“Really?” I asked. I’d never heard this one, and as the middle child, I had very few stories that were mine alone, so I was fairly sure I’d heard them all.
“Oh, yes,” my dad said. “With your brother, we never had to worry. He was wailing every few seconds. I don’t think your poor mother got more than five hours’ sleep that first year. But you slept through the night right away. And it used to terrify me.”
Angela arrived with her pitcher, filling up my coffee and nudging my father’s toast closer to him, as though the reason he hadn’t eaten it was that he hadn’t noticed its presence on the table.
“So,” he continued, taking a sip of his coffee, “I used to just stand in your doorway, listening to you breathe. Making sure that you were still with us. Just counting your breaths until I was convinced that you were sticking with us for a bit.”
And then Angela had dropped off the check and we’d moved on to other things—how he’d driven across the country after high school and got lost in Missouri, and how I had actually figured out the truth about Santa Claus when I’d noticed he had the same wrapping technique—sloppy, with masking tape—as my father. But the image of him standing in my doorway, watching over my breaths in the first few weeks of my life, had stayed with me.
Now though, I was on the dock with Henry in the sunshine, and that seemed very far away. “We’ll see if these do the trick,” I said, setting the cookies aside. When they were out of the way, I leaned over to kiss him again. One of the best things about kissing Henry was that it could make the rest of the world—like my dad, and what was happening to him—go away for a little while. It never totally disappeared, but like a TV you could hear in the next room, I was able to think about it less when Henry’s lips were on mine and his arms were around me.
“So,” Henry said. It was a while later, and we were taking a break. We were stretched out together, and I was lying in what I had already come to think of as my spot—there was just a place where I seemed to fit perfectly. His arm was around my shoulders, and my head resting on his chest, one of my legs thrown over his, our feet tangled together. “Do you have any plans for the Fourth?”
I hadn’t been expecting this question, and I propped myself up to look at him. “I think we’re watching the fireworks,” I said. “Out here, probably.” There was always a fireworks display over the lake, and we’d usually gathered on the dock, as a family, to watch it.
“Great,” he said. “Well, don’t make any plans for afterward, okay? I’ve got a surprise.”
I propped myself up even farther, looking into his eyes. “A surprise?” I asked, not quite able to keep the excitement out of my voice. “What is it?”
“You should get Warren to tell you the definition of the word surprise,” he said as I felt myself smile. “It involves not revealing what something is.”
We lay there together for a little longer, watching the sun over the lake as it finally started to go down, and twilight started to fall all around us, the fireflies starting to wink in the grass. When I felt the first mosquito bite me, I slapped it away and sat up, checking the time, and realizing that I should probably head in for dinner.
“Time to go?” Henry asked, and I nodded, standing up and extending a hand to help him up. He took it, but didn’t really exert much pull on it as he stood and I zipped up a sweatshirt over my bikini. I gathered up my towel, sunglasses, and desserts, and we walked across the dock together, holding hands.
When we reached the back of my house, he squeezed my hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
“See you then,” I said, feeling how wide I was smiling, but knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. He leaned down and kissed me, and I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him back.
“Ugh.” We broke apart, and I turned to see Davy standing a few feet in front of us, Murphy at his feet. Davy made a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“You won’t always think so,” Henry assured him. “Were you walking the dog again?”
Davy nodded and held out the leash to me reluctantly. Ever since my father had given him the go-ahead to walk the dog, Davy had taken his responsibilities very seriously, coming over to walk the dog several times a day. It had gotten so that Murphy was exhausted by early evening, falling asleep on my dad’s lap immediately after dinner.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the leash from him. Davy nodded and I smiled at Henry. “See you,” I said.
“Bye,” he said, smiling back, causing Davy to groan. Henry walked toward his house, with Davy running to catch up with him, already talking about something.