“Just . . . come on.” We left our shoes and he led the way down to the edge of the water. We stood there in the semidarkness, hearing the waves better than we could see them. The water looked black at this hour. Black with white frills that caught the moonlight. The few couples I could see were spread out along the beach, as far from one another as they could be, greedy for privacy.
“Why is the ocean so wonderful?” I asked after we’d gazed in contented silence for a while.
“I don’t know,” George said. “People can’t survive without water, so maybe we’re biologically programmed to want to be near it.”
“You just managed to suck all the poetry right out of this.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Doesn’t this make you want to do something?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” I circled my hands in the air, frustrated by my inability to put the feeling into words. “There’s something about how beautiful it is—and how the waves look—and the sound, too . . . and it’s like we should go out and build castles or fight evil or just run around in circles screaming. Don’t you feel that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s so big and we’re so small. It makes you want to be bigger. To matter.”
“Right.” I turned and we started walking along the shore. “The sand’s freezing. My feet are getting numb.”
“You want to go back inside?”
“Soon. Not yet.” I glanced sideways at him. “So what could we do that would matter? Build hospitals? Slay evil dictators? Write the great American novel?”
“We could write the great American novel about an evil dictator while sitting in a hospital,” he said. “But what we’ll really do is walk away and forget that feeling within about five minutes and end up like the rest of the world, working any job we can get and leading lives of quiet desperation.”
“You’re a cynic.”
“No—a realist.”
I glanced up at the resort and saw a couple strolling toward the ocean, holding hands. “Isn’t that Mom and Luke?”
“I think so,” George said, and we headed toward them. There were a few other couples trailing them, acting all casual and indifferent but clearly sneaking glimpses at the famous TV star. At least they were all keeping a respectful distance.
“What are you two doing down here?” Mom asked as we came together.
“I had to get out of that room,” I said. “Jacob threw a fit—he was screaming and throwing his food. I ran into George in the lobby and we thought we’d see what the beach was like.”
“Jacob had a tantrum?” Even in the dim light, I could see Mom’s brow furrow. “He’s been having so many lately.”
“It’s just because he was on a plane all day,” Luke said with an easy shrug. “After a six-hour flight, I’m ready to throw things, too.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “And most kids scream on airplanes. It’s sort of amazing he didn’t.”
Mom didn’t respond to that.
By the time I got back to the room, Jacob was asleep and Grandma was watching TV with the volume down low—some reality show about a bunch of swollen-lipped women who were drinking wine and yelling at one another.
I curled up on the other bed—Jacob was in a rollaway crib—and texted Heather. I wanted to tell her that Aaron Marquand was coming to live in LA.
He’s the cute one, right? she texted back. With the blue eyes? She hadn’t ever met him, but I’d shown her photos.
Yep. AKA my future husband.
Squeal.
seven
The breeze was blowing strands of hair against my sticky-glossy lips. I had to keep reaching up and pulling them away with my free hand. I wished I’d put my hair up. Or not worn lip gloss.
Jacob’s hand was sweaty in mine as Luke made a toast to Mom. I glanced down at my little brother, who was wearing a soft dark-green top over white pants. His thick, wavy hair was neatly brushed for once—it was on the long side because he hated having it cut and would scream when anyone tried, but at least it looked cute that way. He also didn’t like having it brushed, but I’d won that battle this morning by bribing him: an M&M for each pass of the brush and he got to watch TV the whole time.
He was pretty adorable all dressed up. Kid-model cute. He held my hand tightly and stared up at the slowly rotating fake-palm-leaf fan above us.
We were in a room with floor-to-ceiling glass doors facing the ocean, all of them open for the party. We could hear the waves and feel the breeze, but we had a wooden floor under our feet and three walls to keep the event private. For added security, George had also asked the hotel not to use Luke’s real name, so the event schedule down in the lobby read “Anniversary of John and Jane Smith.” I took a photo and texted it to Heather with a jaunty Maybe we’re related.
“I am so brilliant,” I crowed to Jonathan after the toast was done, and waiters had started passing around drinks and hors d’oeuvres. “Don’t you think this was a brilliant idea? Don’t Luke and Mom look happy?” Mom’s face had lit up when Luke said that the last five years had been the happiest of his life, and their kiss at the end of his toast had looked pretty passionate from where I was standing.
“It’s great,” Jonathan said, and squeezed my shoulders.
“It’s really pretty here,” his fiancée added. Izzy had straight dark eyebrows and straight dark hair. She always seemed very serious and intense to me, but it’s possible I was reading too much into the eyebrows.
They moved on to talk to Luke’s business manager. I helped myself to a glass of champagne and raised it to Luke, who had caught my eye from across the room. He blew me a kiss. I had definitely lucked out in the stepfather department. And not because Luke had become so rich and famous. Because he was Luke.
My grandmother beckoned to me. She’d had her hair blown out by a professional that morning, and it looked sleek and shiny, instead of frizzy and bumpy like it usually did. Between that and the neatly tailored blue silk dress Mom had bought for her, she looked great. “Are you sure you should—” she began, but then she saw something that distracted her. “Is that a piece of cheese? Why would she give that to him? He eats way too much dairy.” She ran toward Mom and Jacob.