Chapter Twelve
In a plot twist I did not see coming, Dylan Harley Sterling gets chatty when he drinks. Not that he leaps right into revealing his deepest secrets, but after a few tumblers of rum, he relaxes into an easy conversation with minimal encouragement and without the need to rely on truth or dare.
He tells me about the indie band on his shirt, a Celtic/hip-hop hybrid that performs multitrack percussion on a single fiddle.
He laughs about a time he attempted a sci-fi story for one of his writing classes and got shredded by his classmates and, worse, a time he attempted to write a song.
He describes the first time he laced up a pair of running shoes and never looked back.
He even tells me about “Seven Tiny Wars,” how it wasn’t based on real life, but it was based on a real fear, and writing the story was a way of living out that fear, so if what he feared came to pass, he’d be less devastated by it.
This, apparently, is something he does—or rather, did—a lot in his writing.
When he started at the University of Southern Maine, they were off like a shot. Contact grew sparser and sparser. A photo from Sturgis. A text from Mesa, Arizona. A Happy Birthday message from Key West. Near the end of his third year, he got a different message altogether.
“It was a boating accident,” he tells me, lying on his back on the green velvet Victorian sofa with his head on one arm and his feet kicked up on the other while I slouch in a creaking armchair, sipping my rum.
The lights are still out, but candles flicker on the side tables, and the fire’s going strong, with the coffee table shoved aside to make room for Dylan’s mattress.
“It wasn’t a biking accident?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “They were so careful on the road. They had to be. It was their only real home. But boats? They didn’t know the first thing about boats, which is ironic when they couldn’t keep me out of the water.
Swimming, sailing, kayaking, crew. Speed boats, though .
. .” He shakes his head again, his jaw in motion, his eyes trained on the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” I say, those old familiar, useless words, trotted out when no others will do.
Dylan’s shoulders shift against the sofa seat. “It sucked. It still sucks, twenty-one years later. But also . . .” He frowns harder than I’ve ever seen him frown, which is saying something.
“You don’t have to talk about this,” I tell him.
“No. I want to. It’s good.” His frown softens as he traces the ornate woodwork on the sofa back with his index finger.
“But also. But. Also. Sometimes I think I miss a version of my parents I made up in my head rather than missing the people they really were. Like I’ve held on to the good-parts-only version, not the version that couldn’t disguise their relief when I wasn’t their responsibility anymore.
They tried. They just . . . couldn’t.” His tone is matter-of-fact, but his jaw continues twitching, and his hands grow more restless.
I don’t want to be your responsibility, he told me last month.
Now, maybe, I get it.
“I don’t think that’s uncommon,” I say. “Missing an idea of someone rather than the precise reality. I think it’s a form of forgiveness, even when we don’t know we have something to forgive.
” This isn’t a concept I’ve considered before, but the words feel true as they sit between us in a quiet room punctuated only by the crackling fire and the pitter-patter of rain.
“Maybe,” he says after a long pause. “But I miss your grandmother exactly as she was.”
I reel as if punched, powerless to a sudden undertow of grief, absence, and immense loss.
“She never made me feel like her responsibility,” Dylan continues, “even though she obviously hired me because I needed her, not because she needed me, at least at first. I was so . . . stuck. She never told me to get my act together. Instead, she got me thinking about how an animatronic parrot works or how many skeletons would crew a brigantine. She got me sailing again. She gave me a place to live and a reason to write, even if I wasn’t writing my own work. ”
I nod and swallow, and tears prick at the corners of my eyes, but while the loss continues tugging me downward, it’s softened by something comforting and profound.
Something shared. Because I feel what Dylan feels.
Because we both lost someone who treated us the way we wanted to be treated, when other people tried but fell short of the mark.
He understands, I think. In a way no one else has.
And somehow, that makes the grief a bit easier to bear.
I blink back my tears, setting aside my drink so I can go stoke the fire, even though it doesn’t need stoking. Dylan’s already seen me break down once today, and while I’m sure he’d forgive me for losing my cool again, I don’t want to be Drunk Crying Girl tonight.
The chair beneath me creaks as I stand. It’s loud and annoying and my least favorite piece of furniture in this room.
If I had a sledgehammer, I’d smash it to pieces and toss it into the fire, where it might actually be useful.
But I don’t really want to hit anything.
I barely want to lift anything. So, I trudge over to the fireplace, where I crouch and prod the embers with the poker.
“Where are you with the books?” Dylan asks. A diversion, probably, but a welcome one.
“Thirty-two. Only two left, and we can finally talk about where the story goes next.”
“Or we can talk now.”
“What about spoilers?”
“What about we see where you are, and go from there?”
As I rest the poker beside the hearth, he hauls himself into a seated position, dragging a hand down his face and through his hair. He looks worn out, though whether he’s worn out from fighting the weather with me or from telling me about his writing and his family, I can’t tell.
“You sure you don’t want to call it a night?” I ask.
“Not yet,” he says, and then repeats more quietly, “Not quite yet.” He meets my eyes, and his look holds meaning, but it’s meaning I don’t understand.
“Okay,” I say before I can let myself overthink it. “Not quite yet.”
My brain’s a little fuzzy about where I last left Zane and Euphoria in their flight from Balbo Blackheart, so I head upstairs to grab the book from my bedroom, where it takes me a few minutes to find it.
By the time I return to the living room, Dylan’s tucking a fitted sheet over the mattress in the middle of the floor, with blankets and pillows stacked on the sofa.
“It’s mostly dry,” he says, catching my look of surprise. “I can’t sleep in my usual room, none of the other mattresses would be half this comfortable, and it’s warm here by the fire.”
I set aside the book and help make the bed.
It’s a simple task, but between the fire, the mattress, and an occasional intersection of glances, I become newly aware of how much I’ve had to drink and newly understanding of my siblings’ teasing.
Because suddenly I want to tell Dylan everything.
That I think he’s beautiful and brilliant and I love that he loved my grandmother and he helped patch my roof and he plays truth or dare and he gives me rides on his motorcycle and he knows a crazy amount about obscure music and he runs like it refuels his soul and he shares his shitty pasta and he leaves the lights on for me and he grieves with kindness rather than anger.
“I can hear your voice in this book,” I tell him instead.
He winces, shaking a pillow into a pillowcase. “You’re not supposed to.”
“It’s only because I know you and because I’ve read your work.”
He tosses the pillow onto the mattress and starts sheathing the other one.
“I’ve read your work, too,” he says.
I fumble with the top sheet. “You what?”
“The Botanic Woman and the Seated Man: Gender in Eighteenth-Century French and English Paintings. Borrowing Breeches: How Women in Seventeenth-Century Europe Got a Leg Up. And . . .” He squints at the ceiling, as though the third title might be hiding among the cracks in the plaster.
Then his eyes snap back to mine. “Oh! God. How could I forget this one? Nautical and Naughty: What Really Went on Belowdecks of Britain’s Most Famous Pirate Ships. ”
All I can do is stare. And stare. And stare.
“You read them?” I ask when I can finally manage it.
“I did.”
“All of them? Not just a chapter or a title page?”
“All of them. Start to finish.” He tosses the second pillow onto the bed and takes over where I left off with the top sheet.
“I ordered them through a bookstore in Portland and picked them up last time I was there. I didn’t want to tell you because you might think I was stalking you, but since you’ve admitted to reading my work, it seems only fair to fess up. ”
I continue to stare, so stunned I’m useless for helping with the bed.
“No one’s read my books,” I say. “They’ve been used in some classes, sure, and by the odd researcher here and there, but they’re not exactly bestsellers or bedtime reads.” I shake my head at him, still trying to fully comprehend this. “How did you even find them?”
An amused smile flickers across his face. “You’re not the only one who can google.”
“Yeah, but . . . just . . . yeah.” I can’t quite pull myself together, which is ridiculous.
I sought out his work. I shouldn’t be so surprised he sought out mine.
It’s simple human curiosity, but I don’t think anyone has been curious about me before.
No one in my family ever bought my books, even as a gesture of support, whether or not they cracked the spines.
Noah wouldn’t have picked one up. He didn’t even know I hated pickles, let alone what I researched and wrote about.
And my work colleagues were just that. Work colleagues.
They sent obligatory congratulations when a book was released, signing off with a vapid Best. And that was that.
“Guess I can’t ask if your books were autobiographical,” Dylan teases.
I have to laugh, which finally helps me shake off my stupor.