He draws back to look into my face. “I know,” he says. “I just don’t want you to have to.”
I look toward the deck, blinking back the rising emotion. “The truth is, he seems different.”
“Is that bad?”
I shake my head. “No. I just . . .”
I don’t want to trust him.
I don’t want to be disappointed.
“I made my peace with how things have always been between us,” I admit. “It took me a long time to stop expecting more than he’d give me.”
“That makes sense,” Miles says, tucking my hair behind my ear.
I don’t want to go back to feeling unsteady. I don’t want it to hurt every time he lets me down.
I already feel it again: the aching emptiness where my dad’s love should be. And this time, I don’t have my mom nearby, or Peter and the Collinses to fill the gaps.
And no matter how genuinely nice Starfire is, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s a woman who paid someone actual money to recount the plot of Titanic to her as a prophecy, and she is worthy of Dad’s love, when I never have been.
Just like Petra is worthy of Peter’s.
Just like Peter is worthy of the commitment of all those friends from whom I’d worked tirelessly to earn approval since we moved here. The ones who had no time for me since the breakup. Still worthy of Sadie’s love, after I’d stopped being so.
Life isn’t a competition, and neither is love, but I’m still the loser.
A frown creases Miles’s forehead as he cups my chin.
I shake my head. “I just want it to be real.”
“What?” he says.
“The memories he has of us,” I whisper. “This visit. I want to believe it all means something.”
“Maybe it does,” he says.
The bathroom door opens behind us, and his hand falls away as we press ourselves against the wall to let the emerging man slink past. As he goes, he finishes tucking his dress shirt back into his pants and eyes us with unbridled suspicion.
“He one-hundred-percent thinks we’re doing a drug deal,” I say.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “He at least fifty-percent thinks we’re having an illicit affair.”
We both smile at our feet. “So where do you want to go,” he asks. “Back to the table, or out the front door?”
“Table.” I tip my head toward the open bathroom door. “Just give me a minute.”
“I’d give the bathroom a minute,” he says. “That guy had the face of someone who just did something ungodly.”
I catch our server on my way through the restaurant to the deck. “Could you make sure you put the shared plates on my tab?” I ask.
“Wish I could.” She’s holding her hands up in surrender. “The older gentleman already picked everything up.”
“Really?” I say. “You’re sure?”
“He was adamant the bill not make it to the table,” she replies.
I thank her and walk back to my seat, slightly dazed. As soon as I’ve sunk back into my chair, a crowd of servers files through the restaurant’s back door onto the deck, carrying a chocolate cake lit with a sparkler.
“Happy late birthday, honey,” Dad says, right before the staff begins to sing.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, voice disappearing into the chorus of voices.
“It’s nothing,” he murmurs, squeezing my arm atop the table. But he looks relieved, or maybe pleased.
Like my happiness has made him happy. And suddenly my eyes are stinging and heat is rushing up the back of my nose. I focus on the blue-gold sparks shooting off the cake so I won’t crack.
After dessert, we pick our way down the deck stairs to the beach. Miles brought towels in a backpack, and we stretch out, waiting as the sky darkens, stars gradually pricking through it. Out on the water, someone has decided to shoot off fireworks from their boat.
A hum, a gasp, a sigh, ripple through the beach’s stragglers. One streak of light pops, explodes into a shivering purple blossom. Two more quickly follow, on either side, pink and gold.
Kids shriek and squeal and run circles around their adults, Popsicles and ice cream cones melting down their wrists. Dad and Starfire strike up a conversation with a couple around their age standing near us, and Julia is down on the ground, taking selfies with a shaggy Great Pyrenees sprawling in the sand. Even with the sulfuric smell hanging in the air, I can still pick out the gingery kick of Miles beside me.
“Good night?” he asks, a fresh wave of fireworks making his face shimmer with greens and oranges.
