My Aunt Carole arrived today. She’s Adam’s twin sister and, technically, she’s my mother, if DNA is anything to go by. She and Gabby spent the evening arranging my hair in preparation for tomorrow, and they practiced my makeup. We all had manicures and pedicures, and now I’m tired. I just fed Hank one last time and he’s sleeping in a portable crib in the room with Gabby, presumably so that I can get some rest. Aunt Carole is with her, and she’s supervising the care of my youngest child. Laura is sleeping on the pullout couch and her daughter is with Freddy.
Freddy had surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder and he has been here all summer, along with Laura, recuperating. I thought it would be strange having my husband’s ex-wife, his best friend who cheated with his ex-wife, and their love child around, but it really hasn’t been. The ten years that Laura and Jake spent together made them really close friends who share some memories that Jake and I don’t share, but aside from that, there’s nothing there except fondness.
I reach back to adjust my pillow so I can crawl under the covers, and I hear a tap on my window. Immediately, my mind goes to Cole, but then I remind myself that he can’t hurt me anymore. There’s no way he could be tapping on my window.
Someone raps on the window again. I open it and Jake looks up at me. “Come outside with me,” he whispers. His green eyes gleam in the moonlight, and he smiles at me. My belly drops just like it did when I was sixteen years old.
“It’s two in the morning,” I whisper back.
“I know, but I miss you.” He motions for me to come out.
“I’m not dressed,” I protest.
He waggles his brow at me. “Even better.”
Jake’s standing in the dark with a tiny flashlight in his hand, and he shines it at his own face. He hasn’t shaved since this morning, and beard stubble shadows his jaw.
“This is bad luck,” I remind him. “Go away.” I start to lower the window, but he reaches out and grabs it.
“We’ve already had our share of bad luck,” he says quietly. “Come out and play with me.”
I look toward the door.
“I’ll bring you back before Hank gets hungry. I promise. I just want you for a little while.” He puts his hands together like he’s praying and the flashlight shines up toward the heavens. “Please?”
I huff out a breath and raise the window all the way up.
“Lean toward me. I’ll pull you out,” Jake says.
I reach for him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders with my weight resting on him. He eases me out the window until my legs are free, and then he stands me up.
“See?” he says. “I got you.”
I step up onto my bare tiptoes to kiss him, wrapping my arms around his naked torso. His lips touch mine. “Where are your clothes?” I ask him.
He shines the flashlight at his lounge pants. “Pop gave me these. Look,” he says. The lounge pants are black and they have tiny naked women on them. “I figured I’d never get to wear them again, so I put them on.”
He’s not wearing a shirt, so I let my fingers skim across his naked chest. He turns away from me. “Hop on. I’ll carry you.”
Since I came out the window with no thought of shoes, I hop onto his back and wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his shoulders. “Don’t drop me,” I say.
He hitches me a little higher, hooking my thighs with his hands, and looks back over his shoulder at me. “I’d never drop you, Katie,” he says softly. “You should know that by now.”
I hug him tighter.
He carries me all the way to the water, and then he sets me in the sand, and the wet sand oozes between my toes. The full moon shines on the water, and the only sounds are crickets and a breeze blowing through the trees. The water shines like glass, slick and solid, but soft and wild. Jake takes my hand as I step into the canoe. “Where are we going?” I ask.
I sit down on one end and Jake sits across from me. The gleam of his teeth appears white in the darkness of the night. “You’ll see,” he replies.
Jake paddles around the shoreline bend and then moves toward the shore. It’s the same sandy beach we visited when we were sixteen, the night before I left to go home. “Jake,” I breathe, “this is perfect.”
He gets out and spreads a blanket on the grass just beyond the shore, and then he fetches a small cooler.
“I don’t like sleeping by myself,” he says. “I missed you.”
He lies back on the blanket and opens his arms to me. I fall against his chest and nestle in that little spot that’s all mine, right where his shoulder meets his neck. I let my fingers play in the fine dusting of hair on his chest.
He squeezes me tight and kisses my forehead. “How’s Gabby doing tonight?”
I lift up a little, cross my hands on Jake’s chest, and rest my chin on them. “She’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“She knew Jeff the best,” he says. “She had him the longest. I just thought she might be getting a little nostalgic.”
“If she is, she hasn’t told me. I think she’s fine. No matter what, her father is gone. He’s not coming back. And she loves you, Jake.”
He snorts. “She didn’t love me very much last week.”
I laugh too. “That’s because you caught her behind the tree kissing that boy and made her go home early from the dance. She got over it.”
“That little bastard,” Jake grumbles. “Boys are walking hormones.”
“So are girls,” I remind him. “They’re thinking about all that just as much as boys are.”