Chapter 21
Twenty-one
Brooklyn’s father, Charlie, was nothing like I anticipated.
He was mild-mannered for a man of his size, and far softer around the edges than Brooklyn had made him out to be.
When he found out I’d been writing (which Brooklyn had to proudly state), he recommended a few nonfiction books on creative philosophy.
It was also Charlie’s family lasagna recipe that was made for dinner, and Stella eagerly played sous chef, yapping his ear off about junior league and some inconsequential drama in her friend group. But Charlie listened attentively.
“Don’t let the tough-girl act fool you, she’s a daddy’s girl.” Brooklyn nudged me and smirked.
“Does that make you a mama’s boy?” I asked. We’d taken on the task of setting the dining room table after Brooklyn had so graciously volunteered.
“No way,” Brooklyn replied. “At least, not in the negative connotation of the word. But god forbid men are nice to their mothers.”
“Don’t be so smarmy.” Annie had appeared beside us to hand Brooklyn a stack of napkins. “You know you’re my favorite son.”
Brooklyn blinked. “I’m your only son.”
“Exactly.”
I snickered behind my hand, and Brooklyn playfully jabbed me in the side, causing me to squeal and capture everyone’s attention.
“Nothing to see here.” Brooklyn came to my rescue. “Maybe a casual kidnapping.”
We sat down for dinner, and they carried on as if Charlie had only been gone two days instead of almost two months.
“On the rig, sometimes it’s hard to pass the time,” Charlie was saying. “A bunch of us take turns doing the questionnaire from the Colbert show. Have you ever done it?”
“No, but I like personality quizzes.”
Charlie nodded. “You’ll like this, then. So the first question is what’s the best sandwich.”
Definitely not what I had expected, and I was sorely unprepared for an answer—which I guess was the whole point. “Wow, that’s actually kind of hard, because I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that in my life.”
Brooklyn lurched forward in his chair. “Grilled cheese, obviously.”
“For you maybe,” Stella scoffed with a flick of her wrist. “You have the eating habits of an eight-year-old.”
Stella’s comment lit up places in my memory, and the answer surfaced.
“Okay, I’ve got mine. When I was younger, my mom used to make me turkey and lettuce with mustard on really good sourdough that she’d get from the farmer’s market in downtown Arcadia.
I know that’s not the best, but I ate that for lunch every day from fourth grade to seventh grade, and back then I thought it was pretty great. With some classic Lay’s, of course.”
“Best to you, though,” Charlie said. “That’s the point.”
Brooklyn casually draped his arm over the back of my chair, and his father continued the questionnaire.
Despite knowing there was some kind of tension between Brooklyn and his father, they kept it away from the dinner table, and we all laughed and ate lasagna and debated if apples or oranges were the better fruit.
When I thought about what family normalcy looked like, this was it.
As well adjusted as Nikki, Mom, and I were with our situation, that didn’t stop me from occasionally wondering about what our whole family would have looked like having dinner on a Sunday summer night.
I wondered if my dad would have still been a history teacher, and if my mom would have kept collecting those little ceramic animals that had been all over our kitchen.
And suddenly, it sank in, deep into my bloodstream, as to Brooklyn’s desperation to fit in and be normal. It was for them. People like Brooklyn (and by extension my sister) might have been victims of their illness, but their families were victims of everything else that came with it.
The realization of that stung—that meant I was a victim, instead of someone who was handling things because it’s your family and you care and you want things to be okay.
I didn’t like to be thought of as a victim, because it didn’t feel right to identify as something people who had serious trauma identified as, but maybe Nikki was right about something—I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.
I helped Stella load the dishwasher after dinner, and even in the comfortable silence I felt her gaze on me.
“What?” I asked.
“You really are good for my brother,” Stella said with a casual shrug. “But I think you knew that already.”
“We’re good for each other,” I replied, rinsing off a plate in the sink before handing it to her.
“Right. I do mean it, though.”
I offered her a smile. She jerked her head in the direction of the back doors, where Brooklyn was outside on the deck. “Don’t worry, I’ll finish this.”
“Thanks. For saying what you said too.”
I made my way onto the back deck but stopped when I realized he hadn’t heard me come out. He had his back to me, his silhouette faintly illuminated by the dim glow of the lights coming through the windows of the house.
It was the smallest of things. The way the wind whipped his hair in every direction. The way he’d crack his neck every so often. Every little move he made captivated me. I was beginning to accept how deep into this I was; so deep the light barely reached me.
“Hey, you,” I said as I finally approached him.
Brooklyn turned around, and his eyes lit up.
“Hey, yourself.”
Without a word, Brooklyn wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his chest, resting his chin on the top of my head.
My cheek brushed against the soft, threadbare material of the Clayton baseball sweatshirt he had thrown on, and I inhaled his usual fresh and clean scent that I had grown so used to.
He really did smell like a rainstorm, in the best way, and I would have stayed there all night if I could.
“Thanks for coming tonight,” he mumbled into my hair.
“Of course.”
“Everything felt so okay, for once,” he said. “I felt okay.”
“You are okay,” I replied, reaching down and grabbing his hand, feeling him melt under my touch, as if all the icy tension was turning to water. We stood outside for a while in silence, the gentle sounds of the ocean floating through the night air.
“It’s getting kind of chilly, let’s go inside,” Brooklyn said, pulling at the sleeves of his hoodie.
I nodded in response, and let him lead me through the back door and up the stairs.
A warm feeling radiated through me as Brooklyn pulled me into his room, something I barely recognized as lust until he quietly shut the door behind us and studied me with dark, hungry eyes.
In a split second his lips were on mine, his touch like a spark that set off fireworks inside me.
We slowly meandered across the floor of his room, refusing to separate as we stumbled to his bed.
I had kissed him dozens of times, but the way his hands glided so effortlessly but still so sensually along my skin put me on another level—one that damn near separated my soul from my body.
“Nat,” he whispered softly, still so close to me I felt his lips brush against my ear.
“Yeah?”
He exhaled heavily, his breath hot on my cheek. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me this summer.”
My heart nearly burst. I smiled at him, letting my fingers gently run down his cheeks.
“Don’t thank me. You’ve done so much for me too.
Everything that’s been going on, it would have been really easy for me to lock myself in my room all summer, but you made sure I didn’t.
Remember what you said to me when we first hung out? ”
“Tell me again anyway.”
“We’re in it together.”
I wanted to stop time entirely. He kissed me again, pressing his body into mine. I was in such a haze, his scent and his touch clouding all my senses, that I barely registered the voice calling from the hall. We jerked away from each other as someone pounded on his bedroom door.
“Brooklyn,” his father called from the other side of the door. “Can you please come downstairs for a minute?”
Brooklyn let out a heavy sigh and shot me an apologetic look as he shimmied off of me and rolled off the bed. He pulled at the strings on his hoodie.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Guess I spoke too soon.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I gave him a faint smile in response. “Your dad really does mean well. I can tell.”
“Deep down I know that, but—” Brooklyn leaned down and kissed my forehead. “It’s okay. I’ll only be a few minutes, I promise.”
I nodded, watching Brooklyn turn and walk out, shutting the door behind him.
A heavy breath escaped my lips as I lay back on Brooklyn’s bed, watching the ceiling fan cast shadows on the walls.
This hadn’t been the first time—and wouldn’t be the last—I’d be left alone in Brooklyn’s room, and the logical side of me knew this was all part of what I’d signed up for, but I still watched the clock on his bedside table turn minutes into hours. At least, that was what it felt like.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and thumbed through a few DVDs we had, plucked Reality Bites out of the stack, and loaded it into Brooklyn’s Xbox.
As I was about to sit back down on the bed and resign myself to whatever the night was going to bring, my foot collided with something hard sticking out from under the bed.
Wincing in pain, I dropped to the floor, rubbing the bruise that had already begun to develop on the top of my foot. I glanced under the bed at whatever I had kicked, seeing the corner of a wooden box peeking out from behind the comforter.
I could have just pushed it back under the bed, and maybe I should have, but my body betrayed me.
I was still trying to figure out where the lines blurred between being trustworthy and being cautious, and I guess I’d decided cautious was the better option, since I pulled the box out in front of me and ran my hands over the smooth, dark wood.
It was heavy in my hands, but the top of the box slid off with ease, and I was instantly greeted with a heavy, musky scent.