“He accepts them and acts like they appeared spontaneously.”
“Sounds about right.”
I look at the flowers sitting on the counter and feel something tender move through me. My dad is forty-nine years old, and he carries the whole weight of McClane Mining on his shoulders every single day, and some part of him still has the grace to be charmed by flowers even while pretending he doesn’t know what to do with them.
I love him so much it sits in my chest like an unmovable stone.
The rest of the afternoon rolls by more easily after that. My dad comes back into the kitchen around four, carrying something heavy inside him, the kind of weight he’s already decided he’s handling alone, whether anybody likes it or not. He makes coffee, then he puts a hand on Will’s shoulder as he passes through, heading to the counter, and he doesn’t sayanything at all. It’s brief, just one solid squeeze before Dad lets go again, but Will goes completely still for a second after it, caught off guard by whatever landed from that one simple gesture.
My dad doesn’t look back.
He takes his coffee and returns to his chair.
I saw it. I keep my eyes on the counter, the caramel, the cake. I don’t say anything either, because this is not the kind of moment that warrants words around it.
I will remember this.
I already know I will remember this.
By the time evening arrives, the cake is finished, covered, and sitting in the refrigerator. My dad falls asleep in his armchair, watching something on the television that none of us have been paying attention to, his head tipped back, his breathing slow, and Will touches my elbow, nodding toward the sofa.
We arrange ourselves there the way we’ve gotten good at without discussing it, my feet tucked up and my shoulder against his, his arm finding the back of the cushion behind me, then somehow around me, and the television plays on. A nature documentary, with a pleasant voice describing something neither of us is listening to.
My dad eventually heads off to bed, moving through the house with the tired heaviness he’s been carrying more and more lately.
Will’s thumb moves in one slow arc along my shoulder, back and forth, unhurried. I am aware of his breathing, the warmth of him, and the absolute ease of being here, in this space, with no performance required and nothing to prove.
Tomorrow is his patch ceremony.
Tomorrow, a two-year road ends, something new begins, and everything in this club, in this life we’ve built up around each other, shifts into a different shape.
Iknow this.
Heknows this.
We have not said it tonight because tonight is not the time to say it.
Tonight is forthis.
The darkened house, the warm sofa, the television neither of us is watching, and the peace of being with someone who knows you well enough not to need anything from you except your presence.
His breathing evens out first, going deep and slow beneath my ear.
I stay awake a few minutes longer, listening to it and watching the light from the screen move softly across the ceiling.
Everything is settled, calm, and exactly right.
And in the morning…
It will all be different.
Chapter Sixteen
WILL
Patching Ceremony
I wake before the alarm.
