“You guys!” Leo hollers from the bank of vending machines, and we all look at him at once like we’re a single collective body. He raises a fist above his head. “Machine’s empty!”
“No fuckingway,” Stevie repeats. “Fratty Chicken was the last stickereverin there?”
“You know what this means,” Thad says. We all look at him. “We said we’d do it.”
The rest of us are silent.
“Comeon,” Thad says, stomping his foot. “We promised we’d get Fratty Chicken tattoos if we ever got him!”
He turns to Ren, like he might convince him. “You and Joni are the only ones who have matching tattoos among us.”
“Not true,” Stevie says. Leo hands her a gumball and she pops it into her mouth, pushes it into her cheek. “Joni and I got tattoos together when we moved to New York.”
“The sun and moon on your ribs?” Ren asks me about the tiny symbols, reminders that Stevie and I are each other’s better halves. He’s standing behind me, voice low, but Stevie hears the question, her eyes flying to us. I dig my elbow into his stomach, and he coughs to cover up the smalloofhe let out.
“None of us are getting Fratty Chicken tattoos,” Sasha’s voice startles us from a few feet down the sidewalk, her face stony underneath her sunglasses. “We’re not twelve. You’re a parent now, Thad. Grow up.”
Debate over, we head in the direction of the house, Ren falling back a step to walk next to me.
“I just can’t believe this part of our lives is over,” Thad says ahead of us. “I thought Fratty Chicken would never end.”
“Ten dollars Sasha tries to steal it by the end of the night,” Ren says, sliding down his sunglasses and leaning in toward me. “According to Thad she’s always stealing his stuff in LA.”
“Oh, I’ll put fifty on Stevie having it by the end of the weekend,” I say.
“You don’t want it?” Ren asks.
“I’m not brave enough to put up that fight.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he mumbles. We’re smiling into each other, angled together as we walk, his fingers lifting to trace the tattoo we share below my elbow, then down to my palm, applying the slightest bit of pressure.
I look up just in time to see Stevie’s sharp-eyed gaze slipping away from us.
chapter twenty-four
“If I never have to see a twinkle light again, it’ll be too soon,” Thad says across from me as he rips another shepherd’s hook stake out of the ground, looping the strand of lights already hanging there over his arm.
We’re all scattered around at various sites, checking items off Sasha’s list while Leo and Stevie are in town with his family, who arrived last night. In the kitchen before they left, Leo was quiet and tense in a way I’d never seen him before, and I worried that his family’s presence could be what sends everything off the rails. But then I clocked Stevie’s fingers lacing through his, and I knew they would get through the day together.
“I thought the lights at your wedding were gorgeous,” I tell Thad. We’re halfway down the path to the lighthouse, and I’m sweating through my tank top as I mimic his actions, ripping what we had thought, for the third time, was a perfectly placed stake out of the ground, only for Sasha to inform us that they needed to seem like they were part of the tree line, then that they didn’t start soon enough at the top of the path, and now that we’re short string lights and instead need to use these to line the lawn that stretches from the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage to the end of the headland.To, you know, make sure no one plunges to their death during toasts and dancing at the wedding tomorrow.
“Theyweregorgeous,” Thad says. I can just glimpse the ocean through the trees behind him as he pauses, takes in a deep breath. “Because someone else put them up.”
I snort, yanking on a particularly stubborn stake that comes free abruptly, sending me reeling backward. My heel catches on a rock, and I trip to the ground, hands flying back to brace my fall at the last minute.
“Are you okay?” Thad says, dropping his meticulously looped lights in a heap and lurching toward me, slipping easily into parent mode. Except in this case, I’m the child.
“I’m fine,” I say, something like delirious laughter bubbling out of me as I brush my hands together, take his waiting one.
He pulls me up to standing, rubs a hand down his face.
“Thad.” I knock my elbow against his arm. “What’s up? Fratty Chicken got you down?”
He meets my gaze almost reluctantly, the same brown eyes as his mom and Ren. “I love Katie so much,” he says. “Being away from her this week feels like there’s this whole part of me missing.”
“I’m sure it does,” I say, waiting out the rest of whatever he’s going to say. Thad is like an older brother to me, and while he’s always been playful, his earlier comment about that part of our lives being over has me wondering if he’s struggling with something deeper.
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just—trying to balance lawyer life and fatherhood hasn’t left a lot of time for anything else. I haven’t hated having a break to just feel like myself again.” He exhales, squints at me. “Sorry if I went overboard last night.”
