Chapter 48
COLT
Iwalked up to the door with the paper bags in both arms and a box of water guns. I wasn’t sure Becca was going to be cool with them, but I was very well versed at being the fun uncle—Funcle Colt.
I knocked on the door.
“It’s open,” Summer called from somewhere inside.
I got the door with my foot and came into the kitchen. The smell hit me immediately. Meat. Limes. Tacos. I was so ready for some tacos. I missed tacos.
The kitchen was organized chaos. Becca stood at the stove with a dish towel over her shoulder and a wooden spoon in her hand.
Ground beef sizzled in a pan. She added more seasoning and stirred.
Summer was at the island with her hair piled up and what I was going to guess was a virgin margarita in a glass beside her.
She was peeling shrimp. That was going to make the tacos even better.
Back home, we were big on the carne asada. But I loved a shrimp taco as well.
She looked up when I came in, with a bright smile on her face. We’d texted a bit and I knew what she was wearing under that tank top and shorts. She was coming over after dinner. And we weren’t hiding it.
“You brought groceries,” she said. “I told you not to bring anything.”
“I brought dessert,” I said, setting the bags on the counter. “And something for the kids.”
I kept the box of water guns behind my back. She narrowed her eyes at me.
“What’s behind your back?”
“Nothing.”
“Colt.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Outside with Dad and Sheryl.” She set down a shrimp and dried her hands on the dish towel. She took two steps toward me and I took one step back. “Show me what’s behind your back.”
“You’ll find out when everyone else does.”
Becca looked over her shoulder from the stove. “Whatever it is, if it makes noise, it sleeps at your house tonight. With the kids that make it make noise.”
“It doesn’t make noise,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
Summer was still watching me. I slid the box onto the shelf of the pantry behind a bag of rice where she wouldn’t see it and came back to the island. I leaned across it and kissed her quickly, tasting the strawberry on her lips.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi yourself.” She turned back to her shrimp. “Dad and Sheryl are outside. Go say hello.”
“Do I get a drink first?”
“Help yourself,” Becca said. “Pitcher is in the fridge.”
I poured myself one and took a long drink. “Good,” I said.
“Thanks,” Becca replied.
“Do you guys need help?”
“Nope, go,” Summer said.
I went out through the sliding door to the back patio.
Gideon was standing at the railing with a drink in one hand and his other arm resting on the rail, looking out at the water.
Sheryl was beside him with her shoulder against his.
They were talking quietly and I almost turned back inside to give them the moment, but Gideon heard the door and looked over.
“Colt,” he said.
“Evening.” I crossed the patio and shook his hand. His grip was the same as it had always been. “Sheryl.”
She smiled and extended her hand. “Good to see you again.”
“You too.”
We’d been doing the family dinner thing the last month. It was good. It kept me from getting too homesick.
“Uncle Colt!”
I turned just in time to brace myself. Ocean hit me somewhere around the hip. I got my arm around him before I lost my footing completely.
“Hey, buddy. Where’s your sister?”
River came at a more measured pace across the patio.
“Hi, Colt,” she said shyly.
“Hey, River.”
“We found a jellyfish,” River said. “A dead one. It couldn’t hurt us.”
“How big?”
She spread her arms to a width that would have been impressive even for a living jellyfish. “This big. Mom made us leave it alone.”
“Mom was right.”
“I really wanted to touch it,” Ocean said.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “After dinner, if it’s still there, we’ll go look at it from a safe distance.”
Dinner was the kind of meal that took two hours to eat because nobody was in any hurry to stop talking.
We had dragged extra chairs onto the back porch and set up the big table outside because the evening was too good to waste indoors.
Summer was fading, and even though Southern California didn’t get cold, there was something about losing the long days.
I sat between Summer and River, which meant my left side was occupied by the woman I was in love with and my right side was occupied by a small person who kept stealing shrimp off my plate when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“How’s that shrimp?” I asked and looked at the little thief.
She chewed slowly. Swallowed. “Good,” she said.
I laughed. Summer was watching from my other side. I pointed at River’s plate.
“Eat your own,” I said. “I know where you live.”
River giggled and went back to her own food with complete shamelessness. I shook my head and reached for my drink.
By the time Becca started clearing plates, I felt like I’d won something. Some prize only a select few knew about. A prize given by life but it was never advertised. You just had to stumble into it. Once you found it, you won.
Gideon caught my eye across the table at one point. Just a look. The kind that said he saw everything. I held his gaze and nodded once. He nodded back. He knew exactly what that prize was. He’d found it once and it looked like he’d stumbled into it a second time.
I helped carry dishes inside and got shooed out of the kitchen by Becca, who told me I’d done enough and that she had a system. Summer appeared at my elbow with two glasses, a paper bag, and a look that said she had a plan.
“Beach?” she said quietly.
“Yeah.”
We grabbed two folding chairs from the rack on the side of the house.
I carried them both down the path through the dune grass, Summer walking ahead of me with the wine glasses held carefully in both hands, her bare feet moving through the sand like she’d done this walk a million times before. She knew every inch of this place.
We set up at the waterline where the sand was still warm from the day but the breeze off the water was cool enough to make it perfect.
The ocean was calm tonight. The small waves barely making a sound when they reached the shore.
I stretched my legs out, crossing my ankles in the sand. She handed me my glass.
“Contraband,” she joked as she poured the wine into my glass, then hers.
“I think it’s smart you guys don’t drink in front of the kids,” I said.
“It’s not a forever thing,” she replied. “Just until the kids are a little older and feel settled. Comfortable. We don’t want them to ever feel like they’re in danger.”
“I get it. I’ll honor your wishes.”
“Becca doesn’t mind a beer here or there. She’ll sometimes break her own rule and put wine into her Stanley mug.”
I laughed. “Good to know.”
Summer sipped her wine and looked out at the water. The moon was barely there tonight, just a thin silver sliver sitting low on the horizon. The stars were out, not nearly as bright as they were back home, but enough.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
“Always.”
She kept her eyes on the water. “I’ve been thinking about kids lately.
” A pause. “More than lately, actually. It’s been on my mind for a while.
” She said it carefully, like she was afraid of my response.
“I want to be a mom. I think I’ve always known that but I’ve been so focused on everything else that I just kept putting it somewhere in the future.
” She finally looked at me. “I don’t want to keep putting it in the future. ”
I looked at her. She was serious.
“Sooner rather than later,” she said.
“How much sooner?”
She smiled, bobbing her eyebrows up and down. “I’ve been thinking about names.”
I took a slow drink of wine, not jumping out of my chair and freaking out. I should be, but oddly enough, I wasn’t panicking. “Have you?”
“Coral,” she said.
I choked on my drink. “Coral.”
“Coral Banks Anderson,” she said, completely serious.
I stared at her. She stared back at me with those dark eyes that had been ruining my life since the first summer. She wasn’t joking.
“Coral,” I said again.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “It fits.”
“What does it fit?”
“Us. The ocean. This place. It’s pretty.”
I thought about a little girl with Summer’s eyes running across this beach in the early morning and the name Coral felt as natural as anything else about this place. I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever you want.”
She burst out laughing.
“What?” I said.
“Your face,” she managed. “You hate it.”
“I agreed,” I said. “I said yes.”
“You said whatever you want like I’d just told you I wanted anchovies on the pizza.”
“I was processing,” I said.
She stared at me until I put up both hands in surrender. “Fine, I hate it.”
“Okay,” she said. “What would you want? If you had a say.”
I thought about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d want something that meant something. Something with weight to it.”
She was obviously thinking about it again. “I like old names. Strong names.” She swirled her wine slowly. “Something that doesn’t sound like it belongs to a boy band.”
“I think the name should be something that comes naturally instead of forced,” I said. “When the little nugget starts incubating, we’ll get a better sense of who he or she is. Where we are. Maybe we wait until the kid pops out and looks us in the eyes.”
“Kids don’t pop out,” she scoffed. “I’ve seen the process. Popping is not what happens.”
I laughed. “We’ll know. I trust that.”
We talked about travel for a while after that.
Places she’d never been that I wanted to show her.
I told her about a stretch of coastline in Portugal.
I knew she’d love it. She told me about a reef off the coast of Belize she’d read about.
I decided right in that moment I was going to get her there.
Maybe for our honeymoon. Hell, maybe I’d buy us a cute little beach house so we could visit whenever we wanted.
“You know where I really want to go?” she asked softly.
“Tell me.”
“Texas. I want to see your home.”
“You’re going to love it. I can’t wait to show you. I want to lie under the stars with you and inhale the dusty air and the smell of cow shit.”
She burst into laughter. “Sounds amazing. I’m going to love watching you there. That version of you.”
“Same version.”
“I want to see where you come from. The whole picture.”
I looked at her. The woman I loved. The only woman I would ever love.
I’d been carrying the ring for three weeks.
I saw it at an antique shop and knew it was the right one.
It was simple. A thin band of gold with aquamarine and sapphire clustered around a simple diamond.
It looked like it belonged here. It looked like it belonged on her hand.
I’d been telling myself I was going to wait. Take her to Texas. Do it properly, at the ranch, with the family close. My mother would want to be there. My father would want to shake my hand. I had a whole picture in my head of how it was supposed to go.
But sitting here with her in the dark with the stars showing off overhead and the ocean as my backdrop, the plan I’d been holding onto felt wrong.
We were sitting on the beach where it all began.
The beach that would be our home. It was the right place.
Texas would be the place for other things, but I needed to do this here.
I reached into the front pocket of my shorts.
“Summer,” I said.
“Yeah, baby?”
I slid out of my chair and knelt in front of hers. She smiled at me, clearly thinking I was about to do something else. And then I held up the ring. Her mouth dropped open and she nearly dropped her wine glass. I took it from her and put it in the sand.
“Summer Banks, I love you. When I first saw you, I knew you were the one I was going to marry. I saw you and knew that was my mermaid.”
She giggled, wiping at her eyes.
“I hate that I’ve wasted so many damn years.
I don’t want to waste another day. I want to marry you.
I want to have babies. We can name them Seaweed, Coral, or Reef.
Whatever you want. You have me. I will work my ass off to give you everything you want.
My only job in this life is to make you happy.
All I ask is you give me your heart and agree to be my wife. Will you marry me?”
She smiled and leaned forward. Her hand cupping my jaw. “You had my heart the moment you chased me into the ocean. Yes, I will marry you. We’ll have babies and none of them will be called Seaweed. I love you.”
She kissed me, leaning against me with her whole weight and knocking me flat on my back in the sand. I held on to the ring while she showered me with kisses.