31. Now
NOW
I t’s coming to an end. I have six days until the gala, and once I leave here, it’s all behind me. I’ve let down my guard a bit, though I shouldn’t. I just want one last chance to pretend these things are mine.
I go to the store with him. I follow him around the house like the lovesick girl I’ve always been. He’s folding laundry—I offer to help.
“I still have your sweatshirt,” I admit as we fold. “That UCSD one you loaned me the night I ran from the sorority house. I guess I should give it back.”
“No,” he replies, “you shouldn’t. It’s yours.”
Luke and I work together on the kids’ rooms without being asked.
We hang pictures and fill dressers. We make breakfast and dinner, side by side.
And when we’re sitting across from each other at the table, I can almost believe this is our life.
I allow myself to go for long stretches of the day forgetting it’s going to end, filled with a lazy, delighted sort of contentment.
Cash texts to ask when I’m coming and I don’t bother to reply.
It’s the feeling of hopefulness, and it’s not real, but I let it happen anyway because I know I won’t feel it again.
Donna and I hear him hammering in the backyard one morning and follow the sound. He’s hanging a hammock between two of the trees.
“Do kids even like hammocks?” Donna asks.
His eyes hold mine and I smile. “Everyone likes hammocks.”
In the afternoons, Luke surfs, and I play guitar in the backyard.
I’m trying something new, music that’s more real and honest than anything I’ve created since that first album.
I’ve been hiding for a long time, submerged.
I’ve been singing about life seen from the bottom of the ocean, but here, now, I’m singing about the world as it is when you’ve just come up gasping for air.
At night, I slide into Luke’s bed when it’s late enough, when the street is silent and the house is pitch black, and he’s always waiting for me. I press my nose to his skin and just inhale. I hope he doesn’t notice.
“Jules,” he begins one night as I climb over him, and I know, just from his tone, that he’s about to ask some question I don’t want to answer.
We aren’t anything. It’s not going anywhere and it won’t continue.
“Don’t ruin it,” I say, cutting him off.
He tenses. I know him. I can feel his desire to argue in the tightness of his muscles, in his sudden silence. My mouth moves to his neck, hoping to distract him, but he remains rigid beneath me.
“Get on the floor,” he finally replies.
I still. “What?”
“Get. On. The. Floor.”
I don’t know if he’s punishing me for the way I refuse to let this be anything more than it is, or showing me how full of shit I am—because he can prove it’s more. He can prove I’m his.
I slide onto the floor, on my knees. He stands, shoving his boxers down and grabbing his cock, bringing it to my lips. “Open wide,” he demands, and when I do, he thrusts inside my mouth, weaving my hair through his fingers.
“Take the whole thing,” he grunts. “All the way to the back of your throat.”
He’s treating me like a whore, and I’m soaking wet anyway, participating eagerly because I’m so turned on.
He uses his hand to move my head, faster and faster, going far enough to trigger my gag reflex.
“You love this, don’t you?” he hisses. “You’ll do any fucking thing I ask, any hour of the day, but you can’t tell me the fucking truth a single goddamn time.”
He’s swelling in my mouth, moving faster. I groan around him, squeezing my thighs together as the ache between them grows unbearable.
“Swallow all of it,” he grunts, and then he explodes in my mouth with a sharp inhale, a quiet cry.
He remains like that, breathing heavily for a long moment before he finally unwinds his fingers from my hair. I don’t know what happens now…if he’s still mad, if he wants me to leave.
Why isn’t this enough for him? That I’ll leave, that I’ll stay, that I’ll lie beside him all night, twisting in the sheets, just in case he wants to fuck me later?
“Get on the bed,” he finally says, sliding out of my mouth. “And take off the shorts.”
Because even when he’s mad…he’ll do anything for me too.
* * *
The gala for Danny’s House is being held at The Obsidian, this dreamy all-white hotel that sits right on a beach to the north of us.
It feels a lot like the wedding Donna wished she could plan for me and Danny, the “ Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could afford that?
” dream that was way out of our price range.
On the morning of the gala, Luke drives me and Donna to the hotel to help set things up. I check us into the three-bedroom suite I’ve rented so that we don’t have to drive all the way back to Rhodes when we’re done, and Luke carries our bags in while Donna and I go to the ballroom.
There are floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean, and a terrace wraps around the outside so guests will be able to flow easily in and out of the space.
“We’re cranking the air conditioning,” the hotel liaison tells us, “but it won’t be this cold in here once it’s full of people.”
I text Luke and ask him to bring a sweater for Donna.
He returns with the cardigan she wore in the car and one of his hoodies for me, so big it will fall to a few inches above my knees.
I shouldn’t accept it but here I am, letting my foot off the gas again.
I pull it over my head and inhale deeply. It smells like him.
He catches me and his mouth curves into a pleased, lopsided grin. “It’s yours,” he says, holding my eye. Everything I have is yours , is what he means. God, I wish I could say it back.
We follow the coordinator as she points out where things will go, and Libby whispers the names of guests in my ear—a lot of Silicon Valley, tech-rich couples who could probably buy and sell me easily. They’ve already made large donations or have offered to match the final sum.
That New York Times reporter, no matter how little I care for her, wasn’t wrong: Danny’s House is turning into something that might be repeated all over the country.
Luke and I are the ones who brought it the exposure, yet Hilary Peters still doesn’t want us around.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says to me with a tight, displeased smile on her face.
Luke moves closer. It makes no sense that he still wants to protect me—he’s seen how readily I put myself first.
“Of course they’re here,” says Libby, wrapping an arm around my waist. “They’re the whole reason we’re able to do this.”
Hilary’s smile grows sharp. “Their contributions are a drop in the bucket compared with what’s come in over the past few weeks.”
“And those contributions are coming in because Juliet and Luke brought us the publicity,” Libby counters in a surprising show of backbone.
I fight a smile.
Hilary acts like she hasn’t heard this, but Libby and Donna exchange a glance when her back turns.
I’m glad they’re both keeping an eye on the situation because Hilary is exactly the sort of woman who will say the right thing to Social Services, then stomp all over some powerless kid she happens to dislike.
We’re led to the tables where the silent auction will be held and start taping down bid sheets and setting up the displays.
There are toddler ballet lessons and themed baskets.
There are also trips, from the mundane—Napa bus tour—to a glamorous private home overlooking the Sea of Cortez, chef included.
We’re still there when the hotel staff come to set up the stage for the band and a parquet floor for dancing. Donna stands with Luke, fretting as she watches them. She calls me and Libby over. “Do you think it’s big enough? Thirty by thirty sounded big on paper but look at it.”
“Let’s see,” says Luke, pulling me by the hand.
I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t willingly let him grab my hand in public, much less dance with him, but he’s smiling in that way I can’t resist, and it’s all so effortless and easy.
I’m like a bedsheet floating off a clothesline as he leads me across the floor.
I could no sooner walk away from him now than that sheet could stop floating and fold itself into four square corners.
Libby grabs Donna and spins her too.
“He’s singing ‘Jingle Bells’,” I call over my shoulder to Libby and Donna. “I can’t believe you don’t know any other songs.”
“I know lots of other songs,” he argues before launching into “The Wheels on the Bus”, loudly. Donna starts to sing along, and Libby and I are laughing so hard we’re nearly bent over.
“You’re proven your point. We need a bigger floor,” says Hilary sharply, cutting into our silliness.
We stop dancing, still trying to control our giggling, and that’s when I see Grady. He’s standing by the ballroom doors with a garment bag over his shoulder, staring at me and Luke.
Me, wearing Luke’s sweatshirt.
Me, happy and flourishing.
I drop Luke’s hand fast, but not fast enough. The room is still freezing, but I can already feel the sweat trickling down my back.