by Lisa Suzanne
“Thanks, Grandma,” Will says, breaking any possible tension at the insinuation that she knows Will and I have sex. She smiles and leans over to give him a side-hug, messing up his hair a little. “Is it okay if I take a quick shower?” he asks.
She nods. “The towels are in the closet in the bathroom down the hall. Help yourself to anything.”
“I’m heading up,” my grandpa says. “Goodnight, everyone.” He kisses me on the top of the head, pats Will’s shoulder, and gives my grandma a kiss on the mouth, and I can’t help but hope I have that someday—a husband who still wants to kiss me before bed after being married for over fifty years.
“Goodnight,” we all echo, and then Will bounces off down the hall for a shower.
“So you really love him, huh?” my grandma murmurs when it’s just the two of us.
I sigh. “Yeah, I really do. It’s kind of crazy how it all happened, and I never expected it, at least not with him, but I do.”
“And he loves you?” She looks concerned, like she wants to ensure that he’s treating me right. I can’t help but think back to Maine when he took me to the snowy beach and we threw snowballs at each other and made snow angels and laughed and kissed.
“So much,” I say softly as more memories of our time together assault me. “He’s really, really good to me, Grandma.” Even when I don’t deserve it.
“You think you’ll marry him someday?”
I ponder her question. It’s so soon to think about marriage. I’ve barely gotten him to start thinking about tomorrow, let alone an entire future.
But I still see the two of us making it past all this.
I see little curly haired, red-headed, brown-eyed babies with my love of science and his musical talent.
I see happiness and cookies and adventures and road trips and helping other people.
I see love. I see him kissing me goodnight when my mouth is crinkled with laugh lines and my eyes are webbed with wrinkles.
“I do,” I say softly.
CHAPTER 38: WILL
Amber and her grandma head to the grocery store together, and her grandpa is outside smoking a cigar—which he apparently only does when her grandma goes to the store, which Grandma is fully aware and totally disapproves of—and I take the time to put in a call to Kylie.
She picks up on the first ring.
“How are the road trippers?” she answers. “Getting plenty of amazing footage for the show?”
I clear my throat as I realize I haven’t really taken any footage apart from what’s filmed in the truck, where we were largely silent on the way out because we weren’t really talking to one another. There is a ton of great footage of me belting out country tunes, though.
“Of course,” I say. “Would you expect anything less?”
She laughs. “I’ll plead the fifth on that one. What’s up?”
She’s asking because I never just call to shoot the shit with her.
“I had an idea and I want to talk it through with you. Plus I’ll need your help.”
“Here we go,” she says with a sigh. “Hang on.” I hear some rustling, like maybe she’s getting out a pen and paper to take notes on my idea. “Okay, go.”
“I want to start a charity with Amber. We need legal people who know what they’re doing because I have no idea where to even begin,” I say, pacing around the family room.
“Back the truck up. First, are you and Amber back together?”
“Yeah.” Duh.
“Jeez, you two are a freaking disastrous whirlwind,” she mutters. “Whatever. I can get legal people, but I’ll need some clauses in there about what happens when you break up again.”
“We won’t,” I say softly, my tone genuine because I really believe it this time.
“Right. So what sort of charity?”
“Amber makes these hilarious cookies with dirty sayings that she sells at farmers markets, and I was thinking she could make cookies with our logo that we could sell online. She could still make them dirty, something like Brody banged his stick on my cookie or Dax strummed my cookie. I don’t know, I’m just throwing out ideas. I asked her what charity is close to her heart, and she wants to find a way to purchase supplies and items for her ER.”
I hold my breath as I wait for her response.
“Holy shit, Rascal,” she murmurs. “This idea...it’s fantastic.”
I finally exhale.
“MFB needs to do more community outreach and this is the perfect bridge. I love it. We can keep it local, or we can go bigger. But our own foundation...this is incredible. And you could have a day where you take cookies to the hospital to give to patients. Oh! We could have TV crews on hand, and it would totally make up for the trouble you get yourself into, and—”
“Two things, Kylie,” I say, cutting her off. “First, it’ll be Amber’s foundation. And second, I want it to go to the hospital where Amber works. It’s not as much about making MFB look good as it’s about Amber doing something she’s passionate about.”
“The only way I’ll allow her to use MFB’s logos is if the band has a stake in the foundation.” Her voice is firm, and I see why she’s such a good businesswoman. She’s cutthroat and doesn’t take any shit, and she’s not afraid to speak her mind and go for what she wants. It’s what Dax fell in love with, and it’s what we all appreciate about her.
“Only if Amber holds no less than fifty-one percent.” I can be firm, too. “And I want my own personal stake as well. It was my idea to begin with, and while I want MFB to look good in all of this, that’s not what it’s about first.”
“All right. I’ll get legal working on it and see who I can find who knows how to set up foundations.”
We talk out a few more details, and I feel good about the head start we’re getting on this new endeavor. I love that it’ll belong to Amber even though it’s a project we can work on together...all of us.
The more I think about it, the more excited I get. Her best friend is part of this group now that she’s married to Adam, and surely we can find a sweet spot where they’ll be able to work together. In fact, she’s taken over a lot of MFB’s finances recently, and I bet she could do that for the foundation as well.
Amber’s face lit up when we first conceptualized the idea. It lit again when I saw the light bulb click the moment she knew we were heading to Grosse Pointe Woods.
I want to continue to find ways to make her face light up like it has the last couple days.
And with that in mind, I call Daisy Brown, the owner of that bakery whose window I knocked in. I have an idea—one that’s sure to make her face light up again. I explain my idea to her, and she’s completely on board with it...and suddenly I can’t wait to get back home.
Here at her grandparents’ house, Amber is comfortable and happy. She’s back to herself again. She’s in her element as she bakes with her grandmother. I listen to her explain why baking is science, and I hear the nerd inside her emerge as she talks to her grandma about how much she loves science while I sit in the next room pretending not to listen while falling even deeper in love with her.
We spend two nights at her grandparents’ house in Michigan, and it’s on the second night that she and her grandmother are baking more cookies in the kitchen and I’m sitting in the family room with her grandfather pretending like I enjoy watching golf on television.
I haven’t seen Amber this animated and alive since the night we first hooked up. Something happened after Vegas. We got back to the real world and our relationship got into her head, and we’ve had these crazy highs and crushing lows, but somehow we’ve ended up on the right side of things again.
I don’t know what our future together will hold, but the past few days have brought us closer than we were before.
And that means something to me.
Something big.
Something that makes me want to plan for a future that includes her.
“So, William,” her grandfather begins when a commercial comes o
n after his favorite golfer tees off. “What are your intentions with our Amber?”
I’m a little surprised at the bluntness of the question, though after spending a couple days here, I see where Amber gets that particular personality trait. Still, I’m not entirely shocked that he’s asking.
And I don’t really know how to answer. “I love her,” I finally say. “We’re taking it slow, but my intentions are good. You have my word. Adam is my bandmate, like a brother to me, and I’d never do anything to screw him or anyone in his family over.”
He stares thoughtfully at me for a few beats, and then he nods like my answer was sufficient enough for him. He turns his attention back to the television screen, and then he says a little gruffly, “Glad to hear you’ll be sticking around. You seem good for her.”
I smile even though he’s not looking at me anymore. I feel like I just passed a test.
After a tearful goodbye for Amber, we’re on our way toward Chicago, where, in the vein of planning for the future when I had some free time in Grosse Pointe Woods, I’ve already booked us a night at the Ritz, followed by a night in Omaha at a Hilton and a night in Denver at the Four Seasons. We’ll cap off this road trip in Vegas, and I’ve even managed to secure a few nights in the same suite in the Octavius Tower at Caesar’s Palace where we first hooked up.
And then we’ll head home.
That means we have a week left on this road trip. We’ll be getting home a full week earlier than we’d planned because our trip out was so fast. We didn’t take the time to stop and see the sights, and while we have an extra week to explore if we want, I can tell Amber’s excited to get home and get started on this new business venture we’ve discussed.
Plus she needs to head into work to put in her notice.
And now that I have Kylie working behind the scenes to get legal going on our new foundation, we’ll be going home to work on a project that’s ready for us.
CHAPTER 39: AMBER
It’s not the road trip he wanted, and I vow to myself that I will give him that someday.
The journey to Maine turned out to be much faster than we’d anticipated. It turned into just getting to the end so we could get back home and get out of this stifling car and away from each other.
The journey home seems like the right time to give into what he wanted this trip to be in the first place, but he actually planned the way home.
I can hardly believe it.
In three days, we’ve gone from my grandparents’ house to Chicago to Omaha to Denver, and now we’re in the car toward what he tells me will be a mini-vacation for a few days, but he hasn’t told me where we’re going yet.
We’ve stopped at a few different attractions, and each time, Will has taken video footage on his phone. It’s like he suddenly remembered Kylie asked him to do that, so he’s making up for lost time.
We stopped at the Barbed Wire History Exhibit in Dekalb, Illinois, and then as we continued, we made a quick stop in Ashton, Illinois, to take some pictures by the town sign. Will said he’d send them to Mark Ashton, and I still get giddy when I realize I know people who know Mark Ashton. I know it’s silly, but I can’t help it. I dreamed about the lead singer of my favorite band long before my brother went on tour with Vail.
We went to a crazy sculpture park in Des Moines where I snapped Will by a UFO. As we trekked through Nebraska, we took pictures by a Superman carved out of an old tree in Lincoln and laughed by another Muffler Man in North Platte while we complained about Nebraska being a long state. We saw a twenty-foot dog made entirely out of dog tags in Denver and a fifteen-foot tall troll in Breckenridge, and of course we stopped in Vail while we were in Colorado just so we could have more pictures to send to Mark Ashton.
The scenery is beautiful as we drive through the mountains, if a little terrifying in Will’s truck. We’re somewhere in the middle of Utah now as Will pulls off at an exit.
“Are you ready for this?” he asks, and I shrug as I read the sign leading us to a town called Green River.
“Am I ever really ready for these roadside attractions?” I ask, and he laughs.
We pull up to the world’s largest watermelon slice, a wooden attraction painted to look like the delicious summer treat. We take pictures, and I’m just left wanting a slice of watermelon. It was a nice way to break up the trip, though, and a mere six hours later, we’re pulling into the valet lane at Caesar’s Palace.
I guessed we were heading to Vegas about two hours ago, but I had no idea he’d choose the same hotel where it all began for us.
And when we check in and head up to our suite, I had no idea he’d book the exact same suite we stayed in last time.
Only this time, it’s just the two of us, and we’re both a little more clear on what it all means.
“I booked us four nights here,” he says. I’m standing near the window looking out at our familiar view of the Las Vegas Strip. “I hope that’s okay. I figured it’ll give us time to relax and have some fun before we get home and Dax and Kylie’s wedding craziness begins.”
I turn around and give him a smile. “It’s perfect. What do you want to do while we’re here?”
“I have a few things planned,” he says, and he shoots me a smile that leaves me wondering where the hell the immature boy I broke up with went and who this man I seem to have fallen for is.
And by “a few things,” he meant that he packed our four days in Vegas completely full of events that are so...us. They’re not the normal Vegas attractions everyone goes to.
We start the first day with a visit to the Neon Museum, a place that houses retired Vegas neon signs. We go to some place off the strip for dinner, and then we sleep in after drinking late into the night at a bar in the casino downstairs. We go to Dig This, an adult playground where we learn how to use excavators and bulldozers. He takes me to Sin City Smash, where we de-stress and take out our aggression by smashing bottles, plates, and electronics. We battle it out on a blacklight mini-golf course that pays tribute to the band Kiss—and Will even wears a vintage shirt celebrating the band when we go.
We still do traditional Vegas touristy things, too—like riding the huge Ferris wheel, where Will springs for our own private passenger pod complete with a full bar. And apparently private means no bartender, so he gropes me against the glass while we look out over the view of the Strip. He takes me to nightclubs where we kiss in dark corners and to high limit private gambling rooms where we play blackjack.
We recreate some of the magic the first night we got together held—with the exception of this whole vibrator incident that was the reason behind Will cutting his hair. Or, more accurately, the reason behind me cutting Will’s hair for him.
And with every moment we spend together, I find myself falling a little harder for him.
I already knew it was love...but this is something different. This is the future I always wanted—holding hands as we make our way through the Neon Museum, laughing about some dumb inside joke as he calls me Cookie, smashing those plates and feeling all the weight of this trip lifting right off my shoulders, kissing as we looked out over the Strip—but it was a future I thought I wanted with someone else.
As we live it, though, I realize that the person I was meant to share it with was actually right in front of me all along. For the past decade, really. I wrote him off when I was sixteen because he wasn’t Dax or Brody, the guys my brother went to high school with who I always had crushes on.
But now I see what a colossal mistake that was.
And if he lets me, I want to spend the rest of my life making sure he knows that he deserves better. He deserves to be front and center, not written off like he’s always been.
He deserves to be a participant in his own life instead of letting things just happen.
And I’m here to make sure he gets what he deserves.
CHAPTER 40: WILL
We have one night left in Las Vegas, and I can’t stop thinking about how this is what I want out of life.
Amber is the reason I don’t feel burned out anymore. She makes life interesting and fun and sometimes terrifying, but she’s become the reason I get up in the morning. Making her face light up has given me new purpose in life. Knowing that we’re heading home tomorrow toward creating a business together and knowing I’m getting something out of this, too, has cured whatever burnout blues I found myself in.
I’m even excited to get back to the keyboards, at least to some degree. I can’t wait to get back to music and I’m still thinking about what Mark said about getting me on guitar on our next album. I’ll do what I can for MFB because I’m fucking grateful to be a part of it. I don’t want to go solo. I want to be this new version of myself with my four best friends.
Laughing with Amber and being the one person she can most rely on has made all the difference for me, and as much as I don’t want this trip to end, I’m also excited to get home to start our immediate future together.
And that’s why I find myself pacing outside the Tiffany store at the Forum Shops while Amber gets ready for a night out at the clubs.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Tiffany is a good place to buy a ring, right?
I’m not just pacing. I’m pacing nervously. The security detail inside the door keeps eyeing me as I walk back and forth. I stop to look at the displays in the window before going back the other way, stopping to look at those windows, and then I turn around and repeat the process.
I pull out my phone and call my mom as I walk away from the store.
As soon as she answers, I say, “Am I crazy for wanting to get a ring for Amber?”
She gasps. “An engagement ring?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my word, William! Are you serious?” She’s shrieking, and maybe it was a bad idea to ask her this. I mean I kept the fact that I even had a girlfriend from her until we broke up. “Wait. What happened? The last I heard, you were devastated that it was over.”
