“I mean, oh no, I don’t think my cheeks could handle your complete and utter hilarity.”
The foghorn of a distant boat wails hauntingly in the distance, disagreeing with me.
“You know, I could distract you another way.”
“I have no clue what that could entail, but I give you free rein.” I giggle. “Oh! Before I forget, I have a very important question to ask you!”
“Important questions from you scare me, but I’ll allow it.”
“Your fear is probably valid, and I’ll try to work on that, but not today. So! When Paul said you gave up beer and carbs for me…?”
Liam groans behind me. “You couldn’t wait to tease me until I’m not hungover?”
“Absolutely not. You knew what you were getting into with me.”
Liam’s breath pricks the nape of my neck as he dips his head and brings his lips to my ears. “It was worth it watching you gape at me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You forgot basic sentence structures.”
“You got a boner!” I shout far too loudly, causing an older lady power-walking through the park to move off the sidewalk to keep her distance. Fair. I blush, meeting that patented Gene Kelly stare fashioned on Liam’s face, eye crinkles and all. “We should probably get home and shower before we have to see my family.”
“I want to show you something first, but yeah, then we can gohome.” He takes a sip of his coffee, lips curled up behind the lid. I haven’t even been here twenty-four hours, and I’m already claiming his apartment as my own.
Liam guides me past a fountain with a cherub and a fish over a brick sidewalk to a white-fenced area. My breath catches as we walk down a few tiny stairs and enter an area blanketed with a canopy of white blossoms. Twisted trees sit in barren beds dusted with fallen petals. A lace covering of blooms overwhelms their branches which bow under the encumbering weight, while three fountains with brick walls trickle throughout the petaled wonderland.
“Oh. Wow—this is—this is perfect,” I whisper, worried my voice could break the delicate balance of the area.
A low-grown warmth sparks alive in my chest, like a fire softly crackling in its hearth. It’s a comfort I haven’t felt in years, not since Nana passed. I glance up at Liam staring back at me, dimples of doom severely popped, and the thought forms.
There are so many things to be anxious about right now.
I haven’t seen my parents or brother in years.
In the next two weeks, I have to somehow drag my already exhausted body and mind through a family dinner, a dual baby/bridal shower, and a wedding. And I can’t guarantee my body will be able to last through it all, even though it has to, which means pushing it past its limits.
I know all this. I spiraled over it during my flights from hell. And yet, standing here with Liam, I have this suspicious feeling that instead of the anxiety that should be consuming my chest, something akin to happiness has found residence there.
My tongue didn’t slip. My heart has found its home.
I just never imagined home would be a person.
19
Donut Bring Me Down
“Youdon’tthinkyou’drather have a salad, sweetheart?” My mother’s lips press into a thin line, her eyes steady on me. The low glow of the garden lights accentuates her harsh frown lines that have deepened either with age or from my antics in the past few years.
A firepit crackles in the corner of the back patio of this Italian restaurant. We had to march through the main room to get back to this garden oasis, and with every person we saw that has formerly breathed the same air as Caroline, she stopped with a “Why hi there, have you seen? My Evie is back fromParisand oh, look whose arm she’s on.”
There were a few times at the delivery of this news that I jumped, feigning shock to find myself on Liam’s arm, my need to nettle my mother at any given moment and make Liam laugh aligned for once.
All of this, of course, precipitated after she met me outside with a quick smooth down of my hair with her hands and an “I should have scheduled your hair appointment for today. Did you even try to cover up those bags under your eyes?” And my personal favorite: “That tunic does little to compliment your figure, sweetheart. You want to look curvy, not rotund.”
A harshly cleared throat forces my attention back to the present. I blink myself out of the frozen state my mother’s question created and shift in my seat, hemming and hawing some more.
Do I want a salad? No.
