Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

PRESLEY

Presley: I finally opened my box the other day. Didn’t get all the way through it. But you’re still proud of me, right?

Thomas: You know there’s no judgement here. There’s an envelope in mine I haven’t opened. A letter, I can tell, but I’m terrified of it.

Presley: I don’t blame you. gif of friends hugging

I stare down at my phone as I sit in my car in the driveway at my parents’ house. I texted Thomas this morning, but it’s not surprising that it took him time to answer. His job keeps him busy. It wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary if it had taken him several days. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll all stop texting each other eventually, if there will be a time when Thomas doesn’t feel like our family anymore. That’s hard to picture.

My mom sits at the kitchen table with her laptop when I walk into her house. She turns to welcome me. “Hello, sweetie.” She reaches out to grab my hand, and I squeeze it as I take a seat next to her.

“What are you up to?” I ask.

“Nothing. Wasting time. Mindlessly scrolling.” She shrugs and pushes at her laptop, which is sitting in front of her. I catch a glimpse of a Facebook post with a close-up of an emerald ring with ruby stones flanking it almost like flower petals. The headline reads, “Is there a Christmas Miracle for a long-lost ring?”

“What’s that about?” I gesture to the post she was looking at.

“Oh, you remember the ring that was stolen last year at the Westcott’s big Christmas party?”

I furrow my brows at her. I remember the Christmas party. I go with my parents every year. The Westcotts have lived in the same neighborhood as my parents for as long as I can remember. Their daughter, Vivi, and I went to elementary school together, and Mrs. Westcott takes that to mean that my attendance is required with my parents, even though Vivi and I weren’t close.

“A stolen ring?” I feel like I’d remember that.

Mom makes a face at me. “Presley. It’s all Alexandra Westcott has talked about since it happened. You follow Vivi on Instagram, don’t you?” she says.

“Yeah.” But I can’t remember the last time one of Vivi’s posts came across my feed.

Mom waves her hand. “We were all there, Presley. They stopped the whole thing when they discovered it was gone, and refused to let anyone leave the house until they were searched. Thomas kept joking about having to explain to his bosses that he was under suspicion of burglary.”

It hits me with a flash of Aunt Shannon’s laughing face. The way she gave Thomas the side-eye but then grinned up at him. No one thinks the FBI agent stole something at an overdone Christmas party , she’d said to him. He’d winked and leaned closer to her. But what if I did?

You guys , I’d said, pretending to be annoyed by their affection. Please.

Shan is on a bad boy kick , Thomas had said with a smirk. Just trying to please her.

I’d pretended to gag.

Aunt Shannon died two days later. Our world spun upside down, and opening up my purse to be searched before I left Westcotts’ that night wasn’t important anymore. I forgot all about the stolen ring.

“Oh yeah,” is all I say to Mom.

She swallows, and I’m guessing my face played my emotions as I remembered. “Anyway, they haven’t found it,” she goes on. “I guess it’s supposed to be Vivi’s engagement ring, and she’s getting married at Christmas. I understand it’s upsetting, but Alexandra’s being obnoxious about it. Every post she makes sounds like she’s accusing everyone in the neighborhood of a conspiracy.”

That seems like Mrs. Westcott. A couple summers ago, her dog got sick, and she called the police, insisting that some boys down the street had fed the dog beer.

“Why don’t they just have a new one made?” I ask. It’s weird that Mrs. Westcott wouldn’t parade around the fact that they have plenty of money to replace something like that. “They probably even had insurance on it, right?”

“It’s a family heirloom. Her husband’s great-grandmother’s. Westcotts have worn it for generations,” she says the last in a posh voice that makes me laugh. She sobers. “I absolutely understand why she’s upset. I should be more sympathetic.” She grimaces, but she’s struggling to hold it. “Anyway, what are you up to?” she asks.

“Work is slow until training camp starts. And I’ve been spending too much time at my apartment by myself. Re-reading TOK.”

Mom chuckles. “Any special reason?”

Heat blooms in my cheeks immediately. “I actually met another fan, and you won’t believe who it is.”

Her eyes widen, and she leans in closer. “It’s a guy, and you like him. I can tell.”

I throw up my hands exaggeratedly. “Who wouldn’t? He’s hot, has a good job, and loves my favorite book series of all time.”

“Well, who is he? ”

“Brock Hunter. He plays for the Denver Devils.” I tilt my head and give my mom a dreamy look that makes us both laugh. Like with Aunt Shannon, I’ve never shied away from dishing to my mom about all the details, even early on. We’ve always been close, and though we fought when I was a teenager, she was still my best friend no matter what. Sometimes she would call me her and Aunt Shannon’s third musketeer. From the time I was little, they took me almost everywhere with them. Rarely was there a girls’ night or trip that I wasn’t invited to.

“Poor guy,” my dad says, jogging lightly down the stairs.

“Steven!” Mom chides, amused.

Dad gives her a what? look. “Worst in the league two years in a row. Everyone’s blaming players, but I say it’s the coaching.” He points a finger at my mom and moves to the sink to get a glass of water.

My dad is a former pro-football player. He played fifteen years as a defensive lineman for the LA Rays and was the biggest reason I got a position on the athletic training staff with them a couple years after I graduated from PT school.

“Better watch your mouth.” Mom shakes her head at him, “unless you’re going to start picking up calls from the general managers who want you on staff.”

Dad grunts. “I’m retired.”

Mom rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, and turns back to me. “Tell me about Brock Hunter and these books.” Dad leans against the kitchen counter, listening in while he slowly drinks his water. I’m close to my dad too. Mom’s best friend and a daddy’s girl all at once. I rarely missed any of his home football games as a little girl and went to as many away games as Mom would let me. He injured his knee when I was ten, and he let me help him do the rehab exercises at home with him, which was when I fell in love with helping people through exercise. Thanks to Dad, I’ve always loved sports, so it seemed a given to use my physical therapy license on an athletic training staff somewhere. Aunt Shannon thought going into regular practice was too boring for me anyway.

But talking to Dad about the newest boy I like? Embarrassing. Even at twenty-nine, it makes me squirm. I push the thoughts away because Mom will tell him anyway. She tells him everything. I just don’t need to witness it.

“I met him at Lincoln’s wedding.”

“Ahh, that’s right. They played at USC together,” Dad interrupts.

I whip my head around to look at him. “Do you know everything?”

“He’s retired,” Mom parrots, and we both laugh. Dad finally joins our chuckling.

“Anyway,” I go on, “he saw the TOK necklace that Aunt Shannon gave me and asked about it. One thing led to another and?—”

Dad coughs. “That’s my cue.” He moves to leave the kitchen, setting down his glass inside the sink.

“ And we ended up talking about Obsidian Kingdom, Dad! ” I hurriedly cry out. I turn back to my mom. “We’ve just been texting. Honestly. ” My cheeks burn so hot I could start a fire.

Dad continues out of the room. He turns to throw me a wink before heading into the family room. A moment later the TV comes on, already tuned to a sports broadcasting station and a group of people talking about the upcoming training camps.

I fan my face, hoping the blush is fading. I do wish that my night with Brock had included some romantic moments, but getting caught up in talking about TOK felt pretty heady too. I’m trying to manage my expectations, make sure I’m not falling too fast for someone I just met, but that’s hard when he can analyze the tropes in Kael and Lyra’s relationships with me. And especially when that someone is as good-looking as Brock. Plus we’re texting all the time and getting to know each other like if we were going on dates.

“I have a crush on him,” I say in my cool-as-a-cucumber voice, which contradicts everything I’m saying. “I don’t think it’s any more than that.”

“Yet.” Mom wiggles her eyebrows.

I let out a long sigh. “I hope so.”

Mom leans back in the upholstered chair she’s sitting in. Her kitchen chairs are so fancy. She says it’s because I’m finally out of the house and she can have nice things.

“It must be something,” she says. “Shan basically set you up with him.” She nods at my necklace, which I’ve been wearing every day since I met Brock.

“Yeah,” I say in a soft voice, reaching up to hold it.

Mom looks just like her sister. She was older than Aunt Shannon by two years, but they were super close. Most people mistook them for twins. They had the same chestnut brown hair and gray-blue eyes, which I inherited from them. I have my dad’s full lips and thick, unruly eyebrows, which require a lot of upkeep.

But sometimes, looking at Mom is like looking at Aunt Shannon, and it makes my breath catch. I wonder if it’s ever hard for her to look in the mirror and see her sister in the reflection. I know she misses her with the same ache I do. Their closeness is the reason I was close to Aunt Shannon. She was like my second mom. When Mom married Dad twenty-five years ago and moved out to LA with him, Aunt Shannon followed from Arizona, where they’d grown up. They lost their parents when I was little, so sometimes Aunt Shannon even took on the role of grandma to me, making sure someone spoiled me and teased Mom when she protested.

“I opened my box,” I say after the silence has stretched on too long.

Mom reaches out and takes my hand again, holding it in hers. “What was in it?” She wears a soft smile.

“Did she write you letters?” I ask. Mom nods, the smile growing, and I lean my elbows on the table, continuing. “When did she tell you to open them? ”

Mom tilts her head in thought. “The first one is for the anniversary of her death. Then there’s one for when you get married. When I get to be a grandma. My sixtieth birthday. One for if Steven dies first. I think that’s it. What about yours?” Her eyes shine, but Mom likes to talk about Aunt Shannon, even when it makes her emotional. It helps her hang on to her sister, hearing the stories.

I tell her all the labels on mine, and like me, she catches her breath when I mention she wrote one for me for when Mom dies.

“Probably thought she was going to be here for you,” Mom says with a hiccupping laugh. “We were only two years apart! I could have outlived her.” She huffs. I lean out of my chair toward Mom, enveloping her in a hug.

I think of what Thomas texted me earlier. “She wrote them for Dad and Thomas too?” I ask.

“Yeah. Steven’s are like mine, although she did write him a letter for when you meet the guy he knows is the one. And one when he’s a grandpa, and if I die first.”

“And Thomas’s?”

“I only know about one, and only because she told me about it. I don’t think Thomas has looked at them.” She taps her fingers absently on the table. “When he meets someone new and it’s real.” Then she laughs.

“What?”

“She didn’t want him to move on.” Mom’s teasing expression is a shade sad, her eyes dancing. “I mean, she did, but in the moment it made her crazy. She said she wrote up a whole letter about how she wanted him to love just her his whole life and then tore it up.” We share a look with each other about how feisty Aunt Shannon was.

“I couldn’t go through everything,” I say because what I want to say is how unfair it is that Aunt Shannon was robbed of half her life, even more so than the five to ten years of life she should’ve had after her diagnosis. We were all supposed to have plenty of time to say goodbye, but in the end, her accident took her far too quickly.

Mom hums in understanding but doesn’t talk. Probably taking a minute to settle her emotions back down.

“Well,” she says after a moment, “what do we know about Brock Hunter?”

I let out a breath, glad she changed the subject. “He plays left-tackle for the Denver Devils. You’ve probably seen a few memes of him. His temper gets played up.” I open my phone to show Mom the helmet one. Dad turns down the TV in the family room, scoffing as he tunes into our conversation. My mom has loved the open concept layout of the kitchen and family room of their house for this exact reason. When she was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, she didn’t want to be cut off from whatever Dad and I were doing. I have memories of a lot of conversations where the three of us were split between these two rooms—the four of us when Aunt Shannon was around, which was a lot.

“I met him a few years back at a big pro-football charity event. What was it again?” He looks to my mom to help him remember, but she shrugs.

“You’ve done a million of those,” she says.

“Hmmm.” He frowns as he ponders. “I think we were putting together packages of some kind. Anyway, he worked harder than anyone and never complained.” He chuckles to himself. “I remember he did call out some guys that weren’t helping out, a couple rookies, you know? But from what I saw? Good guy. I’d play with him any day.” He holds up a finger. “And Trent Foster, the Pumas’ strength and conditioning coach, has only good things to say about him.”

“Pumas?” Mom says.

“He signed with them after college,” I explain.

“Undrafted!” Dad pipes up, in his impressed voice. I’m not surprised he admires the hard work Brock had to put in to play pro football. “Got traded for some linebacker the Pumas wanted a few years ago. ”

“Unfortunate for Brock,” I say with a sigh. “The Devils don’t seem to know what they’ve got.”

“The Devils don’t know a lot of things,” Dad says.

“But the fact that he likes TOK seals the deal, am I right?” Mom bounces her eyebrows at me. Dad gives us a look and turns the volume back up on the TV, now that we’ve switched to talking about my crush again.

“Can you blame me?” I ask. He’s fun, sending me quotes from the books and off-the-wall opinions he knows will get a rise out of me. He’s a tease, even though it’s dry. In his texts, I’ve seen bits and pieces of the intensity that people play up, but he’s so much more.

Having a friend like him feels like the first few chapters of The Obsidian Kingdom when I read it the first time: fascinating, intriguing … engrossing.

From the text I got this morning, Brock is probably almost done with book two already—we both had to slow down a little the last few days after spending an entire day reading book one. I’ve been listening to the audiobook because I still can’t find my old copy. It must be at my apartment somewhere, but not knowing sends a little buzz through my stomach when I think about it being missing. Aunt Shannon didn’t buy me that copy, just book one of that old collection, but they’re still all tied together. Reading my original collection has become like a tribute to her.

I push away from the table.

“Okay, I have to go. But have you seen my copy of Shattered Void ?” I ask, just in case. “It’s the second TOK book.”

“Yeah,” Mom says. “Your dad’s been reading it. He borrowed it from your house a couple weeks ago. He didn’t think you’d miss that old copy.” She grimaces. “You have a couple other sets, right?”

I don’t care that Dad borrowed a book from me without mentioning it. We’ve always been like that as a family, sharing easily. He probably meant to let me know and forgot .

“Dad is reading TOK?” I give my mom a bewildered look.

“I’m retired!” Dad says from the family room.

I burst into laughter. Dad has been retired from pro football for almost ten years. In the first several years after he retired, he always had something going on to keep him busy—commentating gigs and stuff like that, but in the last couple years he’s stepped back from almost everything to be “totally retired” as he likes to tell me and Mom. Now he’s free to golf. Fly out to Rays games across the country whenever he wants. Spoil grandkids when they finally arrive. (His pointed words, not mine.)

I move from the kitchen to the edge of the family room. “What do you think of the book?” I ask Dad, almost giddy. First, finding out that Brock likes the books, and now maybe my dad likes them too? I mean, he read on to book two. That means something. I form a picture of the two of them discussing the ultimate battle scene from book fifteen, but quickly dismiss it. Managing expectations.

Dad smirks at me. “Meh.” But his eyes dance.

“Dad!” I turn on my heel and wave as I head back the way I came, bending over to kiss Mom on the cheek before I leave, grinning the whole way. “Want to be in my book club with Brock Hunter?” I call from the doorway before I go.

“Meh!” he answers again, a wide smile breaking his face.