Beth sighed again. I could picture her sitting at the barstool in her kitchen with a hand against her forehead. She was probably still in her scrubs from work, ugly clogs on her feet, exasperated, as always, by her little sister. “Yes, but—”
“And he still loves you?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Then I don’t get it.” I knew it wasn’t my job to care so much about my sister’s marriage.Supportive little sister!I reminded myself. But Mark had been family since we were kids. I knew he was a good man. He loved my sister. He loved the kids. He loved me. When I lived with them,Mark had taken the time to help with my homework. When Beth worked evenings at the hospital, he’d insist he could put the kids to bed by himself.Don’t you have a paper due tomorrow?he’d say. I knew it wasn’t about the homework. He was just trying to make sure I didn’t end up as a third parent.You’re still a kid, Jo, he’d tell me whenever I tried to take on more responsibility at home.
Beth was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes love isn’t enough, Joey.”
The words hurt, though they shouldn’t have. I knew it was true. Love and grief were dangerous, especially when they got caught up together. My mother’s love for me—and I did believe she loved me—wasn’t enough. My love for Dad and Samson wasn’t enough to save them. My love for Alex—and yes, I had to admit that what I felt whenever I saw him, whenever I thought about him, whenever he touched me, was love—wasn’t enough for him to love me back.
“Please don’t tell Mia and Kitty,” Beth said. “We want to tell them together.”
Tears tracked quietly down my cheeks. I wiped them away, frustrated with myself. “Yeah, of course.”
After we hung up, I closed my laptop and laid my head on my desk, and then a memory came, as strong and sudden as a Florida rainstorm. I could feel my sister’s couch sagging beneath me. Samson, a few months old, asleep on my chest, his finger wrapped around my pinkie. I could see into the kitchen where Beth cooked dinner, singing off-key (neither of us had inherited our father’s talent for singing). Mark was on the living room floor, Mia and Kitty climbing all over him with their toy ponies. The evening light slid through the window, dust suspended in its beams. An insignificant moment. A miracle I remembered at all. I’d felt the kind of peace you only had when everything in your life aligned, when the good outweighed the bad, which for me wasn’t often. If only I could remember this one moment, I’d thought, taking a snapshot in my mind. And yet, I hadn’t thought of it again until now.
I lifted my head, light bursting stars across my vision. The memory,which should have been sweet, left a bad taste in my mouth. The tile was cold against my feet. There was no singing. No music played. No beams of light fell through my window.
But there was Alex. His door eased open across the parking lot. I waited, tense. Would it be good to see him and know he simply existed? That he was safe, even if he didn’t love me back?
But it wasn’t Alex who stepped out of his unit. It was the blond woman from the bar, the one he’d been with the night we met. The “not date.” Alex followed out after her. He leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms over his chest. I was too far away to make out their expressions, but when the woman put her hand on Alex’s forearm, I remembered what the girls had said about the event planner from Coral Castle—blond, an old friend. They’d said she’d touched him like that and what it meant. But that couldn’t be right. Alex said he hadn’t dated anyone in years. He’d said it was too complicated.
As the woman talked, Alex stared at his feet and shook his head. Whatever was happening between them, I could read the tension from here. She stepped closer, and he looked up at her. He nodded, and then she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. She placed her hands on his arms and embraced him. I waited for Alex to pull back. He’d tell her what he’d told me,Event Planner, I don’t—
But instead he put his arms around her. They stood like that, holding each other, and for a moment I couldn’t look away. This didn’t look like the sort of hug you’d give a friend after they stopped by for a visit. It looked like it meant something.
They were still in each other’s arms when I turned away. I didn’t need to torture myself by seeing what happened next. As I stared down at the tile beneath my feet, everything clicked into place. Alex pulling back from me on the beach. Alex saying he was unavailable. It all pointed to one thing.
Nina had been right. Alex not being into relationships wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule. But it turned out I wasn’t the exception.
Sixteen
“This looks really boring,” I said, standing in the doorway of the karaoke restaurant. “Doesn’t it look boring? Wouldn’t you rather go home and watchMy Super Sweet 16?” All week I’d told myself that karaoke would be fine. Maybe it would even be fun. What did I care if I embarrassed myself in front of dozens of strangers? But as soon as I peered inside the packed restaurant, my lifelong stage fright reared its ugly head. I tried to back out of the doorway, but Mia and Kitty closed ranks behind me and shoved me forward.
“You’ll be fine, Aunt Jo,” Kitty said. “You just have to think of your anxiety as something that’s trying to help you. That’s what Dad said when I was practicing for the school play, and it worked. It’s science.”
“You didn’t get a part,” Mia said.
“But I wasn’t as nervous,” Kitty said, shooting Mia a dirty look.
Mia ignored Kitty and turned to me. “If you can jump out of a plane, you can sing karaoke. Even if you suck, it’ll at least be entertaining,” she said, which didn’t console me at all. She pushed me again and added, “Will you hurry? You’re making us look like weirdos.”
The girls shoved me inside and led me through the restaurant.Karaoke hadn’t started yet, but the place was filled with noise. All this time I’d imagined a dinky little stage, like the kind bars sometimes had for live music. But this was the stage of a grand production, complete with an array of lights that danced out across the room, making me feel as if I’d stepped into a rave, not a restaurant. It had a real party atmosphere, which shouldn’t have surprised me, seeing as Nina chose it. I preferred the comfort of a dimly lit dive bar, but Nina would never allow me to check off this item somewhere unphotogenic. My stomach flipped at the thought of my performance being photographed, or even worse, recorded. But there had to be documentation for the blog, otherwise what was the point? And even if the blog hadn’t been a factor, how likely was it I could convince my best friend to not record what would be my one and only foray into the performing arts?
It wasn’t hard to find Nina, who, in a sparkly red minidress, looked like a bow on top of a present. Her hair was as over-the-top as the rest of her, transformed from its usual sleek high ponytail into a beehive, though she still wore the same dangling unicorn earrings. I felt too casual in the dress I’d bought for item number ten (short, tight, blue, expensive), though it wasn’t casual at all. I could already predict Nina would complain about me wearing it again. But at least I hadn’t left my hair in its usual limp curtain. Mia had curled both my and Kitty’s hair into soft waves with a curling iron I hardly ever used. I’d taken a selfie with the girls and sent it to my sister, the first contact I’d had with her since she told me about Mark moving out. I pushed the thought of that away. I couldn’t let the girls sense something was wrong. I’d promised Beth, and, besides, I wanted them to have as many happy moments as possible before finding out.
The table Nina had chosen was, predictably, beside the stage. Nina, surprisingly deft in stilettos for someone who spent most of her time barefoot, raced over when she spotted me.
“I can’t believe you showed!” She squeezed me as if she hadn’t seenme in weeks, though it had been less than twenty-four hours since she’d left the condo after returning from her walk with the girls.
“Of course I showed. It’s for the list,” I said, and at Nina’s skeptical look added, “I tried to get out of it, but Mia and Kitty wouldn’t let me.”
Nina held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down. “Trying to squeeze every last dollar out of that dress, huh?”
“It cost five hundred dollars!”
“So you’re at what? A dollar per wear now?”
