“God, no. Not physically! No!” Trevor rushed to explain. “You just look like—”
“No.” Darla’s single word thundered through the room, the declaration a thunderclap of certainty that Trevor welcomed. He and Joe shuddered, as if her word recalibrated them, and Trevor felt his body tense in one big, long chain of muscles, like an orgasm without sex, as if he clenched and realigned every bone, every muscle, each tendon and fiber now back in place.
She had that effect on them.
And only Darla could do that.
“You can make fun of me for being a hick,” she said, holding up a hand to stem the inevitable protest that Joe started to put up, “and you can be a crabby jerk because you’re too uptight to admit that you hate law school and hate the life you’ve chosen at Penn, but don’t know how to find your way out of the straightjacket of your parents’ expectations for you,” she said to Joe in a calm, slow, deliberate voice that made her seem timeless and wizened, mature and all-knowing. It made Trevor relaxed and self-conscious at the same time.
“But,” she added, eyes combing over Joe, then Trevor, then back to Joe. The gooseflesh she left on Trevor’s body came from the timbre of her voice, the cadence of a rock-hard declaration that neither of them dared challenge. “But—you do not get to ruin what we have just because you’re afraid of what you don’t know.” Her eyes flashed and flicked between the two of them. I mean you too, she was saying to Trevor.
And he knew it.
“We’re going to Jeddy’s tomorrow,” she said, pulling on Harvard-logo yoga pants and one of Trevor’s oversized flannel shirts, eyes locked on Joe while she did the buttons. “And you’ll sit across the table from Mike and Dylan and ask them how the f**k they figured this shit out ten years ago when they met their first woman. Because those two know something. They know something you two don’t.”
“What’s that?” Joe croaked out. It made Trevor cringe.
“They know what it’s like to fall in love in all the weird ways love gives you, and they know what it’s like to have it all taken away not by someone’s stupidity, but by the cruel randomness of cancer.”
Trevor just blinked.
“They lost Jill and didn’t have a choice. And then they got a second chance with Laura. Look at ’em. A happy family.”
Trevor flashed back to the image of a baby at Darla’s breast, and he held his breath. Her green eyes caught his, one corner of her mouth crooking up as if she read his mind.
“You want…that?” Joe choked out.
Trevor and Darla both looked at him. Trevor’s mind seized up.
Darla took two, three, four measured breaths, unhurried and unworried, her placid outer self scaring Trevor more than anything she was about to say.
And then:
“I don’t want…this. Which means you two had better go talk with Mike and Dylan and figure out how they manage to have a strong threesome relationship without making everyone feel like an obstacle. Going through life feeling like you’re doing something wrong all the time with the people you’re supposed to be most attached to isn’t my idea of living.”
And with that, she shut the door quietly, leaving Trevor and Joe in complete silence.
They were both holding their breath.
Alex
How Josie talked him into this one would remain a mystery. Jeddy’s was Jeddy’s, the cracked red vinyl seats and the veneer-topped Formica tables still the same. Alex knew that Madge was fighting her grandson, Caleb, tooth and nail over every change he tried to make, because during the dinners he had with his grandpa and Madge, he heard about it.
Ad infinitum. She was eighty-four years old, had just weathered a heart attack this year, and kept his grandfather, Ed, busy with a sex life that Alex preferred not to know about. She also cared for Ed with such grace and tenderness that it made Alex tear up—in an entirely manly way, of course—to see how love could extend into the outer decades of life with a depth and authenticity that he hoped to have one day with Josie.
Who was currently grousing about his taking more room in her pantry than was fair.
“It’s not like your food is bigger than mine,” she hissed as they picked a booth. “It’s just that you buy more and are hogging the space. I have to keep cereal on top of the fridge now, and I hate that. It’s a little too Seinfeld for me,” she added as Madge approached them with what passed for a smile these days.
“How are my two favorite lovebirds?” Madge asked. Alex stood and folded in half to give her a hug, his hands pressing into her back and measuring the change. Madge had lost weight since her cardiac episode, and Ed had asked Alex if he could recommend the absolute best cardiologist in Boston to make sure “his Madge” was around at least for the rest of Ed’s life.
At least.
Alex had assured his grandpa that Madge already had the best of the best, but the fear in Ed’s eyes had been so haunting it kept him up at night, staring at the ceiling fan in Josie’s—now their—bedroom on the rare nights he wasn’t stuck at the hospital.
Love might conquer all, but mortality was an interfering bitch.
And no matter how hard he tried, medical science couldn’t beat death. But it could give it a run for its money.
“We’re roommates now,” Josie complained, standing slowly to give Madge a hug, too. She wasn’t the affectionate type with anyone but him, and he always noticed the look in Josie’s eyes when social niceties like hugs and handshakes were called for, as if she knew there was a protocol but couldn’t quite nail the sequence. When his own mother, Meribeth, swept into a room with kisses and hugs, Josie looked like a helpless foreigner drop-shipped into a new country with an alphabet you couldn’t even read.
Mom accepted it as she did everything—with equanimity and a tiny dose of worry for Alex.
“You’re shacking up. Deal with it. Let yourself be happy. Your friend Laura manages it somehow, and she’s got to please two men,” Madge said after Josie gave her an anemic embrace. Alex watched Madge’s swift movements, the coffee appearing before them as if conjured by a magic spell, a tiny tray of miniature deserts proffered before them.
“Yeah, but she’s got two billionaires.”
Alex pretended to be offended. “You want me to turn into a billionaire? I would think being a physician would be enough of a superpower.”
“Pffft.” The sound Josie made was distinctly unfeminine. “I’ve worked with hundreds of doctors over the years. You’re all extremely human. Some are even subhuman. Give you a scalpel and you might be God for a few hours, but you all snore and drool and hog cabinet space like us mere mortals.”