Page 97 of The Cost of Forgetting You

“Iteration. Good use of your SAT vocab, English teacher.”

She rolls her eyes, but when they return to mine, they’re a little bit brighter. “Are you happy? With Kimberly?”

I blink. “I can’t remember the last time someone asked me that.”

“Well, I’m asking you now. Are you?”

There’s always an undercurrent when Lucy’s this close. A spark that flows beneath my skin, jolting me awake. I feel it now, pulsing. It’s the kind of thing you could get addicted to, even when you know you shouldn’t.

“I’m happy now”—I sweep my arms out toward the barren classroom—“with this.”

She presses her lips together and nods. Settles her fingers over the keys. “Okay.”

Before I can reply, she starts to play. At first I assume it’s an original, but then a familiar swell reverberates through my chest and I remember a different piano, in a room with green carpet and vaulted ceilings. I remember a girl with a purity ring and a yellow sundress, and the song we played together.

I pivot on the bench and join in, rusty at first and then in perfect sync. There are so many words we’ll never be able to say to each other. A lifetime of conversations missed. But in this way, we can be honest with each other. With ourselves.

We are happy. And we are sad. We want more from this life, and yet we’d never change it. All these things can be true at once. We’re not bad people for it. We’re just people. Just Lucy and Henry. A breath apart, but also a lifetime.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Delilah

Awareness floods me with the scent of freshly brewed coffee and something so masculine it makes my stomach clench. Rain splatters against nearby windows. There’s an ache running the length of my cheekbone, up to the shell of my ear. I try to pull away from whatever firm, flat surface I’ve knocked out on, but that surface has arms that tighten when I put the tiniest bit of effort into moving.

“Back to sleep,” Truett groans, his voice thick. “Too early.”

This time when I yank backward, he lets me go. I prop my palms on the hard plane of his chest, arching my back to create space between us. I orient myself, blinking the blur of sleep away to find my father sitting at the table sipping his coffee. He glances up at me and smiles like it’s normal that I’m sprawled over Truett Parker on our living room couch, a spot of my drool seeping through the front of his shirt. Like yesterday never happened.

For a moment I wonder if it did. But if it hadn’t… How else would Truett be beneath me now?

The front door creaks open. Roberta doesn’t knock anymore. Lately her absence is felt more strongly than her presence. That’s how integrated she is in our family. How necessary. I don’t know how I’d make it through the long days without her. How I’d have survived yesterday and calming Dad down in the aftermath, if I didn’t have Roberta.

If I could go back in time and talk with the version of me who thought she could do this alone, I’d laugh in her face. Gently.

Roberta kicks off her rain boots on the porch and steps inside. When her gaze lands on the two of us, an easy smile spreads over her face. “Well, don’t you guys look cozy.”

Heat floods my cheeks, and I scramble the rest of the way upward and over, till I’m sitting at the other end of the couch next to Truett’s feet. He grunts when my knee narrowly misses his groin and cracks one eye open. “Careful there; I need those.”

I shoot him a glare. How did I end up asleep in Truett’s arms? The last thing I remember was dragging my blanket out here at half past midnight, telling him I couldn’t sleep for fear that Dad would slip away in the night unnoticed. Truett had tucked his legs in, making room for me at the opposite end of the couch, where I planned to sit vigil the entire night.

He’s staring at me now through the narrow slit of his eyes. He wipes a hand over his tense jaw, and it slackens, his mouth parting into a lazy grin. “Morning, Temptress.”

I elbow the soft underside of his foot and he yelps. “How’d I end up down there, huh?”

“Apparently you’re not the only one who’s irresistible.”

“Funny,” I deadpan.

Roberta empties the remainder of the coffee my dad prepared into a cup and passes it to me as I approach, righting my oversize tee where it had slipped off my shoulder. I hear Truett stretch and groan behind me. The pop of his joints fills the room with the sound of firecrackers. “Are you seriously taking the last of the coffee?” he says.

“Relax, I’m making a fresh batch,” Roberta calls over her shoulder. “I gave her that one because Henry let a few too many grounds slip through.”

Truett laughs. Dad glances up sharply. “I did not!” He peers into his cup, grimacing.

I pour a bit of creamer into my coffee and wrinkle my nose. “You did.”

I feel the heat of Tru before I see him. He steps up behind me and peers over my shoulder at the coffee grounds floating in my mug. One of his hands locks on my hip like it’s the most natural thing in the world to touch me like this, to wake up beside me. And in some ways it is. He fits into my mix-and-match family better than I do most days. I peer down at his hand splayed over the hem of my cotton shorts and remind myself not to imagine his fingers slipping beneath that hem, dusting sensitive skin as he blazes a path to?—

---