Reading my mind, Mom looks around. “We’ll ask the big fella hiding behind the lamp post.”
I hand my phone to Patrick, who’s doing his best to stay serious, but the corners of his mouth twitch.
“Come here,” I whisper in Jackie’s ear and plaster her to my side, squeezing possessively.
Her arm wraps around me, and just like that, my heart grows too big for my chest.
I stare at her. Wondering what it would be like to want her without complications.
When she has to leave, I walk her to the car.
“I couldn’t have done this without you.”
She beams at me. “I loved it. It was so…normal.”
“I do like having you in my normal, boring life.”
With a kiss on the back of her hand, I close the car door, wishing it didn’t have to end. That the ground wasn’t so unsteady under our feet. That I’d get to keep her and rest my head on the pillow next to hers.
I take the stairs and let my parents get on the elevator by themselves. It has less to do with personal space and more with the need to replay these last hours with Jackie without my mother watching me closely.
Inside, Mom leans against Dad, who started snoring the second his behind touched the couch. “Send me that picture,” she whispers. “I wanna show our neighbor, Sybil.”
Swiping through the camera roll, my gaze catches on the last three. In the first, Jackie’s eyes are wide, gazing up at me. In the second, she’s tucked in at my side with a contented look.
In the last picture, we’re all laughing, and she’s radiant, giggling at another of my Dad’s cheesy jokes.
That’s the one I send Mom.
I think about her gift. That perfect, beating heart. Made to be broken apart and put back together again.
Mirrors my own story in a way.
But can I risk gambling mine again? So far, I’ve mainly been the one to step forward. To crack myself open. Lay my feelings bare. I need more than an apology from her. I want to know that her wanting to try again isn’t born of regret and nostalgia.
Because we can’t rebuilduson maybes.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
JACKIE
“He had it on the damn mantle, Lilly!” I whisper through clenched teeth, trying to keep my voice low. “Do you understand?”
“By the fifth time you mentioned it, yes.” Her lids remain closed, the picture of serenity, her braids skimming the yoga mat beneath her hammock. She looks like a goddess.
Meanwhile, I’m a twitchy marionette on a string, fingers digging into the back of the blue silk.
“You can release your hands down to the ground, ladies,” the nice-looking instructor says sweetly, walking around amongst the other women hanging from the ceiling. Her voice is soothing, calm.
Unlike my brain.
Because over Adam’s fireplace sat the ugliest painting of a cat to ever see the light of day. Still in the same frame I “borrowed” from our family’s storage room. He kept the abomination for all these years.
“Now widen your stance and bring your legs through the front side of the hammock,” the instructor says, her voice still hushed against the spa-like music playing in the background.
I crane my neck to see what kind of acrobatics she’s making us do now.
“Control the fabric,” she continues, “make sure it catches on your shoulders when you spin.”
