Thirty Sunsets (11 page)

He looks at me warily, then opens his mouth to speak.

“Oh,
for heaven’s sake
!”

Mom’s shrill voice makes both of us jump.

“I wanted to give Brian some advice,” Mom continues, her hands flapping again. “Your father disagreed. I told him he didn’t get a vote. I’m Brian’s
mother
. Mothers have instincts that fathers don’t have.”

I’m still looking at Dad. His eyes fall.

“
End of discussion!
” Mom says, then walks inside, slamming the door behind her.

A breeze sets our wind chime in motion, a discordant jangle of tinny pings.

I keep staring at Dad until his eyes meet mine. “Tell me what’s going on,” I say.

“Your mom just told you,” he says, but his eyes fall again.

“Bullshit.”

“
Forrest.
”

“I mean it, Dad. I’m sorry, but you’re obviously keeping something from me.”

He studies his hands. “Kids don’t necessarily need to know everything their parents know.”

Dad is terrible at keeping secrets. If I wait him out, I sense he’ll keep talking.

“What you need to know,” he finally says, “is how much your mom and I love you and Brian. Unconditionally. With all of our hearts. Period.”

I study him closely. “Except there’s more to know,” I say. The tinny wind chimes keep pinging in the breeze.

Dad opens his mouth, but Mom suddenly flings the door back open. “I told you both,” she says, “
end of discussion
.”

I’m still staring Dad down, but the moment is lost. He walks over to me and kisses my forehead. “Let’s drop it for now. Okay?”

Then he and Mom walk into the house, leaving the door ajar. I kick a deck chair with my tennis shoe, then walk down the steps toward the beach.

sixteen

Brian is sitting in the surf in his shorts, staring at the horizon. My eyes dart around for signs of Olivia. I don’t see her.

I run to Brian and sit beside him, the waves lapping at our feet. I’m still wearing tennis shoes, but I don’t care that they’re getting wet. All I care about is the stricken look on my brother’s face.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I say, leaning into his face.

He runs a hand through his dark curls and drops his head.

“What
is
it, Brian?”

“It’s … ”

His voice breaks, and my heart crumbles into pieces.

“What’s going on?” I repeat. “And where’s Olivia?”

He points vaguely down the beach. “Walking. I tried to go with her, but she said she wanted to be alone for a while.” He swallows hard. I put my hand on his back.

“I heard Mom and Dad yelling when we got back,” I say. “Is it about the baby?”

He lifts his chin defiantly. “The only reason Mom invited Olivia to the beach was to try to talk her into giving the baby up for adoption.”

My jaw drops.

“
My baby
.” He punches a fist into the palm of his hand. “She honestly thought I’d be willing to walk away from my baby.”

“You must have misunderstood … ”

“She’s already got a family lined up!” he says with mock gusto. “This great couple at our church!
Awesome
couple! Can’t have kids of their own, so, hey, my baby actually comes in kinda handy. It’s like it was meant to be! And if
that
falls through, maybe a yard sale … ? You know … buy our old lawn mower, and we’ll throw in the baby for an extra two bucks.”

I’m … speechless.

“I hate Mom right now,” Brian says.

“A couple at church … ?” I prod.

“She
talked
to them!” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “She talked to them about my baby!” He squeezes both hands into fists and shakes them. “If she ever,
ever
utters so much as a word about my baby to another living
soul
, I swear to god, I’ll … ”

“It’s okay, Bri,” I say, rubbing his back.

“She will
never
see my baby,” he mutters, his green eyes glistening in the afternoon sun. “Olivia and I will leave town. We’ll … ”

“You’re talking crazy, Brian. Mom … I know she’s majorly annoying, but she isn’t evil. I think she’s just trying to sort all of this out.”

“She’s finished sorting,” he snaps. “Got everything squared away, just like she was chairman of a bake sale. The last step was to break the news to Livy and me. Just one last little detail to take care of. Just a little blip on her radar before we returned to business as usual.”

The waves are lapping farther from our feet, the tide sucking them away.

“I think she was just trying to make sure you know you have options,” I say. “If adoption was the option you wanted to take, I guess she thought she was making things easier on you, coming up with a plan so you wouldn’t have to … ”

“To
what
?” he challenges, tossing a bitter glance at me. “To have to think too hard about which stranger to hand my kid off to? Does anybody in this family know me at all?”

I shake my head slowly. “This
is
a lot to take in.”

“Yeah, well, get over it.”

I flinch. He notices, then leans closer, his eyes locking with mine.

“Sorry,” he says softly. “I know I’ve been snapping a lot lately.” He picks up a sand dollar and fingers it gingerly. “It
is
a lot to take in. I know that. I hate that I laid all this on you guys, doing things bass-ackwards. It killed me to tell Mom; I knew it would break her heart. But then, when I told her … she was great, you know? I mean, she wasn’t jumping for joy or anything, but she was staying calm, staying positive, saying it would all work out … I didn’t know she was just biding time while she hatched her goddamn plot.”

I nod. “Mom is a world-class plot hatcher,” I muse, and when Brian laughs in spite of himself, I laugh with him.

“Remember when she tried to force me into piano lessons by telling me we were going to Mrs. Autry’s house because she had a piano to sell?” I say. “Then, once we were there, if I wouldn’t mind sitting down at the piano and trying it out? Then, next thing I know, Mrs. Autry is whipping out a book of scales.”

Brian sputters with laughter. “She got me on the yearbook staff by telling me the advisor had cancer and needed my help,” he says, his eyes twinkling.

“She
did
have cancer,” I say. “That little mole on her upper lip? Basal cell.”

We laugh some more.

“I hear it can be very debilitating,” I continue earnestly. “When she had it removed, she had to wear a teeny little bandage for, like, two whole days.”

Brian chortles. “Thank god I was there to help her through it. The club section might have pushed her over the edge if I hadn’t been there to sort out the members in alphabetical order.”

I breathe in the sea air. I love laughing with Brian like this.

He glances at me from the corner of his eye. “Thanks for being so great to Olivia the past couple of days,” he says. “It totally makes up for the crap you rained down on her for the last year.”

I jab him playfully with my elbow.

“The way you guys hung out together today?” he says. “That was primo.”

My gaze drifts down the beach. “Is she okay?” I ask.

Brian follows my gaze. “I better go catch up with her,” he says. “Ya mind?”

“Nope,” I say. “Hey, if she sees Church Lady chasing her with a net, tell her to run like hell.”

Brian gives me a thumbs-up and starts trotting down the beach. My gaze follows his path for a couple of seconds, then I stare into the ocean, wiggling my toes in my damp tennis shoes.

God, Mom … what were you thinking?

Then again,
of course
she was thinking about adoption. I was too! I mean, I hadn’t exactly assembled the Potluck Supper Committee to set things in motion, but I sure wasn’t ready to wrap my head around Brian being a father.

Until now.

Suddenly, his being a father seems like the most natural thing in the world. Of
course
he’s going to raise his child. Of
course
he and Liv are going to be a family. If I ever had any doubt about that—or the slightest bit of doubt that he could pull it off—the last fifteen minutes wiped those thoughts entirely off the map.

I’m so proud of my brother. And, hey … I’m gonna be an aunt!

I squeeze my knees against my chest, a silly grin on my face, as I sense somebody on the beach inching closer to me. I ignore it at first—lots of people are milling around, after all—but, yes, somebody is definitely coming closer.

I shield my eyes with my hand, then look up. I squint to get a better look.

Oh.

“Hey, stranger.”

seventeen

Scott kicks some sand idly with his bare foot. “You’re not even gonna say hi?”

I shrug, still staring at the ocean. “Hi.”

He sits next to me, letting his knee fall against mine.

“Not very friendly today,” he says with a fake pout.

“Haven’t seen a friend in a while.”

“Ouch!” Even from my peripheral vision, I see him give an exaggerated wince. “I wanna be your friend.”

Okay, the fake pouting is getting, like, nauseating.

The breeze blows a lock of hair onto my face. “I’d really like some privacy, if you don’t mind … ”

He leans closer and pulls the lock of hair away. “Don’t be pissed,” he coos into my ear. “
Pleeeeeeze
?”

I jerk my head away. “I don’t even know you. Privacy, please?”

“You’re pissed because I didn’t talk to you the other day,” he says in a singsong voice, then fingers the same lock of hair he just pulled from my face.

I roll my eyes.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, still cooing, still fingering my hair. “I was just kinda caught off guard. I mean, I was in the middle of a game, and I couldn’t exactly let on to my bros that this goddess on the beach has turned me into a puddle of sap.”

He kisses my cheek before I can move away. “That’s what you’ve turned me into, Forrest. A puddle of sap. I guess that’s kinda fitting, huh? Forrest? Trees? Sap?”

I hold up my palm as a stop sign. “Do you
mind
?”

“Then, the rest of the week, my aunt had me painting her bathroom.” He dangles a paint-flecked hand in front of my face. “See? Taupe, I think she calls it. Looks beige to me. Apparently there are, like, sixty-seven words for beige. Anyhow, she’s making me put four coats of paint on her friggin’ bathroom walls, and all I can think is,
Wonder what Forrest-like-the-trees is doing. Wonder if she’s as drop-dead gorgeous today as she was before. Wonder if that walk on the beach made her stomach do somersaults like it did mine. Wonder if she’ll bite my head off if I stop by and say hello
.”

I laugh a little in spite of myself, but I’m still staring straight ahead.

“A smile!” Scott nudges closer. I can feel his breath on my cheek. “Hot damn. I actually see a smile.” He tugs lightly at my T-shirt. “Why ya wearin’ shorts on the beach? And tennis shoes … really wet ones … ”

I lift my chin. “I wear what I want.”

“So how is it,” he says, his voice husky, “that even wearing shorts and soggy tennis shoes, you’re, like, a million times hotter than every other girl on the beach?”

For the first time since he’s plopped down beside me, I turn to face him. “Do girls actually fall for these lines?”

He shrugs. “I don’t care about any girls except one. I was kinda hoping
that
girl would fall for ’em … fall for ’em like
timmmm-brrrrr
.”

As he says the word, his finger twirls slowly toward my chest, poking me in the heart on the last syllable.

“Fall for me, Forrest,” he says softly, then leans in to kiss me.

My mind is swirling. I am
so
not falling for this. This guy is
so
not my type. I am
way
too mature for this …

Except that I’m kissing him back. As he presses his moist, salty lips against mine, I’m tilting my chin higher, nudging my face closer, tasting his tongue, panting lightly through my nose, resisting the urge to moan …

Who knew a first kiss could feel this natural?

Our faces move in a synchronized little dance, tilting right, left, right … I’m barely even aware that he’s shifting positions, putting his body on top of mine, holding my shoulders firmly but gently as he lowers my back against the sand, pressing his bare chest against my T-shirt …