Chapter 2 #2
By the time we've got everything set up, the whole family's filtering outside.
Gram appears with a platter of garlic bread.
Her older sister, Juliet, follows, carrying nothing but complaints about the humidity and the bugs and how late they're eating and if Gram's trying to starve everyone to death.
So much talk of death for a birthday weekend.
"Eleanor, this is ridiculous. It's nearly eight o'clock."
"It's summer, Juliet. People eat late in summer."
"People eat late when they don't know how to manage their time."
Gram sets the garlic bread down and raises a brow at her sister. "I manage my time just fine. I manage everyone else's too. It's my birthday weekend, but I seem to be the busiest around here. You slept all afternoon when you should have been making casserole."
"I'm eighty-three, the oldest here. I deserve to nap because I need the energy to deal with you."
"You can get lots of sleep when you're dead."
Harriet appears with plates and napkins, her mom, Janine, behind her with a salad that looks like it came from a magazine—all colorful vegetables arranged just so. I'm not even a salad guy, but wow, it looks hella delicious.
The thing sits on the table while everyone gravitates toward the nachos and burgers.
"Mom made a salad," Harriet says, smiling at Gram and wringing her hands.
Gram eyes the salad the same way you look at a gnat on your steak. "Nobody at my age aims to be healthy. I don't want to live forever. That's just exhausting."
"Ma." Harriet's mom sighs. "You could at least try—"
"I could try a lot of things, like pissing in public. Doesn't mean I will." Gram piles more lasagna on her plate, maintaining eye contact with Harriet's mom. "Pass the meatballs. I'd also have the regular soda, not the sugar-free one."
Juliet snorts. "You'll outlive us all out of pure stubbornness. I'm older, I go first, so quit hogging the drama."
"You're older by twenty-eight months and you never let anyone forget it."
"Damn right I don't. Not until the day I die."
Like I said, a lot of talk about death for a birthday weekend.
They bicker—about how the lasagna needs more bechamel or the burger buns are too dry—while sitting close enough to share an armrest. Harriet catches my eye across the table and rolls hers, and I have to bite back a grin.
Then the twins show up, the only ones I've been avoiding ever since I heard one of them yell how he would gain a hundred thousand followers if people found out who he was partying on the weekend with.
Jake and James barrel out of the house. They spot me and freeze.
"Holy shit," one of them breathes. "That's him."
"Language," three different adults say at once.
"Sorry. Holy crap. You're Heath Donovan."
"Guilty."
They're identical, these two, but Jake's wearing a jersey—not mine, but my teammate's—and James has a phone already halfway to my face.
"Dude, can we ask you some stuff? Like, that catch against Denver last season? The one where you basically climbed that safety's back?"
"That wasn't as hard as it looked on TV."
"Bullshit," Jake says, then glances around at the adults. "I mean, bull. That thing was impossible. You were like thirty feet in the air."
"More like eight. Felt like thirty though."
James is holding his phone up, thumb hovering over the screen. "Guys, you are not going to believe who's here. This is insane—"
"No." Harriet's voice cuts across the table. "Put it away and stop embarrassing us."
"Come on, Harriet, this is—"
"He's here as family, not content. Phone down or I'll lock those up until Sunday."
Gram backs her up without looking up from her lasagna.
"You heard her. Put it away before I throw it in the lake.
You ever film Heath secretly and you answer to me.
And by answer, I mean I'll toss that ugly-looking game thing you attached to my TV.
Or I'll probably just set it on fire. Will depend on my mood. "
The boys deflate, but they rally quick. "Okay, but can we get some photos? Just regular ones? We won't post it this week. Just once we're back home."
I nod, and they're off their chairs in a heartbeat, crowding around me with the phone. They take about fifteen shots from different angles, and spend the next ten minutes hunched over the screen, arguing.
"This one makes my face look weird."
"Your face always looks weird. We're twins."
"You look weird too then."
"Yeah, but less weird than you in this one."
"That's not even logically possible."
They drift away eventually, still debating, disappearing toward the house, all while munching on nachos.
The adults settle back into comfortable conversation, voices mixing with the sound of water lapping at the dock.
The light starts to fade, purple creeping in around the edges of the sky.
Gram and Juliet migrate to the porch, still bickering about something—whose fault it is that the mosquitoes are so bad this year.
Alvin and Janine start clearing plates, along with the twins' parents, waving off offers of help.
And then it's just Harriet and me and the dying fire.
She's kicked off her flip-flops, that shirt still sliding off her shoulder every time she moves. The firelight catches in her hair, throws shadows across her face that make her look like something from a dream.
"Remember the summer of the great cookie heist?" she says suddenly.
I laugh, the memory hitting me full force. "The tin of sewing supplies."
"We were so careful. Waited until Gram went into town, picked the lock on the pantry—"
"You picked the lock. I just provided moral support and bad advice."
"And we finally got that stupid tin open and it was just spools of thread and needles. Not even good thread."
"The disappointment was crushing. I think I laid on the kitchen floor for ten minutes."
"You were so dramatic." She's grinning now, unselfconscious, the guarded thing from earlier completely gone. "I was the one who had to explain to Gram why her sewing supplies were scattered all over the counter."
"And she made us organize the whole pantry as punishment."
"Worth it, though. We found that stash of chocolate bars behind the flour."
"Which she definitely knew about and was saving for us to find."
The conversation slides into other memories, easy as breathing. The summer I found her the job at the bookstore in town when she wanted to save up for a new computer.
"You've always looked out for me every summer," Harriet says softly.
"Looking out for you was never a chore."
The whole world slides to a stop around us, and my self-control cracks, a rush of deep, intense longing rushing through the gap.
"What about the rain swim?" I ask, and her eyes go wide. "Remember that?
"Oh God, don't."
"Come on. That was legendary."
"That was stupid. We could have been struck by lightning."
"But we weren't. We were eighteen and invincible and it wouldn't stop raining." The memory sits heavy between us—cold water and wet clothes and fabric clinging to every curve. "Gram nearly killed us when we came back soaked."
"'Nearly' is generous. I thought she was going to make us sleep in the garage."
"Would have been worth it."
Her gaze drops to my mouth. Just for a second, a flick of her eyes, but I catch it and everything in me goes taut. My cock strains against my pants. I'm so fucking hard to the point of pain.
This is it. Finally.
Ten years overdue, but finally.
I stand and walk towards her chair, sitting on my haunches just in front of her. I do it so slowly, giving her room to pull back if she wants to. But she doesn't pull back.
Harriet stays right there, lips parted slightly, fingers gripping the armrest.
Then her eyes go wide and she's up, chair scraping against the stone fire ring.
"I should go. I'm sorry, Heath. I can't—"
And she's gone, running toward the line of houses, toward the strip of woods behind them.
Damn it. I did it again. Misjudged, pushed too hard, read something that wasn't there. The old fear roars up—of course, what did I expect? A woman like her, and me lunging across a campfire like some kid who never learned when to quit.
But I can't let it end like last time. Won't let her run and then spend another ten years wondering what if.
No. If she says she doesn't want me, then that's it. But this running and not knowing? It's going to kill me.
My legs are longer, and I'm used to moving fast. I catch up to her at the tree line, both of us breathing hard. The fire's glow is gone here, just darkness and the sound of the lake behind us and her face tipped up to mine in the scattered moonlight.
She's pressed against an old oak, chest rising and falling, looking at me like I'm something dangerous. Maybe I am. Maybe we both are.
"Harriet—"
But I don't finish the thought. Don't give her another chance to run. I step into her space, cup her jaw, and kiss her.