But onlyoneevening, I remember. I step back, hands dropping to my sides. “This isn’t on the list,” I remind him again. Tonight is our one night because tomorrow we’ll be at the wedding, and on Sunday we’ll say goodbye again.
I attempt to leap back over the offending flower beds, but Ren’s fingers catch my wrist and tug me back toward him.
“We don’t have time for this,” I say.
“We do,” Ren says. “If we want to have time for this.”
“Well, I don’t,” I say, gesturing toward the picnic tables. “What if this place is terrible?”
Ren smirks. “Yes, because the tiki bar was really a top ten experience.”
“It was on the list!”
“Fuck the list,” Ren says. I open my mouth to protest, but he continues. “I’m serious.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “There are at least twenty dogs here just waiting to be rated.” It’s another one of our dumb games, picking which dogs are the best on various scales. They’re all winners in the end. But it’s not what we need to be doing right now.
“The wine bar is, like, fifty feet away.” I throw an arm in its direction.
Ren looks down at me with those soft brown eyes. “Joni,” he says.
“Ren.” I swallow.
He steps up to me so he can take my face in his hands. They’re warm on my cheeks, and for the first time since we left the hotel, I feel my thoughts slow down. I lean my face into one of his palms, close my eyes. When I open them, his gaze has gone darker.
“Joni—” he says, a slight edge to his voice. He’s going to offer up another argument for why we should stop,but I’m already convinced.
“Onebeer,” I say. Ren’s mouth snaps closed, and for a second I see it there: something more he was about to add, something he’s not telling me. “Were you going to say something?” I ask. Things often need to be drawn out of Ren, the result of being the youngest of three, with two deeply extroverted siblings, and never wanting to fight for attention.
But Ren just releases my face, a smile spreading as he loops an arm around my shoulders and turns me in the direction of the bar.
“You won’t regret it, Miller,” he says, pushing me forward.
He scrubs a hand over the top of my head, and I pretend to shove him away. “Yeah, yeah, Webster.”
* * *
An hour in, Ren is right: I don’t regret it.
“I can’t believe your dad agreed to go skydiving,” he says, grabbing another fry from the basket between us. We’re at a table next to a group with three friendly golden retrievers. One named Hopper keeps coming over and resting its chin on Ren’s leg, looking up at him with doleful eyes while he scratches behind its ears.
“Believe me, neither could I until I saw the pictures.” I dunk a fry into the lake of ketchup I upended into the basket. “I don’t think he’d ever do it again. But my mom has made it their personal goal as a couple toface a fearonce a month this year. Got the idea at some therapist conference she went to. At least she has a hobby and isn’t nagging me as much.” My phone buzzes against the table then. I pick it up, glance at the screen. “Speak of the devil,” I say.
“Do you need to take it?” Ren asks.
I set my phone down again, shake my head. “I’ll call her back.Probably just another one of her interrogations.” Ren knows them well from college—my mom calling me every other day to ask how I am, if I went to therapy, if work is overwhelming, so on and so forth. It’s always the same questions, and they’re never productive.
“Okay, what fear are you facing this month?” Ren asks me, trying to divert attention away from our third guest, I know.
“Answering one of my mom’s calls and telling her I’m not sticking to her facing-my-fears plan,” I say.
Ren laughs, Hopper raising his head at the sound.
“To facing our fears,” Ren says. He lifts his half-empty glass. We cheers.
Now that we’ve actually been able to sit down, take a breath, we’ve been working our way through everything there is to catch up on. We might talk every day, but somehow, our phone calls always seem to devolve into arbitrary things likewhat’s your take on reincarnationorhow long can we still say we’re postgradorlet’s really dig into that whole glitter conspiracy.“How’s the team?” I ask.
Ren started coaching a youth soccer team in college, something he’d done at summer camps when we were in high school.
“They’re good,” he says. “We might actually win a game this year. Oh—remember Cameron Velasquez?”
