Page 109 of Our Long Days
Patrick blows out a breath, dragging a hand through his messy hair. “This is…weird. Am I totally oblivious? Does everyone know?” He laughs in disbelief, still slightly perplexed.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure Lottie worked it out before you.” Jo laughs, face turning serious when Patrick groans into his hands.
“No sex talk. No PDA. No…” He aims a warning finger at Dex. “No breaking her heart.” Then, he turns to me. “Same goes for you. Is there something else I’m supposed to say? Make an honest woman out of her or some shit?”
Johanna snorts. Dex shrivels in his chair.
I grin, taking pleasure in his discomfort. “Too late for that, big bro?—”
Dex slaps a hand over my mouth as Patrick pales and shoots up from his seat. “Things I didn’t need to know.” Behind his flustered state, acceptance shines through. “I’m gonna go lie down.” He darts across the lawn, pausing in front of Lottie. “No dating until you're forty.”
“Lord help him when he has two daughters.” Jo rolls her eyes and smooths a hand over her belly. “For what it’s worth, you look good together.”
“He’s okay.” I toy with the hem of my dress. “Early days, so we’ll see how it goes.”
“Watch it,” Dex growls.
When Jo leaves, he crooks a finger at me. “Come here, Trouble.”
Depositing myself on his knee, I sit sideways on his lap, pecking a kiss to his lips—because I can. “That went…okay?”
“Better than expected. My jaw isn’t dislocated.” He chuckles, tracing circles on my thigh absentmindedly.
We sit like that for a while, watching the party unwind and the sun set. There are a few stares from people who know us—not judgmental, just curious. My other two brothers seem a lot cooler about it than Patrick. Low and behold, my mom waves at us, omniscient as the sky is blue.
“How are you feeling about your appointment next week?” Dex mumbles into my shoulder.
I shrug. “I’m not sure. Nervous. Anxious. Eager.”
Once my insurance transferred to Dex’s employee plan, I arranged an appointment. I’d put it off long enough.
“If you don’t vibe with this doctor, we find a new one. Don’t settle. Ask questions. Write it all down. Don’t feel pressured to decide on the spot.”
We.He uses that word so freely. We’ve evolved from skirting around our attraction to becoming a team.
“I won’t.”
He frowns. “I can take the day off?—”
Pressing my fingers to his lips, I silence him. “Mom’s driving me. It’s the last day of construction on the camp. You’re not bailing.”
A reluctant grunt tickles my palm.
“Do you know what I love about the summer?”
He shakes his head.
“The warm embrace of the sun. Endless sunshine from dusk to dawn. The infinitely long days.” I follow the flight of an eagle as it glides through the blush sky. “I’ll be sad for it to end. It’s where this all began.”
Dex tightens his hold. I could float away into the atmosphere with the happiness infused in my bones. “This started well before the summer. The beginning was a starrynight, when a beautiful woman challenged me to spell crude words and barricaded herself in my bedroom. It didn’t matter that the sun was set, because that was the first of many.” With the tip of his finger, he tilts my face. “The first of our long days.”
Whoever saidthere’s beauty in chaos is full of shit.
The incessant click-clacking of the receptionist’s nails on the keyboard has me on edge. I haven’t bitten my nails in years, but the longer I sit in the psychiatrist’s waiting room, the urge to break my eleven-year stretch increases. My mom dropped me off, hounding me with questions and asking no less than four times if I wanted her to come into the appointment with me.
I reassured her I’d be fine. The medical center is in Jacob’s Bluff, and she’s off to the stores until I’m finished. It’s days like today I wish I’d gotten my license years ago.
“Florence Sadler?”
