It didn’t seem like all that long ago that Everett had believed that the life he wanted would come to an end. Until Caleb and Everett had met Jayne, their paths had been diverging, and Everett hadn’t seen a way to fix it. All he’d known was that the more time passed, the less things stayed the same. No matter how he struggled to keep the life he wanted, he was helpless against change.
Meeting Jayne had taught Everett that helplessness wasn’t the end.
Life itself promised that nothing would stay the same. Leaves turned colors, then fell and decayed. Everything with a heartbeat matured, aged, and eventually died. Not even insentient objects were spared—rocks wore down to sand, water evaporated, clouds formed and burst, and even the most carefully guarded works of art could fade, crack, or begin to deteriorate.
What mattered was how well he, and the ones he loved, could adapt to the changes thrown their way.
Caleb and Everett, hoping to cling to the past, had been stuck trying to recreate something that would never be. Jayne, who fought the past and strove for the future, had shown them that there was another way. Not only had he bettered them as a couple, but he’d bettered them as individuals.
Everett loved him for it.
“I’m so proud of you kids,” Clarissa said at last. She spoke in a soft, contemplative voice that left Everett uncertain if she was talking to him, or if she was talking to herself. “All of you have achieved so much, and you’ve gone about it in so many different ways. I wish that I could go back and watch it happen all over again.”
“Clarissa?” Everett asked uncertainly. “Is there something going on?”
Clarissa scoffed. “Psh. No. Well, technically, me saying no is a lie. There’s tons of stuff going on. I’m sure if you googled what’s happening in Aurora, you’d find a ton of results. If you broadened your search to include other places, you’d probably never run out of things to do. Australians really know how to party, and they’re like, what? Twelve, fourteen hours ahead of us? They love partying so much they’re doing itin the future.”
The answer didn’t convince Everett. He narrowed his eyes and looked Clarissa over, seeking the truth. “First Dad’s late to work, and now you’re being weird.”
“I’m always weird.”
“Weirder than usual.” Everett pushed off the wall and stood directly in front of her in the hopes that if he kept the pressure on her, she’d spill. “What am I forgetting? A birthday? An anniversary? You’ve been talking a lot about how I’ve grown up so much and how proud of me you are, so I take it that it has something to do with me. I know it’s notmybirthday, so what is it? The anniversary of the day I graduated high school? College?”
“Oh. No.” Clarissa twittered with laughter and waved a hand dismissively. “Pay no attention to me. I’m definitely not in cahoots with your dad. Nope. You’re getting way too far ahead of yourself with all those suspicions of yours, mister. When did you get to be so distrustful?”
“When you started acting suspicious.”
“Suspicious? Please. There’s nothing weird going on here at all. Nothing at all.”
Everett further narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think I believe you.”
“Which is totally your choice.” Clarissa tucked the errant lock of hair behind her ear and smiled at him, her crow’s feet and laugh lines deepening as she did. “I can’t tell you what to believe, even if what you believe is totally wrong.”
Right as she finished speaking, the sound of slow-rolling tires approached, and a familiar all-wheel drive Volvo wagon entered the small lot. The car belonged to Everett’s father. It was far from glamorous, but it was perfectly suited to handle the winding state highways and the mile of gravel driveway separating his father’s house from the road.
Clarissa stood, all the while keeping the pizza box balanced. “Look, see? Your dad was all of… forty minutes late? Not so bad when you consider how far he drives to make it in. There was probably an accident along the way that backed traffic up.”
“I still don’t believe you,” Everett said point-blank.
Clarissa shook her head. “And this is why my heart belongs to pizza.”
“What about Sam?”
“Sam is pretty much people-shaped pizza.” Clarissa weaved past Everett to approach the Volvo. It was parked in a spot not all that far from the stairs. “And not the gross kind with peppers on it, just FYI. Sam is the most delicious kind of cheese pizza you can imagine. We’re talking six cheese with Italian seasoning and some herb-infused crust at a minimum.”
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear that,” Everett’s father, Cedric Langston, said as he opened the door and exited the car. He was a tall, well-built man who was neither too narrow nor too broad. Like Everett, he wore a finely tailored suit that framed his body. This evening, his dark hair was combed back from his eyes, and his cuffs were rolled up his arms, revealing the full sleeve of tattoos that ran from his right wrist to his shoulder. Some of Everett’s fondest childhood memories were of times spent cuddled up against him, tracing the outline of those tattoos. Once upon a time, the story went, his father had been in love with a tattoo artist, and while she’d long since returned to dust, she lived on in the designs she’d left upon his skin. Love, his father had told Everett, was a funny thing that was both beautiful and cruel, but it, like his tattoos, was indelible.
It was why, more than a decade later, Everett and Caleb, drunk on love for each other, had found their way into an artist’s chair and striped their arms with two identical, parallel black bands.
“One for me,” Caleb had said on their way back to the condo, their fresh ink wrapped in a protective layer while their skin healed, “and one for you—two lives running in tandem on the same track, side by side, now and forever.”
“You think so?” Clarissa asked, bringing Everett back to the present. She set a hand on her hip while the other supported the pizza. “I think if I told Sam that she was people-shaped pizza, she’d pat me on the head, tell me to take a melatonin, and to go get some sleep.”
Everett’s father closed the car door and grinned at her—it was the same grin Everett saw when he looked in the mirror, both unassuming and sincere. “You sure? If anyone were to call me people-shaped pizza, I know I’d be thrilled.”
Clarissa beamed. “You know, I was going to tease you about finally showing up for work, but I’m thinking I’ll keep my comments to myself now that I know you’re on Team People-as-Pizza.” She swept around the car and tugged Everett’s father into a one-armed hug. “Were the roads okay? Your son and I were just talking about how weird it is that you were running late. You should have heard the conspiracy theories coming out of that boy’s mouth.”
Everett covered his eyes and shook his head. “She’s exaggerating.”
