Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jeff
“Tell me which bridge I’m supposed to take home again.”
“Syd, honey there’s at least four bridges that will take you back to Jersey. And you have the app telling you directions,” Devon says, patting Syd’s arm.
I can barely hear the two of them over the wind that’s attacking me from all angles. When I’d hopped into the convertible this morning and asked Syd why the hell the top was down in November, she’d pointed to the sun and told me she needed all of the vitamin D she could get.
“Ok. You’re right. I got this. You two need to be careful though. There’s some really bad parts in Philly,” Syd yells over the wind as her speedometer needle approaches 70 mph. Like Philly is what’s endangering us right now.
We are flying down Christopher Columbus Boulevard at a speed that would surely eject me across the river into Camden if I were stupid enough not to wear a seatbelt and we were to crash.
Devon throws me a look over her shoulder. Despite the adorable protective vibe Syd’s got going for Devon and my genuine admiration for Sydney as an overall wonderful human being, I cannot wait to get the hell out of this car. Alive.
Not to mention I’m desperate to get Devon alone again.
Volunteering today was rewarding as always, but was a special kind of torture every time our gazes met or our hands accidentally—or not so accidentally—brushed.
It was impossible to focus with her in the room.
It’s impossible to focus when she’s not in the room.
Because no matter where I go, she’s dancing across my brain like it’s her stage.
“Syd, slow down,” Devon tells her again, hitting the imaginary brake in front of her and grabbing for a nonexistent oh-shit handle.
I need to put an end to this. I lean forward between them. “Alright, we’re here,” I lie. Better to walk the rest of the way along the waterfront than to die in a Volkswagen Beetle.
Syd screeches to a halt and finds what she thinks is a parking spot but is actually the right turn lane onto Market. I don’t correct her and neither does Devon.
“You two be careful tonight. Don’t drink and drive,” Syd tells us as I climb out over the back of the beetle.
“We don’t have a car,” Devon points out.
“And remember that the pull-out meth—”
“Byeee, Syd. Text me when you’re home safe.” Devon shuts the door and points to the line of cars trying to make a right hand turn behind her, their drivers beeping and cursing out their windows. Syd just smiles and gives us a little wave before taking the turn onto Market Street on two wheels.
“Who the hell gave her a license?” I wonder aloud.
“She’s worse than Cher from Clueless,” Devon answers as the tiny blue bubble disappears from view.
A burst of freezing air rushes up from the river and crosses the busy street, sending Devon’s hair across her face.
I step toward her, push the soft strands back in place behind her ear as she takes in the sight of the brightly lit Ferris wheel planted on the riverbanks in Penn’s Landing.
At the base of the wheel, dozens of people slide and spin on ice skates, partaking in the music and laughter that surrounds the outdoor skating rink.
“This is amazing,” she says.
“You’ve never been here?”
I take her hand, lead her to the crosswalk.
“Nah. I’ve heard Kev and Mer talk about it. They came a lot the year it first opened, but I was in grad school that summer,” she explains. She adjusts her grip on my hand so that her fingers slip between mine. “I guess they lost interest.”
“Well, Mer does like to mix it up,” I point out. “Are you warm enough?”
“I’m fine. She keeps texting me dirty memes today.
I don’t know what the hell is up with her,” she tells me as we dodge the people leaving the landing and make our way around those in line for the carousel.
A kid is screaming at his dad that he needs cotton candy.
Devon sticks out her lip a little like she’s commiserating with the kid—or maybe the dad—who’s trying his best to redirect the kid’s attention away from the hanging clouds of pink and blue sugar above him.
“Weird. Kevin has been texting me a lot today, too. Giving me unsolicited dating advice,” I tell her.
“Who are you dating?”
I blow out a breath, and we both watch it hang above us in the air.
“If I recall correctly, it was you who kept calling tonight a date” I say with a smile. “Kev also wanted to know how you are doing. I told him you’re fine.”
“Am I?” she asks, stopping in front of the carnival game where you have to fill the toilet with your water gun. Her hands are sunk into her kangaroo pocket. The neon lights dance across her eyes.
“I think so. Or I hope so,” I say.
She chews on her bottom lip and looks down at her shoes.
“I wouldn’t be, Jeff. If it weren’t for you,” she says softly. “Usually, I spend this weekend in fetal position every moment that my mom’s not around.”
My heart clenches in time with my fists.
“Your mom hides it almost as well as you, huh?”
She nods once. “I hear her at night sometimes—when she thinks I’m asleep—”
I reach for her hand in her pocket—squeeze it as I imagine that gut crushing feeling of witnessing your own mother’s sorrow.
“But yeah. She hides it well. My dad was the love of her life. He was a liver surgeon at Penn. Constantly getting called in like Kev—saving their lives, leaving his life. And then, one day, he gets a call for a liver harvest—” her mouth turns up at the corner, “just before the call he threw a piece of toast at me and said ‘Can’t wait to toast your mother.’ He made the worst dad jokes.
” She sucks in a breath and looks out over the river.
“Then he left—got in the helicopter with the team to go be a hero like the thousand times before. Did you know they don’t use helicopters for procurements anymore?
Because of the danger. Of course they figured that out after.
Too late.” She shakes her head and lifts her eyes to the sky.
Her voice drops so low that it’s nearly carried away in the screams and laughter around us.
“We were celebrating my parents’ anniversary with dinner in the city that night and he just—didn’t show up. And that was that. End of story,” she says.
End of story. The way she says those words makes the bright lights around us dim to grey. Her pain rushes through me, a flash flood that steals the words and breath from my throat. I force myself to ignore it, just like I do when I need to deliver bad news to a family after an operation gone wrong.
“I’m so sorry, Devon,” I tell her, tipping her chin back toward me so she knows I mean it. A tear slides down the side of her face and I catch it with my thumb. “His story goes on with you and Tara and your mom. You are his story.”
She nods like she knows this, but I can see by the set of her mouth that the words aren’t helping.
“I can’t help but think—if he’d just been something boring. Sold copy machines or worked at a desk. He’d still be here. My mom would be—”
Shrieking laughter cuts her short when a lone seagull attacks a group of girls behind us and they bump into her as they run for cover, clutching their funnel cakes to their chests.
“Sorry,” one girl says as she swats at the bird.
Devon laughs as they retreat, then looks up at me and smiles.
“I’m ok. By Monday, I’ll be good as new. Right as rain.”
She lifts her brows and tilts her head, asking me to play along. So I do.
“By Monday, you’ll be dancing around and singing like Julia Andrews for your students.”
She fights a laugh.
“You got a thing for Julia Andrews?” she asks.
“My sister used to make me pretend to be Bert from Mary Poppins.”
She chuckles and I feel it warm the air around me.
“I’d love to see a little Chim Chim Cher-ee action. You want a drink, first?” she asks, tilting her head toward a shipping container lined with taps. The lights from the Ferris wheel are spinning in her glassy eyes.
I step toward her, lower my face closer to hers. Her hair smells like the lavender my mom grows along the side of the house. She smells like home. She closes her eyes, her lips part just enough for me to see her tongue and remember how it felt on mine.
“A drink sounds good,” I whisper against her ear lobe.
She shudders and leans into me. My body responds and I know she feels it from the hitch in her breathing and the flush of her cheeks.
I feel buzzed already, no beer required.
I plant a soft kiss on her cheekbone and tear myself away to grab some liquid distraction.
When I return with two plastic pints, she’s talking to the little boy who’d been screaming for cotton candy, the Dad smiling at her while she hands the kid one of her blue multi-stringed bracelets that she wears around her wrist. The little boy is clearly smitten.
I don’t blame him because Devon is giving him the most dazzling smile in her arsenal and telling him that the bracelet grants whoever wears it the power to change the world.
She has lots of these little string bracelets, a collection of causes that she supports.
I wait until the little boy runs off pretending to shoot web from the new gift on his wrist, his father close behind yelling thank you over his shoulder, then I close the distance and hand her the drink.
“Why don’t you teach elementary school?” I ask.
She thanks me for the beer and gives me a look that say Oh-Fuck-No.
“I’m serious. You’re obviously great with younger kids.”
We start to walk along the boardwalk, sipping our beers as the sky over the river begins to bleed and burn with layers of red and orange.
The sun dips lower between the towering buildings to the west and the reflection of the lights hanging in the trees around us swims and glitters along the surface of the dark water.
The sweet smell of funnel cake mingles with fried steak and I watch Devon check out every food vendor that we pass.