“That’s us, Bear,” Luke clarifies.
“Dad. I am NOT saying rhinoceros. Got it?”
“Got it.” Luke catches my gaze and holds it.
I don’t look away. I don’t want to. I love the way he looks at her, like he would do anything to make her happy. She looks at him the same way. I love that Luke the Guy doesn’t really change that much when he’s Luke the Dad. I love the crunchy macaroni and the lumpy sugar cookies and the tutus and the frilly aprons.
And I love Luke Poulos so much it should scare me. But tonight, it doesn’t. So I pinch a wayward candy heart from my placemat and slide it across the table.
“I’ll just hold on to that.” He picks up the heart and drops it in his shirt pocket. “Keep it safe.”
I believe him.
chapter twenty-five
Elle,
Mom and I got into it last night. It was worse than usual. I can’t even tell you the things she said about us. All of us. You, me, Dad—and I’m lying here, staring and the ceiling, and trying so hard to tell myself that the things she believes aren’t true. But her hatred just weighs me down, you know? Feels like a weight on my chest; makes it hard to breathe. And I don’t know how to shake this without you here.
Love you for infinity,
A
I sleep in on Saturday morning for the first time in months. The muffled clang of dishes being stacked in the kitchen draws me out of sleep, and when I roll onto my side I almost expect to Luke to be there, grinning from beneath a mop of curly, sleep-mussed hair. Instead I find a pile of folded laundry I’d been too lazy to put away, and one of Gwen’s back issues of People.
I flop onto my back and blink at the ceiling, allowing myself to sink into the warm memory of the night before. It comes in brief moments, like a series of short films I want to rewind and play again and again. The look of sheer joy on Lilah’s face when I pulled her inedible lumps of burned sugar from the oven. The way she settled into my lap after dinner and fell asleep in my arms, her mouth slightly open and smudged with frosting. The way Luke looked at me as I held her. Liked he loved us both, separately and together.
The sweet scent of Waverly’s hazelnut coffee drifts beneath the crack in the door. I slip out of bed and grab the first pair of jeans I can find and one of the folded t-shirts from my laundry stack, my navy WHARTON tee. As I brush my teeth, I study my reflection in the mirror. Tousled auburn hair, pale skin with just a whisper of pink in my cheeks and on the tip of my nose from the sun.
The girl in the mirror looks like me. The real me; the me I’ve become since I arrived in Miami. She is not a fraud, not the imposter I believed her to be when I first arrived at Dr. Goodwin’s house for the Allford reception. I give her a small smile. A peace offering.
Your name is Elle Sloane. You are an economics teacher. Your life so far has been anything but normal, or bland, or average. But you have survived it all, and you are loved by a good man. And maybe one day soon, you’ll explain everything. Maybe he’ll understand. Right now, in this moment, you are happy. This time when the words echo in my mind, I truly believe them.
In the kitchen, Waverly and Gwen are sitting at the table nursing steaming mugs and bowls of cereal.
“Well, it’s about time, girl,” Waverly says. She’s dressed already, in turquoise jeans and a cream tank top.
“I know. I slept late,” I yawn, shuffling toward the coffee maker.
“You’ve had a long week. I’m sure your body needed it.” Gwen smiles over the top of her mug.
Waverly’s features contort in disgust as I pour my coffee and take a seat between them. “I could care less what your body needs. How’d it go with the kid?”
“She was a really sweet little girl, actually.” I pour my coffee and take a cautious sip. “You know what was really weird, though?”
“I knew it.” Waverly smacks the table with an open palm. “What’d she do?”
“Nothing. What was really weird was that it wasn’t weird at all.” I trace the rim of my mug with my index finger. “It just felt natural. There was nothing forced or fake about the whole thing.”
“That’s so fucking cool.” Gwen beams at me. “So you felt like you could be yourself? You weren’t nervous?”
“I was when I first got there. But then I met her, and we just sort of fell into this…” I pause, searching for the words to explain. But the searching is like sifting through handfuls of sand to find the perfect grain. The words slip through my fingers too fast. “…routine. We ate dinner and made cookies, and it felt like we’d been doing those things together for a long time. It felt… normal.” Heat rises to my cheeks.