Page 17 of Licks

There was no way this big, gorgeous man returned the sentiment, but his hands were on my hips, the slightest tremble to his grip. What could he see before him but a betrayer?

Disoriented, I eased away from him and knelt in front of the case. “You know what this means, right?”

He cleared his throat. “You might learn your mother was an eighties club kid?”

Not even close. I still couldn’t believe this was happening, that August was with me for this wild turn of events. Who got lost luggage returned after seventeen years?

I wanted to unpack the man behind me as much as I wanted to dissect this new treasure. Find out every country and town he’d toured, what cool foods he’d eaten in Japan, if writing music felt as cathartic as it seemed, if being on the road was lonely or exhilarating. We weren’t there yet. Not close. Not friends, even. We might never get there.

Better to stick with safer topics, like why this suitcase fascinated me.

Hands on the hard plastic, I glanced at him over my shoulder. I was about to tell him there could be clues about my father in here, but the hope taunted me, the hours I’d spent ransacking my mother’s room proof I was grasping at straws, wishing for the impossible.

With August here, though, the impossible no longer seemed unattainable. Still, I latched on to his humor instead. “You nailed it, but if Mary Hamilton loved the rave scene, I’m an arachnid scientist with a penchant for mayonnaise.”

I got off on bungee jumping and would kill to surf a fifty-foot swell, but drop an eight-legged critter near me or force mayonnaise down my throat, and I’d scream bloody murder.

August’s good humor returned. “I ruined you, didn’t I?”

“You were an evil mastermind.” Who’d hidden a trove of plastic spiders in my room and had snuck gross mayonnaise on my turkey sandwiches. He’d also ruined me for men, unbeknownst to him, my history littered with nothing but assholes until my dating hiatus this year. No one had ever compared to August.

I kept my focus on the suitcase, grounding my wobbly hands on the cool metal, still aware of my former best friend behind me. His sneakers scuffed the floor. To leave? Walk out of my life again? I’d taken care of my mother’s funeral arrangements on my own, had dealt with her will, was packing her life into boxes.

But this…

I didn’t want to unearth more of her past alone. I didn’t know how to ask for August’s support. I kept talking instead. “As far as I know, my mother never left San Francisco. Never took so much as a weekend getaway. And I was eleven when this supposedly went missing. I’d remember her traveling, wouldn’t I?” It also seemed weird it turned up today. With August. The day before my birthday. “Why am I nervous to open it? This is worse than skydiving.”

“Since when do you skydive?”

His question proved how far we’d fallen away from each other. He didn’t know me now, the woman I’d become. When I didn’t reply, he said, “It’s just stuff, Gwen. Nothing in there can hurt you.”

He was wrong about that. “Says the guy who grew up with a great family.”

“It wasn’t as peachy as it seemed. Nowhere near what you went through, but we have our issues.”

I almost turned at his bitter tone, but I didn’t want to acknowledge the part I’d played in their family discord. I also couldn’t look away from the suitcase. “Will you stay while I open it?”

I had no right to ask August for anything. He probably came by to clear the air between us, find the closure we both clearly needed, or to reinstate his anger—fodder for his songwriting. (He could name his next gem “Girl Who Can’t Forget the Past.”) Some nerve I had, asking him for support now.

“Of course,” came his quiet reply.

I stayed focused on the case, couldn’t look at his expression as I faced my mother’s history. But he was here. Of course. He would let me lean on him. Of course. He’d forever be the only person who could calm me. Of course.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

I heard him move, felt the heat of his palm on my back. Magnetically, I curved forward, rounding my spine into his tender touch. I closed my eyes.

Three extended beats later, he moved away, my serenity leaving with him. “Take your time with her stuff,” he said. “I’ll make myself at home.”

Easier said than done in a packed-up house, but August knew these walls as well as me. He’d been the one to make pencil marks in the pantry every year I grew taller. He moved that way now, toward the kitchen, farther from me. The distance felt physically painful. I also appreciated it; he always knew what I needed.

I examined the relic before me. Billy Idol stickers. INXS. Depeche Mode. I traced the stained graphics, beyond baffled. Maybe someone had lent my mother the case. Someone who’d enjoyed music and had let loose. Someone who hadn’t shuffled through a quiet life.

Afraid to disturb its contents, I eased the suitcase on its side and opened it. A musty smell hit me full force. I rubbed my nose, but the stale aroma stuck to my nostrils. Seventeen years of confined clothing.

Clothes I couldn’t believe had belonged to my mother.

Sitting cross-legged, I pulled out one item at a time: a neon windbreaker, high-waisted jeans, a micro-mini skirt, bright tank tops that would fit Barbie-Man. She would have been twenty-eight when this went missing, not sixteen. The styles were as baffling as the concert stickers, until I noticed the Rolling Stone magazine below, from 1990.