Chapter 14 #4
But. . . maybe not just now? Right? she bargained with a cluster of mindless moon jellies sailing in a transport tank. Maybe she didn’t have to disappoint him yet.
She wondered—hoped—feared—through the remainder of her shift while she rinsed her squeegee, stripped off her gloves, and recycled the computer lab’s sign.
She wondered that night, watching hours of shadows pass over the bedroom ceiling, her eyes dry from the fumes of sterilizing chemicals, from exhaustion after parsing marriage license requirements—and from not glancing at Wes across the coffee table earlier that evening, not even when her vision blurred, when a throb at the base of her skull sent her stumbling past him to the bathroom, fumbling for water and her pills.
“Isabel? Everything all right in there?”
Keep Out.
“Fine.”
She was cold and aching.
Though without an answer to her own question.
So when Wes tossed a “Ready for game time?” over his shoulder on Wednesday morning, cleaning his camera in the sink after a dive in Elkhorn Slough, Isabel didn’t say no.
Instead, she nodded. Yes. Or—almost. Following his shower and hers, she’d taken too long in selecting what to wear to Santa Cruz.
Erin had sported a backless jumpsuit at the St. Francis Yacht Club, hadn’t she?
Wes’s tall, confident, brilliant physicist sister, maneuvering her cue and her partner around the pool table, tossing a strawberry-blonde braid, nudging up her glasses, chalk smudging her burgundy-stained lips, laughing.
. . Isabel doubled an elastic around her own plait and tugged on her otter fleece over work- and sun-faded jeans.
Then she studied her cheekbones and pale mouth in the mirror.
She nearly reached for her cosmetics bag, but—no.
She rubbed a smear of sunscreen across her nose and left the bathroom.
These were the clothes and face she had.
And even after a brief confession about her silly, mistaken suspicions of the computer lab, Wes still hadn’t seemed disappointed in her. . .
Now she trailed him, his own sweatshirt, and his Nikon to the Jeep.
She breathed through their merge onto the Pacific Coast Highway, following signs north toward Santa Cruz.
David Attenborough’s The Trials of Life: A Natural History of Animal Behaviour played through their quiet and the staticky stereo.
Isabel only realized she was fidgeting when her hair elastic snapped in her hands.
A guilty glance sneaked at Wes showed his attention on the road.
He hadn’t noticed her twitchiness. In fact, he was biting his lower lip and his thumbs were drumming on the steering wheel.
Self-soothing behaviors.
Her question startled them both. “What’s wrong?”
The Jeep veered over the highway’s center divide. Just a few centimeters, though, before he corrected their trajectory and released his bite on his lip. Before he was smiling again. “Hmm?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She almost believed him. When a Watsonville/Santa Cruz sign appeared through a cluster of dark pines around a bend in the road, however, his thumb gave another tap.
“You’re anxious,” she said. She finger-combed out the remains of her useless braid and tucked her hair behind her ears. Resisting the pull of her seat belt, she turned to face him.
He waved a hand. So close to careless. “I’m not—”
“Is it about today? About your brother and sister?” About me, she didn’t add when another sign outside Aptos flashed by.
They’d reach the boardwalk in fifteen minutes.
“Is it?”
Wes cursed under his breath and followed the exit directions to Morrissey Boulevard.
The beachy city of Santa Cruz coalesced around them: kiosks selling tie-dye and crystals, window displays of books on mysticism, Thai food and tarot readings, racks of electric bicycle rentals, coffee shops with marijuana on the menu, and more surfboards than she could count.
He decelerated at a traffic light outside the Rio Theater.
His ears were pink under a thin sheen of sunscreen. His thumb tapped again. He sighed.
“Fine. Yes, I’m nervous.”
“Because they might not like me.”
“Might not—No. No, Isabel, I’m not worried that Erin and Adrian won’t like you. They will. I’m worried you won’t like them.”
What? He was nervous about her not liking his siblings? Erin and Adrian were his family. Hot sauces or no, how could she not like them?
That wasn’t the problem at all.
She didn’t tell him that. She couldn’t. But she could reassure him. “I will. I will like them. Today will be fine.”
“. . . thanks.”
They pulled into the Beach Street parking lot near Santa Cruz’s municipal wharf.
Wes exhaled; when his smile returned, it was softer, golden—and her heart lurched as he offered his hand.
His fingers interlaced with hers while they strolled across a trolley track to the boardwalk.
This was how couples walked, wasn’t it? How they should walk for the immigration interviewer, and for Erin and Adrian.
Whirlpool romance. Holding hands in the sunshine. . .
Yes, this day would be fine—for him.
“Ready?” he asked her a second time, when a voice near a ticket stand called his name.
“Wes, over here!” A woman’s ponytail flickered in the breeze above the lettering on a STEMinist graphic shirt.
Erin Monaghan waved a ream of ride coupons.
She motioned them toward her group: Ethan Meyer, holding Erin’s free hand with ink-stained fingers, wearing a fleece vest and holding the leash of a golden retriever in a vest of its own—plus a man who must be Adrian Monaghan (taller and thinner than both, with a sharp jaw and well-cut hair) in a Vuori jacket and aviator sunglasses.
Isabel could see her reflection approaching in those lenses.
Their reflection.
Ready or not.
And then—then it was happening: all the anxiety and anticipation of this moment arriving in a crash, surrounded by noise and movement and carnival tickets, Erin hurtling into her brother’s chest for a hug, Adrian slapping Wes’s shoulder so hard that he choked out a gasp of laughter and stuck a retaliatory finger into the other Monaghan’s ear.
Isabel lost her grip on his hand. But it was all right. She’d promised him it would be fine.
“You made it over the Santa Cruz mountains in one piece?”
“Adrian rented an Audi e-tron.”
“Christ.”
“Well, I’m meeting with investors in San Francisco until Friday.”
“You also knew you’d be transporting a dog to the beach, right? Hey, Bunsen.” Wes dropped to his heels to rub the dog’s ears. Brown eyes adored him. “Ethan, how’s life?”
“Wes,” Ethan acknowledged him with a slight smile, while watching his dog’s good sit and thumping tail for a moment.
But then he looked past the Monaghans’ loud, instant descent into conversation, and straight at Isabel.
His smile angled in a crooked curve. Dark eyebrows tilting, he shrugged a question.
She understood.
Overwhelmed, right? But good?
Had it been this way for him too, the first time he’d met the siblings all together?
She didn’t envy his hot-sauce ordeal. Of course, Ethan and Erin Monaghan had been an actual couple when Wes and Adrian subjected him to their trial by fire.
They’d stress-tested him because it mattered, because he was an authentic possible addition to the family, not just—
No.
She bit her tongue and froze that thought. Instead, she nodded.
Yes, overwhelmed. But yes, fine.
She’d promised Wes.
Ethan echoed her nod. An instant later, however, he’d reached through the Monaghans to retrieve Bunsen’s leash.
He tugged the retriever aside and opened the knot of discussion and embraces in her direction.
He extracted a Frisbee from his backpack.
Bunsen’s focus snapped from Wes to the disc with enviable ease.
“We’re going to Seabright Beach. If I don’t work off this energy, we’ll get kicked out of the restaurant tonight. ”
“What, so I didn’t wear you out this morning?” from Erin.
Adrian pulled a disgusted face. “Can you not say things like that before we ride a roller coaster?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Adrian.” Erin grinned at Ethan and pulled him in by the zipper of his vest for a kiss. While he and Bunsen jogged away, she told her brothers, “We ran the Stanford Dish trail earlier. We’re training for ‘Bay to Breakers.’”
Adrian flipped his sunglasses onto his head. “You couldn’t have just explained that? You had to—”
“—torture you?” Her grin twisted into a smirk, revealing a small, pretty gap between her teeth. “Like you tried to torture Ethan with the hot sauce? Yes. But—don’t worry, Isabel. We can be nice, too.”
“Sometimes,” Adrian added. With startling speed, he turned and extended his hand and a flash of a smile to her.
Isabel’s stomach pitched backward in Ethan’s direction, but she held her ground.
She accepted the handshake. For Wes. “I’ve heard about you, but we haven’t met. I’m Adrian. You’re Isabel?”
Isabel: from the yacht club disaster, now at Erin’s bungalow.
She nodded again.
Isabel: wearing Chase Meyer’s ring on September first, but today?
Today—
A dizzying swirl of anxiety sucked hard and suddenly at her gut—until Wes reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
His thumb grazed her cheek. Her breath caught, stilled.
His gaze was level and warm. Steady. Reclaiming her free hand, his fingers uncurled hers from their instinctive fist. He ignored his brother and sister trading glances and said, “Yes, this is Isabel Wright. My fiancée.”
Silence.
Overhead, a gull screamed. Riders on the roller coaster answered. A distant sea lion yodeled. . . and then:
“What?” Adrian’s eyebrows rocketed up. He grappled for his sliding aviators. “You—what? No. She’s your. . .?”
“Yes.”
“No, seriously?”
“Yes.”
“But she was just—wasn’t she? With—”