Page 37 of Love Felt Like This

He opens the driver’s-side door and rounds the front, then pulls me into a tight hug.

“Hey there, sugar.” His words have that familiar drawling lilt as they croak, muffled in my hair. He grips my shoulders. “Let me get a look at you. Ah. Pretty as always.” He sighs in faux disappointment. “But still not tan. What’s that California sun ever done for you?”

I look him over as well. All Dad’s head hair has officially migrated down to his chin and cheeks, but I knew that from our last video call together. What the low-quality phone camera couldn’t show was the tiny lines beside his eyes that have gained new friends or the way his once brown beard has more salt and pepper than before.

Since moving to California five years ago, I’ve only returned to North Carolina for the holidays or occasional weekends when we’re between shooting schedules or performances. I didn’t get the chance to return for Christmas last month, since Flock Workshop was in the last stages of shuttering its doors. I force a smile. I don’t like that I can see the slipping time now.

A car behind ours honks. The minivan’s side door slides open, and my nana’s puff of dyed red hair pokes out.

“Let’s get going, Glenn! Before I start picking fights.” Her playful grin beams over to me. “Come on, Bevvy.”

Bevvy.

The only people who have ever called me that are Finch, Grandpa, and Nana. Finch would be happy to know that his best friend’s widow is still sticking with tradition.

“In the car, you two!” she yells. The impatient car honks again. Nana waves them around us with a “Well, go on!”

My nana, Alice Jones Starling—keeping her maiden name as her middle, thank you very much—is the type of woman who keeps tasks moving. Grandpa always deferred to her as the matriarch of our household. He was a cautionary admirer of his wife, who still functions like a tornado, even now at seventy-five.

Dad pats my shoulders with a final smile and grabs both my suitcases. I follow him to the van, parting ways at the open sliding door as he rolls the bags around back.

Nana engulfs me into a hug through the open door, smelling like her usual mix of her floral perfume and vanilla lotion.

“All right, come on, come on,” she says, coaxing me in. I hunch and crawl inside the van. It’s stuffy from the dry heat and too many bodies. Rustling limbs and swishing coats. A panting dog.

“Let’s make some room,” Nana says. “Rob, would you take her backpack?”

“I’m a little busy!”

My brother’s knobby knees pull up to his chest in the back seat as he grips Pudge’s collar. Rob’s aptly named portly basset hound tugs against his hold, struggling his way between the middle seats and toward me.

“Oh my God, when did you get so lanky?” I ask, watching Rob’s arms stretch out to pull Pudge’s torso backward. Rob and I are eighteen years apart—his fourteen to my thirty-two. He was a late-in-life, totally unplanned but beloved baby. I guess that’s what happens when your parents never let the spark fade. I try not to think about it too much.

Nana shifts in her seat as I bypass her for the opposite one. I twist to make sure my backpack hits the front passenger seat—filled with various diner supplies—instead of her.

“Okay, I can take that now,” Rob offers, reaching out. I slide off my backpack, holding out my coffee so it doesn’t drop, and pass the bag to him. Pudge immediately rubs his nose over it.

“And I’m not lanky,” Rob adds with a grin.

“Tell that to your elbows—ow!”

One accidentally protrudes into my shoulder as he murmurs, “Sorry.”

“Settle on in,” Nana says, reaching across the center aisle to slide up the other middle seat’s arm. She shuts the sliding door, and suddenly my coat feels like it’s swaddling me in sweaty heat.

Dad opens the trunk, and cold air whips through like a wind tunnel.

Rob leans forward between the middle seats. Pudge’s drooling jowls coat his knee in slobber.

“You have to tell me everything about Griffin Harvey.”

I buckle my seat belt as I fumble out a laughing “What? I just got here. Dad’s not even driving yet.”

I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about Griffin. My brain is still tired from travel. Probably because I spent the entire flight thinking about him.

“Our little superstar,” Dad calls from the open trunk.

“Oh, let’s not,” I say, wincing.