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“I know. I don’t care.”
He spends several days calling and texting his friends from the city. My dad doesn’t invite them to the pool party. He demands that they come, and every one of them says yes.
I would, too.
I spend that time having stuff packed up in California, including Shane. He doesn’t go in a moving box, but he and the rest of my team are coming to New York to guard our new house.
The day of the pool party is a perfect July day. It’s too hot to wear anything but bathing suits and cover-ups, and all my dad’s friends come out of Zeus’s house ready for the pool, and the whole patio is filled with people shouting and laughing and teasing one another.
I lie underneath the giant sunshade on the opposite side in my bikini, wearing the largest pair of sunglasses I have ever owned, in the most comfortable lounge chair available on the market, listening to the party.
I could watch, if I wanted. The painkillers are working again, and the sunshade was designed for me and my dad, but I’ve spent enough time in the dark to know that the visual isn’t everything.
They sound so happy.
I wouldn’t go so far as to take credit for it. My parents are thrilled that I’m moving back, of course, and Zeus is beside himself, but that’s also about Hercules.
He’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him.
It’s bittersweet. Sometimes, he seems tentative about it, like he’s not quite sure that it’s real, or that it’ll last. There’s no such thing as a guarantee in life, but he feels like one to me.
I hope I feel like one to him, too.
And not just me. All of us. The whole family. I didn’t understand why he was so hesitant to be part of it before. Last week, when we were talking in the middle of the night, he told me that he worried about betraying his mom. Forgetting her.
He’s not worried anymore.
See? Nightmares have silver linings, too.
Just kidding. Those things are the worst. I would be fine if I never had another one for the rest of my life. Or if I had anormalone, the way other people do. I’d rather dream about being late for math class or being lost in a maze or having my phone quit working.
The pool party gets a little quiet, the chatter ebbing the way it does sometimes. I don’t open my eyes. I’m enjoying the entire range of sound. Shrieks and belly laughs and my old friends chatting andcan I hold her? She’s darlingand Castor and Pollux in the pool, and, and, and…
“Hey.”
Hercules’s voice is close to my ear. I still don’t open my eyes. I know what he looks like in his bathing suit, and I can’t have sex with him right now. Not unless we go upstairs, and everybody at this pool party will know what we’re doing.
“Hi.”
“Daisy.”
“Yes?”
The lull in conversation is a real lull now, and I want to know what’s going to break it up. Is it someone’s birthday? I didn’t think so, but now would be the ideal time to bring out a cake.
“Baby.”
“Hercules. What?”
“Open your eyes.”
He’s on one knee at the side of the lounge chair, hope in his eyes and that shy, knock-me-out-in-a-good-way smile on his face, and he’s holding a ring.
Aring.
It’s a tiny black diamond in a lovely, delicate setting. It’s how I’ve always wanted to feel, made into a ring.
“Oh my God.” I scramble up on the chair and shove my glasses gracelessly up onto the top of my head. “What are you doing?”
