Chapter 19 — The Seven Stay #4
"I'm not dropping out because of you."
"Because of us, then."
"I'm making a choice about what I want my life to look like."
"I know." I leaned toward her. "I hear that. I know what you're saying under it, Eden. But you don't get to throw away your future to prove you want this."
The table held its breath.
Eden's face didn't move, but her eyes did. The control in them flickered.
"It isn't throwing it away."
"It's if you would have stayed except for distance."
She looked down again.
There it was.
Not strategy. Not pride. Fear.
I softened my voice without weakening it. "Baby, look at me."
She did.
"If you need to be there, I'll get you there."
Her brow drew together. "What does that mean?"
"It means I'll fly you back and forth. Hire drivers."
She went completely still.
"Every week if that's what it takes," I said. "Every weekend. Every break. Whatever schedule we need. If you have to be on campus, you go. If you can be here, you're here. We build the calendar. We make it work."
"Luke."
It came out barely above a whisper.
"I'm not letting you lose school to keep me," I said. "And I'm not losing you because school is three states away."
Her mouth trembled once before she got control of it.
That almost broke me.
Eden Archer, who could sit on my lap in front of her father and turn it into strategy, who could use a man as a cover story and forget his name the next day, who could look at chaos and turn it into a seating chart, stared at me like I had reached across the table and taken a weapon out of her hand before she could use it on herself.
"You'd do that?" she asked.
"Yes."
"That's insane."
"So is this summer."
Tatum sniffed. "He's got us there."
Eden looked away fast. Kiki reached across the table and took her hand. Reese took the other. Eden let them.
For a while nobody said anything.
Then Penny, because Penny understood when a moment needed structure, said, "Then we agree on the fall."
I looked at her.
"We stay," she said. "However the schedule works. We stay."
"We stay," Kiki said.
Shay lifted her glass. "Obviously."
Tatum wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand and pointed at me. "But if I have to drive one day a week, I reserve the right to make at least four dramatic speeches per commute."
"Granted," Penny said.
Reese smiled through tears. "We stay."
Eden looked at me last.
Her eyes were wet now. She didn't hide it. That was how I knew I had gotten through.
"I stay," she said.
The words hit the table and stayed there.
I looked at all six of them and felt the future shift from a fear to a problem.
Problems could be solved.
Not tonight. Not all of them.
But solved.
"We've got the rest of summer," I said. "But July is when we start figuring out the families."
No one argued.
They all knew it was true.
The lake was dark behind them. The champagne was warm. The table was messy with plates and glasses and proof.
The family problem was still beyond the yard, waiting in six houses full of people who trusted me.
But around my table sat six women who had chosen to stay.
That didn't solve everything.
It changed everything.
***
Nobody wanted to sleep alone.
That was the first thing everyone agreed on after the plates were cleared and the champagne glasses sat empty and the word forever had settled into the house like something that had always been there waiting for us to notice.
"My bed isn't big enough for seven," I said.
Tatum was already pulling cushions off the sectional. "Then your bed has failed us as a society."
"It's a king."
"And yet."
Shay came down the stairs with three pillows, two blankets, and a look of intense operational purpose. "I have solved the problem through theft."
"Those are my pillows."
"Our pillows," she said, and threw one at my chest.
Kiki appeared behind her with the soft quilt from the guest room and the expression of a woman who had decided resistance was inefficient. "If we're doing this, we're doing it properly."
"This is why I love you," Shay said.
"For my blanket logistics?"
"Among other crimes."
Penny moved the coffee table with Reese's help while Eden disappeared into the kitchen and returned with popcorn, chocolate, water bottles, and the bottle of wine she had been ignoring earlier.
"No more champagne," Penny said.
"This isn't champagne," Eden said.
"That wasn't the spirit of the objection."
"The spirit can file a complaint."
Within ten minutes, my living room had stopped being a room and become a nest.
Blankets covered the sectional and spilled onto the floor.
Pillows multiplied. Someone put on a movie nobody cared about.
Tatum argued for an action comedy. Reese suggested something with a lake in it and was immediately vetoed for emotional manipulation.
Shay wanted a horror movie because she claimed group fear was bonding.
Kiki told her nobody was screaming in this house tonight unless someone found another spider in the laundry room.
Eden picked the movie while everyone argued.
Of course she did.
I ended up in the center because apparently democracy had limits and my location had been decided before I entered the room.
Kiki tucked herself against my right side, head near my shoulder, fingers finding my wrist under the blanket like she was checking that I was still there.
Tatum claimed my left side by dropping half her body across me with a satisfied sound that made Penny sigh and adjust a pillow under Tatum's knee before Tatum could complain later.