Chapter 19
NINETEEN
For a man who gives strangers advice about their love lives five nights a week, I spend a truly stupid amount of time standing in my closet, trying to figure out what to wear to take my own wife to dinner.
I go with the good jeans and a button-down.
I roll the sleeves. I unroll them. I decide I’m being ridiculous and roll them back up.
Then I decide my tattoos look a little dull and I add this enhancing cream I have.
“You’ve changed your shirt twice.” Josie’s in the doorway of our closet, already dressed, watching me lose a fight with my clothes.
“I’m curating.” It’s what I’m doing, right? Curating a look in the event someone wants to take my photo.
“You’re stalling and for what, I don’t know.
” She takes a couple of steps toward me and fixes my collar, which didn’t need fixing, and I let her, because her fixing my collar is one of my favorite things on this earth and I’m not about to tell her it was already fine.
“It’s dinner, Rockstar. Not a comeback tour. ”
“Everything’s a comeback tour if you commit.
” We, as in the band, never announced anything about retiring or taking time off.
We’re allowed to have a life, side projects, or just be bums until we’re ready to release our next album or decide to do a legends tour at every fairground across the country.
She reaches past me, pulls a shirt I forgot I owned, and hands it over. “This one. You in this one, not whoever you were trying to be in the other two.” I put it on. She’s right, which she’ll happily confirm for you herself.
“God help me,” she says, and she’s smiling, and she takes my hand on the way down the stairs. She doesn’t have to. She does it anyway because tonight, we’re dating.
I made a reservation at a place I found on the web. The pictures looked nice and it has those cloth napkins and an extensive wine list. Josie takes one look at me in the button-down and shakes her head.
“Let’s go somewhere more casual,” she says. “I feel like a burger, some fries, and a cold bottle of beer.”
On our way downtown, I call and cancel my reservation. They’re very sad that Mr. Page won’t be joining them. Funny thing is I made the reservation under Westbury so I’m happy to cancel.
We end up at the grill off the square, the one that’s been on that corner forever, in a back booth with a burger for her and the same for me and a basket of onion rings between us, because as soon as she saw them on another table, the fries went out the window.
Over the burgers she tells me about her day. A bride came into the shop and cried, actual tears, because peonies are out of season, and Josie talked her down and into ranunculus and sent her home happy.
I tell her about a song I started, but I’m not really feeling it. Can’t get the chorus right.
“Do you want to sing it to me?”
“No.” I take a bite of an onion ring. “You’ll tell me that you love it even if you hate it.”
Josie lifts her shoulder. “I love everything you sing.”
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?”
“Nice deflection.”
A couple two booths over keep sneaking looks, and I wait for them to come over and ask for photos. It happens. I’m used to it. The man finally stands and walks over.
“Um, hi, excuse me. Are you Liam Page?”
I should say no since he doesn’t know and has to question whether I am. But I don’t. I nod and stick my hand out to shake his.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Oh man, my mom is going to lose her mind. She wants to call your show.”
“She should.”
“She doesn’t have any drama,” the man says. “Her life is good, so she’d just be making things up in order to talk to you.” He runs his hand through his hair. “Do you think I can get a photo? I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say as I stand. He goes to hand his phone to Josie, but I reach for it. “We’ll do a selfie.” Truth is that I don’t like asking Josie to take photos. Whoever has asked is already intruding on our time together, she doesn’t need to give them any more.
We take the photo and I sign his phone case, which he says he’s going to give to his mom.
“The silver fox still turns heads.” I’m never living that hashtag down. My daughter branded me online and my wife has decided it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Hush,” I tell her.
She steals the last onion ring off my side of the basket and teases me with it. I could take it from her but what’s the point—I’d just give it back.
We pay our tab and head out into the chilly night air. On our walk, she points out that one of the shop windows has its Halloween wreath hung crooked.
“It’s not your shop.”
“It’s making the rest of us look bad.”
I shake my head. “Call them tomorrow and ask if they need someone to come fix it. If they do, call your son. He’ll do it.”
“What if I want to watch my silver fox rock star climb a ladder?”
“Is that your thing now? Should I buy a hardhat?”
“I mean, if you want to do some roleplaying?”
“Woman . . .” I give her an odd look. If we needed to spice things up, maybe. As far as I know, she’s satisfied.
If she isn’t, then you can bet your ass I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure she is.
Josie slows in front of Whimsicality without meaning to and checks her own display through the glass, because she can’t not, and I stand there because watching my wife look at the business she built with her own two hands has never once gotten old.
I turn and look at the road, where cars park.
Years ago, I parked my bike along the curb, two doors away and walked through the door of Whimsicality at closing time.
I had just met the boy who said he saw me on video, kissing his mom.
I knew then, he was my son but refused to believe it until I heard Josie tell me.
The bells above the door announce me like I’m just another customer. My helmet is still on, my gloves gripping nothing but the tension in my hands. She calls out from somewhere in the back that they’re closing up. Her voice hits me like a freight train I wasn’t braced for.
I set my helmet on the counter and pull off my gloves one finger at a time. My hands need something to do or they’ll shake apart.
She comes around the corner without looking up. Doesn’t see me standing here, stripped of my disguise, stripped of every wall I’ve built over ten years. I watch her for half a second, the way she moves through her shop like she owns the air in it.
She does.
“How old is he, Jojo?”
Her hands fly to her mouth. The vase she’s carrying explodes against the floor, water, glass, flowers scattering across the tile. She steps around the wreckage, eyes closed, like she needs one more second before this becomes real.
When she opens them, something shifts between us.
I can feel it the way you know a storm is rolling in before the sky even changes.
She’s looking at me, really looking, but her face is a war zone.
I can see her trying to be the version of herself she planned for this moment.
The tough one. The one who doesn’t flinch.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice comes out broken. Barely there. Not the Josie I remember, the girl who could cut you in half with a single sentence.
I step toward her. She steps back, hand up like a traffic cop.
The message is clear. I shove my hands into my pockets because if I don’t, I’ll reach for her, and she’s not ready for that.
Neither am I. My eyes drop to the floor.
Looking at her too long does things to my chest that I can’t afford right now.
“Jojo . . .”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It’s your name.”
She shakes her head, teeth working the inside of her cheek. I know that look. She’s holding back something bigger than anger. Something that’s been fermenting for a decade.
I smirk. Not because anything is funny, but because standing here in her flower shop, surrounded by everything soft and alive, I feel like the deadest thing in the room. I lean back against the counter, trying to look casual when every nerve in my body is firing.
She breaks eye contact when I bite my lower lip. Old habit. One I should’ve killed years ago because she always noticed.
“What are you doing here, Liam?”
“Do you have something to tell me?”
She shakes her head, presses her hand to her forehead like she’s warding off a migraine. “No. We have nothing to talk about. You made that very clear that night in my dorm room.”
That night. Those words land like a punch I deserve.
I move away from the counter, needing to do something with my restless energy.
My fingers find the leaves of a nearby plant, rubbing them just to feel something green and real.
Then I’m walking toward her. Slowly. Deliberately.
Not because I want to intimidate her. Because I physically cannot stay away.
She has nowhere to go. The wall of flowers behind her makes sure of that. I hold up my hands so she knows I’m not a threat, even though I’m the most dangerous thing that’s ever walked through her door.
“What’s his name, Josie?”
“Why do you care?” Her eyes throw daggers right back at mine. She doesn’t flinch. There she is. There’s my girl.
“You should go.”
“Nah.” I shake my head. Step closer. She steps back. The display wobbles behind her. “I just want to talk. I don’t think you want me to start asking questions, do you?”
The fight drains out of her face. She shakes her head. She knows what it would mean. My name attached to hers all over again, people pointing at the boy, connecting dots she’s spent years keeping apart.
“How old is he, Jojo?” I use the voice. The one I never meant to weaponize. The quiet tone that used to tell her I loved her between classes, the one I’d use when I’d drop her off after a date and didn’t want the night to end.
“He’ll be ten in June.”
The math hits instantly. My chest tightens. My lungs forget their one job.
I step back. Look at her, really look. She can see the hurt in my eyes. I know because she lifts her chin, hardens her jaw. She’s decided not to care.