Milo gives me a measured look and then, as if coming to a decision, nods. “You want a beer?”
“Yes.”
He goes and gets two, and then we talk, like men do, about baseball.
I sit next to Lucy, and she leans into me as we watch her family and friends around us. It’s the long golden hour—the one I have come to associate with the best moments of the last several weeks—and the yard has gone to its slower register, the kids running about, people in their chairs with the easeful quality of a good afternoon completing itself.
Something with horns and a low, swaying rhythm, cumbia or something close to it, starts to play on the Bluetooth speaker.
Her father pulls her mother up from her chair, and they move together in the grass with the ease of two people who have been dancing together for forty years and have long since stopped needing to think about it.
I look at Lucy.
She is watching her parents with an unguarded expression. She’s full of love for these people, for this yard, for this loud and warm and easy thing that she grew up inside of and that I have been, I understand now, a poor replacement for.
“Dance with me.”
She looks at me. “I’m sore.”
“I know.” I stand up and offer my hand. “I’ll carry you.”
She gives me a mischievous smile. “I’ve been sitting on my ass for weeks now, putting on weight. You sure you’re man enough to carry me?”
“Baby”—I look into her eyes, let her see my hunger, my need to hold her—“I’m man enough for anything you want.”
She flushes and, after a moment, takes my hand.
I lift her gently and hold her close, taking most of her weight so her ribs don’t have to bear it.
I put one hand at her waist and one hand holding hers, and we move—slowly, barely moving, more swaying than dancing—in the grass of her parents’ backyard in Antioch while her father dances with her mother. Milo pretends not to watch, and Dina absolutely watches and doesn’t pretend otherwise.
She is close enough that I can speak quietly, just to her.
“Your brother likes me.”
“My brother is tolerating you,” she teases.
“He gave me a beer.”
“He gives everyone a beer. It’s a barbecue.”
“He told me you were tough,” I add. “He said you don’t let people see when things are hard.”
She is quiet for a moment.
“He’s not wrong.”
“No, he’s not.” I turn us slowly. “I should have seen itbefore. I should have—looked harder.” I feel her hand shift in mine.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was too busy not looking to see what was right in front of me.”
She pulls back just enough to look at my face.
“You say things like that,” she whispers. “And I don’t know what to do with them.”
“You don’t have to do anything with them.” I kiss her lips. “They’re just true.”
