Chapter Twenty-Three

Miles

"S URPRISE!"

My foot hasn't touched tiled floor when the cheerful greeting startles me.

With a high-pitched curse, I stumble inside to find my living room filled to the brim with familiar faces, my embarrassing shriek swallowed by the yearly chant they yell in unison. Fortunately.

My hand presses against my chest, trying to slow my heartbeat with measured breaths. Then I lock eyes with Zoe and all my efforts crumble.

She's a petite thing in the midst of a crowd, but I find her in an instant. She's gravity to my soul, her pull unrelenting. As though it's a two-way street, the crowd parts for her to step forward to me.

Zoe's smile hides behind a single candle that paints her cheeks in the prettiest pink as she raises it for me. "Happy birthday, love."

Shaped like the trophy I won all those weeks ago on the luckiest day of my life, the small features a flickering candle. The flame vanishes with an exhale, a small spiral of smoke between us.

Cheers erupt, volume dimmed when Zoe's finger dips into frosting and snakes swiftly through the air to smear it across my cheek.

"Oops." She giggles.

I want to pull her finger into my mouth and suck, for cleaning purposes, but I refrain—crowd around us and all that. It's a lot less scandalous that she licks it herself, pink lips puckering around the digit, the hollowness in her cheeks disappearing into a grin.

Aching to touch her, I tuck her long overgrown bangs behind her ear. "Do that again and I—"

"I never want to hear the end of that sentence, Miles Blackstein."

That voice has a direct line to my heart, and I finally see beyond my entire eyesight.

Warmth radiates through the very center of my chest to consume my whole body, cresting in a grin that blooms until my face hurts. "Mom?"

Hands that held me from my very first breath caress my cheekbones with tenderness. Taller than average, she looks small by my side ever since my sweet sixteenth, so she has to tip her face a little to meet the eyes I inherited from her.

"Happy birthday, honey."

"Mom!" I pull her into my arms. It's been too long. First resolution for my 28 th year is to remedy that and visit her often. "You're—How are you here? Why did you tell me you couldn't come?" I babble, swaying us from one foot to the other.

"It's called a surprise," she deadpans with glossy eyes .

"I'm so happy you're here." I almost jump to hug her again. "I missed you so much!"

With a sniff, she draws back again, gesturing towards the crowd that dispersed to give us privacy. "Go on, greet your guests."

Outside, they mingle in the heat. All except for one. Hands inside jeans pockets, Nicholas leans against the wall. He grabs the bottle I offer, tips its neck to greet mine with a click, and we take a swig.

"The beer sucks," is his opening line.

Admittedly, it sucks.

My girl's knowledge about beer isn't great. If I had to guess, I'd say Zoe perused the shelves in the store for approximately five seconds before settling on the most expensive, convinced that higher price equals better quality.

"Just chug it down with a smile. Or whichever scowl consists of your smile."

Unnervingly impassive, he stares at me. "I was impressed when I got the invitation. Didn't expect it, considering you became an avid recluse ever since you set foot in this city."

"Maybe I decided to explore your lifestyle, see what's so unparalleled that you cling so hard to it." I tip my bottle in his direction. "Or maybe you weren't invited to previous parties."

He ignores me, all knowing. "I understand now, though. The party theme is… enlightening."

The neutral palette of our home is covered by a rainbow of balloons, some high up in the vaulted ceilings, some littered across the floors. Paper streamers cascade from the wall, glitter and confetti twinkle between plates of food on the tables. More decorations around than whose names I know. All that's missing is a bouncy castle—though, maybe I just haven't noticed it yet.

The best damn party I ever had.

I grin at my friend, all teeth and dimples. "I think the words you're searching for are ‘Happy birthday, dear handsome best friend. It's an honor and a privilege to be a very, very small part of your blessed life.'"

For a long time, he eyes me with deliberate silence as he takes another swig of the shitty expensive beer. "10 years, huh?"

I narrow my eyes. "You calling me a kid?"

"If the shoe fits…" My best friend, the bastard that he is, shrugs. "I, however, was wondering how I've put up with you for an entire decade."

The edges of my lips hitch back up to their normal height. "We both know you can't live without me."

He hums. "My skin has shriveled considerably during the last year you spent in meditation inside your penthouse."

I squint, inching intentionally too close to his face in inspection. "It is glowing obscenely, lately. Here I thought it was the sunshine that seems to follow you around." My wide smile widens. "Or is it you that chases it? Vitamin D and all."

Nicholas stares and keeps staring. "Do you have a pen?"

The lines between my brows crease in question. Predictably, he doesn't elaborate until I rummage through four drawers to unearth a pen.

Pen in hand, he asks in the same tone. "Paper?"

"Are you fucking serious?"

Another round of stare-off. I have no chance of victory. Throwing my hands in the air, I restart the search, spotting one of hundreds of empty notebooks Zoe has scattered around the house—and pray she doesn't murder me for touching it.

Nicholas scribbles something on a random page, punctuating it with a final click of the pen. He separates it from the notebook with a rip and leaves me to read.

In clear calligraphy, the note says IOU: dental reconstruction .

I gape at his back, jaw dropped to the balloon on the floor. Not due to the implied threat that he'll break my teet, though. "You know what an IOU is? That's like my grandfather knowing what an IOU is!"

"You don't have a grandfather, Blackstein," he throws over his shoulder.

I pick my jaw up to scowl properly at him. "Rude."

And right, once—a long time ago. Not anymore.

"Miiiiiles!" I turn toward Camila's obnoxiously elongated call. "Your present!"

"Oh. Thank you." I blink at the mess of wrapping paper and tape, stunned she noticed my love for literature. "You got me a book?"

"I'm proud to promote literacy. And boys that read are very sexy."

"I'm a man," I retort, not in the slightest offended, just as her name comes in a commanding voice.

"Camila."

She snorts, at which of us I don't know. "Open it when you're alone. Or alone with your girlfriend." She winks.

Then she follows my best friend's voice.

With the giddiness of a kid on Christmas morning, I immediately tear through the wrapping paper that fully covers it.

Behind the paper, the book isn't fit for children.

Kama Sutra .

Fucking Kama Sutra.

That's Camila's gift.

Against my will, I bark out a laugh. What else could I expect from that ball of chaos and craziness?

This book is a fire hazard on this floor, so, two steps at a time, I climb the stairs to drop it off in my room. The door shuts behind me as I drop the paperback on my nightstand with a dull thump.

Then, a knock, knock, knock on the door. My thoughts are answered by the low tone of someone who's worked in a library for thirty years.

My mother comes in, keen gaze floating around, examining what's supposed to be the space I share with my girlfriend.

I wait with bated breath, watching her, worried. Watching for signs that she can see through our fa?ade. Watching the room through her eyes.

A small stack of books on my bedside table, the new addition fortunately covered by the wrapping paper. A laptop and charger on Zoe's supposed side, her bees neatly folded at the end of the bed.

No pictures except for a polaroid of us, taken on the day we moved in.

When she focuses her attention on me, a soft smile creeps up the corners of her lips, and mine are an instant mirror.

The flowers on her dress stand out against the beige duvet, as she pats the bed once, twice, gesturing for me to sit with her.

"My baby boy," she croons. I welcome her hug. In her arms, I'm a little boy, again. "I can't believe you're 28. I don't know where the time has gone."

"I still feel like a kid sometimes," I admit playfully .

"Good. I don't want you to ever lose that sweet little boy."

It's an effort to hold my smile with the heaviness of guilt. I've never hidden anything from her, much less blatantly lied to her.

"When we're young, we think our parents are perfect. We assume their lives were always all about us and don't consider they had a life before each other, a past that might have included other people."

My eyebrows drag together, uncertain where this is coming from—or where it's going.

I suppose she isn't wrong. I never asked about her life before my father. When I was old enough to wonder about love and its intricacies, they already had divorced. I decided not to ask, afraid my questions would revive sad feelings and hurt her.

Mom sighs, tracking my features with a sliver of sadness. "You were so mad at your dad—blamed him for the divorce."

I did. I do. I don't want to do this—whatever this is.

"Mom, my girlfriend kindly organized everything downstairs for me. It's rude to leave her alone with our guests." I stand up stiffly, making my way out. "Frankly, I just don't want to."

I'm severely underdressed for my own birthday party, wearing my team's blue colors in a t-shirt and shorts after practice, but I won't waste time showering and changing while Zoe entertains our guests downstairs. In all honesty, five minutes would be nothing, but I want to be next to her now . I also wasted those minutes staring at our picture like a fool.

"There was a man before your father." My hand freezes on the doorknob. "I fell in love and… It didn't work out. "

I don't dare to shatter the stretching silence as she searches for her words. I wouldn't know how to.

She was right. In all the times I wondered about her story with my father, not once did it cross my mind that he wasn't her first love.

"It takes two people to make a marriage work. And when it doesn't, the responsibility doesn't fall solely on one side." My hand flexes, falters, and falls at last. "I loved your father. But… I guess it wasn't the same. In the end, he decided to go his own way rather than stay with someone who couldn't entirely let go of another love."

I whirl around and slump, letting the door support me. "Why tell me this now?"

"I just wanted you to know the whole truth." She folds her hands on her lap. "He left me , never you."

Didn't he? Though I refused to speak to him upon the separation, firmly on my mother's side—as much as she insisted there were no sides to take—he stuck around until I left for college. Then he took a job somewhere in Texas, coaching college football.

"He still calls often to ask about you—since you won't answer yourself." She lifts her shoulder like it's nothing. Like my world isn't spinning dangerously. "One would think you're old enough to pull your head out of your ass by yourself, but if you refuse, it's my job as your mom to kick it."

There's noise in my head, so loud I don't know where to focus. Voices over voices speak foreign languages, urging me to listen.

"I'm not defending your dad. As a matter of fact, I don't agree with his choices. When you pushed him away, he should have pushed back harder. But the fool wanted to respect your space, give you time to come around. Look at what good that did…"

"Does that mean I'm never allowed to stay mad at you?"

Mom pats my arm indulgently. "You could never be mad at your mom, baby."

She knows she's gotten through to me—bulldozed her way through. On the other side of the destruction is a whole new perspective.

It was so easy to blame my father for leaving our home and breaking our family. It was easy to punish him with silence, letting the resentment grow with the distance. So easy to justify it all on my mom's behalf when, maybe, all along, it was me—I was hurt, too.

I've been chasing goal after goal, victory after victory, trophy after trophy, in hopes to… What?

What have I truly been chasing? What have I been trying to accomplish?

Were the goals I scored motivated by an underlying wish to make him regret leaving? Was my insatiable hunger for success part of a foolish, never-ending quest to avenge us—me and Mom? To prove that we were fine, and we didn't need him—I didn't need him to be great.

Only one person has ever been able to quiet my restlessness, to soothe the itch under my skin.

Zoe.

When I'm with her, nothing else matters.

As much as I'm ready to put this in the back drawer for now and enjoy the party by her side, the dot of a question mark pokes at the back of my head.

"Why didn't it work out with… the other guy?"

"He was the love of my life." Her voice is soft with the sadness of acceptance. "I wasn't the love of his."

I suck in a sharp breath. Of all the things she's said, that's what undoes me.

In need of oxygen or a reprieve or something, I cross the room to the windows, watching my busy yard.

There she is— gravity . Zoe waves at me, wearing a grin I could see from above the clouds. I swing the window open like I might catch a whiff of flowers in the wind.

It comes—the wind, invading the room, whisking the wrapping paper to the carpet. My mother tracks it down, as do I. Naked on the nightstand, the book glares at us.

My cheeks burn as she scrunches her eyes shut like she's trying to un see, nodding to herself and whispering, "I think I'm gonna go now."

Like a teenager caught with nudie magazines under the mattress, I only nod back and wait for the furious blush to fade.

"Don't let her go." Mom stops at the threshold, one foot inside the bedroom, one foot out. "If she's the one, don't make the mistake of ever letting her go."

"I won't," I say, but she's gone—my mutter all to myself.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I fish my phone from my pocket. One, two, three swipes and my thumb pulls an unopened, unending thread of one-sided white balloons.

I've been purposely looking away for so long… I can't anymore. I must look on, and it's glaring what I see.

I've been so stuck in my own self-righteousness, so self-assured I was doing right by my mother, standing by her, and so stuck in my own hurt, that it brewed and became something bigger than what it was supposed to become.

Small mistakes and misunderstandings cook in silence and avoidance to become big rifts that cause nothing but pain. Maybe that's why the world is festering. People hurt and keep hurting others in response—even the ones they love the most.

I type.

Miles : Hi, Dad.

And I hit send.