Chapter Twenty-Four

Zoe

"Z oe?"

"Hi. Yes. Hi."

It isn't that she startled me. It's that she is Julia; apparently, Julia makes me a little jittery.

I'm not equipped to deal with the infinite kindness this virtual stranger so generously graces me with. I've seen her through a screen, even spoken to her, enough times—but three-dimensional circumstances are different, real in a way screens cannot mimic.

She hits me with another smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes. I see Miles there.

"Thank you. For this." She waves an arm around, then laces it with mine. "For taking care of my son."

Arm in arm, she steers us through the sprawling grass, vivid green and neatly tailored, where most guests mingle.

The vast majority are teammates or staff from Miles's club—which Aaliyah is to thank. She put me in contact with Gus, whom, upon careful persuasion, supplied me with a list of Miles's closest colleagues. Then, Lucas and his family, Deacon, from the vintage sneaker store where Miles gets shoes he'll never wear, and his girlfriend Elma, one of our neighbors, James something, the rich hot bachelor Miles befriended approximately 24 hours after we moved in…

"The thing about mothers is that we don't ever stop worrying about our babies. You kids turn 18, but the switch doesn't expire. In fact, it gets worse. You're not under our roof anymore, where there's a semblance of protection, however misguiding it might be. I won't even say control—that just vanishes as soon as we pop out the kid—and we have to learn to live with that."

We stop when we reach the farthest corner of the backyard, an unobstructed view to all the angles of the house I currently call home. Even under the shade of the trees that knit together to create a screen of privacy, the heat is unrelenting, and a fine sheen of sweat glazes my body under the satin mini-dress.

"You're thousands of miles away from the nest, alone where we can't reach and hold you. We have to learn to live again. Mothers live so many lives in a lifetime."

Her gaze darts around, seeing exactly the place miles and miles away in which her son landed. It goes unfocused, like she's traveling through time, watching previous lives.

"We live one life before you, and so many lives after we give birth to yours. In this one, I'm still learning to trust my best was good enough. That I was able to teach my son how to take care of himself, to choose the people for his life."

At this, I have to reach for her. I have to grab her hand, and squeeze. I have to tell her, in all my failing eloquence. "You did. You were. Miles is… He's good. He's… good."

I have a degree in Communications, useless as I search for one word, just one, that will do them justice—and find all words lacking.

Julia is tall, much taller than me, and I feel those inches when she pulls me into an embrace that drowns me. Her brown hair, darker than Miles's, is cut an inch or two below her shoulders, but she wears it in an impeccable bun to fight the unrelenting heat of the summer. It catches on my claw clip as she backs away, she doesn't bother fixing it.

"My son has been so fixated on creating the perfect family, that I was afraid he would forget his own happiness. Or worse, he'd be too blinded to recognize it." She brushes my strands with a motherly hand, righting the clip. "I see now that he hasn't. He's realized that a perfect picture can be no more than a forced smile for a flash of time—and it's all the other seconds and nuances photos cannot capture that truly matter. And I think it has something to do with you, Zoe. Mother's intuition," she finishes with a wink.

I swallow, but my mouth is dry. I wouldn't be able to push out an answer even if I could string one.

As it turns out, I wouldn't have to.

"What are my favorite girls colluding with each other, now?"

With a glass of water in each hand, Miles stretches each of his arms around me and his mom, a buffer between us.

Too little too late, all the punches have landed, the damage is done.

Still, I'm so thankful for his arrival that my arm snakes around him, shackling him to me as I down the fresh liquid in one gulp.

"Planning another party behind my back?"

I beam up at him."We were wondering about the clown's delay, actually. "

Miles's face falls, ashen. "Clown?"

Cold bites my lip as I tap it with the rim of the glass, while ogling my boyfriend deliberately. "He was putting on his apparel for the party, I realize now."

Julia snorts her unexpected amusement, the water swishing and spilling into the maxi skirt of her floral dress. "You're every bit as wicked as he's been telling me."

"Thank you." I bow my head in mock reverence. "I am a woman of many qualities, indeed."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." Shaking her head, she attempts to soak the liquid from the fabric with a napkin. "He's always been a little masochistic."

"Mom! Do not encourage her. Do not ally with her. I 'm your son."

"I have always wanted a daughter," Julia muses.

"Remind me to never leave you unsupervised. You two together are a threat."

"To whom?"

"My ego!"

Julia pats her son's shoulder patiently, her forever little boy, then points to her dress. "I'm gonna clean this mess. You be good—the two of you."

We reply like a well-rehearsed choir.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yes, Mom."

Her amusement floats over us as we watch her charm everyone in her way.

Our sprawling backyard has never seen so many people. But together, we're just a boy and a girl, in our own private bubble.

Like a little girl, I'm mute and taut, overcome with the uncertainty that clutters my mind.

A surprise birthday party, just like my surprise birthday present, were good ideas on paper, where I could justify my efforts aligned with the narrative we had committed to sell. But as I stare at the boy, I can no longer lie to myself. If the way he gazes at me is any indication, not to him, either.

However, I've gotten a little too tangled in the illusion, and lost sight of a tiny detail. This isn't technically my house. As much as it's all for him, it wasn't my right to invite all these people here.

So, I apologize, though Miles didn't yet know the depth of my apology.

"I'm sorry if I overstepped." I move away to stare at the party in full swing. "This house is a dream, but I know this is not my place t—"

In a blink, he's on me again. I don't even see his hands before they cup my cheeks roughly, stealing the end of my sentence.

"A dream is all this house is on its own. When you're here, it's home. Because you're here." In his urgency to make me listen, each word is slow, thorough. "This is your home, Zoe—always will be."

His touch must be rougher than either of us realize, because my airways constrict, and it feels like he's stolen all the oxygen from my lungs.

Glass shatters, causing a commotion, but it's all muted in the distance from where it can't reach our bubble.

"Save the intensity for when it's just the two of you, lovebugs," Rodri yells from somewhere. "And get a mop. Some little monster broke a glass."

Miles doesn't break eye-contact, taking all the time to make sure the words sear into my soul.

"Do you feel guilty for lying to the world?" I hear myself blurt out in a whisper.

"Is that who we're lying to? The world?"

I don't speak.

I don't know words.

"Who are we fooling, Zoe?" His touch crawls from my cheeks to my shoulders, until my heart is under his thumb. "Are we pretending for the world or for ourselves?"

Most of the guests have left, like the worst of the heat, gone with the sun that lies low on the horizon. The mellow breeze invites us to stay outside, enjoying the last notes of a happ-y day.

My hosting duties have concluded with success and little damage. I can now enjoy my white wine without apprehension that I might trip and somersault into the pool or accidentally insult someone's dead uncle.

It's just family now, the moms and the kids. Upon insistence, a visibly tired Grandpa Toby retired for a nap, complaining of the burden of old age—and the granddaughter who's keen on getting rid of the elders to start the actual party.

"How did the two of you meet, anyway? I never got the full story."

The party has moved to the lounge-space, a fireside gathering around a stone fire pit and granite walls that stretch and surround the glimmering pool .

Miles's massive hand curls around my bare leg to steady me on the arm of the patio chair we share, his strong legs sprawling ahead of us. The grip on my wine tightens as I scramble for an embezzlement of our first meeting.

Miles notices the spike of my anxiety, taking the burden. He doesn't fumble for lies. "The day I moved into her building, the first thing I did was knock on her door with a cup of sugar. She pinned me with this—" He looks up at me like he knows what awaits him. "—glare." With the pad of his thumb, he smooths the lines between my brows. "Like she was on a diet and my sugar personally offended her, and I'd been sent from hell to torture her."

Laughter erupts around us, along with nods that confirm it's the first encounter they'd expected from us. I don't look away from his earnest eyes, seeing the encounter I've so many times replayed in my head from his perspective.

February 13th. My 24th birthday. I'd waited all day, despite what I told myself, to hear from my father. It had been just past seven; with the time difference, it was already the 14th in Europe, and all I'd received was complete radio silence.

Uncharacteristically impulsive, I'd called him, unsure what I would say. As I was about to hang up, he'd picked up.

I'd paused.

The answer to my quiet "Hi" was a question.

"Who is this?"

Then, small pieces of shattered glass everywhere as I'd disconnected the call, slamming the phone against the wall.

I'd never found out if he'd realized it was his daughter, calling so late on the day he never remembered.

Minutes later, Miles's incessant knock on the door found me frozen on the same spot. How dare he look so happy when I wanted to crumble into dust on the floor? His blinding smile only highlighted the darkness I'd felt. So, I'd ripped it right off his face with blatant rudeness.

Later, with a clear head, I saw the error of my ways. Hidden behind a bouquet of beautiful lilies, I was on his doorstep, ready to make amends, only to be met with a mirror of myself. I never got a word out.

In the face of reciprocation directly fueled by my own attitude, I never gave him the benefit of the doubt. From then forward, I declared Miles the bad guy, shaping the story to the benefit of my beliefs, taking innocent actions, and injecting them with hidden intentions and self-serving interests.

People hide themselves. I was raised to notice the difference between a public persona versus the truth. So, it made perfect sense that that's who he was. Another rich, hot guy hiding his ugliness behind a blinding smile.

With all those foregone conclusions and assumptions, I'd been the one to set in stone the tone of our relationship, a complete bitch who knew how to hold a grudge with nothing but stubbornness and two slender arms. I clung to it like a lifeline, when in reality it was only ever a boulder that dragged me down.

It sounds so petty and childish now that I want to dig a hole under my bed and never come out.

Camila interrupts my trip down the memory lane, as though she isn't the only person in the world who knows everything.

"So, how did you change her mind?"

Miles's searching eyes flit between mine, offering only truth once more. "Most days, I'm not entirely sure she has."

Over my shoulder, I see the closed curtains that conceal my secret—the birthday gift that winked in my head the first time I visited this house. I walked in and before I saw the room as it was, I saw it as it could be—as it would be.

After weeks of work in a careful schedule that assured Miles was far away from the house, it's finished—just in time for his birthday. All the things I haven't voiced, things I can't make sense of, wrapped in a present without a bow.

I'm just as eager to kick everyone out and drag the curtains open as I am to keep them in place forever.

"Oh, she has," Rodrigo says all-knowing. All provoking. "If you took your smoldering eyes off her ass for a second, you'd see it."

An unexpected boom startles me. Fortunately, my drink is long on its way to my blood, so there's no waste of expensive alcohol. I fumble for balance, grasping only air that doesn't support me. I tumble into Miles's lap, knocking our heads in the process.

"Ow!" I complain as Miles grunts. It's my scar his finger smooths with care, like it's my pain he must erase.

"Foda-se, Camila!" Rodrigo's heartfelt curse, followed by his sister's maniacal cackling, enlightens the picture I can't see. Because my gaze is stuck on my boyfriend's hands that clutch my waist as he adjusts me on his stone-legs.

"He's afraid of balloons," I explain to those alarmingly attractive hands. Can hands even be that attractive? They shouldn't.

Somewhere in my periphery, Julia clucks her tongue as an introduction to her speech. It sounds remarkably like Portuguese, but not quite in the way the siblings speak. Her lips curl around the vowels in a slower manner that strips them naked and presents them with adoration .

My eyes snap to her, hands on her waist as she distributes admonishments.

The indentations between my brows are questions that Miles promptly erases with unrestrained pride. "My mother is Brazilian."

My jaw drops with the weight of all the implications of this little revelation. "You speak Portuguese."

The divots in his cheeks deepen, delighted at being caught. "Don't worry, love. They mostly talk about your devilish eyes. It's me that inspires their creative insults."

"So all this time you've been eavesdropping on their conversations. As they talked about you. Without their knowledge. That's… devious." And unexpectedly hot. Very fucking hot.

I don't realize I'm clutching his wrist until the calloused pads of his fingers send shivers up my arm from their trail on my whitened knuckles.

Miles leans back, a smirk tickling the corner of his mouth as gray disappears under pupils fueled by all the feelings behind mine.

I stare for what feels like the briefest eternity until the moon joins, fireflies, crickets and cicadas. Until Miles sits me on the chair and leaves me staring after him as he vanishes inside.

"Who's staying for dinner?" Miles comes back, phone and wine in hand.

"Dinner?" Camila shrieks, scandalized. We have been eating all afternoon, after all.

"It's not a proper birthday without burgers and fries."

Rodrigo scrunches his nose. "Burgers?"

"They're Americans…" Camila shrugs, like it's a matter of nationalities. "I guess I could eat some cheese. Get me a double, no pickles. And sweet potato fries. Thanks! "

She hugs Miles. Then sucker-punches him in the gut, sunny smile never faltering. Miles doubles over with a pained wheeze, and I choke on my wine.

Rodrigo's laugh is muffled by the cake he's munching on; no surprise, only unconcealed amusement. Like Camila going around punching people isn't only a normal occurrence, but the highlight of his days.

From another chair, Nicholas's gaze is heated with praise and appraisal, then concern, tracing her face for any signs of pain. He watches as she flexes her hand, pocketing his own inside his jeans like he's stopping himself from kissing her knuckles better.

Camila smiles at Miles, simultaneously frowning a little in thought. "That's for what you did to my bestie. Even if only good things came from it."

Miles accepts the punch delivered by the sunshine in a white flowy dress and cow-slippers, feeling deserving of the violent aftermath he'd yet to face for the fatidic not-kiss. "You are surprisingly strong. For your short physical structure! And bubbly persona."

Camila winks, conspiratorial. "A girl's biggest weapon is her bubbly personality."

I suspect she's revealed more of herself in this one sentence than all these months.

Rodri ruffles her hair with unbridled love. "She's got a big brother who taught her how to throw a punch."

She shoves him away. "You always had the perfect dimensions for a punching bag."

Rodrigo seems unoffended, used to her brand of insults. "Walked right into that one, didn't I?"

His little sister nods. "You should know by now silence is the only answer to me."

"Are you okay, love?" I drag my eyes from Camila to Miles's weirdly amused expression. "Your mouth has been hanging open for quite a while."

"Better shut it, little Z, before you give the man ideas that will land the next punch a little lower. Don't forget my little sister is vicious."

My middle finger enters the conversation. And ends it.