Page 154 of Wreckage and Rain

"Yeah."

"That book was the bravest thing I've ever read. And I haven't even read the next one yet."

"You've read six chapters."

"Six chapters and I already know what it costs you to write it. All of it, Summer. The one that launched tonight and the one you're not done being scared of. Every word of it."

"You said you weren't going to use that word."

"I've decided it's the right word again. Vivienne ruined it. We're reclaiming it."

"From your mother."

"From my mother. From Cheyenne. From every person who tried to use it against you. Brave is yours, Summer. I'm putting it back where it belongs."

Sonny pled in the spring. The sentence came down last month, and there's a number with the word years after it. Cheyenne pled too on both charges. I cup his face. He has the small lines now at the corners of his eyes that he didn't have at twenty-three. The lines that come from grinning at a three-year-old who calls you Uncle Cowboy. The lines that come from crying he doesn't see coming and laughing without restraint. He's more beautiful than the boy who walked into King's Diner at sixteen and grinned atme with grass-stained knees. I didn't think that was possible. I've been wrong about a lot of things.

"Tell me again," I say.

"What."

"What you said about happiness. The earned kind."

"You wrote it down already."

"Tell me again."

"I'm happy in the specific small daily way. I'm happy that I'm the man sitting on this roof with you on the night your book launched. I'm happy that I'm that man at all. I'm happy that you let me become him."

"Yeah."

"You?"

"The same."

"Tell me yours."

"I'm happy in the way my mother described. The lost child comes home. And home was never Charleston, or even Chicago. It's booth four, the one I carry around with me. It's wherever the people I love are sitting. Tonight that was the rooms below us, full of all of them. Now they've gone home and you're right here. Home is in the room. It's been in the room the whole time."

He kisses my hair.

We stay like that a long time, me in his lap, the wine glasses going empty on the parapet. The city doesn't stop. The night doesn't stop. We aren't in a hurry.

Eventually I stand. He stands. He shakes out the throw blanket. We carry the glasses down.

The apartment is quiet now, the lamps low, the lasagna pans soaking in the sink, Jake's snoring faint through the guest room door.

"Bed."

"In a minute."

"Why."

"I want to write something first."

I go to the writing desk in the corner of the living room. Open the laptop. Open the document. The new book, which Patricia doesn't know about yet, which has six chapters drafted, which has the working title I've been holding onto.

I don't write a chapter tonight. I haven't written one at night in months. The chapters come at six in the morning, before the day starts, and tonight isn't that time.