by Sarah Ready
“Mama, Mama. You see that? I’ve got a lightning bug on my finger.” Bean laughs as it flashes bright yellow. “It tickles,” she says.
“That’s amazing,” Ginny says.
She looks over at me and her eyes are filled with so much happiness that my heart stops then starts again with a hard thud.
Just friends. We’re just friends. I’m just helping out, then heading back to Hollywood.
Enid’s words play back in my mind. They need a miracle, not a friend.
The firefly lights up again and Bean laughs as it flies up into the sky. It joins the others and they fill the gray dusk with twinkling yellow light.
“I’m so happy,” says Bean.
“Me too, baby,” says Ginny. She pulls Bean into her lap and they lean back to watch the fireflies.
I look up at the sky. The fireflies blink in then out. Then I look at Ginny and Bean. I rub my chest, and it aches under my hand. They need a miracle.
Ginny is anything but a damsel in distress. She can do whatever she puts her mind to, she can even be her own hero. But can she find a miracle?
I don’t know.
16
Ginny
The summer’s nearly gone. It’s been six weeks since I met Liam. I brush my hand across Bean’s head and drop a kiss on her cheek. It’s early, before sunrise. Bean snuggles in her bed, the big teddy from the county fair, christened Pinky, is in her arms, and she’s sound asleep. I slip through the adjoining door into the kitchen of the house. Enid stands at the stove flipping pancakes.
“She’s still asleep,” I say.
Enid’s shoulders stiffen, but she doesn’t say anything. The longer we’ve been seeing Liam, the less she’s said anything, but if anything, her disapproval has gotten stronger.
“I’ll be back by eight.”
She turns and points her spatula at me. “You’re getting too attached.”
I step back from the spatula. “What?”
“All Bean talks about is Liam Stone this, Liam Stone that. You don’t talk about him, but I can tell you think about him. You spend every night together, afternoons, and evenings, too. He came to the picnic.”
“Yes?” She’s right, we have spent nearly every day of the past six weeks together. Except the days we’re at the children’s hospital, or the days I have a long shift at work. Bean’s so happy, and I’ve been…happy too. “You make it sound like a crime.”
“It is,” she snaps. She turns and flips the pancakes.
“I know you believe—”
She turns again and waves the spatula at me. “I was wrong. That man’s not a bad seed, and he’s fit for decent company.”
“Okay?” This is unexpected.
“He’s even worse. He’s a fine man, and because you’re vulnerable, you’re getting too attached. That man’s set on leaving, and when he does you’re in for a mountain of misery. You and Bean both.” Her eyes are watery and her mouth drawn down. She’s speaking from experience. My heart reaches out to her, and although she’s never welcomed it, I want to hug her.
“I miss him too,” I whisper. She knows who I’m talking about. He’s the only person we both miss.
The lines around her mouth deepen and she turns back to the stove. She flips the cooked pancakes onto the plate next to the griddle. They hit the plate with a forlorn plop. When she’s done she places her hands on the counter.
“Do what you’ll do,” she says. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She doesn’t turn back around. Her back’s so straight that I know she’s keeping herself together by sheer will. I shouldn’t have said it. We don’t talk about George. His death is a ghost here, even though Enid removed every bit of him, scrubbed the house clean of his memory, he still comes in. A song will play on the TV, and by her reaction, I can tell it reminds her of him. Or, sometimes when Bean laughs, she has to leave the room. Their laugh is the same. It’s like bells ringing on a clear, spring day. I love it. But Enid…
“I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders stiffen, but she doesn’t take her hands off the counter, or turn, or acknowledge me.
It’s always seemed to me that the way Enid dealt with her son’s death was trying to forget he ever existed. But maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe the pain is just too big for her, even now. She’s trying to protect herself. Maybe instead of the heart of stone I imagined, it’s a heart too soft.
“Thank you for being worried for us.”
I wait a moment for her answer, but she doesn’t say anything. Grandpa Clark comes into the kitchen, a Vietnam War modeling magazine in his hand.
“You’re still here?” he asks in surprise.
Enid stands up straight and starts pouring more pancake batter.
“Just leaving. I’ll be back by eight. Bean’s still sleeping.”
“Alright, bye then.”
I jog to the car. I’m a few minutes late. Liam will be waiting.
“Tell me about your husband,” says Liam a few days later.
I look at him in surprise, but he’s doing pushups, so I can’t see his face.
“Why?” I ask.
“You never talk about him. Bean doesn’t talk about him except to say he was a hero.”
“Bean never met him,” I say.
“Why not?”
Liam flips on one hand and does a perfect side plank. He doesn’t need me anymore. It’s pretty clear that there’s not any reason for him to stick around. He’s cut, lean, and in silver screen shape. He could jump into filming tomorrow. Enid was right, he’ll be leaving soon.
He drops back down and starts on another set of pushups.
“I was only in early pregnancy when he died.” I look around the field, at the trees at the trailer, and think about how unexpected life is. In that car, seven years ago, I never would’ve thought I’d be standing here.
“Ah, so she just has stories of him.”
I nod, even though Liam can’t see it. “I tell her the funny stories. Like how he could do any accent perfectly, and he’d get us into the most ridiculous situations. And I tell her the romantic stories, like how we met and right away I knew I was going to marry him. He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, pretty lady, I think you stole my heart.’ Then he smiled and I was a goner. So I tell her the story of how we met and then about how he died. How she and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. How he loved her so much that he gave his life so she could live. That he didn’t think anything of going back for her and saving her life. Even though he’d never met her. He loved her that much. That’s what I tell her. That he loved her so much.”
“I’m sure he did,” says Liam. He pushes up from the ground and stands next to me. “Sorry, you don’t have to talk about it.”
I wipe at my eye and shake my head. “No, it’s alright. I don’t mind it.”
“Sort of a hard act to follow, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I did set the bar impossibly high,” I say. I can’t really live up to the image I painted in my stories, and neither, maybe, can anyone else. “Maybe I should tell Bean a few stories that show her dad as a person. The good along with the bad.”
It’s the flaws that make us beautiful after all.
“Don’t know,” he says. “Life’s complicated.”
Liam smiles and stretches out his arms and shoulders. Then, without needing to say anything, we start jogging down the trail. He turns down the fork and heads toward the stream. When we get there he stops and starts to kick off his shoes and socks.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to do this for weeks.”
I smile as I watch him test the water with his bare feet.
“That’s cold,” he says.
But he settles down and dunks his feet in the clear running water. He pats the ground next to him.
“Alright, alright,” I say. We have a good forty-five minutes before I need to get back. I pull off my shoes and socks and settle on the mossy ground next to him. I dip my feet into the water. It’s cold a
s ice and feels amazing.
Liam leans back on his elbows and I lean back too. We’re quiet for a minute. The spongy moss beneath us, the birds calling each other from the tree branches, the sound of the stream running swiftly by. I pull my feet out of the water before they go numb.
“You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?” I ask. We’ve talked about nearly everything, except this. I guess I thought that if I ignored it, it wouldn’t happen.
He plays with the springy moss, pressing it up and down. Then he looks up at me.
“We’re friends, yeah?” he asks.
I’m startled by his question.
“Of course we’re friends,” I say. After watching the movie, we’ve been nothing but friends. Talking, hanging out, training, going on adventures with Bean. I’ve even shared with him my dreams about starting my own wellness center. I’ve not shared that with anyone. One night, I told him how scared I am. Of everything. I’ve told him more than I’ve told anyone in my whole life. No one knows me better. No one. We’re friends. But more.
There hasn’t been any more holding hands since that first night. And there haven’t been any more kisses. He’s been just a friend. The best friend I could’ve ever imagined.
God, I’m going to miss him.
“My agent called,” he says.
I look over at him and a cold dread washes over me. This is it then.
“What did he say?” I ask.
“I haven’t called him back yet,” he says. He throws a flower head into the stream and it’s carried away on the current.
“But you will,” I say.
He nods.
Suddenly, I want to tell him not to call his agent back. Not to go. That he doesn’t have to go. He can stay here and we can keep on like this forever. But even as I think it, I know it’s the wrong thing to do. He wouldn’t be happy here. His place is in Hollywood. He’s told me the stories, how much he loved it, how being an actor is a part of him. I look over at him. There’s not a trace of the man I met that first day in the trailer. Then, he was hungover, out of shape, and, what did I call him…a villain?
Now, he stands tall, he laughs, he has so much energy and life. He’s filled with so much anticipation. For his future.
Not for staying in Centreville, Ohio with a widow and her daughter.
Plus, even if he asked, I couldn’t uproot Bean. She has her grandma and grandpa. She has the doctors and nurses she trusts at the children’s hospital. And then after everything. I think of Enid, her mountains of misery and her years of pain. I don’t know who I’ll become…after. So, this little bit of time, this is it.
“I think,” I say on a rush of feeling, “you’re the best person I’ve ever known.”
He looks over at me quickly. “Don’t say that.”
“You are.”
“Just because I’m leaving soon, don’t get all nostalgic on me. Pretty soon you’ll only be telling the good stories about me. Leaving out all the bad.”
“Come on.”
“Don’t make me a hero,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “You’re a superhero.”
“You know what I mean.”
I do.
“How about I tell you some bad stories about me?”
I smile and shift closer to him. Then because the moss is spongy and I’m starting to relax I lay my head on his shoulder. He stiffens then lets out a breath and wraps his arm around me. It feels so good to be held.
“Tell me,” I say.
“I was a class-A jerk in Hollywood.”
“You were not,” I say.
“Oh yeah. A-hole with a capital A.”
“No, come on. I don’t believe it.”
“I had two personal assistants. Every morning, they had to bring me a triple espresso cappuccino. If it wasn’t exactly 140 degrees with two inches of foam I sent them back for another. One day, I sent it back four times.”
I start to laugh. “You were an a-hole.”
He grimaces. “Yeah. It sounds moronic. But that’s what I was like then. During filming, I had requirements. A bowl of only yellow M&M’s. A specific brand of bottled water. I wouldn’t talk to any actor below hot shot status. If a staff member annoyed me, I fired them. I didn’t care about people.”
“You sound…awesome.”
“I was an ass.”
I lean in and rest my arm over his chest. He’s warm and I like the feel of him. I splay my fingers over his heart and rub a little circle with my pointer finger.
“I thought, being one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, that I had a right to walk all over people. If anyone called me on it, which they rarely did, I thought they were jealous, or had an attitude. It never occurred to me that they could be right. I was making millions, and they were fetching coffee, or working minimum wage, what could they know?”
I run my hand up his collarbone and along the tendons in his neck. He cut his hair, but the ends still curl at the base of his neck. For weeks I’ve been wanting to feel it. So I let myself. It’s as soft and silky as I imagined. He lies still beneath me. He’s so powerful, so solid. It’s hard to picture him as the person he’s describing.
“But you were such a good person in your movies.”
“It was an act. I was acting.”
“Were you? I mean—”
“I was. Trust me, I wasn’t a nice guy.”
“And then…”
“I fell.”
“Broke your back and your hip.”
“And all those people in Hollywood that I’d treated like crap—”
“They were happy to see you go?”
“No. My assistants, the woman that filled the coffee in the break room, the guy that got the flipping M&M’s, they were the only ones to visit me while I was in the hospital. The people that I’d dismissed as not worthwhile were the only ones to show a speck of humanity. I found out pretty quickly that I wasn’t as irreplaceable as I’d believed. Just as quickly as I’d dropped the faulty assistants, Hollywood dropped me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He runs a hand over my back, and I stretch into his touch.
“I’m not.”
I look up at his face in surprise. “Why not?”
“In Bean’s words,” he says, “breaking my back was my origin story. It transformed me from Grade A a-hole to who I am now.”
“A little wiser,” I say.
“A little nicer.”
“A little uglier.”
He jerks under me. “Hey.”
“And bad at pushups.” I say.
He laughs and then flips me under him. His arms cage me in and his legs rest alongside my own.
“You think so?” he asks.
“I know so. I’m your trainer.” I smirk up at him. There’s a happiness low in my belly, but also a growing warmth. I want to pull him down or tilt up my hips to meet him. We’ve not touched this last month, but oh how I’ve wanted to.
“How’s this?” he asks. He drops his arms down and does a pushup over me. His nose touches mine and then he pushes back up. He hovers just above me.
“Weak,” I say. I hold back a smile.
“And this?” he asks. He pushes down again and then up.
“Try again.”
He does. He drops down then up, down then up, until he’s moving in a rhythm over me. Is this what it would be like to be with him? When he moves down, his body brushes mine. Our hips meet, our noses touch, and his lips are just a whisper away.
“And now?” he asks.
“Keep trying,” I say. My voice sounds throatier than usual.
When he hears the huskiness his pupils dilate. He lowers more slowly onto me and I hold myself back from tilting up to meet him. My breasts feel heavy and I’m starting to ache. I want to rock into him.
“And this?” he asks. His mouth is so close. I could tilt my chin up and we’d meet.
I shake my head no.
He smiles and pushes up again. His hip bones graze against me and I hold back a moan.
/>
“Now?”
“More,” I say.
He smiles and lowers down again. Finally, he lets our whole bodies meet. His chest presses into my breasts and sends tingles across my nipples. His hips press into mine and I feel the long, thick length of him. Warmth bursts through me and I rock up into him.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yes.”
His lips tangle over mine and he rubs them across. He lifts himself up and watches my face. His eyes flare when he sees my expression. Then he lowers back down. I let out a long exhale as he comes back to me.
“Better,” I say.
He rests down on his forearms and tilts his head to mine.
“Can I kiss you?”
I drop my eyelids until I’m looking at him through a haze.
“Please.”
With aching slowness he lowers his lips to mine. When he does it’s like a star bursts to life inside me. The whole world is consumed with brightness and the birth of something beautiful. I gasp and he captures my mouth. Presses himself into me and I cry out as he rubs his length over me. His tongue tangles with mine and I feel like we’re trading secrets. For a month we’ve been talking, learning each other, sharing everything. Now, we’re just doing it in another way. He’s telling me that he cares for me, that he wants me, needs me. I’m telling him that I’ll miss him, that he’s the best man I’ve ever known, that I need him too.
I taste him and he tastes like kindness and goodness.
Then, I stop tasting, stop thinking and just feel.
He keeps up the rhythm of the pushups, but instead of leaving me, he drives his length over me. He drags it across my shorts and I push back up to him. It runs against my clit and sends sparks over me that grow and grow. I ache for him. I grab his back with my hands and pull him close. I want him closer.
He runs his lips over my mouth. His kiss is deep and intimate, and his mouth works in concert with his hips. I wrap my legs around him and he groans into my mouth. The deep rumble of it spreads a vibration through me all the way down my legs.
He rubs harder along me and I cry out at the burst of pleasure. He catches my cry in his mouth.
