He kisses me again, and then we get up. We eat spaghetti and meatballs and we soak in the hot tub and we sleep in the same bed, Daniel’s arm thrown across my back.
When we wake up, we wake to the sun streaming through the bedroom window. We snuggle for a long time, saying nothing, just Daniel and me together, alone, the two of us.
And it’s perfect.EpilogueDanielOne Month Later“Do you think he’ll like it?” Rusty asks from the back seat. “At first I had unicorn stickers on it but I’m not sure Uncle Seth likes unicorns, so I put the shark stickers on it instead.”
I glance in the rearview mirror. She’s holding up a novelty cowboy hat, the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY emblazoned in gold on the front.
“I think he’ll definitely like it,” my mom says, reaching over and touching the hat. “Look at all those different sharks.”
“I also had a princess hat,” Rusty says, still contemplating.
“Seth’s not much for princesses,” my mom says, and in the passenger seat, I can see Charlie press her knuckles against her mouth and look out the window, probably before she says something inappropriate about my little brother.
“He’ll like the cowboy hat much better,” I say, loud enough that Rusty can hear me.
“More appropriate,” Charlie mutters, casting me a quick, conspiratorial glance.
“Ridden everything in town,” I agree sotto voce.
My mom gives me a look in the rear-view mirror, but I don’t think Rusty heard us.
She’s still chattering away as I pull into Eli’s driveway and park behind Seth’s mustang. Rusty’s the first one out, impatiently rattling the door handle against the child lock until I let her out, then racing up the stairs to Eli’s deck, already shouting for Seth. I watch her long enough to confirm that there are, indeed, responsible adults up there, and then I open the back and grab the cooler.
“Don’t jostle it too much, please,” my mom says. “It’s loaded very particularly, you know.”
“I would never intentionally harm a pie, mom,” I say. “You know that.”
I heave the cooler out of the back. Charlie comes around, gives me a quick once-over look, then grabs a few more things.
I flex a little harder and lift the cooler a little higher. She notices, but my mom’s there so she pretends she doesn’t and closes the lift gate after me.
“You can touch if you want,” I tell her the moment my mom’s out of earshot.
“The cooler?” she asks, blinking up at me in faux-innocence.
“C’mon, squeeze one,” I say, lifting the cooler a smidge higher. “No one’s looking.”
“Daniel, get your pies upstairs,” she says.
“I know you want to.”
“If they get jostled, it’s not gonna be on me.”
“Just a quick squeeze, I already caught you looking,” I say, grinning down at her.
Charlie sighs, glances over at the deck where Rusty is currently presenting Seth with a cowboy hat and Seth is acting very impressed.
“Fine,” she says, and slides her hand around my bicep.
I flex.
Charlie laughs but she also blushes, her cheeks going faintly pink under the freckles, and I wink at her.
“Told you,” I say.
“Ridiculous,” she says, and then we head up the stairs just in time to see Seth ever so carefully perch the hat on his head.
“That’s a real good look, pardner,” Silas says. He’s standing next to Seth. On Seth’s other side, his younger sister June rolls her eyes and drinks her beer.
Seth touches the brim of the slightly-too-small hat and ducks his head.
“Thank you kindly,” he says, his accent matching Seth’s.
Rusty’s grinning from ear to ear, and I duck inside to where my mom’s instructing me to relinquish the pies in the kitchen.
“Thank you,” she says, opening the cooler again. “Oh good, the new pie system worked. I was afraid the blueberry would get crushed on the bottom, but—” she holds up a pie, inspecting it, “—it’s right as rain.”
Outside, it already smells amazing. Eli and Violet have a very small but very adorable house on Deepwood Lake, and over the past year they’ve built a huge deck onto one side. It’s making its debut today at Seth’s birthday barbecue.
Because it’s Eli, there’s a whole cooking section on the deck. Two charcoal grills. A gas grill. Something that’s got a window in the front of it and somewhat resembles a bank vault. A turkey deep fryer, though that at least appears to be off right now.
Charlie walks up to me, a beer in each hand. I pick one, we clink our bottles together, and drink, wandering back over to the knot of my brothers and their friends.
“The monster’s name is Dave?” June’s asking Rusty.
“It’s short for David,” Rusty explains.
June has to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
“He’s only Dave to friends and family,” Levi says. “With everyone else he prefers Mr. Monster.”
I shoot Charlie a quick glance. Levi? Acting like a normal human in June’s presence?