11 #2
“Good. Every group of idiots needs a witness.”
Ryan lifted his coffee. “I’ve been saying that for years.”
“And yet you keep standing near them,” Mom said.
Ryan’s mouth twitched. “Character flaw.”
Bliss slid out of the booth before I could say anything and hugged Mom like they had known each other for years instead of meeting at the game the night before.
Mom hugged her right back, one hand smoothing down Bliss’s hair in that automatic way she had with people who looked like they had been through too much and still showed up sweet.
Cade watched with a softness he would have denied under oath.
Vivi chose a booth after inspecting the window glare, the distance from the speaker above the counter, and the location of the syrup dispenser.
Skylar took the outer seat beside Rider and immediately asked whether he actually liked his hair that length or if hockey players had a legal requirement to look like they had unresolved feelings.
Rider treated the question like it deserved serious consideration, which meant Skylar decided he was still the cool one and Briggs would spend the entire meal trying to recover.
Breakfast was chaos in a way that should have made my headache worse and somehow didn’t.
Briggs ordered enough food to make the waitress stare at him in silence for three full seconds before writing it down.
Vivi corrected the order in which everyone’s drinks should arrive because water needed to come before anything sticky.
Cade apologized to her with complete seriousness, which made Bliss press her lips together to keep from smiling.
Ryan and Skylar got into a debate about whether energy drinks were a personality trait or a cry for help. Rider taught Vivi how to fold a straw wrapper into a tiny paper hockey stick, and Briggs watched like he had just been replaced in his own emotional role.
“You’re jealous,” Skylar told him.
“I am wounded by paper engineering,” Briggs admitted.
Vivi slid the tiny stick toward him. “You can have this one.”
Briggs froze.
Cade leaned toward Bliss and murmured, “He’s going to cry.”
Bliss whispered back, “I know. It’s precious.”
“I am not crying,” Briggs said, his voice thick with betrayal. “My eyes are hydrating out of respect.”
Mom looked at him over her mug. “You’re a sweet boy, Briggs.”
He pressed both hands flat against the table and stared at her. “If you keep saying things like that, I cannot be held responsible for forming a maternal attachment.”
“You may form one after I finish my coffee.”
“Fair boundary.”
Everyone laughed, and I let myself sit in the middle of it without trying to fix anything for half a minute.
Skylar’s cheeks were pink from being included.
Vivi’s shoulders were relaxed enough that her headphones remained around her neck instead of covering her ears.
Mom had eaten half her waffle, which meant she was either starving or comfortable enough to stop performing fine for us.
That should have been enough, and it almost was.
Then Vivi looked across the booth at Bliss and Cade and pointed toward the small velvet pouch beside Bliss’s coffee. “What’s in the bag?”
The laughter thinned gently, not disappearing so much as softening.
Bliss glanced down at the pouch, then at Cade. He gave her one tiny nod, and she pulled it closer with both hands. “Those are my Nevers. My friends Aura and Charm bought them for me.”
Skylar leaned forward. “What are Nevers?”
Bliss untied the pouch and poured several marbles into her palm.
They caught the morning light from the window, tiny and bright, all different colors, like little planets in her hand.
Cade’s expression changed as he looked at them, grief and love passing through him so quickly that someone who didn’t know him might have missed it.
“They started with my mom,” Bliss said. Her voice stayed steady, but Cade’s hand found her knee beneath the table anyway.
“After she died, there were all these things I knew she would never get to see. Big things. Small things. Stupid things that shouldn’t have mattered and mattered anyway. I started thinking of them as Nevers.”
Vivi’s attention sharpened. “Things that happen and she will never know?”
Bliss nodded. “Exactly.”
Skylar’s expression shifted, her fourteen-year-old armor lowering by an inch. She looked at me, then Mom, then down at the marbles.
Dad’s absence sat at our table as surely as the plates did.
Cade reached into the pouch and took out a deep blue marble, rolling it once between his fingers. “They’re not supposed to fix grief. They just give it meaning.”
Vivi considered that. “Like a physical representation.”
“Yeah,” Cade said softly. “Like that.”
Briggs cleared his throat. “For the record, I respect the hell out of grief marbles.”
Skylar glanced at him. “You are one emotional-support vest away from being a therapy dog.”
“I would wear the vest with honor.”
Mom laughed quietly, then held out her hand. Bliss placed a pale green marble in her palm without asking. Mom stared at it for a long moment, her thumb moving across the smooth glass.
“For our dad?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Her smile didn’t break, but it changed. “For one of the many things he’s being rude enough to miss.”
Vivi looked at the marble. “He would have come to the game.”
“He would’ve been insufferable about the game,” Mom said. “He would have told every stranger in the stands that his son was captain until someone begged him to stop.”
My throat tightened hard.
Skylar looked down at her plate and stabbed a piece of waffle with unnecessary violence. “He would’ve bought the expensive hoodie too.”
“He would’ve bought two,” Mom said.
I looked toward the window because the parking lot was safer than my family’s faces.
Bliss slid another marble toward Vivi. “You can have one if you want. You don’t have to know what it’s for right now.”
Vivi chose a purple one because she was Vivi and some things in the world made sense. She held it in her sleeve-covered hand. “Can mine be for the things Dad missed and for Easton being captain?”
My chest cracked, and Mom’s hand found mine beneath the table and squeezed once, hard enough to hurt.
“Yeah, Vivi,” I said, my voice rough. “It can be for both.”
Briggs made a strangled sound and shoved a forkful of hash browns into his mouth like carbohydrates could save his dignity. Rider looked down. Ryan’s jaw flexed. Cade watched me with that quiet, seeing-too-much expression that made me want to tell him to stop being Cade before noon.
Vivi tucked the marble into her hoodie pocket with the hotel sugar packets and looked around the table. “Are Aura and Charm coming?”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
Mom’s gaze lifted from her coffee and landed on my face with the precision of a woman catching the exact moment a lie became tempting.
Skylar, apparently born without survival instincts, looked between all of us. “Who are Aura and Charm?”
“Bliss’s friends. The ones who bought the Never marbles,” Briggs said carefully.
“Charm is the one Ryan likes. I heard Easton talking about it once on the phone,” Vivi added.
Ryan closed his eyes. “We were doing so well.”
Briggs brightened. “I’m back emotionally.”
Bliss choked on a laugh and covered it with her napkin. Even Cade’s mouth shifted like he wanted to smile and hated the timing. Skylar immediately turned in her seat to stare at Ryan.
“You have a crush?”
Ryan looked at Rider. “I blame your paper hockey stick for opening the portal.”
Rider sipped his coffee. “Reasonable.”
Skylar leaned closer. “Is Charm pretty?”
Briggs made a sound of disbelief. “Charm Harlen looks like expensive perfume learned how to be a person.”
Ryan’s gaze cut toward him. “Will you stop with the rich jokes?”
Briggs raised both hands. “I say that with fear and respect.”
Vivi looked at Ryan. “Your voice changed.”
Ryan exhaled slowly. “Thank you for the ongoing surveillance.”
“You are welcome.”
Skylar grinned. “So Aura is the other friend?”
The humor around the table thinned again as I took a drink of coffee I didn’t want.
Bliss looked at Vivi, choosing her words carefully. “Aura had something else this morning.”
That was a lie.