Chapter 18
“Oh, no.”
Jameson leans over on the oversized poolside lounger we’ve commandeered and wipes the tears off my cheeks with his knuckle. “Shh, angel. It’s okay.”
“You almost died.”
“It didn’t feel like I almost died, if that helps. Dying never crossed my mind.”
He doesn’t look like he almost died, honestly. Jameson’s all man-bun and bright green eyes and—the part I can’t get over—a dusting of freckles from sitting out by the pool so much, and walking from house to pool deck at the pace of a man recovering from an ordeal. He’s alive, not silent and trembling and half-dead, and I wish I could convince my heart to accept it as fact.
“Well, you did. And now I’m crying in a sunhat. Do you know how embarrassing it is to cry in a sunhat? I have a pi?a colada!”
“Shh.” Jameson pulls me closer and nuzzles at my temple. “It’s a virgin pi?a colada.”
“It’s a huge pi?a colada,” I half-wail, half-laugh. The pi?a colada is enormous. I don’t know where Gabriel got the oversized glass, but he thought it was incredibly funny when he handed it to me. So did I, until I remember that Jameson almost died. At least, I think he almost died. That’s what it looked like to me. And to his siblings, who remained remarkably calm about the whole thing.
“Here.” Jameson takes the glass out of my hand and puts it on a table next to our poolside lounger. “Let it out.”
“You let it out!” We have about a hundred towels stacked nearby, so I use one to wipe my face. “You are forbidden from keeping your emotions inside to this extent ever again.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I would never just say that.”
Snowball tweets in his cage, settled on the table at the other side of the lounger.
“I love you, but shut it,” Jameson tells him. “You can’t make fun of my wife.”
I would scold him for using a faux scary tone with Snowball, but I really like how he says my wife. After a few more deep breaths, I manage to get the tears under control and focus on the matter at hand: cuddling with my husband at a pool party.
The reason for the pool party is that it’s hot, and a pool exists, and it’s an event that Jameson can attend without actually exhausting himself. It’s been a week and a half since his nightmare turned into something that seemed a lot scarier from the outside and was apparently a lot better from the inside. Jameson’s favorite joke is to catch Zeus’s elbow, look at him with innocent eyes, and say did you drug me? And then Zeus pretends not to know what he’s talking about.
One day, I’m going to get all the details out of both of them.
For now, everyone’s highest priority is swimming in the pool, eating the food that Cook brings out every couple of hours, and making a big production out of bedtime. Jameson gets nervous every sunset, and so do I, and then we—along with everyone else in the house—pretend that going to sleep at night is a funny way to pass the time and not a harrowing reminder of the Near-Death Incident.
That night, Jameson almost ran into the pool and had to be yanked back by his brother, who then sat on the pool deck with Jameson in his arms for seven straight hours because no one could wake him up. I thought listening to him scream and sob and beg his siblings not to die was bad until he went silent six hours in and started shaking his head like he was saying no every few minutes, his teeth clenched tight and one of his fists balled in Mason’s shirt.
I think Mason was starting to panic when Zeus and his brothers casually joined us on the pool deck and started a lighthearted conversation as Conor found a position at Hades’s feet and curled up as close as he could get to Jameson. Somewhere in the middle of that, Jameson shook his head again, and Mason, a tense note in his voice, said he keeps doing that.
It didn’t sink in that Zeus thought Jameson might be listening until, in the midst of an unrelated sentence, he asked whether Jameson was always so quiet when he had night terrors.
Not in my experience.
A minute or two later, Zeus gently suggested that what was happening to Jameson by then probably wasn’t a nightmare, or a night terror, and pointed out how tightly Jameson’s jaw was locked and how his fingers couldn’t be uncurled from Mason’s shirt. And then there was a short discussion of needles and medical power of attorney that was somehow as zero-pressure as it could be. Whatever Zeus did with the needle was so competent and—dare I say—soft that I didn’t even see it happen.
What I saw was Jameson actually falling asleep, his hand uncurling and his jaw unlocking and his whole body relaxing. And of course Zeus didn’t wander off to start a pool party. He stayed around, casually supervising.
“There,” he said, about five minutes later. “Dreaming.”
I don’t know how he knew that, and I still haven’t asked.
I’ve just been a pregnant emotional wreck at a pool party while Jameson readjusts his sleep schedule after not sleeping for half his life and gets used to simply waking up his siblings instead of suffering for hours—years?— at a time. His bad dreams are dreams, now—things he can be woken from—and I have never met a man more dedicated to reassuring his youngest brother that it was really just a bad dream than Mason Hill.
The best way to clear one’s mind is with movement. However, if your new husband and the love of your life is, like, really tired, cuddling will do just fine.
I knewMason had friends who would show up for a wedding and actually be in the wedding on a moment’s notice. They’re also the kind of friends who will let you stay in their house for close to three weeks when one of you—namely Mason—can’t stand the thought of having any of his siblings out of sight. Everything’s easier with more adults.
Especially when Jameson decides he’s not tired—despite a visit from a literal doctor who told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to rest—and has to work off his excess energy somehow.
A lot of joking ensues.
Jameson also makes me show him videos of aerial hoop dances and insists that he could learn how to do it. He chats continuously to Snowball, who revels in the attention, and spends as much time as he can with Robin in his lap, telling him elaborate stories about what pools are and how he’s pretty sure one of the guys at the house is a pirate and maybe, just maybe, he will teach Robin how to swim so he can one day sail the high seas.
We’re stillat Zeus’s house when the anniversary arrives.
Gabriel explains it to me the night before with tears in his eyes but incredible relief in his voice. How they’ve gone every year to leave flowers and talk to their parents. How he’s not sure he’d have gone if anything had happened to Jameson. How he’s sorry, because it’s not the kind of thing people usually like to do on their honeymoon.
“Please,” I tell him, Snowball echoing me with his tweets. “Don’t be sorry. I’m—it means a lot to get to be there with you.”
“It’s good,” he answers finally. “That we’ll all be there.”
We leave earlythe next day, the sun just starting to rise and the heat still gentle.
“I’m going in the pool today,” Jameson announces from his spot next to me in the SUV. He has a bouquet of lilies on his lap. I have Snowball’s cage on mine. We’re riding with Gabriel, Elise, and Remy. Mason, Charlotte, Robin, Nate, and Lydia are in the other car. “Be grateful.”
“We’re so grateful,” Gabriel sings.
“Are you allowed in the pool?” Remy asks. “Or do you have to stay on a floatie the entire time? I’ll stay on a floatie next to you if you do.”
“It’s a floatie or nothing for me,” Jameson answers with a sigh. “Try not to feel bad. I’ll get through it.”
The closer we get to the cemetery, the quieter they get.
And then we’re all walking across the dewy lawn together, Robin cooing in his baby carrier, and my chest does that aching, grateful, near-miss thing again. I tighten my grip on the handle of Snowball’s cage.
Remy goes first.
When she straightens up, wiping her eyes, Jameson takes my hand and pulls me up to the gravestone with him.
He and Remy do a long and elaborate handshake. He hugs her tight. Then she walks away to stand by a tree, and Jameson lays the bouquet we bought.
“Hey, Mom,” he says softly, his hand tight on mine. “Dad. I have to tell you—this is getting old.”
I was getting ready to cry, so my laughter catches me off guard and turns into a snort.
“This is Lily, my wife,” he continues. “I’m so annoyed that I have to introduce her to you when you’re, like, dead. It’s bullshit. You should have been at the wedding. But maybe you were, unless I hallucinated that whole thing.”
“What whole thing?” I whisper.
“I visited them,” Jameson whispers back. “With Hades’s daughter. Well—not, like, with her, but she was there in my dream. Might not have been a dream. I don’t know. My mom said I showed them the path, whatever that means.”
“Like…a psychopomp?”
“Offensive.”
“Not a psychopath. A psychopomp.” I cannot believe I didn’t think of this before. “They’re, like, spirit guides. To guide spirits to the afterlife. I saw a photo of a painting at Pompeii and looked it up.”
Jameson squeezes my hand. “Maybe.”
“Jesus is considered one of those.”
He laughs. “Dad said I’m not Jesus. That’s some other guy.”
“Like…some other guy on earth? Like the second coming?”
Jameson shrugs again, more exaggeratedly this time. “Anyway, parents, this is Lily, my wife, who definitely thinks I’m Jesus. Also, she’s pregnant, which totally happened once we were already wedlocked.”
I snort again. I can’t help it.
“Lily. Be cool,” Jameson murmurs. “You’re meeting the parents.”
“Completely wedlocked,” I confirm. “Time is a construct.”
“Oh, before I forget—this is my bird, Snowball.” Snowball tweets like he’s waving hello. “He’s just a bird, so he probably won’t outlive me. You’ll have to take care of him if he gets there first. Do not let me down, otherwise I’ll give you hell. Or take you to hell? Just kidding. I’m just kidding. I love you.”
Jameson pats the top of the headstone with a smile on his face and dry eyes. It’s that, more than anything, that makes me think he might really have seen his parents in his dream.
“Have fun,” he says. “I can’t stay. I’m going to a pool party. And I’m probably going to try to untie Lily’s swimsuit so I can see her?—”
“You don’t have to untie my swimsuit to see my tits. You can just see them. We’re married.”
“Lily,” he whispers. “My parents might hear you.”
It sounds true.
Gabriel goes next.He brings Elise and Nate and Lydia with him, and they all stand in a semicircle at the headstone. It sounds for all the world like he’s introducing them, too. Gabriel’s definitely crying when they walk away, and Mason stops to give him a long hug.
Mason and Charlotte go last, with Robin.
When Mason holds him close to the headstone, showing him off like the proud dad he is, a bird lands in the branches of the closest tree and sings its little heart out.
It’squiet when we get back into the SUV to go back to Zeus’s.
Then, his hand in mine, Jameson takes a deep breath. “How hilarious Dad was. All his jokes.”
“Mmm.” From this angle, I can’t see all of Gabriel’s face, but I have the impression of a wavery smile. “How disgustingly in love with each other they were.”
Remy laughs. “How Mom used to come to tuck me in after they let you guys babysit, and she’d say, tell me all the rules your brothers let you break and I’d never tell her anything and then she would say, good for you, Rem. And then she would—” Another, shorter laugh. “She’d say, they’re going to grow up and be good men, and don’t you let them forget.”
“Oh, Remy,” Gabriel says. “You never have.”
The reasonI know Jameson’s going to be okay—really, really okay—is that people are in and out of Zeus’s house all the time. That wouldn’t happen if anybody thought he was in danger of having another terrible nightmare episode.
Julien and August show up to take family photos, which we then get roped into and turn out to be as good as the ones from our engagement session.
August spends the better part of one evening’s golden hour taking lifestyle portraits of Daisy and Artemis. It’s kind of incredible, actually. He’s patient and unflappable and knows which signs make them giggle and how to keep their attention. At one point, he stands up tall and covers his eyes with his hand, and I guess that’s a game they’ve played before, because Daisy and Artemis both shriek, and then Daisy runs as fast as her toddler legs can carry her to August, who picks her up in his arms and lets her put her face in his shoulder. Artemis runs for her mom, who swings her around in a circle as Artemis laugh-screams something that I later learn was lights off, lights off and we are all in the dark with a children’s concert playing on a built-in speaker, both of the girls dozing off, before I realize it wasn’t really a game at all—Daisy needed to come inside.
Mason’s right-hand man, Dev Madden, shows up one day when it’s so hot that nobody will countenance doing anything but floating in the pool. I get a floatie decorated like a pink doughnut, and Jameson leans on the side, kicking us around the pool in slow circles. Dev—in trousers and a pressed shirt—tries to talk business with Mason for fifteen full minutes before Mason sends him into the house to get a bathing suit and come swimming.
“But—” Dev says.
“I’ll give you a raise. Come on. Take half a day off. Get in the pool. Relax, Dev.”
Dev can’t argue with this. He goes into the house and comes out a few minutes later, bathing suit-ed and carrying a hard lemonade. Poseidon teases him about it for several minutes, then ends up drinking one of his own.
Well—he drinks about half of it, then drops it on the pool deck and shouts, “You asshole!”
Everyone in the vicinity of the pool turns to see who the asshole is. It’s a guy who’s walked straight through Zeus’s house, already dressed in swim trunks. He’s tall, with dark hair and dark eyes and a sharp, handsome smile. Zeus comes out of the house behind him with an indulgent smile on his face.
“Your friend showed up, Poseidon,” Zeus says.
By the time he’s finished saying his brother’s name, Poseidon has already bodily tackled the mystery guy, and they go flying into the pool. Both of them are laughing when they resurface.
“Holy shit,” Jameson whispers.
“What? Did you see that guy, too?”
“Yes, I saw that guy.” He gives me a look. “Do you think he’s hotter than me?”
I make a face at him. “No. I literally married you. I am your wife.”
He leans in to kiss me, his eyes hot, but pulls back at the last second. “Holy shit.”
I put my hands on his face. “What are you talking about? Is it the guy? Do you know who it is?”
“Everybody,” Poseidon shouts. “This is my friend Caspian.”
“It’s his friend Caspian,” I whisper into Jameson’s lips. “He has a friend Caspian. Settle down.”
“I’m not the one who needs to settle down, angel. Look.”
He turns my doughnut floatie around.
Dev Madden leans against the far end of the pool, one elbow propped on the edge, a tight grip on his hard lemonade. He’s under the shade of a big awning that Hades spends most of his time under. Conor is lying under it not far from Dev’s spot in the pool. Because of the sunshade, Dev can’t be sunburned.
No—Dev’s blushing.
And he’s staring at Caspian.
“Stay very quiet,” Jameson murmurs in my ear. “I don’t want him to know we saw. He never tells me anything.”
“He still hasn’t.”
“Look at his face,” Jameson says. “That’s a man with a crush. Mark my words.”
Then he drops his face into the curve of my neck and kisses me until I can’t stop laughing, and then until I can’t stop kissing him back, and then until we have to excuse ourselves for a nap.
We don’t get much sleep.