Chapter 41 Wreckage and Rain #2
Jake slides into the booth next to me.
"So," he says. "Autumn and Sam."
"Autumn and Sam."
Colt comes back from the bathroom and slides in on my other side. He follows my eyeline to the bar, where Sam and Autumn are leaning toward each other in a conversation that doesn't need translating.
"He's going to ask her out," Colt says.
"How can you tell."
"He poured her the bourbon, and then he poured himself one."
"That's the move?"
"That's the move."
We sit in the booth and watch the slow choreography of two people who've been broken before and are letting themselves try one more time.
Sam leans his forearms on the bar. Autumn leans hers.
They're close. They aren't touching. The whole thing is a study in restraint.
It's the most romantic thing in the building.
At the table by the stage, Dom watches Marisol close out her set with the settled look of a man who decided a long time ago where he wanted to be.
Jake, beside me, exhales.
"Okay."
"Okay what."
"Okay. I approve."
"You don't have to approve."
"I'm approving anyway. It's what I'm here for. The brothers approve."
"There's one brother. You aren't plural."
"I represent the plural by virtue of being the one she has."
"I'm also right here," Colt says.
"You're a brother-in-law. Different department. I'm the blood."
Colt laughs.
"Holloway, you have a future in politics."
"I have a future in not being in politics. I'm going to fish on a marsh and read romance novels until I die."
"You read romance novels."
"I read my sister's books and the books her editor recommends. I'm educated. Bennet, don't start with me."
"I'm not starting."
"You were going to start."
"I was going to start gently."
"Don't."
I lean my head on Jake's shoulder. He puts his arm around me.
Across the bar, Sam slides Autumn a second bourbon without being asked and her shoulders come down a quarter inch, and Colt, beside me, puts his hand on my knee under the table like he's done since we were teenagers, like he started doing again back in the fall, like I'm going to let him do for the rest of my life.
***
Saturday night.
Jake's last night in Chicago. He has been at Vibes every night.
After the Saturday show, Jake hugs me at the door of Vibes. Long. Like Daddy hugs me. He smells like Sam's bar and the cold and the cologne Jake gave Colt that Colt hasn't started wearing yet.
"I'll see you in June."
"June."
"Patricia got me a ticket to the launch event in New York. I told her I wasn't going. She told me I was. I'm going."
"Patricia got you a ticket."
"She likes me. She has called me twice this month."
"Patricia has called you twice this month."
"She has decided I'm the responsible Charleston-based representative of the King family. I've been promoted."
"Welcome to your new job."
"Thank you."
He climbs into the cab Colt called for him. Waves through the window. Disappears into the snow.
Colt comes up behind me. Puts his arms around me from the back. Tucks his chin against my shoulder.
"Home?"
"Roof first."
"Roof. In January."
"Roof. In January."
"You're out of your mind."
"It's one of my favorite things about me."
***
The roof of our building is accessible by a service stairwell at the end of the third floor hallway.
We've brought up two folding chairs, a fleece blanket, and a thermos of cocoa.
Colt is wearing his Patagonia, I'm wearing the puffer-on-puffer-on-mittens situation, and we sit in the chairs at the corner where the parapet looks east, toward the lake. The city is laid out below us.
The lake is black. The downtown is gold. The Hancock Tower is a sliver against the cloud cover. The snow has stopped. The wind is in our hair. The cocoa is the kind Sarah taught me to make at fourteen, the slow kind, with real cocoa and milk and a pinch of salt.
"Summer."
"Yeah."
"I have a question."
"Okay."
"Are you happy."
He has been asking me this every two weeks since the fall.
It's a real check-in, never an obligation.
He asks it on Saturday nights, when we're alone, when there's no agenda.
He asks it like Dr. Ramos taught him. He asks it because he learned the hard way that the answer is never something you should assume.
"I am."
"Tell me what kind."
"The new kind. The kind that includes the bad days. The kind where I cried at the Sears Tower last week and I was still happy. The kind that doesn't ask me to pretend."
"Specifically."
"Specifically." I take a sip of cocoa. The wind catches the steam.
"I'm happy that you're here every day now.
I'm happy that Lucia called you Uncle Cowboy yesterday and you bought boots in retaliation.
I'm happy that Autumn is three blocks away.
I'm happy that Sam is going to be okay. I'm happy that I've got a book coming out.
I'm happy that I have a new book idea in my head that's bigger than the last one and I haven't told you yet because I don't have the words yet, but I'm going to.
I'm happy that you're wearing the cologne Jake gave you and you didn't used to wear it and now you do because it makes Lucia laugh.
I'm happy in the specific small daily way. "
He's quiet. I have his hand under the fleece blanket. Mittens make it hard to hold properly. We're doing our best.
"What is the new book."
"I haven't told you because I want to know whether I can hold all of it in my head a little longer before I let it out."
"Tell me what you can tell me."
I think about it.
"A man wakes up in a hotel room he doesn't remember checking into.
There's a woman next to him he didn't consent to be next to.
He has six hours of his life missing. He has a wife who is in another city and doesn't know yet.
The book is about what he has to find out about himself in the next year to be a person his wife could choose again.
The wreckage and the rebuild. Married to a thriller plot at the front and a redemption plot at the middle and a romance at the back.
I'm going to call it something with rain in the title. "
He has gone very still next to me.
"Summer."
"Yeah."
"That is."
"I know."
"That is."
"I know what it is, Colt."
"You're going to write it."
"I'm going to write it."
"All of it."
"All of it. Including the part where the husband is the villain in chapters one through fifteen and stops being the villain in chapter sixteen and becomes a person in chapters seventeen through thirty.
Including the part where the wife sleeps with the bartender and isn't ashamed of it.
Including the part where the husband goes to his mother in a garden.
Including the part where the bartender ends up at coffee with the wife's best friend. All of it."
He's looking at me. The cold has put color in his face. His eyes are wet.
"That's the bravest book anyone has ever written."
"Don't use that word with me."
"That's the boldest book anyone has ever written."
"Better."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure. I've been sure for a month. I've been waiting to be sure I could write it without burning anything down."
"And now?"
"Now I can write it without burning anything down. There's nothing left to be afraid of. The only thing left is to make it true."
He puts his arm around my shoulders. Pulls me against him. The mittens make it awkward and we work around the mittens. The cocoa goes on the parapet.
"I'm proud of you."
"Say it again in a year when the book is out and the reviews are bad."
"I'm going to read every draft."
"You read the last one four times and gave me a single note and the note was a comma."
"It was a load-bearing comma."
"I'm going to give you notes you don't want."
"Patricia gives me notes I don't want and I survive."
"I'm going to be worse than Patricia."
"You aren't going to be worse than Patricia."
"I'm going to try."
We sit on the roof of our building in Lincoln Park in January, the wind off the lake in our hair, the city gold below us.
Inside me a book is starting that'll tell the truth about a year of my life.
On the parapet there's a thermos of cocoa Sarah taught me to make at fourteen.
And next to me there's a man I married at twenty and almost lost at twenty-three and got back at twenty-four, the long way, with help from a bartender, a single mother, and a two-year-old who declared him Uncle Cowboy after a single afternoon of crayon work.
"Colt."
"Yeah."
"I love you."
"I love you."
"You're happy too."
"I'm happy."
"Tell me what kind."
He thinks. He has learned to think with the question. Not give the easy answer.
"The earned kind. The kind where I'm scared every day of doing it wrong and I don't let the fear stop me from showing up.
The kind where I bought boots because a toddler told me to and I didn't hate myself for it.
The kind where I'm a partner in a small clean firm and the firm pays for our apartment and I'm no good at carving turkey but I'm going to carve a turkey at Thanksgiving in this apartment for your parents and Jake and Autumn and Sam and Dom and Marisol and Lucia, and I'm going to do it standing up in the kitchen with the bird and a knife and bad form and I'm going to be happy doing it. "
"You're going to carve a turkey."
"I'm going to carve a turkey."
"That's the most Lowcountry sentence you've ever produced in Chicago."
"I'm incorporating my background."
I lean into him. Close my eyes. The wind comes off the lake and around the building. The cocoa is going cold next to us. And I am, for the first time in a long time, sure of every single thing.