Growing up, I obviously knew that Shelby and I didn’t have any living grandparents. My memories of my grandmother are even hazier than those of my mom. But I’d never thought about what it might be like for my dad to lose both of them, just like that.
“I get that he was your friend, Lawrence,” I say, raising my gaze to his, not wanting to let the wall I’ve built between me and mydad crumble. Because if I do, then I might have to mourn the father I never had. And that seems like a little too much grief for me.
Especially considering what I’ve just learned about my own little family. About what Lara kept from me for five whole years.
Going on, I say, “But it doesn’t mean anything to me. He boxed up my shit and stuck it out on the curb a few weeks before I was supposed to leave. I ended up couch surfing in Ann Arbor because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“He didn’t want you to go, Jake.”
I blink, shake my head, not sure what to make of that. “You think him putting my shit on the curb meant he didn’t want me to go?”
“You remember what I said about him being intense? About him always feeling too much, being that guy? Yeah, I think that he was having a lot of feelings about you leaving and he didn’t want you to go. He dealt with that by kicking you out a lot sooner, because he thought he could avoid the pain that way. That was Miles’ big problem. He fooled himself into thinking he could avoid the pain.”
After a beat of silence passes, Lawrence clears his throat again, reaching across the bar and knocking twice on the spot in front of me. “He was doing his best, kid. Maybe his best wasn’t enough, and that’s okay. But I swear to you, he was.”
I swallow that down, swallow down my cola, and Lawrence doesn’t let me pay for it before I leave, walking back out into the cool, muggy night. Mosquitoes swarm around me and I ignore them, only thinking about my dad.
Thinking about how complicated he was, the stuff I never knew about him.
How afraid I’ve been to become exactly like him.
And the chance I have now to prove to myself that I’m not like him. That my best can be good enough.
That I can be a good dad… if I want to.
CHAPTER 23
LARA
I’m still sitting on the couch, wallowing in a glass of wine that I’m too nauseous to do anything but take tiny sips of, when there’s a knock at the door. Assuming it’s Zachery, I stand and shuffle to the door with a blanket wrapped around me, trying to figure out what I’m going to say to him.
It’s not like him to come back, but with the chance to apologize, I’ll take it. We’ve never fought before, and I already feel horrible about the way things were when he left.
But when I open the door, it’s not Zachery standing there.
“Lara,” Jake says, and I drink him in, thinking for a second that I’ve imagined him. His scruffy facial hair, getting thicker each day. Those amber eyes, glinting at me in the light from the stairwell. His sweatshirt is damp on his broad shoulders from rain, and his hair is darker than usual.
“Jake,” I answer, barely believing he’s standing here in front of me. We stand in the doorway and stare at each other for a second, that thing between us stretching out and growing, turning into something new.
Because this isn’t just about us anymore. It’s about the triplets, too.
It’s like it always is between us, the unspoken thing, something that we both see and acknowledge without ever having to say anything about it.
“Can I come in?” he asks, and I shift to the side, unblocking the entrance.
“Yeah, of course.”
Silently, we move into the living room together, and his eyes glance over at the wine glass before finding me again.
“Are you okay?”
“Areyouokay?” I counter, already feeling my eyes tearing up again at the memory of the look on his face. “Because, Jake, I?—”
“Can I go first?” he asks, holding up a hand and tilting his head. “I think we should have a conversation, but first I have some things I want to say.”
I pause, tugging the blanket tighter around myself and nodding as he clears his throat and sits down on the couch. I follow him, sitting a few seats away, staring at him like he might disappear if I don’t keep an eye on his face.
Everything feels surreal. Zachery told me once about the idea of liminal space. A place like a rest stop in the middle of the night, an airport, an empty hallway or a waiting room. A place that doesn’t quite feel like reality is touching.
