Chapter 12
Emryn
“Is this how you do it, Uncle Tayte?” Avery asks from beside me.
The whole family is over to help with the decorations for the ceremony—which might have been a mistake. By the time this day is over, I might be bald, but I guess I wouldn’t have to worry about getting my hair done if I was—one thing to take off the list.
“Sure, pumpkin,” Tayte says, a mischievous grin on his face. “It looks beautiful, and I’m sure your momma will love it.”
He turns to me and winks, making me want to sock him in the mouth. But then he would retaliate, and I learned the hard way I’m not faster than him.
Oh, the joys of having a big brother.
Avery turns back to her task, content to have a compliment from her uncle. Today is a good day for her. She hasn’t been quite so angry, but I’m still holding my breath, waiting for it to change. It’s been like a snap of the finger lately, and her mood plummets in the other direction.
“Tayte,” Mia, one of my best friends, scolds from under her breath. She is sitting beside him—a surprising choice, seeing how they are both constantly at each other’s throats—and leans in closer so that Avery doesn’t hear, “you’re supposed to be helping her.”
My brother looks at her, confusion written in the way his brows dip together. Lifting up the centerpiece, he says, “I did help her.”
And when I see it, I can’t decide if I want to laugh or cry, so instead, I snort, covering my bases for both.
“You helped her?” I ask, my voice on the edge of breaking with hysterics. Tayte looks at the centerpiece in his hand, paint smearing the edges of the wooden slab that will hold the flower vases. “The paint is supposed to be on the vase Tayte, not the wood.”
He shrugs. “We thought it would look better this way.”
Mia snorts, mumbling under her breath. “Of course, you did because you have the mentality of a five year old.”
I would have thought that Mia would have learned by now that her snide comments are like poking a bear. It only eggs my brother on.
Tayte’s mischievous grin turns into an all-out smirk. Reaching out, he pulls Mia’s braid, and she swats his hand away. “You know, Mia, when you’re mean to me, it makes me think you like me.”
Mia scoffs as if that’s the furthest thing from the truth, but I don’t miss how her lips tilt up just an inch before she forces them down.
“You wish,” she says, flipping her hair behind her so Tayte can’t reach it. She picks up her drink, content to let the conversation drip.
But for once, the teasing drops from Tayte’s face when he looks at Mia. “Yeah, I do.”
Mia nearly chokes on her drink, but Tayte just sends her a wink and turns back to Avery.
Once she can finally breathe again, Mia looks my way. “He was joking, right? Tell me he was joking.”
There’s panic laced in her voice, her breaths coming out a little erratically.
“I mean—Tayte likes to joke a lot,” I offer. It’s a non-answer, and we both know it, but if she wants to be in denial, I’ll have her back until she’s ready to admit otherwise.
“Yeah,” she says more to herself than me. “Yeah, he does.”
Each of us turns back to the projects in front of us. Avery and Tayte continue to do their own thing, and I let them because of all the things that have gone wrong while planning this ceremony, that would be the least of them. At least from this, I’ll have something made by Avery’s hand.
“Uncle Tayte, that’s not the way you do it.”
I turn toward Avery’s angry voice just in time to see her swat the centerpiece out of Tayte’s hand. For a moment, I’m frozen, my mouth agape, unable to believe what I just witnessed.
Avery’s arms are crossed over her chest, an angry scowl creating a wrinkle between her brows.
Tayte looks over to me, his eyes wide and helpless, and it snaps something in me into action. “Avery Marie, come here right this instant.”
She turns to me, eyes wide and brimming with tears, and a piece of my chest rips open. I’m surprised no one could hear the audible crack.
Avery doesn’t move, so I start to open my mouth again, demanding she comes to me, when Tayte stands up from his chair. His face is smooth, none of the surprise left from a moment ago. When he squats down in front of Avery’s chair, she tilts her head the other way, ignoring him.
“Avery Bug, look at me,” my brother urges. At first, I’m not sure she will listen to him, but slowly, she turns her head toward him, the tears falling against her eyelashes, and my heart shatters.
Tayte reaches out his hand, wiping Avery’s tears away with this thumb. “You know what, Bug? It’s okay to be angry. There are lots of times that I’m angry. But it’s not okay to hurt someone else when you’re angry—even if it’s just their feelings. We all love you here,” he says, stopping to look around our little circle, meeting each of our eyes before he turns back to Avery, “and we know that you are dealing with some big emotions—things that aren’t exactly fair. We are here to talk, but even if you can’t, you have to find a way to release some of those emotions because you can’t keep them bottled up in there.”
He taps a finger over her heart and Avery’s lower lip trembles. I have to turn my head so she doesn’t see me crying. Mia, who is standing beside me at this point, has tears in her eyes, but she’s not looking at me. She’s looking at Tayte like she’s never seen him before. The truth is, she hasn’t—not like this, anyway. Tayte hides this side from her, and I’m not sure why.
Leaning in, Tayte whispers something in Avery’s ear, and when he pulls back, Avery has a small smile on her face.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Tayte,” Avery sniffles.
Tayte opens his arms, and Avery falls into them, finding comfort. My brother stands up with my little girl still tightly held in his arms and then turns to me. Avery’s head is tucked under his chin, so she can’t see me.
“Thank you,” I mouth, thankful that he could de-escalate that situation before it turned into more. But I know this isn’t the end of it. Avery needs help, and whether Brooks wants her to or not, she needs to go to therapy.
Nodding, Tayte winks at me and offers a half-smile. “Avery and I are going to go inside. Do you ladies need anything?”
Mia is still staring at Tayte, her mouth half-open, and I’m tempted to reach over and close it just to prevent her from drooling.
Realizing that he’s partially talking to her, Mia clears her throat and darts her eyes away from him before bringing them back.
“No,” Mia croaks the word, barely making it past her lips. Cleaning her throat one more time, she tries again. “Nope.”
This time, it comes out much stronger, but Tayte still looks at her like she’s grown a second head, then spins on his heel, marching inside with my daughter.
Despite the turmoil roiling in my stomach, I can’t help a small chuckle when Mia meets my gaze. “Smooth, Mia. Smooth.”
______________________
“Emryn, are you listening to us?”
Georgia sits to my left and Mia to my right. We are having brunch and ironing out some details of the vow renewal. When I told them I was struggling and worried about getting things done on time, they both immediately offered to help. Mia suggested we meet for brunch, and now we are here.
It’s nice having friends, something I never really let myself have outside of Brooks before. I made Brooks my whole life, and last year, I learned that while I love him, it’s also too nice to have a piece of me that is just me. I met Mia when I started subbing at the school. She helped me realize that I wanted to go into the teaching field, and even though I met Georgia through Grayson, I still consider her one of my best friends.
I shake my head, clearing my thoughts, and try to focus on the two women in front of me. “I was listening but kind of zoned out for a minute. I was mentally running through my list of things I need to accomplish.”
Offering them a wince in apology, I grab my drink and take a small sip, loving the tangy taste of the orange juice as it passes my lips.
Georgia claps her hands, “Lay it on us. We are here to help.”
Beside me, Mia nods in agreement while chewing thoughtfully on her toast.
“Well,” I say, dragging out the word, “First, I have to figure out what to put Brooks and Grayson in since the two goons messed up their last fitting. The shop doesn’t think they will have anything ready in time, with the ceremony a week and a half away. I need to run by the caterers to drop off a final payment. The venue called, and they need us to stop by. They said it’s urgent. And about a hundred other things are on that list, but I think the biggest is trying to get Brooks to finally write his vows.”
My drink slams down against the table, the crash echoing around the restaurant. I hadn’t meant to put it down that hard, but the annoyance over that even having to be a thing on my checklist causes my hand to tighten on my cup. Several other customers glance our way, and heat creeps up my neck. Mia and Georgia are staring back at me with their mouths agape.
“Sorry,” I say more to the table than anyone else.
Georgia is the first to react, reaching out and placing her hand on mine. “Hey, no need for apologies here. This is a judgment-free zone.”
Mia hums in agreement. Her chair scrapes against the tile floor as she stands, and before I can fully prepare myself for it, her arms are wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me into a tight hug. “Deep breaths, babe. Deep breaths. We won’t let you drown in all of this, and neither will that husband of yours.”
I nod against her shoulder because I know she’s right. Brooks won’t let me down, but it also worries me that he hasn’t written his vows yet.
With Mia sitting back down in her chair, I have room to gather my courage and ask the question I’ve been asking myself for weeks. “I know this is silly—Brooks loves me, and we’ve come a long way—but sometimes these little tendrils of anxiety creep in. They get in my brain and make me wonder if he still loves me—why he still loves me. It’s not his fault. It’s my own. Brooks has done nothing to make me feel unloved. We talk about our problems, but how do I tell him that sometimes I need that reassurance that we aren’t going back to that place we were?”
The words come out in a jumbled mess, merging together so fast I’m not sure either Georgia or Mia caught them, but when I look up at their faces, I see such tender understanding there that I know they have.
“Do you know that Grayson shares his location with me always because there are times that I’m so afraid of losing him that I have full panic attacks? I know that Nate’s death was different, but it doesn’t take away the fear that I will lose someone else I love.”
I shake my head because I didn’t know that, but it also doesn’t surprise me. I don’t know how I would handle it if I lost Brooks the way Georgia lost her late husband. It would leave a mark on you that would never really heal.
“And did you know,” Georgia continues, “that I still have days when the loss is still so overwhelming that I lie in bed, trying to breathe around it—even though I love Grayson?”
Again, I shake my head. I can only imagine the pain that a loss like that would bring.
“My point is that Grayson doesn’t hold those things against me. He gladly shares his location, so it’s one thing I don’t worry about, and on the days it’s hard to breathe, he lies in bed with me and lets me cry. He doesn’t feel like I love him any less because of it, either. I think Brooks would be the same. He wouldn’t hold those fears against you, but I think he would chase them away. Let him do that for you. Tell him why it bothers you that he hasn’t written his vows. But be willing to listen to what he has to say, too.”
She’s right. Part of the problem last year was that I let my insecurities drown out my husband’s voice.
I don’t want to make that mistake again.