Page 75 of Plain Sight

“You almost died.”

“It didn’t feel like I almost died, if that helps. Dying never crossed my mind.”

He doesn’t look like he almost died, honestly. Jameson’s all man-bun and bright green eyes and—the part I can’t get over—a dusting of freckles from sitting out by the pool so much, and walking from house to pool deck at the pace of a man recovering from an ordeal. He’s alive, not silent and trembling and half-dead, and I wish I could convince my heart to accept it as fact.

“Well, you did. And now I’m crying in a sunhat. Do you know how embarrassing it is to cry in a sunhat? I have a piña colada!”

“Shh.” Jameson pulls me closer and nuzzles at my temple. “It’s a virgin piña colada.”

“It’s a huge piña colada,” I half-wail, half-laugh. The piña colada is enormous. I don’t know where Gabriel got the oversized glass, but he thought it was incredibly funny when he handed it to me. So did I, until I remember that Jameson almost died. At least, I think he almost died. That’s what it looked like to me. And to his siblings, who remained remarkably calm about the whole thing.

“Here.” Jameson takes the glass out of my hand and puts it on a table next to our poolside lounger. “Let it out.”

“You let it out!” We have about a hundred towels stacked nearby, so I use one to wipe my face. “You are forbidden from keeping your emotions inside to this extent ever again.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I would never just say that.”

Snowball tweets in his cage, settled on the table at the other side of the lounger.

“I love you, but shut it,” Jameson tells him. “You can’t make fun of my wife.”

I would scold him for using a faux scary tone with Snowball, but I really like how he says my wife. After a few more deep breaths, I manage to get the tears under control and focus on the matter at hand: cuddling with my husband at a pool party.

The reason for the pool party is that it’s hot, and a pool exists, and it’s an event that Jameson can attend without actually exhausting himself. It’s been a week and a half since his nightmare turned into something that seemed a lot scarier from the outside and was apparently a lot better from the inside. Jameson’s favorite joke is to catch Zeus’s elbow, look at him with innocent eyes, and say did you drug me? And then Zeus pretends not to know what he’s talking about.

One day, I’m going to get all the details out of both of them.

For now, everyone’s highest priority is swimming in the pool, eating the food that Cook brings out every couple of hours, and making a big production out of bedtime. Jameson gets nervous every sunset, and so do I, and then we—along with everyone else in the house—pretend that going to sleep at night is a funny way to pass the time and not a harrowing reminder of the Near-Death Incident.

That night, Jameson almost ran into the pool and had to be yanked back by his brother, who then sat on the pool deck with Jameson in his arms for seven straight hours because no one could wake him up. I thought listening to him scream and sob and beg his siblings not to die was bad until he went silent six hours in and started shaking his head like he was saying no every few minutes, his teeth clenched tight and one of his fists balled in Mason’s shirt.

I think Mason was starting to panic when Zeus and his brothers casually joined us on the pool deck and started a lighthearted conversation as Conor found a position at Hades’s feet and curled up as close as he could get to Jameson. Somewhere in the middle of that, Jameson shook his head again, and Mason, a tense note in his voice, said he keeps doing that.

It didn’t sink in that Zeus thought Jameson might be listening until, in the midst of an unrelated sentence, he asked whether Jameson was always so quiet when he had night terrors.

Not in my experience.

A minute or two later, Zeus gently suggested that what was happening to Jameson by then probably wasn’t a nightmare, or a night terror, and pointed out how tightly Jameson’s jaw was locked and how his fingers couldn’t be uncurled from Mason’s shirt. And then there was a short discussion of needles and medical power of attorney that was somehow as zero-pressure as it could be. Whatever Zeus did with the needle was so competent and—dare I say—soft that I didn’t even see it happen.

What I saw was Jameson actually falling asleep, his hand uncurling and his jaw unlocking and his whole body relaxing. And of course Zeus didn’t wander off to start a pool party. He stayed around, casually supervising.

“There,” he said, about five minutes later. “Dreaming.”

I don’t know how he knew that, and I still haven’t asked.

I’ve just been a pregnant emotional wreck at a pool party while Jameson readjusts his sleep schedule after not sleeping for half his life and gets used to simply waking up his siblings instead of suffering for hours—years?— at a time. His bad dreams are dreams, now—things he can be woken from—and I have never met a man more dedicated to reassuring his youngest brother that it was really just a bad dream than Mason Hill.

The best way to clear one’s mind is with movement. However, if your new husband and the love of your life is, like, really tired, cuddling will do just fine.

I knew Mason had friends who would show up for a wedding and actually be in the wedding on a moment’s notice. They’re also the kind of friends who will let you stay in their house for close to three weeks when one of you—namely Mason—can’t stand the thought of having any of his siblings out of sight. Everything’s easier with more adults.

Especially when Jameson decides he’s not tired—despite a visit from a literal doctor who told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to rest—and has to work off his excess energy somehow.

A lot of joking ensues.