I kissed his forehead and said, “Please don’t ever hold back. I may not be able to fix anything, but I’m always here to listen.”
“I appreciate that.” He sat up and smiled at me, even though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Enough of me wallowing in self-pity. Let’s go downstairs and join our friends. We should be celebrating our time together, not moping.” It was really all we could do—make the best of what we had.
* * *
As always, I slept great with my boyfriend at my side. The next morning, I made pancakes for the entire household, and then Lucky and I lingered over coffee in the backyard while Owen ran around chasing the small white butterflies that liked to visit the flowers. Fortunately, he had zero chance of ever catching one. If he did, he’d probably try to eat it.
Lucky checked the time on his phone and muttered, “It’s about that time.” The car service always picked him up at exactly eleven a.m., and it was currently a quarter ’til. Once he pocketed his phone again, he said, “I’m going to swing by and visit Ana-Sophia at the diner before I head to the airport. It’s almost her birthday, and I wanted to drop off a gift.”
“That’s nice of you, but won’t you end up being late for your flight?” He was leaving at the same time he always did, and as far as I knew, he always took the same flight home.
“I’m flying out a few minutes later than usual, because I didn’t want seeing my friend to cut into my time with you.”
I had to ask. “So, are we still sticking with that whole not introducing me to your friend thing?”
He broke eye contact as he muttered, “Like I said before, the Lucky she knows is very different than the one you know. It would just be awkward for me if you two met.”
I really didn’t know what he could possibly mean by that. I already knew about his wild years—the self-destructiveness of his early twenties, the partying that followed, and the way he used to sleep with a different man every night. In fact, at this point I was pretty sure I knew everything about him. What could there possibly be for me to discover?
But if he wanted to keep Ana-Sophia and me apart, so be it. This wasn’t important enough to me to push for a meeting.
A few minutes later, I stood on the front porch with Lucky, hugging him tightly. The black town car was double-parked and I knew I couldn’t drag this out, but it was so hard to say goodbye.
Lucky kissed me before resting his forehead against mine and sighing. “This only gets harder, not easier,” he said.
“You’re right.”
“I’ll message you tonight, when I get in.” I nodded and kissed him again, and then I stood there and watched as he jogged down the stairs, climbed into the back seat, and drove away. Damn it. Every single time, it felt like a piece of my heart left with him.
After I took a minute to get myself together, I closed the door and went back to the kitchen. Owen was in his high chair, having a snack with Lark and Dylan. Lucky always said goodbye incrementally—first to the baby, then to me. Owen got too upset when we brought him to the door and he watched Lucky leave, so we’d started the snack distraction.
I sat down at the table, where Dylan was browsing a U.C. Berkeley course catalog. His parents were both professors in the university’s sociology department and had been encouraging him to go back to school, now that he’d retired as a firefighter. He closed the catalog and asked, “How are you, Logan?”
“You know. Gutted as usual.”
Lark was sitting on the counter, eating cereal right from the box, and he said, “You guys really need to come up with a better solution for seeing each other. Can’t Lucky work remotely or something?”
“Maybe someday. Definitely not now, while his dad’s training him on how to run the company.” Because it was too depressing to dwell on this subject, I gestured at the catalog and asked Dylan, “Are you thinking about applying?”
“Possibly. It’s time to start thinking about what’s next for me, career-wise, so I’ve decided to audit a couple of classes this fall. I just want to see how it feels to be back in school.”
“Can I take a look?” When he handed me the catalog, I flipped to the Information Technology section and read down the class list.
Lark asked, “Are you thinking about going back?”
“I will someday for sure. It wouldn’t take much to finish my degree, just a handful of classes. But it’s tough to see how I could make that happen any time soon.”
“When you do decide to go back to school, you know Lark and I will help out in any way we can,” Dylan told me. “Watching Owen is a given, but maybe there are other things we can do too, like researching grants or scholarships. Since my parents work at a university, they have a lot of contacts in various departments.”
“I appreciate it. For now, it’s just an idea, but I definitely feel like I need to start making some kind of plan for Owen’s and my future.”
Dylan asked, “As long as you’re considering your options, have you looked into the University of Miami?”
“I thought about following Lucky to Florida, but it’s not a good idea. For one thing, I really believe it’s important for Owen to have the stability of our family, and uprooting him and moving him across the country less than six months after his mom left him just seems irresponsible.
“But also, this is where Lucky wants to be, and he’s miserable in that job. What we need to figure out is how to bring him back here, as opposed to packing up the baby and following him.”
“That makes sense,” Lark said. “I know he’s not just going to forget about his responsibility to his dad though, so let’s all hope for the return of Prohibition. That would not only drive the liquor company out of business, but we could make a fortune running a cozy little speakeasy.” My brother flashed me a big smile.
I grinned and said, “Sure, let’s hope for that. How sad that it seems like the only thing that’d actually let Lucky return to San Francisco.”