“You’re not used to people taking care of you, are you, January?” he asked, rephrasing my question to him the day he had appeared behind me soon after I had moved into the cabana.
I chuckled, though tears were stinging the back of my eyes and my heart had lodged in my throat at his question. “You’re not wrong,” I quoted his reply to me that day.
We just stood there and looked at each other, and I wondered how I’d spend a night on the same floor with him with only a few yards and two doors between us. The hardened look on his face helped me in reaching the conclusion that I could and would make it through, because beyond the fact that my sons would be so close by, Oliver himself was still true to hisno relationshipand no softening regime.
“I made lunch, and I want you to join us.”
He still faced me, but his gaze drifted away, over my head. Only the way his right thumb gnawed against his forefinger indicated that he’d heard me.
“Oliv—”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“It’s just lunch. Lunch is always a good idea.”
Damn him, he was biting back a smile.
He looked at me. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. On both counts. See you in the pool house in thirty?”
“You can use the gazebo on the other side of the garden,” he said.
“The gazebo?” I was stumped. Was there a gazebo there the whole time that I hadn’t noticed?
Oliver tilted his head toward the balcony in his bedroom, hinting me to follow him there.
I looked at his muscular back clad in a white shirt as he led the way there. Stepping outside, the ocean burst into my vision. So beautiful that I forgot why I’d come out here until Oliver pointed toward the part of the garden that was around the corner, hidden from view of the pool area. There used to be an empty stretch of well-cared-for green grass there, and now there was an elegant gazebo with a wooden garden table and chairs.
I shifted my gaze to Oliver’s profile. His jaw was clenched. I wanted to reach out and caress his cheek and neck and unclench it. I wanted to pivot entirely toward him and hug him. But that thin veil of separation still shielded him behind it.
“Thanks,” I said, guessing he had put the gazebo there for me. “It’s beautiful, and they’re gonna love it.Ilove it. See you down there in thirty.” I turned and left the balcony, leaving him there. But when I reached the middle of his bedroom, I turned back around. “They really want to meet you, and I want them to. I hope you do, too.”
Oliver swung toward me. “I do.”
I nodded once then left.
Wrapped in towels that I had found in the cabana’s closet, the twins and Stephanie helped me carry everything to the gazebo. We were setting the table when Oliver appeared. Even in that simple white shirt with the top two buttons undone, untucked over a pair of gray Dockers, he looked like he had stepped out of an ad. The look on Stephanie’s face confirmed it, too. My sons looked somewhat bewildered, as if the owner and the house somehow reflected each other.
“Boys, Steph, this is Oliver Madden. Grandma Julie used to work for his father, and we went to junior high and high school together,” I said, immediately putting out there the dry details first.
“Heard a lot about you,” Oliver said, shaking each of their hands.
“Wish we could say the same,” Lennox muttered, looking from Oliver over to me.
“Food’s getting cold,” I said, though on this warm April day, there wasn’t much chance of that.
We all sat down, and I thanked God for the conversational abilities of nineteen-year-olds that left no space for awkward silences.
Will and Stephanie told us how they had met in a statistics course, Lennox told us about the guy he had a crush on, and they all laughed at their own stories about parties, the dorms’ communal kitchen, fridge fights, and what they called, “the bucket incident in room twelve.”
I side-eyed Oliver. He was mostly quiet, but it wasn’t one of his steely silences. It was as if he was soaking it all in. He smiled at the stories, laughed a few times, and answered their questions, even the nosy ones like, “Do only rich people go to that university?” to which he replied candidly, “No, but it helps,” and “Have you met any royalty?” to which he responded, “Not that I know of.” Then they asked things like, “What’s the word for ‘Oh, shit’ in Swedish?” and his reply, “Oh, shit,” made them all laugh.
“Boys!” I exclaimed.
“No, that’s okay,” Oliver said with a smile. “I don’t mind them asking.”
“Okay, how do you say ‘kiss’ or ‘I love you,’ in Swedish?” Stephanie asked to soften the boys’ cruder direction.
