by L. B. Dunbar
“I might know a guy. Can you give me a few days to ask him?”
Maxwell tilts his head. “You know a guy? Sounds gangster.”
“Not gangster,” I tease. “Former Marine in IT and not too happy where he works.” The bigger question is whether Levi would be willing to move from sunny Florida to the cold winters of Michigan again, and even more importantly if he’d like to live near me.
“Well, send me his resume.” Max gives me his easy smile, and I rush off another text to Levi after Max leaves me at my classroom.
Me: Have you ever considered moving back home?
Levi: I have a home in Florida.
The quick response startles me, and I fight the pit in my belly, accepting that I’ve definitely gotten ahead of myself. Maybe all we were was one night, and I missed the signs. I don’t want to believe that’s true, but I don’t have anything else to go by. I need to not make assumptions that it was more to him when it was everything to me.
+ + +
As soon as I enter my car, I call my mom.
“Katie bug, are you sure you’re going to make it?”
“Just hitting the highway now. Two hours, maybe two and a half.” I’m running late as it is as I stayed an hour longer to help Carmela Macias with an assignment in her ASL learning. She’s former Army who lost her voice in a surgery gone wrong and a single mother of three. I adore her, and she’s such a hard worker. I didn’t want to leave her until she felt she had the assignment done.
“I want your eyes on the road, but I feel like I need to tell you something. Derek called your dad.”
“Why?” It wasn’t that Derek disliked my family, but he didn’t exactly fit in with the crowd, with his private schooling and Ivy League education. He was a respectable doctor, despite the jokes from my family, but he also didn’t share their humor.
“Dad didn’t tell me, and I didn’t feel it was my place to tell him about you and Derek.” This surprises me as my mom tells my dad everything, and then he has to pretend he doesn’t already know when I tell him something. Not to mention, I assumed my dad told Mom everything and didn’t keep secrets between them.
“Well, whatever it is, Derek and I are over, and I’ll explain everything to Dad after the party. I don’t want anything getting in the way of tonight. I know it’s important to Tom.” I also know it’s important to my grandmother. I don’t want to detract from the evening with a sob story that isn’t a sob story. Derek and I are done. We aren’t getting married, and I’ll deal with the fallout after the party.
“Baby, have you ever considered that you shook Derek up with the breakup? Sometimes the potential of permanently losing someone forces the other to make decisions and change.”
“I don’t think this is the same thing as you and Dad.” I know that’s what she’s referencing. After meeting my father, my mother went back to her home in Chicago, thinking their relationship was hopeless. My dad went to visit her, and it was the catalyst to prompt Mom to give up her life in the big city. She took a leap of faith with my dad, but it wasn’t much of a jump. He was hoping she’d come back.
Strangely, I wonder if Levi would ever take a leap. Would he want to take a chance on me? On us? Telling him about the job would mean suggesting he move here. Then I consider his response. He doesn’t see Elk Lake City or even the state of Michigan as his home anymore. He expressed as much the other day when he said ELC was his hometown but not a place he recognized anymore.
The fact I’m thinking more about Levi than Derek confirms how much things are over between Derek and me.
“Mom, I gotta—”
BAM!
The back of my car is hit, and I look up before colliding with the one before me.
16
[Levi]
After texting Katie, I leave her room. It’s still early, and I expect the house to be asleep, but as I’m closing her door, I turn to face Leon.
We stare at one another a second, and suddenly, I feel like that fifteen-year-old kid, never wanting to disappoint a man who acted kinder than the dad I had and took me under his wing as the brother he lost.
“What are you doing up here?” I ask, trying to avoid the awkward position I’m in of exiting Katie’s room.
“Tricia sent me up here to check on towels and toilet paper, like I’m some damn errand boy,” he teasingly mocks. Shaking his head, he snorts. “Women.”
“But you’d do anything for that woman, right?” I ask, lowering my voice and my eyes as if my foot is the most interesting thing in the world.
“Yeah.” Leon softens his voice, hinting he’d check towels and toilet paper or any other thing she asked. “Between towels and toilet paper, though, I can think of other things I’d rather do for that woman.”
“I get that,” I whisper, knowing I’d check on towels and toilet paper if Katie asked me. I’d do anything she asked of me.
“But now I’m strangely curious why a man I consider a brother is coming out of my niece’s bedroom at seven thirty in the morning. I’m assuming it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with towels or toilet paper.”
I sigh, leaning against the wall next to the door and tipping back my head.
“But if I wanted it to be?” I ask, knowing we need to cut the euphemisms. I lower my head to face him, meeting his glare as he looks ready to pummel me into next week for taking advantage of his niece. “What if I want to do anything this woman asks of me?”
“Answer me this first. What’s going on with my sister?”
“Not you, too,” I groan. “Nothing. Lys and I are friends. I love your sister like she’s my sister. Nothing is happening between us.”
“Just making sure.” He winks like he already knew the truth. “‘Faithful friends are hard to find.’”
Leon loves to quote Shakespeare, and he nods, accepting that Lys and I are friends.
“Saw that kiss the other night, though.”
“It was an accident,” I huff in exasperation. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell people. I would never disrespect her, you, or her marriage like that.”
“Tricia talked me off the ledge of bludgeoning you in your sleep.”
“Bludgeoning? More Shakespeare speak.” I laugh, but it’s bitter as he’s still glaring at me.
“Explain.” He nods at the door to my left.
“I wish I could.”
“Try.”
“I’m in love with her. I have been for a long time, just not in the same way as it is now.”
Leon’s brows lift. “I did not see that coming.” He pauses. “What makes now different?”
My face heats, and Leon steps up to me, crowding me into the wall. “You did not fucking fuck Katie in this house.”
I push at his shoulder, forcing him to give me space and warning him to step back. “I did not fuck her. I love her.”
Leon places both hands on his head, turns in a full circle, and comes back to face me. “This is not good. What about Derek?”
What does he mean it’s not good that I love Katie? And shit, I don’t feel it’s my place to explain Derek, but I have to defend myself. “They broke up, but Katie doesn’t want anyone to know until after the party.”
“The party,” Leon whispers. “Oh my God, the dang party.” His eyes shift away from me, and I wonder about the sudden concern etched in his face.
“What?”
Leon shakes his head side to side before scrubbing a hand down his face. “It’s going to be an interesting night.” His eyes latch onto mine, but I don’t know what he’s not saying.
“You’re both adults.” He nods at the door. “But I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Do you think I’d sleep with her and walk away?”
“Don’t you have to? You live in freaking Florida.” Leon waves out a hand like I haven’t been thinking this through all morning. I don’t want to do a long-distance relationship. I want to be near Katie, but it seems presumptuous to move here after only one night. Then again, I consider
how presumptuous Katie and I were last night, and I fight the inappropriate smile to match my memories.
“I’ll just have to figure something out,” I admit, but I’m not far off the mark. I’ve been considering, the what-ifs of moving here.
“What about AJ? Man, this isn’t like flitting all over the country to chase tail.”
“I’m not chasing tail.”
“You moved to Florida for Alicia.”
I did do that, and I hate to admit it. We’d met in Tennessee, but she lived in Florida. When I finished my rehab there, I followed her south since I didn’t have any other plan.
“So?” I snap, still not understanding him.
“I love you, kid, but I love Katie, too, and I don’t want anyone heartbroken.”
“You’ve already said that,” I remind him, as we continue to glare at one another across the hall.
“You willing to move here for her because she has a good job.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means, I know you aren’t happy with yours, but do you really want to give it up and come back here. You hate it here, remember?”
I have said that on numerous occasions. It’s one reason I left. I couldn’t get away fast enough, and I stayed away for over a decade unless I had to return. My father’s funeral was one of those times. It’s here that my life took a turn, and I always thought it was for the worst, except for a fleeting moment in an alley and now a week in a house on the lake.
Suddenly, I’m reconsidering a few things.
When I don’t know how to respond and take too long, Leon speaks. “I need to check on towels and toilet paper.” He turns for the bathroom, and I head to my own room, finding AJ sitting up in his crib but not crying. I had the monitor with me in Katie’s room just in case, but the night was AJ free and filled with her.
Katie.
Maybe what Leon’s really trying to say is I’m not good enough for his niece, and a half hour later, when she texts me about moving, I’m bitter that I won’t ever be enough for her.
+ + +
The family heads to dinner at Ethan Scott’s restaurant, The Red Barn Table, for a private meal before the event at the barn on the same property. Despite the chaos of us all leaving one place and moving like a herd to another, I don’t miss that Katie has not returned.
“Hey, where is your sister?” I eventually ask of Daisy as I’m too afraid to question Katie’s parents. Throughout the day, Emily keeps giving me painfully sympathetic looks while Jess narrows his eyes every time he glances in my direction. I can’t ask Lys about Katie as she’s been quiet and standoffish since the other night. Leon’s keeping his distance, caught up in the evening events as Tricia planned everything, and she’s losing her mind a bit about schedules.
“She’s fine,” Daisy says, and I find the response unsatisfactory.
“What do you mean, ‘she’s fine’?”
Daisy looks up from her phone at the question. “Sorry.” She wiggles her phone like it explains her vague answer. “I mean, she’ll be okay.”
“Why would you say that? What happened?”
“She was in a fender-bender on the way home. The car is crushed, but she’s okay.”
“What?” I shriek, causing several people to look in our direction. “Why didn’t anyone say something?” Daisy could be a twin for Katie at seventeen as they have similar freckles and blue eyes with long, blond hair and a summer tan.
“Well, Mom and Dad said it wasn’t a big deal, and they didn’t want everyone worked up before tonight. I mean, the car might be totaled, but Katie is okay. Dad went to get her.”
Fuuuuuck.
“I could have done that,” I blurt, although Daisy’s giving me a strange look.
“Why would you do that?”
Because I love her, I want to yell. Doesn’t anybody get it? Can’t they all see it? I’ve been following Katie around all week like a lost puppy who finally found a home.
Home.
This place. This town. Katie.
Fuck, when she asked me earlier if I ever considered moving here, I glibly stated Florida was my home, but it’s not.
She is my home.
Fuck.
17
[Katie]
“Dad, I’m fine.” I’ll be sore later, but I’m okay. Shaken but nothing broken, nothing lost, just my poor car squished like a bug. When the guy behind me slammed into me, the trajectory pushed me forward into the braking car in front of me. I’d noticed traffic slowing and was braking accordingly, but the man behind me admitted he wasn’t paying attention. With a totaled car, Dad drove an hour to pick me up.
“We should go to the hospital to have you checked out.”
“Dad, I’m good.” I don’t want to go to the hospital. The airbag didn’t even deploy, but the jolt of impact jarred me. I just want to go home to Elk Lake City. We have a party to attend, and as much as I want to curl up in bed and Netflix the night away, I also want to see Levi. I need to know what happened between us last night. Was it something more like I felt? Or was it only one night, like a vacation from life, as this entire family reunion has been?
“You don’t need to attend the party. We can go back to the house.”
“Dad, no. Uncle Tom wants you there, and Aunt Tricia worked so hard to plan everything.” The barn is going to look spectacular. It hadn’t changed much, but enough to give it more warmth than those first years when I was a kid, and they were using it only for the annual Halloween Smash Party hosted by Tom and Karyn. Now, the place is a destination for wedding receptions and large events. It’s a beautiful location up on a hill, and with the two large doors open, the view of the lake in the background is magnificent.
As Dad and I are stuck together for the ride back to Elk Lake City, I decide now is the time to tell him about Derek.
“Dad, I need to tell you something.” Glancing over at him, I see the tic in his jaw. He does this clenching thing as he braces for whatever I need to say.
“You know you can tell me anything.”
“Derek and I broke up.” With the quiet that follows, I know he already knows, just as I suspected. Mom told him. However, he keeps quiet for longer than normal. It’s not that he seems displeased, but his silence unnerves me. “I just thought you should know.”
“Want to tell me what happened? Did he cheat on you?” I’m not surprised this is my dad’s first fear.
“Nothing like that. I just don’t think we were right for each other.”
He nods as if he understands. “You know, baby, who you love is who you love, but I was never convinced you loved him.”
“Dad,” I shriek, shifting in my seat. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Because your choices need to be yours. I can tell you about my experiences, and I can even hint that I don’t like a guy, but ultimately, you need to learn things for yourself. As much as I want to protect you.” He side-eyes me with his last statement. “If I was worried he was abusing you, I’d have stepped in, immediately.”
“I know.” My dad would have been there faster than a heartbeat if he thought Derek was unworthy in some extreme manner, but that wasn’t the thing with us. “He’s a good man, just not the right man for me.”
Dad nods and clears his throat. “I’m not certain you’ve heard the last from him, though.”
“Why? What do you know?”
“He called me to discuss you.”
I’m stumped, and my mouth falls open. “What did he say? What did you say?”
“Same thing I just told you. We need to learn who we love on our own. The choice of you being with or without Derek is yours.”
This explanation leaves me with a funny feeling in belly. “Dad, what aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m saying the choice to be with Derek is your own. If you say you broke up, then you broke up. But what if he came back for you?” This happened with my parents. My mother came here for him, but somehow, it wouldn’t be the same thing with Derek.
<
br /> I fall back into the seat, frustrated by this conversation. “I’m not interested in being with Derek, Dad. He just isn’t my person.”
“What about Levi?”
My head swivels in his direction, and I note his knuckles clenching the steering wheel.
“What about Levi?” Does my dad know what we did last night? Oh, God. Quickly, I think of the baby monitor and Leon shoving it in Levi’s chest, warning him no one wants to hear what’s happening in his room. Then I recall that Levi brought the monitor into my room to listen for AJ. Releasing a breath, I still feel uneasy.
“I’ve seen how Levi’s looking at you.” His eyes shift to me and back to the road. “How he can’t seem to keep his hands off you.”
This is a little embarrassing as I’m twenty-seven years old, and I can see my dad’s trying to be confident while cringing at this conversation.
“We don’t need to discuss Levi,” I admit, trying to let him off the hook.
“But I think we should. He’s practically family. Hell, Aunt Tricia considers him hers. I don’t want anyone hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt,” I tease, brushing off the possibility while deep down I’m worried about the same thing. How will Levi be when I return for the party? What will happen tomorrow when we both leave?
“I’m not saying I don’t like Levi. I like him well enough. He has a lot on his plate, and I can sympathize with what he’s going through.” Dad means being a single father, far-removed from family. He was once in the position himself. “It’d be nice for him to move closer to home. I know Tricia wants that for him.”
I’d like that as well, but I toss Dad’s words back at him. “But Levi has to make his own choices.”
“He does,” Dad agrees. “But sometimes, when the right person comes along, those choices become easier to make.”
