Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Remi
Benji’s Place was packed. Clearly, the entire town had come out to drink and spend time with their neighbors, breaking free from the shut-in feeling of winter.
Temporary igloos were set up on the patio, and we’d been lucky to snag one.
I’d arrived at the bar after Brooks and I fixed Alicia’s door.
He had something to do at Nora’s grandma’s house before joining me.
I had just parked my car when Sterling and his sister, Bet, flagged me down.
The sun had set about an hour before—even though it was only mid-evening, it looked like the middle of the night.
It was early enough that Bet’s two-year-old, Melody, was falling asleep on my chest, while her four-year-old, Sasha, laughed at a game she was playing with her Uncle Sterling.
I wanted to settle into my usual Saturday routine, but I couldn’t stop checking my phone for a reply from Alicia.
I’d sent, Your apartment is a bird-free fortress, about two hours ago, and I needed to stop fixating as I scanned for her car in the parking lot, even though all I could see were headlights piercing the night before they blotted out leaving behind a blind spot in my vision.
She hadn’t said that she’d be here. We weren’t planning to meet up.
There wasn’t any excuse to text anymore, but I knew she was somewhere near, making it impossible to relax.
Bet stared up at the inky sky, her hot chocolate steaming in her mug.
“A cow does not say, ‘bark!’ ” Sterling exclaimed.
Sasha giggled around her fingers.
He narrowed his eyes at her, but like everyone else, she didn’t take him seriously. “What does a cow say?”
She narrowed her eyes back, a smile growing on her face. “Quack.”
It was the quack that broke his serious facade, and the rest of us joined in the laughter. Not Melody, though.
“She is out.” Bet’s bright blue eyes were soft and adoring on her daughter’s face. All the Strauss siblings had the same startling-colored eyes, except for the youngest, Violet.
“If this chair was more comfortable, I’d be sleeping too,” I said.
“Thank you, by the way. I needed a break.” She exhaled closing her eyes. “But I should get them home and to bed.”
A gust of cold air swept into the igloo as Lola, Bet and Sterling’s other sister, joined us.
“I’ll carry Mel out to your car,” I offered.
Lola leaned against Bet’s chair. Her large curls were pulled back into a ponytail high on her head, and her olive-green sweater clung to her curves.
She winked at me, and I smirked back. We’d dated briefly but quickly decided that we were better as friends.
In weak moments, I wondered if it was a shortcoming on my end that we couldn’t be more. She was great. Smart. Beautiful. Fun.
But there was the ever-lingering afterimage of Alicia etched into the future I imagined. Taking up too much space for anyone else to fit.
“Are you leaving already?” Lola asked.
Bet sighed. “I should, but I don’t think I can. I’m not ready.”
Lola tilted her head, grinning at her niece’s sleeping face. “I kinda wanna steal her from you.”
“Take a seat.” I jerked my head toward a vacant spot at our table.
“I wouldn’t want to wake her up.”
“You’re missing out.”
“I know,” she sighed.
Sterling scoffed. “Kiss already.”
Lola blushed and rolled her eyes, and for a moment there was a perfect snapshot of what it was like for her to grow up with Sterling as a younger, louder brother.
“That’s what you want to see?” I asked.
Faking a gag, Bet said, “You know what, maybe I am ready to leave.”
“You’re not into that?” Lola mocked. “Watching your sister kiss someone? How very normal of you.”
“In Sterling’s defense, no one has ever accused him of being normal.”
Without looking away from Sasha, Sterling retorted, “You wouldn’t take me any other way.”
Bet leaned past Lola. “Are you giving me an option?”
Lola’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “I’d love to go a week without hearing something about you.”
“It’s not that bad.” He rocked back and forth with Sasha holding his thumbs giggling.
“I will not have you telling me what is or is not bad with the things I have heard . . .”
Slowly shaking her head, Bet grimaced. “More than any sister would ever want to know.”
“You should make them sign an NDA. It’d be a public service.” Lola lifted her drink to her lips.
With a shit-eating grin, Sterling said, “I like to think of it that way too.”
Both of his sister’s faces twisted in disgust.
I muffled my laugh, careful not to jostle Melody.
“Speaking of things people say,” Sterling began. “Remi, your name has been thrown around quite a bit lately.”
A sharp spike of unease needled just under my ribcage. “Yeah?”
“Leave him alone,” Bet scolded.
“You’re not curious?”
“Ignore him,” Lola told me.
“About what?” I knew what he was talking about, and I would rather have this conversation with them instead of some other people in town. The news could travel from their lips; mine and Alicia’s past was bound to come out eventually.
Sterling narrowed his eyes at me. “First, Lily—”
“First nothing, you know that’s bull”—I cut myself off, glancing at Sasha’s sweet face—“hockery.”
“Nice save,” Bet laughed.
“Thank you.”
“All right but then explain this new neighbor.”
“Alicia?”
“Is she really your ex-wife?”
“Yeah, Alicia and I were married.” I answered as if it was no big deal.
It was a matter of fact. Nothing scandalous.
People got married and divorced for all sorts of reasons.
The only reason it was notable was because we were in the same small town and sharing a duplex as luck would have it.
The news might have been new to them, but I’d processed through it.
The resurfacing of old feelings—ones that had never really settled—remained in process.
Since my reaction to hearing one scream from her, and the conversation at the office earlier, followed by Brooks kinda sorta calling me out, the truth of the situation had grown into something more clear and obvious.
I’d expected . . . something other than the awkward silence where no one would look at me, as if they already knew what I’d only just realized.
It probably only lasted two or three seconds, but it felt longer.
Racking my brain for a natural change of subject, I lifted my beer and swallowed the malty fizzing liquid.
Finally, Bet said, “The girls and I met her at the library. She asked me to sign her petition for the wetlands.”
I nodded. “Yeah, she’s doing good work.”
“She seems cool.”
“She is.”
Sterling scrunched his nose at his niece. “I ran into her at the café a few weeks ago. She’s really pretty.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t like him noticing.
Alicia was more than pretty. She was a knockout—a goddamn fox.
She was the most exquisitely beautiful woman to ever grace this earth.
Looking at her was like looking at a sunset, vibrant and full of color.
She could stop my heart with just her eyes meeting mine, and make it race with the curve of her lips.
And that said nothing about the perfect unworldly experience of seeing her naked.
I just didn’t like him noticing. I didn’t think he’d ever been rejected by anyone. Ever.
Meanwhile, I’d already rejected Alicia.
What a fool.
Mustering a nonchalance I did not feel, I said, “I’ve always thought so.”
Sasha placed her tiny hands on both sides of Sterling’s face and urged him to look at her.
He kissed her forehead. “Sorry, goofball, was I not paying enough attention to you?”
Her little eyebrow furrowed and she grunted.
“She’s getting grumpy,” Bet muttered.
With her voice lowered to speak only to me, Lola asked, “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
She tilted her head. “I just wanted to check.”
“I’m good, Lo.” I hoped she believed me.
“I think if my ex moved in next door, I might not be quite right about it.”
“It was weird, at first. I’m past it now.”
“Good.”
But my phone continued to not receive a response from Alicia, and I was still searching for her headlights breaking through the night.
The knowledge that I was completely full of shit had grown past the point of ignoring.
My need to be near her was bad for my health, and persistent.
My feelings were more than residual. And she was more than a representation of my past wrong doings that I wanted to make right.
I was still in love with Alicia.