Page 149 of Joey

And once the Dumas clan gets their fish hooks and diving spears in you, they have a hard time letting go. Because Mrs. Dumas invited everyone down to Key West for this annual break and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Huck, Wald, Brooke and I are in one of their middle-class vacation bungalows just a couple blocks off the marina. Jesse and Emma are next to us. Hannah and her man—can’t remember his name for the life of me, so I call him nerd dude—are in the one across the street. Natalie brought two, yes, two, dudes with her. I think I like Natalie the best of all those crazy lipstick girls. Mila has her whole family packed into the house next to hers and Zach is actually staying with Luke Dumas, who is Emma’s youngest brother. He’s helping him run some boat tours.

But last night was our first huge, new-family dinner with the Dumas clan.

It was an experience I didn’t realize I was missing out on.

It was fun, and exciting, and loud, and we all ate too much… it was, in a word, amazing.

I never thought I could have something like this. I never thought I deserved it.

The only way it could get any better is if Maisy and Johnny were here with us.

But as fun as this all is, it’s just an interlude. Just a pause. Because once Johnny gets back with Charlotte everything will change.

So I enjoy my partners while I can.

We’re sitting on the beach waiting for the sun to set. It’s not quite there yet. The colors the sky will be in a few minutes as the world turns are still a mystery waiting to happen. But I think I know what color the sky will be tonight.

I’m lying on the white sand propped up on my elbows. Huck is sitting next to me, Brooke’s head in his lap. He’s absently playing with her hair as he and Wald talk about fishing with Emma’s brother, Alonzo, tomorrow. Brooke is looking up at them, laughing as they joke about stupid shit I’m not even paying attention to.

Wald is sitting on the other side of me. And every few seconds, while he’s chatting with Huck, he glances down at me like he’s checking to make sure I’m still here.

I’m still here.

I’m just soaking it all up.

For the first time in my life I know who I am.

I know who we are.

Every night we go in to the bedroom and squeeze together on the too-small bed. There’s three bedrooms in our house and I’m sure, eventually, one of us will get tired of having no elbow room at night.

One of us might get tired of someone’s arm draped over their chest, or head on their shoulder, or impromptu sex in the middle of the night when we’re trying to sleep.

But not yet.

We’re not there yet.

This love affair I’ve been having with my best friends for the past sixteen years might not be normal, or conventional, or even emotionally stable. And bringing Brooke in was never in the plan when we came back to the States for Jesse’s tabloid crisis.

But you know what?

Who cares?

Not one damn person out there can guarantee that their well-planned, emotionally stable, couple relationship will make it.

Not one.

As far as I can tell, I’ve got nothing to lose by loving these people.

And I have a new fight in me now too. That’s Brooke. She did that. She’s a fighter. I think that’s why Huck, and Wald, and I never sorted anything out. We were waiting for her. She was missing and somehow we all knew it.

So this is it. The interlude before the end game.

I have no idea what’s coming next but I have hope, and a feeling inside me that everything will work out the way it should, and that there’s calm, fun nights on the beach yet to come.

The sun is setting for real now. The colors forming in a swirl of lazy clouds. Sometimes it’s purple, sometimes it’s yellow, sometimes, it’s red, or orange.

But not tonight.

Tonight it’s pink.