Darling, All at Once (The Fairfields Book 1)

by Piper Lennox

  Her smile wavers. “He is. Talked a lot of sense into me today, too.”

  “Yeah?” I glance at her and set the bottle in the cupholder. “About what?”

  “Everything,” she laughs weakly, fingers messing with her purse zipper.

  “Huh.” We come to a stoplight. She stares at some Converses thrown over a power line. The wind looks like it’ll knock them loose any second, but they twist together instead. “I’ll have to thank him twice, then.”

  “Shut up,” she mutters, and leans against the door so I can’t see her smile come back.

  “Like I said in the hospital,” I add seriously, “you weren’t totally wrong, during the fight.”

  “I wasn’t?”

  “Yeah. With your mom being depressed, for instance: you should watch out for it, because it could happen. But I still think I was right, too—you can’t live like it’s guaranteed to happen. I mean, if we were doomed to turn into our parents?” I look at her again. “I’d be some deadbeat overdosing on junk a thousand miles away, right now. I wouldn’t be here.”

  The light changes. I hit the gas and pretend to study street signs. Her stare worms under my skin.

  “You never told me your dad…. You just said he wasn’t around.”

  I tongue my cheek, the raw spot where my peppermint gum sat throughout the Wallman party. It feels like weeks ago since I stared at that backdrop and thought of our own timeline. How short and severed it seemed.

  “I’m childish.” I shrug. “I only focus on the parts I want to focus on, ignore all the bad shit—”

  “I shouldn’t have said that.” She falters, then inhales. “And I shouldn’t have said that nothing bad happened to you.”

  “I guess that was my point.” Her hand hovers near mine. When I turn it over, she takes it. “There’s so much you don’t know, yet. And a lot I still don’t know about you. But instead of it being a bad thing, like something terrible will blindside us…I think I see it as potential.”

  A taxi cuts me off. I barely resist the urge to give them the finger, which reminds me of the shit with Lindsay all over again. If I feel this stupid for trusting her, I can’t imagine how Levi must feel.

  “I can be optimistic to a fault.” I almost wince, the confession’s so hard to get out. “And I’ve got some growing to do.”

  “Couldn’t hurt me to grow up a little more, too.”

  I laugh. “Your dad tell you that?”

  Her sigh is heavy and drawn-out. “Apparently, I mull.”

  “Mull?”

  “And…I don’t tell people how I really feel, until it kind of spills out.”

  “Or explodes,” I prompt. Reluctantly, she nods.

  Both of us shut up a minute, tongues tied and tired. We mirror the other’s smile.

  “Maybe we can agree to disagree,” I say. “Take it a day at a time.”

  “Focus on the positive.”

  “Still keeping the other stuff in mind, though.”

  “But,” she chimes, “not letting it take over, either.”

  We shake on it. A new arrangement, to be amended as needed.

  As I free her hand, her teeth scrape her lip, searching for the skin to bite. Then she stops and takes a deep, even breath. “If we struggle with money, or I do get depression like my mom’s, or....”

  “We can handle anything that comes at us, Juliet. And I’m not saying that because I think everything will magically work out. I know it won’t. I’m just saying we’ll deal. We’ll do whatever we have to, when shit gets tough.”

  Her laugh is a whisper, skeptical. “Surprised you said ‘when,’ not ‘if.’”

  “I’m having a girl that’s fifty percent Brooks. Shit is guaranteed to get tough, at some point.”

  This time, her laugh fills the car.

  The sun is visible when I pull up to the curb outside her apartment. With one look, I know exactly what she’s asking.

  “Okay.” I pull up the brake. “I’ll stay.”

  Sex is out of the question for now, doctor’s orders. But as we undress and slip into her bed, the restriction doesn’t bother me. I’m happy just to be here, to touch her at all.

  “I love you,” I whisper, and kiss her forehead, after I’ve kissed pretty much everything else.

  Juliet pushes off my chest and stares at me. “You do?”

  “I do. Actually…I have for a while, now.” My joke impulse kicks into gear; I roll my eyes and scoff, “So much you don’t know yet.”

  She laughs again, squealing when I grab her wrists and pull her against me, before she whispers the words back.

  Epilogue

  Two Years Later

  “Will you chill out, man? So it’s broken. Who cares?”

  Levi loosens his tie and reaches for my clipboard, which I promptly fling at Andres like a Frisbee.

  “You’re not even supposed to be in here,” I remind him. “Warehouse is my territory. Go back to the office, I’m sure you’ve got about twenty missed calls.”

  “Yeah, actually. And every single one of them’s from an MOH who’s demanding that chocolate fountain.” He snatches the clipboard from Andres, who doesn’t even put up a fight. Traitor.

  “Yeah, see?” He waves the list in the air. “Chocolate fountain: starred. That means it’s a must-have.”

  I check my watch. We so don’t have time for this. “Then go out and buy a new one, if it bothers you that much.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” he lies. I make a big show of straightening my desk after he leans on it. “But it should bother you.”

  My phone vibrates across the desk, almost toppling to the concrete. “Hello?”

  “Where’s Levi?”

  I smile and raise my eyebrows at him. He shakes his head in silence. “Not here,” I tell Viola. “What’s up?”

  “We only have four hours! When are you guys getting here? And please tell me that stupid chocolate fountain is fixed.”

  “On our way,” I tell her, and hang up in the middle of her next sentence. Who would have thought Viola could be as demanding and overly-specific a matron of honor (co-matron, technically) as she was a bride?

  “Rings?” Levi asks, a test, when we’re in the van. Andres follows behind us with another.

  “In my pocket,” I assure him.

  “Tuxes.”

  “Already at the Acre under Lupé’s watchful, bitchy guard. Next.”

  “Tissues.”

  I side-eye him. “I’m not going to cry.”

  Levi’s mouth ticks up at the corner. “Sure,” he says, as the Acre comes into view.

  It’s hard to gauge his mood today. Apart from his regression into micromanaging me—which I fully expected—he seems okay. But I know, as happy as he is for me, he’s thinking of Lindsay.

  “When Linds and I got married,” he says, while we unload the vans at the service entrance, “she kept complaining about the outdoor setup until we moved the whole thing into the ballroom with, like, thirty minutes to go.”

  “I remember.” He passes me a box of uplights: blue and gold, the wedding colors. “They were calling for rain that day, and you wanted to risk it, but she didn’t.”

  “And not a single drop fell. Just like I told her—there weren’t any clouds in the sky at all, that day.” He seems to catch himself: two years out, it’s not exactly a good look to keep badmouthing the ex, no matter how much she deserves it. During a one-month “let’s try again” stage early in Year One, she cheated on him again. Same shit, different guy.

  “Anyway,” he goes on, as we shut the vans and each grab a dolly, “good call, having it in the courtyard.”

  “Seemed fitting.” Juliet loves the Acre’s courtyard. It was our show-stopping view, the night of our first date.

  It’s also the place I proposed almost nine months ago, frost seeping through my pant leg as I kneeled in front of her and opened the ring box. The air was well below freezing. But when I slipped the ring onto Juliet’s finger and came up to kiss her, in the middl
e of the crowd as the Acre’s Christmas tree flickered to life, I didn’t feel the chill. I guess thousands of twinkling white lights can have that effect on you.

  After we’ve set up the last of the reception gear in the ballroom, I walk the perimeter, just like the night of the Wallmans’ anniversary. Maybe I should be reliving that panic when the ballroom went silent, the party brought to a screeching halt by my brother. Uncle Tim, thankfully, talked the Wallmans down. They still got their refund, but at least they didn’t blast us to their friends and ruin our client base. Levi was lucky.

  Instead, I’m thinking about that sign that listed all the Wallmans’ milestones. Their first meeting and kiss, the wedding day, first kid, first house.

  Juliet and I did things a little backwards, sure. We messed up more than once, though never as bad as that first fight. In the last two years and some change, we’ve started seeing things from the other’s point of view more. Not all the time. Probably not even most of the time. But enough.

  And no matter what, I never leave after a fight. Even if I have to step out of our little rented house and pace the block a while, I don’t go far. I stay.

  “All set,” Levi calls, while Lupé does his weird little sashay around the room, judging and nudging everything into perfection. “We’d better get up to the suite and shower.”

  “But the vans—”

  “I’ll move them.” Andres comes up behind us as we meet in the exact center of the dance floor, pushing us to the ballroom entrance. “Go. Juliet has enough to stress over today—she doesn’t need you two looking like shit. Or smelling like it.”

  I slap his hand and follow Levi out to the elevators. The polished doors show me how disheveled I look. Good thing Juliet and I aren’t allowed near each other right now.

  “Uncle Tim hooked us up!” Levi flops onto one of the plush sofas in the suite’s living room. There are two bedrooms flanking it, each with its own bathroom; our tuxes are hung neatly on the shower doors, already steamed. Guess I’m coming around on Lupé.

  My phone buzzes while I start to undress. “Miss you.”

  I smile and instinctively look to the ceiling. The bridal suite is right above us.

  Then I look at the bathroom window.

  “Why am I doing this, again?”

  Viola barely tames her annoyance as she kneels and fluffs my dress for the hundredth time. Cohen’s ring is tucked safely on her thumb; she hasn’t taken it off all morning. I watch it glint in the soft white light of the suite as she speaks. “First looks with the father are so cute. Trust me: you’ll love all the photos.”

  “Okay, but it’s Dad. I could be wearing a bleached burlap sack and he’d have the exact same reaction.”

  Abby hits her updo with another blast of hairspray. “Juliet’s got a point.” Before I can thank her, she turns. “But…I have to side with Vi on this one. It’s a really cute idea. And doing it now instead of right before the ceremony means you won’t be all fluttery.”

  “Okay, he’s on the stairs!” Viola ushers me to the hall and, yet again, fluffs my dress. I can’t help but flash back to the many times Cohen and I debated a simple ceremony at the courthouse, nothing but a rented suit and white sundress. For the life of me, I can’t remember why we decided against it.

  Then I follow my sister’s cue and turn the corner, standing at the top of the stairs while my father looks up from the landing below, and I remember.

  “Julie,” he whispers, laughing while he covers his mouth. The photographer’s camera whirs nonstop.

  I meet him halfway down the stairs for a hug. “You look absolutely gorgeous, sweetheart,” he whispers.

  “Thank you, Dad.” I fan my eyes as I pull back, both of us laughing again. He dabs his eyes with the handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Your mother’s necklace,” he notices, and nods to the amethyst pendant around my neck. “She wore it on our wedding day.”

  Carefully, I close my fingers around it. Dad lifts my chin with his fingertips and brings my eyes back up.

  “She’d be so happy for you. And so am I.”

  I smile, pulling him in for another hug.

  “All right,” he announces after a moment, waving to Viola, Abby, and the photographer on the stairs above, “better get back to the grandkids—we’re in the middle of a poker tournament.”

  “Daddy,” Vi sighs, while Abby’s laugh swells through the stairwell.

  “You were right,” I tell them in the suite. “That was a good idea.”

  “And now you’ve got time to fix your makeup,” Abby adds, “because you’ve cried about half that mascara off.”

  I ignore their teasing and take my cosmetics bag into the bathroom. “Clip a towel around your shoulders,” Viola calls, even though I still vividly remember her shouting this tip at me not thirty minutes ago.

  In the solitude, I take a moment to breathe and enjoy the view. It isn’t terribly impressive; we’re not high enough to see past the next building. Aside from a patch of blue sky, I’m stuck with weathered gray brick.

  The wind is gentle today, but still strong enough to crinkle a square of paper stuck into the casement window.

  “Juliet,” the outside reads, in Cohen’s slanted script—framed by a banner, held in a barn swallow’s mouth. The resemblance to his tattoo is so uncanny, I find myself touching the ballpoint ink the same way I brush his skin, so many nights and mornings.

  “How the hell,” I mutter, opening the window again and looking down. The boys’ room is directly below ours, but there must be at least ten vertical feet between floors—not to mention the twenty or so to the ground from his bathroom.

  But there is a deep brick ledge below each window, the ballroom balcony between us and the ground, and (if I remember his climbing lessons correctly) some decent handholds along the brick. He’s still insane for climbing up here, but at least there was a method involved in the madness.

  I pull my head back in before the wind can mess up my hair and earn me another brush-and-spray attack from Viola. Then I look at the square of paper in my palm, smile, and open it.

  It’s a poem. “Darling, All at Once.”

  Of course; Cohen would risk life and limb to deliver what can only be an elaborate joke, referencing our lovemaking. Just like that first night of our arrangement, when he asked how quickly I wanted—needed—him inside me, it’s become part of our language, something he now asks me every time.

  I start reading, ready to roll my eyes at the first terrible pun or entendre.

  Then, slowly, I smile again.

  Darling, All at Once

  I did not grow

  to love her.

  No simple descent

  or slow

  awakening—but a single

  and sudden

  moment: clinging

  to her

  in the back of a car

  like teenaged lovers,

  learning the thing

  I already knew.

  So if she asks when

  I knew

  and how I fell

  I’ll tell her

  I knew after too long,

  and fell,

  Darling, all

  at once.

  -Cohen Fairfield

  I wish I could say we never had another stupid or overblown fight. I really, really do. But that wouldn’t be realistic, expecting anything else.

  When we moved in together a few weeks before my due date, a bowl fell out of Cohen’s pocket and shattered on the floor of the moving van. We spent about half the night arguing, until Cohen promised he’d give it up completely if it bothered me.

  “It doesn’t bother me, exactly,” I backtracked, realizing I was blowing things a little out of proportion, “other than the fact it could get you arrested. And that you’re not discreet about it. At all.” I took a breath, looking down at his hand as it spread across my stomach, which was huge by then. “And the fact we’ve got way more important things to spend money on, right now.”


  “I’ve got money,” he countered, which made me laugh, “but on those other points, okay. You’re right.” He thought a minute, then stuck out his hand. “I’ll cut back to social-use-only. And I’ll never carry it on me. Deal?”

  “Deal. Now what do you mean, you have money?” It wasn’t like Cohen was always broke—just forgetful and terrible at budgeting. The kind of person who was fine, most days, until that half-week before payday. Like Viola, before she met Marco.

  “Why do you think I lived in that tiny, shitty apartment for so long?” He lay back against the new carpet of our rented house, hands behind his head, and explained, “I got by on the smallest amount I could and banked all the rest for, like, two solid years.”

  I leaned over his face. He opened his eyes and stared back.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Levi paid me pretty well, considering Mom forced him to hire me. I’ve got about...I think it’s twenty grand, now? Maybe just a little under.”

  “Cohen.”

  “Fine, don’t believe me.”

  I stared at the stubble along his jaw, the sweat dampening his hair. “Why?”

  He shut his eyes again, like the conversation was boring him. “Like I’ve said, oh, a million times: I’m not as immature as you think. It just made sense to save the money while I could.” One eye peeked at me before he closed it, faster than I could look back. “Never know what could happen. Right?”

  My feet ached as I sat back on them, silent. And, honestly, a little dumbfounded. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Cohen always found ways to surprise me.

  Another argument, much dumber than the marijuana one, happened the night I went into labor.

  “It’s definitely happening tonight.” Cohen zipped up the suitcase and set it by the front door. “I know it.”

  “You’ve said that the last two weeks. And I don’t want it to happen tonight—it’s snowing.” I stretched my back after I shut the dishwasher. “Why am I even doing these? Aren’t you supposed to be doting on me, at this point?”