We sit like that for a few minutes, until his breathing is steady again.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and the sadness in his voice almost brings tears to my eyes. “You didn’t have to leave the party.”
“I know. I wanted to,” I say, and he gives me a skeptical look. I just smile. “I’d always rather hang out with you, anyway.”
For a moment I think even that might be too much—I say that kind of thing to him all the time, even before we added making out to our time spent together, but maybe now that he’s stressed about things becoming too serious . . .
But his lips quirk up at the edges, and he puts his arm around me, pulling me closer. Which feels soooo good, I don’t care right now if anyone sees us through the big potted plant fronds.
His brow furrows as he looks past me. “Are you planning on making me toast?”
The look of confusion on his face makes me giggle. “I will, if you want. Except I didn’t bring the bread.”
His smile broadens, but he shakes his head and lets out a breath. “I’m okay.” I think he means more than that he doesn’t need Gudetama toast. He looks around as if taking in his surroundings for the first time.
He’s probably thinking that we’re way too cuddled up for this public of a place—I’m all but in his lap—and maybe that those fronds hiding us aren’t as big as he wishes they were. I let my arms drop down so I’m not a Su-Lin barnacle clinging tenaciously to him (To his hull? Is there a sexy metaphor possibility involving barnacles? Probably not, unless you’re a pirate.) He drops his arm, too, sadly. But I can’t bring myself to scoot away.
“Are you? Okay, I mean?”
He nods. “Yeah. I just needed to get away.Too many people, and just . . .”
“Too much,” I finish.
“Right, too much.”
“Well, you’ve got yourself a calming, scenic view here.” I indicate the ancient computer under the bland motivational poster of a sunset over the ocean.
He lets out a little laugh. “The ocean’s not bad, but I think I’d prefer the real thing. Maybe through a big picture window.” He looks back over at me, his smile soft. A happy glow warms me, because I know what he’s thinking about.
A couple months ago, we were hanging out in the studio, when he asked me where I would live if I could pick anywhere in the world.
I didn’t need to think long. “Honestly, not far from here. I’d get a house on the beach, but not one of those generic mansions, just, like—”
“A place with character!” He jumped in excitedly. “Maybe a fixer-upper.” Brendan’s actually super handy—he lived in some pretty crappy places with his mom as he grew up, and he started taking on all the home improvement stuff himself.
This is actually a huge part of the reason my dad—who can barely change a lightbulb—thinks so highly of him. Not a month after we met, Brendan fixed our dishwasher, which had been broken for two years. All it took was some tools and a good YouTube tutorial, but my dad looked at him like the second coming of Bob Vila.
So that day in the studio, we started talking about the ideal house on the beach—on which, as it turns out, we are in total agreement. We decided that the perfect master bedroom would have a huge picture window facing the ocean, taking up the whole wall.
“And a big skylight open to the night sky,” he added, and all I could think of was curling up with him in bed in that perfect bedroom in that perfect little house on a perfect slice of beach, with the stars above us and the ocean right there.
Of course, what we’d actually decided was that we needed to find two beach houses side by side, so we could be neighbors (though Brendan would clearly be doing all the work onbothhouses), but in my dreams—my very favorite ones—we only need one and itsours.
I’ve never mentioned that fantasy, though, and I’m not about to now. I don’t need to send him into another panic attack when he’s barely recovered from this one.
“And a skylight with a night sky full of stars,” I say, smiling back at him.
He closes his eyes like he’s picturing it. “I love it,” he murmurs.
I’m back to picturing us curled up together in that bed, and I couldn’t agree more. “Seriously, we need to make all the money so we can make these epic beach houses happen.”
He opens his eyes again and stares down at his hands, which are knotted together in his lap. “It would be nice to feel like a place washome, you know? I mean, I’ve always felt like home was with my mom, but we moved around so much, it was never tied to a place.”
I want to ask if he’d ever felt like the apartment he and Candace lived in together was home, but I can’t bring myself to form the words, and I don’t want him to have to think about the bad stuff that happened there with her.
I do think I know how he feels, though. “My house hasn’t really felt like home since my mom left,” I say quietly.
He looks up in surprise. I guess I don’t talk about my mom a lot. I try not to think about her much, which is kind of jerky, probably. But she’s the one who left.
