Page 158 of Creeping Beautiful

She exhales and takes a moment. I give her that moment because like that little girl she was when she came to us, this relationship we have sure as shit didn’t come with an instruction manual.

“Because we’re friends.”

I smile. That was not the answer I would’ve given, but it’s a good one. “We are friends, Indie. It’s a very strong bond. And we can’t go messing it up just for sex.”

“It’s not just sex, McKay.”

“I know. I know it’s not. And that’s why we need to unravel things slowly. Because if we go too fast, we’ll start tying more knots.”

She seems content with that answer because we’re both silent for a long time after that.

I think about Nathan. I feel like I’ve been thinking about that kid my whole life at this point. And there’s nothing I can do to change the way it turned out. What happened, happened. And I have to live with it.

So I take my own advice and start to forget…

Indie falls asleep first, and even though I’m determined to stay awake—leftover paternal responsibilities, maybe?—I can’t help it. I drift off.

When I wake up the water is going tepid. So I get up, help her out, dry her off, then myself. And then we put night clothes on.

She finds a t-shirt and shorts in her dresser drawer. Old clothes this time. From before. And I find a pair of sweats in my room.

Then I go back to her room, climb into bed next to her, wrap my arms around her middle, tug her back up to my chest, and close my eyes. So ready for this day to be over.

“You didn’t wash my hair.”

I open one eye. “What?”

“You didn’t wash my hair. Or comb it out. So I just want you to know, that bath didn’t count.”

I hug her a little tighter and then drift into a dream where all this happened, and nothing is different. The bad, and the good. The laughs and the tears. The things we did right and all of the mistakes.

They come to me in dream, after dream, after dream.

And still, I hear myself insist…

I would do it all again.

When I wake in the morning I feel like I’m having déjà vu because I can hear Indie and Donovan talking down in the kitchen. I swing my legs out of bed, then wonder how she got out of my arms without waking me up.

God, I’m getting too old for this shit.

Anyway, the conversation downstairs doesn’t sound heated or confrontational. So I give myself a break for the security lapse.

When I wander into the kitchen Donovan is still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Motherfucker really did stay downstairs all night. He’s sitting on a barstool at the kitchen island and Indie is sitting on the counter, searching through a cupboard.

I walk over to her, grab her by the waist, and swing her off the counter. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Oh, good. You’re up. We’re hungry.”

And for a second… I swear to God, it’s ten years earlier. She is fourteen. The Company hasn’t fallen. Indie never got pregnant. I am making breakfast. Donovan is probably gonna leave a little later to go back to school. Adam will come downstairs any minute now and say something to make us groan.

Everything is perfect.

But of course, this girl standing in front of me isn’t fourteen and while things might get better, they will never be that good again.

I do realize it’s fucked up to want the Company back. But after nearly ten years without them… I just can’t talk myself into it anymore.

Things did not get better. Nothing got better. The world is still filled with evil people, it’s just a whole new set of evil people we have no authority over.