And there’s one thing I can’t wait to ask any longer. I nod toward the open door leading to the hallway. “Who do you think Mom’s out there calling?”
Zola shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. My services are for paying customers only.”
“You say that now,” I sing.
“I mean it. This kid’s coming any day now. I won’t have time for anyone else’s drama unless they’re cutting me a check.”
I’m about to argue the likelihood of that, but Zo cuts me off.
“If Mom can learn how to date without making it our problem, I’m happy to let her.”
Even if I don’t believe either of them are capable of that kind of change, I appreciate the sentiment—and for tonight, that’ll have to be good enough. Even with Mom’s sweater over my beach getup, I haven’t stopped shivering since we got here. I need clothes and Zo needs sleep.
I lean down to hug my sister, but Zola’s tired eyes are still working on something. She’s still got something on her mind.
“Listen,” she starts. “I think we can all agree I got dumped pretty fucking hard. But if what happened to me is the big, bad thing you’re so afraid of, I just want you to know, I’m okay. And even if I’d like to think I could’ve learned these same lessons a little more gently, in some ways, I’m better for what happened to me.” She rubs her belly as she finishes. “You can only really walk things back so far anyway. I’d never wish my relationship with Jason away. It got me to this moment with this little boy.”
I hate myself for even caring enough to ask this next question, but I do. “You think Dad would say the same thing? About not wishing us all away.”
Zola smiles in a way that reminds me so much of how Mom used to look at me. Like if she couldn’t stop my hurt, at least she’d hold my hand through it.
“What I think,” Zola says, finally, “is that trying to forget us is the only way Dad could stand being gone. He loved us, Kaia. I remember. Love doesn’t just go away.”
I place a hand on her belly and try to force a smile too. Then I feel my nephew moving below my palm, and my smile comes a little easier.
8:59pm
Me:She was just dehydrated. They put her on bedrest for a few weeks but other than that she’s ok.
Ro:Bedrest? Zola?
Me:Ha, Mom and I are gonna have to take shifts holding her down.
Me:Thanks again for your help.
Ro:All I did was grab a clipboard. Liv handled everything else.
I near the hospital exit, watching Ro’s typing bubbles appear and disappear. As much as I want him to clear the air about what happened between us on the beach tonight, I also kind of don’t. I’m too tired for a reckoning.
“Kaia?”
At the sound of my name, I turn to see a face I’d expected to leave buried in the pages of my old yearbooks.#28.The boy I’d once branded my cheek for. AsherfreakingHall.
His laugh sounds the same as I remember. It takes me back to a time when life was so much less complicated.
“Oh my god,” I say, smiling genuinely, despite the night’s events. “What are you doing here?”
He pulls me into a hug, and it feels good to let somebody else hold me up for a minute.
“I work here,” he says, into my hair. “What areyoudoing here? Everything good with Zola?”
I pull back. “How’d you know I was here for Zola?”
“We ran into each other here a couple months back.” Asher looks like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t as he says, “Actually, she was supposed to be setting me up. With you.”
“Oh” is all I say.
But I’m not disappointed exactly. Which may have something to do with how adorably uncomfortable he looks right now. Or it might be that he’s AsherfreakingHall, standing in front of me all these years later, with a stethoscope at his neck, asking about a date.
