“I’ll miss you too.” His jacket was long gone and the bow tie loose at his collar, and if I ignored the warm, humid San Diego air, I could almost convince myself no time had passed at all. “But you’ll be too busy in the ER with the trauma bros to even notice I’m gone.”
“Now, that’s just silly. I’d notice when I reached over in the middle of the night and didn’t find anything warm and soft waiting for me.”
“Like a hot water bottle?”
He sighed like it was a real hassle to put up with me these days. I loved it. “What a little wiseass you are.”
I rested my head against his chest and smiled. I lovedhim. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Remember what I told you,” he said, his tone turning stern. “I don’t want to hear about you two staying up all night, raising hell, and drinking tequila. And, god help me, if you find yourself at a wedding?—”
“I’m only crashing for the cake these days,” I said with a laugh. “As you’re well aware.”
“Well fucking aware, honey.” He smacked my ass like that sealed the deal. “You might not be the innocent angel you’ve convinced everyone that you are, but I’m more concerned with Meri.” A strangled noise rumbled in his throat. “And Brie.”
I wasn’t sure which of them the strangled noise was for, but I understood the overall sentiment. The next two weeks were full of variables. An algebraic equation of vacations.
This summer’s getaway, while similar on the surface to all our previous trips, came with several new features. We hadn’t completely foreclosed the possibility of stumbling into a wedding or two, though like I said, I was only in it for good times and dessert buffets. No bedfellows for me this year.
I had my hands full with the bedfellow I’d found last summer.
Another switch-up was that we were visiting people. Historically, we’d gone to great—often ludicrous—lengths to avoid running into anyone we knew on these trips. We’d wanted those vacations to be complete and total departures from our real lives. We’dneededit.
And now, for a grab bag of reasons, we’d carved out time to pop-in on Meri’s parents in Orange County and visit Brie in Sonoma. My sister made her way to Colorado sometime in April and spent several weeks there. She hadn’t shared many details. Most of what I’d learned about that visit had come from my mother, but I could live with that. It wasn’t my job toknow everything about my sister anymore. She could do that for herself now.
After Colorado, she’d gone straight to Lake Tahoe and Mason, who was fresh off his divorce and riding high after getting his hands around a whole lot of big feelings. This, Brie was happy to share with me. There was no shortage of updates on Mason’s rerelease into the wild or Brie’s breathless, sometimes grudging acknowledgment that Florrie had made serious efforts at taking apart their married life with kindness and generosity. She’d insisted Mason get the house even though her family had paid the entire down payment and her father had lobbied hard for her to keep it. In the end, they sold it and split the proceeds.
Brie hung out with Mason for a month or so before heading out to Wine Country where she was housesitting a massive hillside estate for the next six months. Mason visited on his weeks off and between leading mountain expeditions. They’d decided to see where it went, neither in a rush to put too fine a point on anything.
My sister and I were in a better place these days. Still tentative, still slightly distant, but it was like a great storm had blown through and swept the set pieces of our little family drama out to sea and now we had only each other to deal with, not our histories.
“I can’t make any promises to you about tequila because it tends to be an essential part of our summers?—”
“You say that as if I haven’t heard enough stories from you two,” he grumbled.
“—but I know how to keep a handle on Meri. As for Brie, well, I think it’s going to be all right.” I gave him the same shrug I had every time this topic had come up for the past month. “If it’s not, Meri has been waitingyearsto step in and I think you know she’d make for a dirty ref.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said, my hands skimming down his sides.
“I’m expecting souvenirs,” he said, a little mulish. It was cute.
Next summer, he’d have more time off before the start of his third year. We wouldn’t have to cram everything into one week before shipping him back to Boston. “The best souvenirs,” I promised.
As we swayed in our corner, we watched the happy couple dancing and soaking up all the love around them. They were going to make it. I could feel it.
Cami and her husband—everyone just called him Dixon—floated over, all smiles. “You’re going to be next,” she said, wagging a finger in my direction.
“I’m what?” I asked, not sure I’d heard her over the throb of the music.
“Don’t listen to her,” Henry said. “She gets mouthy when she’s drunk.”
“I donothingof the sort,” Cami replied, all indignance.
“You do, babe,” her husband said lightly. “Y’all wouldn’t believe the trouble she gets into sometimes.”
“Never would’ve guessed,” Henry mused. “We’re on our way out. We’ll see you two in the morning, yeah?”
