She pressed her lips into a sad, stiff line and gave athat’ll do itnod. “Okay, Beck. You need to spend the night figuring yourself out. You can come back after you’ve made sense of all those big feels inside you.”
“Sunny, stop it. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Actually, you are.” She tipped her head toward the door. “You don’t get to say things like this to me and then sleep in my bed.”
“I’m not leaving you alone,” I said. How I managed to speak through that gut punch was a mystery to me. “Come on. You know you still need help.” When she only stared at me, I added, “I promised your parents I’d stay with you. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Not tonight, no.” The finality in her voice raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “I want you to go, Beck.”
I went to her, crouching in front of the sofa. “Sunny. Sweetheart. I’m sorry. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me tonight. I just—”
“Beck.” Her tone was solid ice. “Listen to me carefully. I’m not mad. I’m not giving you the silent treatment. I’m not ending anything. I’m just sending you home to give you the time to think about why you’re feeling this way.”
I peered up at her, certain that I was being ripped in half. “I’ll stay on the couch. Just in case you need me.”
“I’ve had a lot of people hovering over me recently and I would like to be alone tonight.”
Since there was nothing left for me to say and I’d ruined enough things by opening my mouth tonight, I pushed to my feet and marched into the kitchen to feed the dogs. Their dishes needed to be washed so I did that too, along with the teacups and plates in the sink. I filled a glass of water and set it on the bedside table and then plugged her phone into the charger there. I checked the lock on the back door and picked up the dogs’ toys so Sunny didn’t trip over any of them.
“I’ll be back in the morning to take you to your doctor’s appointment,” I said. “Call me if anything happens. Even if you’re not-not mad at me, I want you to let me help you.” I wanted to throw myself at her mercy. I’d beg. I’d plead. I’d promise impossible, ridiculous things. Instead of doing any of that, I walked to the door. “Lock this after I leave.”
She nodded but said nothing else.
Things didn’t get better for me when I arrived at home. I opened the front door and heard a softly gaspedFuckfrom the staircase. Glancing up, I found Parker on the landing with a girl about his age. From the disheveled look of them and the deer-in-headlights expressions on their faces, I had a pretty good idea what they’d been doing up there.
“Hi,” I said to them. “Park, I’ll be waiting in the kitchen.”
I sat down and stared at the table, running my thumb over the scratches and grooves. A few minutes passed before I heard the front door close. Parker appeared in the doorway, lingering there until settling whichever internal debate he had going. He dropped into the seat across from me and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest as if he had nothing to explain.
I almost laughed. On a different night, I would’ve laughed.
“Do I need to have a sex talk with you?” I asked.
He slumped forward and shoved his fingers through his hair. “Absolutely fucking not, no.”
“It’s important that you’re smart,” I said. “Are you taking precautions? To prevent babies and infections? Do youknowthe right precautions?”
Blowing out a long breath, Parker pushed to his feet and went to the refrigerator. He returned with two bottles of beer and passed one to me. “Yeah. I know.”
I stared at the beer bottle. “Are we adding underage drinking to the list of lectures for the night? Again?”
Parker tipped back the bottle and drank deeply. He studied the label for a minute, tracing the edges with his fingernail. Eventually, he hunched forward, the bottle loosely clasped between his hands on the table. “How old were you when you sat in this kitchen and had your first beer? Because I’m willing to bet it was a lot earlier than twenty-one. If I had to guess, I’d say it was right around sixteen or seventeen.” He glanced at me, a crooked grin on his lips. “I hadn’t been born yet but Decker was still a kid, like ten or eleven. Old enough to be really annoying, right? And Mom and Dad were flaky as always, weren’t they?” He took another sip. “You didn’t sneak beers out of the fridge. You didn’t get wasted in forests or on the beach with your friends. No, you sat here with a drink because you were really fucking tired from having to grow up so damn early. And you want to know how I know this?” He slapped a hand to his chest. “I know this because after you and Dex left home, I had to grow up too. It didn’t matter how much money you threw at the oyster company or at Mom and Dad because it didn’t change anything about this place. It didn’t change them. They were still max-level, full-blast ADHD at all times, and that left a guy to drink alone in the kitchen and wonder how the hell he’d wake up the next day and deal with another stupid new crisis.”
I reached for my bottle, took a sip. I nodded. He was right about everything, but he didn’t need me to say that. He already knew.
“And the really horrible thing about it,” he went on, “the most unpleasant, unbearable part is, was that I really love them. They are impossible and exhausting and constantly disappointing, but they’re my people. Andgoodpeople too.”
“It would be so much easier if they were assholes,” I said.
“Fuck yes,” Parker replied. “Dad emails me every day. From jail. He wants to talk about the community softball league and his big plans for an October tournament this year. Because he’s under the impression he’ll be home in October.”
“Something to look forward to, I guess.”
“I feel like I can breathe for the first time in my life now that they aren’t around, and that makes me feel like hot trash.” He picked up his beer but immediately put it back down, saying, “There will be years of therapy in my future. So much to unpack. Like a hoarder’s storage unit.”
“Then you understand why Dex and I left.”
“And without one glance in the rearview,” he quipped. “Yeah, I get it—and you get that it sucked for me that you left and never fucking came back. That’s why there are days when I drink a beer at the kitchen table. Usually after turning off the stove that had somehow been on all day long. It’s only a matter of time until this house blows up, Beck.”
