Chapter 4
NOW
“Hey, Red.”
Austin James gives that bone-melting half smile I remember so well, and I avert my eyes, as if the sight of him might actually burn my retinas.
And Red. The old nickname pierces my eardrums as if he’d screamed it.
A nickname he gave me the first summer we met.
When we started to see the limits of who each other could be.
What the actual hell is he doing here?
And why, for the love of all that is holy, did he have to get hotter?
This tall, broad-shouldered, tapered-waist heartbreaker in those soft old blue jeans that hang on him like the most perfect Levi’s ad.
I know those jeans as well as I know the guy wearing them.
I have to actively block out the searing memories of frantically, eagerly unbuttoning them.
Look at him, standing there in a backward hat with his dark blond waves flaring up just a little around the edge of it, behind his ears.
His tan skin and the vein that goes down his forearm and to his perfect hands, his long, squared fingers.
The ones he used to stir my whiskey in a glass with ice, that he used to move my hair off my face when it stuck to my cheek with salt water, the ones he used …
in other ways. The thought of which makes me realize now that I haven’t been breathing since he stepped outside.
It’s his unpolished look that made him the kind of athlete known by even the least sports-aware.
When I was in college, I had the incredible misfortune of being haunted by the vision of Austin on the walls of countless dorm rooms. Especially the Adidas ads.
Especially the action shot of him hitting the ball with such incredible velocity that it cracked—as it really did in a US Open match once, when his serve reached over 155 miles per hour.
He had a casual, slightly amused look on his face that in no way matched the intensity of his ability.
Across the bottom of the poster, in taunting neon, it said AUSTIN “KILLJOY” JAMES.
I hate him. Or at least I really, really should.
“Sammie girl, it’s so good to see you.” He bends down and she throws her arms around his neck. She squeezes him so hard he laughs, that low rumble I was always trying to elicit from him.
He’s another one who’s been impossible to internet stalk, as he actually is completely absent from all social media and always has been. The only trace of him is in rare news articles I’m sometimes unlucky enough to get pushed.
Sammie doesn’t let go of him completely, pulling back for a moment to wonder at him, her eyes flitting between both of his, her smile big. “You’re here.”
He nods. “I am.”
She pulls him into her arms once more and he squeezes her back, lifting her tiny, five-foot-five frame off the ground several inches as he stands at his full height of six foot three.
“Matt, glad they didn’t cancel that flight after all. Was it rocky?” he asks, over Sammie’s head.
“Apparently the storm moved,” says Matt.
Sammie finally releases him and then steps back, hand over her mouth in awe.
I understand it. He’s the last person in the world I expected to see, here, again. Ever. Anywhere.
But he and Matt are talking like it hasn’t been that long. Do they keep in touch? The thought never occurred to me that they might. My ego is appalled.
The guys hug tight. “Where’s that kid of yours?”
Matt gestures toward his daughter. Austin tosses me a hooded look and I feel like I’m being pranked. Or like in fact I am the one who died, and surprise! I’m in hell!
The chorus of evening birds around us rises to a briefly treacherous volume, as if to confirm my suspicion.
“Austin!” comes a joyful voice, followed by the lumbering run of four-year-old Nora.
She wraps herself around his leg like a koala, and he says, “Hey, kid,” as he ruffles her dark hair. So, I guess Matt and Austin have been in touch. Four-year-olds don’t remember people they don’t ever see.
Me, for example.
My heart has been pounding at double speed for days, as if I had somehow known what was coming. As if I knew this weekend would come with the reunion of all the people I’ve spent a decade avoiding. But I hadn’t known. Had I?
My mother had often said she thought I had supernatural intuition.
Ever since I was a kid. She had an aunt in Florida who was, apparently, the real thing.
She had a little shop in Cassadaga, and did local fairs and carnivals and things.
Babe said I had her gift. I had never believed her, and yet it was always hard to ignore dread in my gut or the weirdness after I’d felt like something was going to happen and then it did.
I’m not psychic. And if you asked my mother, she would have said it’s only because I didn’t practice.
The gift was useless if it wasn’t honed, evidently.
No, instead, I get strong instincts that I can’t quite figure out, and then something comes to pass and I know, deep in me somewhere, that the instinct had been foretelling.
It’s like the gut feelings we all get, only they come on so strong they nearly knock me over.
That’s what I’d felt before coming here. Now I know this is why. Because we’d all be back here together. Well, all of us but Babe.
I register that while my thoughts are whirring, the others have been chatting about Austin’s drive in.
He’s come straight from his parents’ place in Texas, yeah, they moved back a few years ago, no, he doesn’t make it out there as often as he’d like, yeah, his parents have found a nice community out there, hard to do these days, etc.
The doorbell rings and Birdie gives one bark. Austin says, “Hey,” quietly to her with a snap, and she goes to his side.
Matt stands to answer it. “This has to be the lawyer.”
“I’ll go with you,” says Sammie. The unmistakable skip in her step that means she wants to have a drive-by gossip session with Matt.
The dog comes over and starts sniffing me eagerly, tail wagging.
“Birdie. Here.” Austin whistles softly. “Leave her alone.”
“She’s fine!” I pet her and avoid looking up at him. I can’t help but smile down at her, though.
“Didion?”
I tilt my face farther away from him and hear him chuckle. The sound makes blood rush to my cheeks.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I say, sixteen again.
“Even when you’re funny?”
I shift my gaze to his, and my heart trips as I do.
“Oh, hi, Austin,” I say, dryly.
He lifts his chin at me once. “Hey.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, and then Matt comes to the back door. “Ms. Collie is here. It’s time for the will.”
Sammie is chatting cheerfully with the woman and leading her to the other, screened-in porch on the side of the house.
Austin opens the door, keeping a hand on it. “Come on, girls.”
Birdie and Nora go in, then I do. I’m not that near to him as I go by, but it’s close enough to feel his body heat and smell the woody, clean scent of him.
Like palo santo and freshly folded laundry.
He’s the only guy I’ve ever been frequently physically close to who never seems to have a moment of smelling anything but good, not his breath in the morning, not his sweat after hours of exertion. Of any kind.
He slides the door shut behind me and we leave the electric buzz of cicadas for a moment, the sound lulling and crescendoing again as we walk to the side porch, passing Matt and the lawyer where they sort paperwork and talk in low voices in the corner of the kitchen.
I sit down across the table from Sammie, who fiddles with the tablecloth, staring down at the weave.
I spot the faint pink splotch there and remember it being from when she threw a tennis ball in the house and somehow it bounced perfectly off the wood floor and right into Babe’s fresh, boiling hot Le Creuset full of penne alla vodka.
Sammie and I had both looked on in horror, both too used to our new household with the evil stepmother who only allowed clear or pale liquids in the living room with its white couch.
Babe had laughed without concern for the stains that might outlive her, and said, Chinese food it is.
Sammie glances up at me and for a second, I feel like we’re silently remembering it together. And maybe we are.
Austin comes in holding a bottle of Mercy Brewing Co.’s pilsner.
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
“Picked it up on the way. Want one?”
“No, thanks.”
“Sammie?”
She nods.
She looks like she’s about to cry as she lifts her feet onto the chair, pretzels them, and lets her knees fall wide.
I’m sure it’s the grief. The shock of it all.
The unexpected reunion. But part of me fears that she’s lost the spark that made her Sammie.
That’s all I’ve ever been afraid of for her.
That eventually something would come along and dull her shine.
Be it in the form of an increasingly absent mother, a motorcycle-riding asshole, or something I don’t see coming.
I breathe in deeply.
Matt and Ms. Collie come out then. She has a round, nice face, and gives us all a look of sympathy.
“So … I took a look at the will,” says Matt. He glances at the other lawyer and then back at us. “It’s a little unusual.”
“How unusual?” I ask.
He nods slowly. “Let’s just say … it’s the kind of thing only Babe would think was a good idea.”
I raise my eyebrows and then say, at the same time as my sister, “Oh, shit.”