Chapter 38
Sailor Jon's was full by nine.
Kirstin stood by the window with Morgan and Addison and a glass of wine and watched her father's bar fill up.
The jukebox was loud. The tables were full.
Todd was behind the bar moving fast. Jon was beside him, wiping down the counter, pouring drinks, doing what he'd done every night for twenty-five years.
Beck was across the room with Luke and Brady. She caught his eye once and he raised his beer and she raised her glass and the exchange was small and easy and hers.
The evening moved. She talked with Morgan about the January schedule and with Addison about the Braves timeline and with both of them about nothing, the easy nothing of women who had been through something together and come out the other side.
Brent told a story. Ashley corrected it.
The bar was warm and full and the island was ringing in the new year at the only place that mattered.
At eleven thirty, Beck crossed the room.
"Come outside with me," he said.
"It's freezing."
"Just for a minute."
She studied his face. Something was different. Not wrong. Different. A stillness behind his eyes that she'd seen before, in the facility the day of the scouts meeting, in the bedroom the morning he told her about Atlanta. Beck went still when something mattered.
"Okay," she said.
He took her hand. They walked toward the back door, past the bar, past Jon. She saw Beck catch her father's eye and nod, small, barely a movement. Jon's face changed. A look she didn't understand and then Jon turned back to the bar and picked up a glass and started drying it.
She put it aside. She'd ask later.
The back of Sailor Jon's faced the water. A narrow strip of sand, a bench that had been there longer than the building, the marsh beyond it dark and flat under a sky full of stars. The music from inside was muffled through the walls. The air was cold and sharp and smelled like salt.
He took the hat off when they reached the sand. Set it on the bench and pushed his hands through his curls.
"Is everything okay, baby?"
"Everything's perfect," he said.
She watched his face. She watched him shift his weight, adjust his hands. A center fielder who could stand motionless for three hours between pitches, unable to stand still on a beach.
Then she watched him kneel.
Her hands went to her mouth.
He reached into his pocket. There was no box. Just a ring in his palm, catching the light from the window, small and bright against his skin.
Her breath came out in a sound that wasn't a word. Her eyes went to the ring and stayed there and the tears started before she could stop them.
Her mother's ring.
"Kirstin," he said. His voice didn't waver. His hand did. "I know I'm still a baseball player. But will you marry me?"
She went down to the sand with him.
Her knees hit the ground and her arms went around his neck and her face pressed into his chest and she held him.
She held him as tightly as she could and felt him hold her back, his arms around her, his chin on her head, the two of them kneeling on the sand behind Sailor Jon's on New Year's Eve while the bar counted down to midnight without them.
The word was there. Right behind her teeth. But her body was ahead of her voice and the holding was the answer before the word arrived.
When her breathing slowed she pulled back. His face was close. His eyes were wet too.
"Yes," she said.
He took her hand. His fingers were shaking. He slid the ring on and it fit and the tears came again because of course it fit. April's hands. Kirstin's hands. The same hands.
She didn't kiss him. She fell back into his chest and held on.
Her breathing was ragged and his shirt was wet from her face and the bar was loud behind them and the water was dark in front of them and she held on because letting go meant the moment was over and she wasn't ready for the moment to be over.
"Are you okay?" he said. Into her hair.
She pulled back. She held his face in both hands.
"It's my mother's ring, Ethan."
"I know."
She kissed him. The first kiss as the answer to a question. Salt on both their faces. The cold air and the warm mouth and the ring on her finger pressing against his jaw.
He stood and pulled her up with him. He reached for the bench and picked up the hat and tucked it into his back pocket.
She wiped her eyes. She wiped them again. She was bouncing on her toes, barely, the involuntary motion of a body that couldn't contain what was happening inside it.
"We have to go back inside," she said.
"I know."
"Morgan's going to lose her mind."
He laughed. "Yeah, she probably is."
She took his hand. The ring caught the light from the window. Her mother's ring on her finger. Ethan Beck had walked into her father's bar on a Wednesday night in September and changed everything.
"Ready?" he said.
"Ready."
She came through the back door first.
The bar was loud. The countdown had passed while they were on the sand and the room was in the aftermath, hugging and cheering and glasses raised and the jukebox playing something nobody was listening to.
Morgan saw her first. Morgan always saw her first.
Kirstin held up her left hand.
The sound Morgan made was not a word. It was a frequency.
It started in Morgan's chest and came out of her mouth and Addison's head snapped around and Addison's hands went to her face and then both of them were moving, crossing the bar, and Kirstin was laughing and crying at the same time and Morgan reached her first and grabbed her hand and said "oh my God" three times in a single breath.
"I'm taking my ass to Atlanta," Kirstin said.
Morgan pulled her into a hug so tight Kirstin's feet left the ground. Addison was behind her, arms around both of them, the three of them in a knot by the back door while the bar figured out what was happening.
Morgan grabbed her hand. "Let me see. Let me see it."
Kirstin held her hand out. The ring caught the bar light.
"It's my mother's ring," Kirstin said.
Morgan's face went still. Addison's grip tightened on her shoulder.
"April's ring," Kirstin said. "She kept it.
Twenty years in a jewelry box in Jacksonville.
I used to try it on when I was little. I'd sit at the kitchen table and turn it around on my finger and tell her it was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.
" Her voice caught. "He got it from her.
I don't know how. I don't know when. But it's hers and now it's mine. "
Morgan's face crumbled. The operational Morgan, the loud Morgan, the one who ran rooms and planned events and held everything together. She went away for a second and the person underneath arrived and that person was crying.
The bar had caught on. The whispers moved through the room the same way Beck's name had moved through it on a Wednesday night in September. Heads turned. Glasses paused. The jukebox kept playing but nobody was listening.
Luke had Beck against the bar. Beck's back was to the rail and Luke was gripping his shoulders and saying something Beck was nodding at. Brady was beside them, arms crossed, his face wider open than she'd ever seen it.
Then the bell.
The sound cut through everything. The sharp, bright ring of the brass bell that had hung above the bar at Sailor Jon's for as long as the bar had existed. Jon's hand was on the rope. He pulled it again. And again.
The room went quiet.
Jon stood behind the bar. Sixty years old. Gray at the temples. A bar towel over his shoulder and his daughter's happiness on his face.
"My baby girl's getting married," Jon said. "Next round's on the house."
The bar erupted. The noise hit the walls and came back and hit them again. Strangers were cheering. Regulars were standing. Todd was already pulling glasses.
Jon came around the bar. He walked through the noise and the crowd and the cheering and he reached his daughter and he pulled her into his arms.
The Jon hug. The one that smelled like the bar and the island and salt air and twenty-five years of wiping down the same counters. She pressed her face into his chest and he held her and the bar was loud around them and he put his mouth close to her ear.
"He called your mother first," Jon said. "Then he came to me."
She pulled back. Jon's eyes were wet. His face was the Cuban restaurant, the table with April, the plantains, two people who never closed the distance pretending they weren't still in love.
"She gave him the ring," Kirstin said. Not a question.
"She said there was nobody else she'd ever give it to.
" Jon put his hands on her face. "I'm proud of you, baby girl.
And your mother's proud of you. And that man over there" — he glanced at Beck, who was standing at the bar with Luke's hand on his shoulder and a beer someone had put in his hand — "that man loves you like you deserve to be loved. "
She hugged him again. Hard. The tears came one more time and she let them because some tears earn their place and these had earned theirs.
Jon kissed her forehead. He stepped back. He straightened the bar towel on his shoulder.
"I got drinks to pour," he said. "Go be with your man."
She went. She crossed the bar and Beck saw her coming and his face did what it always did. She reached him and he pulled her in and kissed her and the bar cheered again and she let it.