Chapter 35 #2
“Girls!” I shouted, clapping my hands, eyes pricking with tears at their brown hair, their freckles, their triumph. “I am so proud of you.”
I’d take every hard knock with them.
“Let’s go celebrate. We’re getting ice cream.”
As I drove across town, Max burned holes into my profile with his hot stare.
“You look different,” he observed.
I laughed. “The bandages? The swelling? Purple skin? That’ll do it.”
I felt his head shake. “No.”
My chest tightened. “Happier?”
Impossibly grateful? Finally home? Never the same again?
“Maybe.” His gaze jerked away.
I lost him again.
I reached over to grab his hand, and no surprise, he flinched like my hand was on fire. But now more than ever, I would never stop trying. “I love you, buddy,” I said. “You make me happy. You hear that? You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You and those two nuggets back there.”
“I’m glad you gave up on the rags, by the way,” he muttered into the glass. “And hopefully TikTok.”
Freshly blown dry and straightened, parted down the middle to stay, my hair admittedly had come a long way—lifetimes—since Tuesday. I cackled. “Yes to the rags. We’ll see about TikTok.”
“No more rags!” praised the girls.
My kind of rags-to-riches story.
In the middle of our ice cream date, seated together around a patio table in front of Salt he did so good. It reminds me subtly of the night he took me to Paris, in the first home we ever shared.
My fifty best people are here this time, though.
They’re floating and humming, sipping champagne or cider, and eating sushi.
The adults catch up and clink glasses. All of our big kids cluster in the far corner next to the olive tree, shoulders brushing, smiles bright, trying unsuccessfully to pretend they’re not having a blast.
Reid squeezes my hand. My stomach flips with desire. Settles with gratitude.
“Thank you for this,” I say to him. “It’s perfect.” I take a beat, scanning the party. “We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we?”
He steps beside me, consuming the scene too. “I’m just so glad I snatched you up at twenty-one,” he says. “When the universe conspires, you listen.”
I lean my head on his shoulder, complete.
I see Alan hug Camila and Sierra in a boisterous greeting, a big triple hug, all three of them looking radiant and relaxed, like the most natural thing in the world.
Friends growing old together, like they’ve never missed a minute.
Everyone here belongs so exquisitely, I’m nearly breathless: my Coast Academy moms, their husbands, my employees, old friends, new friends, family, the treasured people who make up my life.
Next to our ficus hedge, I see Max blush at something Quinn’s daughter, Cat, says to him.
At a far table, my mom hunches beside my dad, shawl pulled tight, feeding Grandma a chocolate chip cookie.
She wants dessert first lately, most of the time, and who are we to argue?
I watch the three of them—undone by thankfulness—prepared to savor every single day I still have them with me, alive.
We might not be a big family, but together we’re solid as time.
And across the yard, I see Quinn, satin dress matching her sleek black hair. She winks at me, glowing, confident, full, lifting her golden glass.
Happy birthday, she mouths.
Thank you, I whisper right back to her.
Hand to my heart, it’s the happiest of my life.