I bite down over my lip debating whether or not I should call her out on the fact she’s been crying. Ken isn’t one to share her soft side. Confronting her on a meltdown often comes with a price.
“You’re right,” I say. Last year Dad and Warren senior held a picnic at the park, and it was bland as oatmeal. “Fireworks are always a good call. Speaking of fireworks…” I let her in on the fact I’m on the final frontier of becoming a woman and hold back a laugh because I know she’s going to zing me with some sarcastic remark.
“Really?” Kennedy pats a spot next to her, and I flop down on the couch. “I think that’s beautiful.” She wraps her arms around my waist and lays her head on my shoulder. “And, now, for the rest of your lives you’ll both think of each other on the Fourth of July. It’s like the whole country will be having barbeques and lighting off fireworks in honor of your special night—forever.”
“Very funny.” Although not half as clever as I would have pegged her for because it just so happens to be romantic as hell.
“No, I’m not trying to be funny. I mean it.” She pulls back and gives a hard sniff.
“What’s going on?”
Her mascara is smeared along one side, and she’s got track marks in her foundation where her tears once flowed.
“It’s Keith. I know we’re over, but it’s like we just won’t let it die. Sort of like you and Warren.”
“What are you talking about?” A part of me wants to push her off the couch in an effort to set her straight. Warren and I are nothing like her and Keith. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not into Warren like that?”
“Oh, really? Then why did you let him take you to prom in high school? Oh wait, every dance in high school? Why did you go with him to Vale for a part of your winter break and Cancun just after school let out?”
“Those were all group events.”
“No, they weren’t. I was there with Keith, and you were there with Warren. Sure there were a few stragglers, but you and Warren always sat together, always had dinner. He kissed you until you were both blue in the face. The only thing you never did was sleep with him, and, rumor has it, he’s got a line of skanks a mile long to satisfy him. But, for whatever reason, he always floats back to you. You’re his anchor, whether you like it or not.” Kennedy narrows in on me with her accusing stare. “For God’s sake, Reese—you keep a picture of the two of you in a heart-shaped frame on your desk.”
“Shit,” I hiss at the revelation. “I don’t know. In my mind it never went down like that. We had the same friends, so we hung out.” I turn and bury my face in her neck. This is it, the final unveiling of a truth I had been hiding even from myself. Warren and I had happened, we were still happening, and, as much as it hurts to admit, I’d keep the ball rolling forever if I knew it pleased my father. My mother crushed us with her death. I hated her for leaving, especially since she lit up our lives like an oil lamp. And then, in an instant, she was gone, and keeping my father happy had become my life’s work. “I don’t know how to do it. It’ll kill, Daddy. Besides, I told Warren we should see other people, and it’s like he didn’t even hear it.”
“Please, Reese, don’t string people along for the sake of your dad, he’s got my mom. Maybe if you accept that, you’d see he doesn’t need you trying to balance yourself on a rolling log when what you should really do is drop in the water, swim to something more stable.” She pulls me back until we’re eye to eye. “You need to have a serious heart to heart with Warren. Let him know he’ll find someone special one day like you did.” She gives a wry smile. “Only don’t say that last part. Just leave it in a happy place.”
“Got it.” I rub her back. Kennedy’s sweet honeysuckle perfume comforts me. “Did Keith leave it in a happy place?”
“No. He didn’t. He found someone else.” Tears fall fast and loose. “I guess that’s the funny thing about relationships, people always think they’re with the right person until they find out they’re not.” She gives a hard sniff. “Anyway, enough about me.” She takes a breath. “As for your dad, have a nice sit down with him, too, and explain to him that Warren just isn’t the one. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t try. Sometimes when love taps you on the shoulder, you don’t always find who you expect on the other side. That’s one of the nice surprises life has to offer. Warren will still be a part of the family.”
A clatter comes from the kitchen.
“That’s Dad,” I whisper. My heart races like a prisoner who just climbed over the barbed wire. “I’ve got something to ask him, but I think I’ll hold off on the Warren speech until I can process it a little more.”
I go to get up, and she catches me by the wrist.
“It’s okay to have your excuses, Reese.” Her eyes spear right through me. “Just know you may not always have them. The sooner the better. Life has a way of unleashing the truth in the most inconvenient way. I should know. The more I learn about Keith and Joanna, the more I’m figuring out it wasn’t a one-time deal.”
“I’m so sorry.” I pull her into a hug and hold her like that for a long time. Kennedy is right, the sooner I tell my dad about Warren the better. Then maybe I can tell him how I feel about Ace. If my father approved, it would mean everything.
“Get out of here.” She pushes me up. “We’ll talk tomorrow before the real fireworks go off.”
The real fireworks. Just the thought of being with Ace buoys me with excitement, and I bump into Dad as I fly into the kitchen.
“Um…” Crap. “I was thinking about baking something for tomorrow. Do you think I can have Mom’s special recipes?”
Dad raises his brows. “Sure. I thought you’d never ask. You know, it’s the only letter I don’t keep in the safety deposit box at the bank.” He heads back to his bedroom, and I follow. “Of course, I had the teller make a copy of each letter and put them in separate locations in the event the bank disappeared overnight in an act of God. I promised your mother I’d keep them private just between you and her. I’ve never read them, but I’m hoping one day you’ll have mercy on me and show me one or two.” His features sag a moment, and I can see the grief prickling on the edges. “I do miss her.” He pulls me in by the shoulder and presses a kiss over my head.
We walk over to his bedroom, but I linger by the door. I find it creepy to be in the room he shares with Beverly knowing the things they might do in here, although I doubt it’s anything like what happened with Ace and me the other night. That was downright dirty magic.
He returns from his closet with another envelope that matches the ones I have upstairs. My mother’s loopy handwriting greets me across the front.
“Special recipes,” he chimes.
“Great.” I fan myself with it a moment before kissing my father on the cheek. It’ll most likely be the last kiss from his little girl. I bring the envelope to my lips and take in its warm scent as if it were my mother.
I’m on my way to becoming a woman. And, now, I’ll have my mother’s words of wisdom to guide me.
My thumb and forefinger create small circles over the envelope for a long time. The paper warms beneath me until it’s hot to the touch.
I can’t do it.
Instead, I tuck it away with the rest of her letters and swear to myself that I’ll read it in the morning. If it is my last night as a girl, I may as well save my mother’s life-changing advice for my life-changing day. Tomorrow a whole new world opens up for me, and I might as well start the day off with a word of advice from my mother.
Around nine-thirty, after Ace has a chance to shower and wash all his woodcutting efforts from Sherman County off his body, he meets me down by the gnarled oak at the base of my house.
It’s dark out, the moon is hardly a sideways sliver, but those are the best nights in Loveless because you can see the stars spray out like pinholes, trying desperately to expose the glory of heaven. Beverly once said it reminded her of a shattered crystal vase, and that pretty much solidified the fact that Beverly could
see the negative in just about anything.
I run over to Ace and wrap my entire body around him, and he spins me while landing a dizzying kiss over my lips.
“I missed you like crazy,” he whispers hot in my ear. He smells good and clean like spices and mint, a slight woodsy scent mingles in the background.
“You did?” I give a playful tug at his ear. “I missed you way more than you could ever miss me.”
“Doubtful.” He swoops in and picks me up.
“So”—I draw a soft circle over his chest as he carries me over the dirt trail—“are you as excited about tomorrow night as I am?” I gaze up at him. He’s so stunning. He presses against the night sky with his dark hair catching the light of the moon, picking up blue highlights. His dimples go off, and he’s trying to withhold a smile but it breaks free anyway.
“More than you’ll ever know.”
“What’s the plan for tonight?”
“I thought maybe we’d hang out—be the awesome Ace and Reese for one last time.” He bears into me with a slight hint of sadness as if he missed the old us already.
“Hey”—I swat him gently over the shoulder, and my heart ticks a notch at how muscular he is, how rock solid he is in all the right places—“won’t we be awesome after tomorrow?”
“After tomorrow, we’ll be extraordinarily awesome.” He dots a quick kiss on my forehead. “In fact our awesomeness will be impossible to contain. The entire mountain might quake just having us both on it at the same time.”
“Sounds epic.”
“It will be.”
The curve of his bicep twitches as he maneuvers me over toward his cabin. I run my finger up the thick cords of his neck, over his jawline, and up through the ridge of his nose.
“I wish I were an artist,” I whisper. “I’d sketch you—mold a bust of your beautiful face just so I could take you with me wherever I go.”
“You have a way with words. I’d say you’re more of a poet.”
“I don’t know. I’m terrible at rhyming.”
Ace lands me on my feet just shy of his car and swings the door open for me.
“Not all poems need to rhyme. Just write from your heart.” He lands a careful kiss over my lips. “Like a letter with a little more feeling.”
“A letter with a little more feeling.” I blink back instant tears. “That’s exactly what my mother wrote me. Poems.”
Ace tilts into me with a sad smile. He takes my cheeks up in his hands and draws me toward him. “Sometimes, Reese”—he brushes his lips over mine just enough to make me ache for him—“you can write a poem with a kiss.”
And that’s just what we do.
The boathouse is quiet, still, as if we’ve just stepped into our own private universe. There’s so much peace here without any of the drama that Warren affords or the stress of trying to maintain an image my father might approve of. Here, I’m able to shed them both like dead skin. My entire being feels invigorated escaping reality this way with the boy who stole my heart.
Ace starts a fire in the potbelly stove even though it’s still pretty warm out.
“We can just start taking off our clothes if it gets too hot,” I tease while bouncing on the bed.
“The candles alone won’t be enough light for what we’re about to do.” He smolders into me with those glowing eyes. “The overhead light would blind us. I thought the fire might be a happy compromise.” He opens the windows off the back, and a nice breeze flows in making the gauze curtains flutter like a pair of ghosts. I can’t help but note the romantic implications of it all. Whether Ace is aware of it or not he’s a born romantic.
He comes over and sits beside me on the bed.
“For what we’re about to do?” I tease, running my hand up his shirt. “I like the sound of that.” But more specifically I like the way he blisters over the palm of my hand, the smooth ridges of his abs that lie hard as concrete under his skin.
“I’m glad you like the sound of that.” He plucks my hand out and kisses it sweetly over the top. A smile tugs at his lips. “Get on the floor.”
“Yes, master.” God knows I’m up for Ace barking out orders tonight and me complying. I’d do anything Ace wanted as long as we could be together, as long as I ended tonight and every other night in his arms.
I kneel down on the center of the rug and he takes a seat on the floor, opposite of me, pulling something out from under the bed.
“What’s that?” I slide next to him, observing the familiar jar in his hand. “I remember those.” It’s filled to the brim with colorful marbles, mostly clear ones with swirls of blue and red in the center. It may as well be filled to the brim with my childhood. I wish I could open the lid and fall back into those haze filled days when my mother was still alive, baking special treats for my father and me in the kitchen.
“I thought we’d take it slow today. Go old school.” He wraps his arm around my waist and his cologne intoxicates me. He spills out the tiny glass spheres between us, and picks up the oversized navy beauty, clear as midnight. It’s the exact color of his gorgeous eyes. “This is the shooter.” He spreads the marbles out with his hand. “Any marble you shoot outside this ring is yours.” He traces the outer edges of the braided rug, about a three-foot circumference. “The one with the most marbles wins.”
“That’s it?” I’ve never played marbles before, and certainly it always seemed to have something more to it, but I’m all for easy. “That sounds easy enough. I like the simple things in life.” I take the shooter from him and roll it in my hands.
“You like the simple things?” He tilts in observing me as if he learned something entirely new.
“Yeah, I do. I guess you could say I’m the anti-Kennedy. She needs designer labels just to breathe, and I couldn’t care less as long as I have sunshine on my back—peace in my heart.” I reach up and run my fingers through his hair. It’s still damp from the shower and slick. “She needs security. I need love.” I swallow hard, reverting my gaze to the carpet. “So who goes first?”
His eyes are still pressing into me, heating the entire right side of my body like an inferno I’ve accidently gotten too close to. But I can’t seem to face him. I let the L word fly from my lips, and now it’s fluttering around the room like a bat getting ready to tangle itself in our hearts, things are bound to get messy, and we’ll have to cut it out—cut each other out of one another’s lives as collateral damage.
Ace picks up my hand and intertwines our fingers, soft, without pretense. “I think you deserve love, Reese. That’s exactly what I told you that first night in the lake. I want you to have it.”
Ace didn’t mention that he’d like to be the one to give it to me, so I guess love is outside the realm of possibility for us.
My eyes skirt the braided rug that sparkles with the remnants of our childhood. I lean in and shoot the oversized navy eye across the floor and take three marbles out of the ring.
“Now, there’s something I love.” I give a quick wink collecting my glass winnings.
Ace frowns into me a moment before breaking out into his killer grin. “You’re about to go down, Westfield.”
He takes the shooter and proceeds to knock a single marble out of the ring, and just barely at that. I reach over and pick it up. It’s a chalky yellow, pocked with a thousand little holes that make it lighter than air.
“Hey, this is made out of cork or something. I don’t think this counts.”
“It was in the pile.” His cheek rises seductively as he takes it from me. “All’s fair in love and marbles.” He holds my gaze this time and neither of us moves.
“I think maybe we should have outlined the rules a little better.” My throat dries up as I say it. Ace Waterman is making my panties disintegrate with nothing more than that serious gaze of his—that steady stream of innuendos that I wish meant something more.
“Sometimes it’s best to let things play out.” He places his hand over mine as he lays the shooter in my palm but he doesn’t
move. Instead he warms me with his eyes, his skin over mine. “Things have a way of ending up just the way they’re supposed to.” His fingers pull from mine, achingly slow and my insides cry out to have him, right here over this bed of miniaturized rolling stones.
“Do you believe that?” It comes from me childlike, tragically innocent.
“I do.” His gaze never wavers. “I really, really do.”
I take in a deep breath as the woodsy scent from the fireplace permeates the air with the pleasant bite of hickory. I wonder what those words mean to Ace, but I’m too much of a coward to ask. Maybe after the summer…
“We’ll be friends forever, right?” I ask while trying to shoot an entire mob of marbles out of the circle, and not one of them twitches under my command.
“That’s right.” His lips press into a line as he shoots into the exact same spot and lands six of them off the carpet without much effort. “I’ll always be in Loveless. You know where to find me if you’re ever in the mood for an affair.” His chest pumps just once.
I shoot at a clear yellow marble and land it on the line.
“It still counts,” I say, scooping it up as a win.
“You like to make your own rules, don’t you?” He shoots another half dozen off the rug, and I shake my head at the fact Ace is kicking my ass.
“Sometimes making your own rules is the only way to go.” Ace might be landing the marbles where he wants them but I’ve managed to land him where I want him, and tomorrow night, that’s exactly where he’ll be. Too bad it’s not a permanent arrangement. Too bad I’m not better at figuring out how to keep what I win.
We continue our game until I’m effectively decimated, and, as the loser, I have to scoop up all the marbles on my own, but Ace helps anyway.
“Come here.” He lands me over his lap and we stare at the fire, listening to it sing its broken song through a series of wild crackles.