Chapter 48
Venus
“Venus! What’re you doing?” Ivy’s voice splits through a chaotic dream involving cloning research and Henry. Buster rouses beside me with a weak, “What?”
“Sleeping,” I mutter begrudgingly when my sister plops on the bed beside me.
“No, I mean, why aren’t you in class right now? It’s after nine,” she reports urgently.
I sit up, my head throbbing enough to elicit regret. Buster hops over me to tackle her, making the bed shake. I rub my temple. “I called in sick. Canceled my class. It’s allowed.”
“Oh,” Ivy says, calmer now. Her cold hand finds my forehead. “Are you sick?”
“Sick on love and vodka.” A summary of yesterday crowds my thoughts, bringing the pain with it.
Longing burns through me like a controlled fire, clearing the brush for the raw earth underneath.
I ache for Henry. The despair I feel seems illogical when I try to analyze it.
How can I miss him so sharply when I was with him only yesterday?
But love is illogical.
Beautiful, terrible, and illogical.
Feelings, good and bad, rarely equate with reason. The pain of his absence isn’t only for the present, but made sharper for the future and the prospect of returning to a life without him. Without Olly. The thought suffocates me.
I deliberated for hours last night. I treated myself like a specimen and examined every part, looking for hope.
Perhaps I’d find some unknown predisposition for domesticity, hiding in my corners.
Or devise a brainwashing scheme for Maggie.
Or discover a need to settle into a stable career.
Or maternal instincts. Or Ivy-like charisma.
Or general normalcy, hidden in boxes in my mental attic.
Then, I could pull out the necessary tools to make this work, to make others see me as I am—not just a grown-up version of my former difficult self, but also as someone who would keep the two boys I love most safe and sound, as much as it’s in my power to do so.
Then, I could take those empty boxes, fill them with the past, all the shame, blame, guilt, and other negativities inside them, and hide them from my consciousness.
I was quite tipsy by that point.
But that’s what this summer’s experiment was about, me trying to belong—and it failed. Again.
I lay back down, curling into my plethora of oversized pillows, hoping to fall back asleep, the only place to find relief.
Ivy slaps my ass. “Get up!”
“Owwww!” I whine.
“I’ll fix you my hangover cure.” She stands with her hands on her hips. “Take a shower. We have to get moving and grooving. Dad’s arriving at the airport in…” She checks her watch. “One hour.”
“What? Why? He’s not due back for another week.”
She shrugs. “All I know is that Christie texted us… Where’s your phone?”
I glance around. “Don’t know.”
She groans with irritation. “Anyway, he said that Dad’s arriving and asked if we could pick him up. So, shower. Now. Come on, Buster.”
He yaps and follows her out of the loft bedroom.
Ivy’s hangover cure is toast, two pain pills, and an iced coffee mixed with coconut milk, which she has thoughtfully put into an oversized travel mug. She pushes everything toward me when I come downstairs. She gives me a once-over, not bothering to hide her dissatisfaction.
“All those beautiful clothes we got you, and this is what you’re wearing?”
A glance down at my usual t-shirt, shorts, and boots causes a huff. “What? It’s the airport, not a date. I want to be comfortable, and I don’t need those clothes anymore.”
She groans. “You’re regressing and don’t think for a second I didn’t notice the half-packed bags on your floor. What’s going on?”
I shove toast into my mouth instead of answering.
She holds up a finger. “Hold that thought… You can spill the tea in the car. Let’s go.”
Perhaps it’s the coffee or pain pills kicking in, but in the twenty-minute drive to the airport, I spill about the campout, Olly’s injury, acting as a parental surrogate at the hospital, meeting Carly, Maggie’s words, and the greenhouse.
I tell her my plan to accept New Zealand and list the extensive benefits of that decision, reminding myself of them as well.
She grunts, pulling into a parking space at the airport. “Why do you have to go thousands of miles away to change the world? Why can’t you do that right here?”
I’m about to answer, but she bangs her hands on the steering wheel. “And screw Henry and Maggie. What about us? Dad and me? We just got you back, and we want you here. Can’t that be enough?”
I gape as my sister—the same sister who once described me to her friends as being barely related—tears up over the prospect of me leaving. She grabs a tissue from the center console, groans again, and checks her watch.
“We have to go,” she says, but stepping out of her car, her phone rings. She answers with a chipper, “Hi, this is Ivy.”
I meet her at the front of her car, and we slowly start to snake our way through the expansive parking lot. “Oh, hey… yeah, it’s fine that Marnie passed along my number…”
She holds the phone out between us and puts it on speaker.
“She’s not answering her phone. She cancelled her class.” Henry’s voice is bothered, rushed, but it’s a relief to hear it. “I shouldn’t have left her alone yesterday. We were both upset, but Olly needed me. I need to make sure she’s okay—”
“Henry, it’s okay. Her phone’s MIA, but she’s fine,” Ivy chimes in while I shake my head to indicate that I don’t want to talk to him. “She, um, got a little carried away on Vodka Cranberries and took a sick day.”
The sliding doors open, and we’re hit by cool air and background noise. An announcement chimes over the loudspeakers, reporting a flight delay.
“Ivy? Did I hear the word flight? Are you at the airport?” Henry blasts through the phone. “Is Venus there?”
“Um, yes, but no. Don’t freak out. She’s not running, Henry. I promise,” Ivy says. “But she can’t see you right now. She needs… I don’t know what she needs, but maybe time?”
“She’s taking the New Zealand job. Did she tell you?”
“Um, yeah. I’m not happy about it, either. But she hasn’t done anything yet.”
I roll my eyes at my hopeful sister, knowing I won’t change my mind.
There’s a brief silence before Henry sighs.
“I understand why she wants New Zealand. It’s unfair to ask her to settle for anything less.
It’s just… I love her. I’ve always loved her.
I’ll go on loving her wherever she is. Maybe it’s selfish—tell me if it is, Ivy—but fuck it… I want her here with me.”
His words are stern and decisive, sending an electric charge up my spine. Ivy gives me a sympathetic look while I shake my head, unable to hold these weighted emotions right now.
“Venus doesn’t hurt me or Olly—she makes us happy. We want her in our lives. She must know that.”
“Your mom isn’t the only one living in the past,” Ivy tells him, “but she’s wrestling with the facts, too.
You know how she is, Henry. Big feelings freak her out, and she’s trying to ignore them so that she can complete an exhaustive mental analysis before reaching a sound and logical conclusion to her dilemma.
She says she can’t accomplish that around you and Olly. It’s too difficult.”
He groans. “I hate that fucking word.” The line gets noisy for a moment—it’s Henry using his inhaler.
“You okay?” Ivy asks.
“No,” he growls in a scratchy exhale. “I’m not okay. I don’t want Venus reasoning this out. I want her to trust her feelings. To trust me—”
My hand goes to the silky pink scarf in my hair, and how freeing it felt to let him have control, to love me as he wanted, to trust him.
“—Please, Ivy. Tell her I won’t give up on her. Tell her yesterday wasn’t goodbye. I’ll come there. I’ll leave right now. You don’t have to tell her. I’ll just show up.”
“No! Don’t do that. I’d break the fundamental laws of sisterhood if I betrayed her wishes like that. Sorry, Henry. But I promise to talk to her, and she won’t be alone.”
“Good. But wait, Ivy. Please, tell her… everything’s okay. It’s only a storm—we should hold each other through it,” he says, his words choppy. “It’ll pass. And I’ll still be here, wanting her. Always.”
Ivy’s eyes go as wide as golf balls as she glares at me over Henry’s sweet words. My eyes shut tightly, sealing the emotions inside me.
A short pause later, Ivy says, “I’ll tell her,” before the call ends. She slips her phone into her pocket, points to Dad’s arriving gate, and drags me through the airport.
I watch the exit gates, where the flight from London via DC has just landed, and passengers should emerge at any moment. The airport isn’t busy, but the buzzing glow of bright lights and the occasional drone of the speakers unsettle me, even more than I already am.
“Gil’s agreed to move in,” she says, breaking through the noise and inner angst. “You were right. Getting away together loosened him up, and he spilled the beans about his anxiety, prompting me to pop the question. He said he’d take me over Seagrove any day.”
A weak smile emerges. “Excellent. That’s a very positive outcome.”
Movement from the hall’s end catches my attention, but it’s only staff shifting through the corridor.
“What Henry’s mom said isn’t his fault, you know,” Ivy says.
“I know. Henry hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s done everything right, actually.”
“Then, why not talk to him?” she asks, her voice soft and sweet.
I take a breath. “We’ve talked already. What more is there to say?”
Ivy groans again. “That you love him, and New Zealand isn’t what you want. You’re a sad sack in hiking boots—a ten on the pain chart. You thought you’d turned a corner into their family, and now, you’re scared and bullying yourself into believing you don’t belong. But it’s not true, Venus.”
“I don’t intentionally hurt anyone, but it happens around me,” I retort. “The facts are indisputable.”
“Forget these so-called facts. They’re circumstantial. You could argue that people are hurt around me, too,” she says, smirking.
“You work at a hospital.”
“Right, circumstantial. Henry says you should trust your feelings. I agree with him.”
“I know you’re keeping your promise to Henry, but I don’t want to talk. I’m not upset or emotional. I’m controlling my impulses. I’m handling this perfectly well. I’m fine. Absolutely fine… and when I leave again, I’ll be absolutely fine then, too. It’s what’s best. For everyone.”
Ivy appears like she might argue, but the heavy double doors swing open, and the area floods with people, distracting us both.
Dad emerges through the crowd, beelining around families and couples toward us.
From his wrinkled khakis, plain collared shirt, and tousled blonde and gray hair, he looks the same as always.
But my heart rate upticks anyway, and I find myself bobbing on my boots, back and forth, in anticipation.
Ivy reaches him first, meeting him halfway. She latches her arms around his shoulders for her excessive show of affection—she’s always been a self-proclaimed hugger. He pats her back, and they share friendly greetings.
When his grayish-green eyes land on me, his gentle smile unlocks the pent-up tension of the last twenty-four hours.
All at once, my feelings converge. I recall the fear I felt when I saw Olly hurt, the relief I felt with every question he answered, and the pride I took in how well he handled his emergency room visit.
I remember Henry calling me family, and the blissful comfort of sharing the tent with them.
The agony returns, too. Maggie’s disappointment and the raw, aching truth in her words.
The all-encompassing beauty and devastation with Henry in the greenhouse.
I am helplessly saturated with feelings. Utterly soaked. Lost in a storm.
“What brings you home early, Dad?” Ivy asks.
He answers with a simple, “Venus,” smiling gently as he says it.
Hearing my name unlocks the drawbridge, freeing everything inside. I crumble into his arms. That he would cut his trip short for me, like he knew instinctively that I needed him, makes it true. I need him. And Ivy. And all the love and support they’re willing to give me. I need my family.
He holds me there in silence as the world shuffles, rolls, and patters around us, and I do the unthinkable. I cry into my father’s shoulder.
“Oh, you guys,” Ivy coos, latching her arms around us both and crying, too.
“My amazing daughters,” Dad says, with one of us occupying each of his shoulders. “It’s good to be home.”