Meow, Jean thought.
“We can be regular people together.” Charlie turned to Jean with a question in his eyes. “But notnormal,” he added, like that might be a sticking point.
“Better to have realistic goals,” she agreed.
Mr. Pike still looked lost. “This is a lot of change.”
It occurred to Jean that he might be more like his son than either of them realized.
“Not really.” Charlie’s voice was gentle. “It’ll still be a family business. Does it matter whose name is on a bottle or a building?”
Jean’s eyes felt suspiciously damp. Maybe there was hope for privileged white men after all—or at least this one.
“To everything, there is a season,” Mrs. Pike agreed, finger-brushing her husband’s hair back to a semblance of order. “And for us, this is the season of letting go of the past… and going on a European cruise.”
Adriana looked at the older couple with a trace of wistfulness before sneaking a glance at Mugsy. “Should I tell my crew to pack it in, or do you want us to stay?”
It was evident to everyone (with the possible exception of Charlie’s dad) that she was talking about more than the concert.Silent Storm,Jean thought.Bringing all the girls to the yard.
Mr. Pike stood, accepting his wife’s outstretched hand. “Let’s go out there with our heads held high. Make it a going away party.”
While the rest of the group headed for the patio doors, Jean pulled Charlie deeper into the house. In the dark and deserted hallway, she pinned him against the wall.
“Other people’s lives are so messy,” she said, kissing his collarbone.
“Yes,” he agreed, pulling her closer.
“They freak out and fly off the handle at the first sign of trouble.”
Charlie made a wordless noise of assent as her fingers crept under his shirt and stroked up his sides, not skipping any of the ticklish spots.
There were a million things Jean wanted to ask him, about grad school and where they were going and how much he loved her, but first she had a more pressing question.
“Are you going to introduce me to your snake?”
He was close enough for her to feel him swallow. “I’d love to.”
There was a very Charlie pause. Jean was pretty sure she could hear the wheels in his wonderful brain whirring, before he asked, “Which one?”
Epilogue
ONEYEARLATER
“I am a freaking pioneer,” Jean said as she fished a six-pack out of the creek behind Charlie’s house. “Out here in nature, making it work.” She pictured herself chopping wood for an imaginary stove and then cooking up biscuits. Maybe pulling a few turnips out of the ground. “Call me Calamity Jean.”
She’d never actually eaten a turnip before, but it sounded like something a rugged frontierswoman would grow in her windswept patch of dirt. Definitely the most punk rock root vegetable.
“Do you still miss the wagon?” Charlie asked, interrupting this fantasy sequence. He was sprawled on a blanket in the shade, next to their turnip-free picnic lunch. With his long legs crossed at the ankle and his dark hair tousled by the breeze, he looked like a poet or a pianist—someone who should be wearing a ruffled shirt. As opposed to a budding snakeologist.
“We had some good times in that wagon.” She gave him the Groucho Marx eyebrows, even though he was already blushing. Jean suspected she’d still be able to fluster Charlie when he was an old man. Her mouth seemed to know exactly which of his buttons to push, in more ways than one. “But you know I love our yurt.”
It was fun to say the word and living there felt like sleepaway camp for grown-ups. Charlie’s parents had offered to build a cabin on their property to give the two of them privacy, but that would have felt too permanent. This way they had their own space without being tied down.
After the dust from the centennial settled, they’d packed their bags and flown back to Hawaii so Jean could finally introduce Charlie to her friends. A highlight of the trip was running into Pauline in the checkout line at Foodland, where she first asked Charlie to autograph the back of her receipt and then serenaded him with her favorite Adriana tracks, lending them her own unique lyrical stylings—which didn’t stop half a dozen other shoppers from joining in.
From there, Charlie had returned to Australia to spend another month at the research station, before they reunited in California so he could start grad school that fall.
All that travel and relocation would have been outside Jean’s budget if she hadn’t scored a major art commission last summer. She still remembered the electric thrill of opening the email and reading the words:Adriana wondered if you could sketch a few concepts for her new album cover, in the style of your tattoo? She’d love you to include some native plants, if possible.
