Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ellie

To give the O'Neills their due, it was a classy party. White lights dotted the avocado and orange trees in the small backyard. A few college kids dressed in black circulated with prosecco, and one of them poured Sprite into a flute for Kieran. Ella Fitzgerald scatted cheerfully from invisible speakers. And mostly the guests matched the music's mood. Several people came up and congratulated Kieran on winning Fire on High, and when he told them who I was, they complimented my dress and asked me about the other books I'd worked on. I asked them lots of questions, smiled big as they told us what a nice-looking couple we were.

But some of the other guests, the ones that introduced themselves as close friends of Maureen and Joe's, had sharper smiles.

"You look very nice, Kieran," they said. "Who's your lovely friend, Kieran, " they said.

After one particularly enlightening encounter with one of his mother's fellow librarians who asked if he'd been in any fender benders lately, I took a big swig of prosecco and muttered, "Why are they so surprised that you're doing well? I've never wished for so many people to go jump in a lake. Is there a big one nearby?"

He snorted. "Welcome to years of my life I'll never get back."

The wine and water I'd been drinking took effect and I had to excuse myself. After I found the toilet, I wandered through the O'Neill house. The kitchen was a study in midcentury avocado, with harvest gold and rust paisley curtains over the window, and a sparkling-clean white electric stove with exposed coils. It didn't look like it got used for cooking much.

I turned a corner into a quiet hallway. Through the cracked doors I could see beds neatly made up with white sheets, like this was a hospital, not a home.

But then I found a photo gallery on the walls. Fluffy hair and equally poufy bridesmaids' dresses on the left gave way to one baby picture, then two. I pulled out my phone and captured Kieran's delicious cheeks and wispy carrot hair for future blackmail purposes.

Then a neat line of school portraits. Baby teeth fell out and adult teeth came in, faces lengthened and cheekbones got more defined. Brian's hair turned auburn and he started wearing glasses. But there weren't any more school pictures of Kieran after ninth grade. There weren't any more pictures of him, period. There was teenage Brian wearing protective goggles on his head and holding up a gold-trimmed certificate in a high school lab, Brian shaking hands with an older man in aviator glasses while holding a crystal trophy. I kept moving right, and still there was no sign of Kieran.

I stopped cold at what looked like a college graduation picture. Brian's hair gleamed bronze in the sun. The blue flowers in his lei matched the tropical print of Maureen's dress and the cobalt of Joe's tie. Joe's arm choked tight around someone halfway out of the frame.

Fuck. That wasn't a random punk.

Teenage Kieran's hair stood up in black spikes. Silver piercings studded his right eyebrow and lower lip, exactly where his scars were now. His shiny charcoal button-up shirt turned his skin deathly white and made the purple circles under his eyes and the redness in them stand out even more. Stymied unhappiness radiated from the scrawny teenager in the photograph, and I couldn't imagine him like that now. He'd come so far. Not just that he'd gotten sober and found the help he'd needed. He'd found a purpose, too.

"Are you all right, Ellie?" Maureen asked behind me.

Showtime. "Don't worry, I just needed a moment," I said.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" Her voice was as delicate as the rest of her, but I remembered something important from the fantasy novels I'd loved to read as a teenager. Fairy queens weren't always friendly. They could be real bitches, if they thought someone was a threat to their kingdom.

"I am, thank you, Mrs. O'Neill."

"Oh, gosh, I told you to call me Maureen. No need to be so formal." She tilted her head. "How exactly did you and Kieran meet again?"

"We're working together on his cookbook," I said for the hundredth time today. I sent up a small prayer of thanks that she clearly hadn't seen the video the way Brian had.

"That's right." She chuckled. "Forgive me. It's hard to believe that he's going to have a book with his name on it. Though I don't think it counts if he's not the one writing it."

"It counts. He works just as hard as I do. Harder, even, given that he's got higher barriers to get over."

Her smile was brittle. "Well, I know Kieran's achieving something if someone like you is willing to be in a relationship with him."

"Someone like me?"

She gestured to me from head to toe. "Respectable. Elegantly dressed, if a little flamboyant with color. Beautiful manners, well-spoken. Clearly you listened to your parents when they told you how to behave."

I choked back a snort at the thought of my biological father being Mr. Manners. The sheer audacity of it.

"Kieran probably hasn't told you about all the times we had to get him out of trouble," she continued.

I blinked, confused. "No."

She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. "He skipped classes, he stole money out of my wallet, he crashed our cars more than once. Not to mention the drinking, my God. He couldn't hold his liquor at all. We were so ashamed."

I held back my eye roll. It was like having a conversation with a steamroller. As she continued to list Kieran's crimes, I realized that she relished this monologue, all the ways he'd done them wrong. Like she never wanted him to grow up because then she'd have to stop being a martyr.

"But anyway, that's all in the past. Finally, he's become who we always wanted him to be, and we can hold our heads up."

The thought of being a source of pride to these snobby, plastic people made me want to drink ten flutes of prosecco, climb onto their dining room table, and do Amy Winehouse karaoke, Diane's advice about polish and presentation be damned. But all I needed to shock them was the truth.

"I haven't seen my father in over twenty years," I began. "As far as I know, he's still the lead singer of the second-best hair metal band in Spokane. My mother's salary was for keeping herself in clothes and boyfriends. Sometimes I had to break into my piggy bank so that I could buy Cup O' Noodles at 7-Eleven for my brother and me. I've made a good life in spite of my parents, not because of them. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with your son. I knew he was a survivor, too. But thank you for the compliments. Now, if you'll excuse me."

As I walked away from her aghast sputtering, my gritted-out words resonated through me. Had I fallen for Kieran? I knew he made me smile. I knew he made me laugh. Friends did that, right? But friends didn't also imagine soft kisses and long hours exploring bare skin.

Shit, I was in trouble. I didn't know where fake ended and reality began. All I knew was that I couldn't spend another minute in this house, claustrophobic with fake smiles and bullshit expectations.

Kieran

No, I was not going to be a creeper and follow Ellie to the bathroom. I was going to stay here and look like I could handle being with all these people who didn't know me at all. I leaned back against the courtyard wall and sipped my soda, focused on how good the fake lemon-lime tasted, the hard surface against my back, the smell of orange blossom in the air.

"Still not drinking?" Dad said from two feet away.

So much for relaxing. For a big guy, he could be very stealthy. I'd learned this over and over again as a kid, when I thought I was about to get away with something. He'd magically appear and I'd get punished.

"Five years sober in November," I said, faking a smile.

"But you don't mind if I do?" He waved his whiskey glass in my face.

"Nope." Bourbon had never been my drink of choice. It tasted like anger and disappointment, while vodka had burned me clean.

"Good. It'd be ironic if you became holier than thou after all your teenage antics."

Like a lot of times when Dad talked, he didn't need or want a response. We stood there and watched the crowd. A flash of purple out of the corner of my eye made my heart jump. But one of Mom's librarian friends stopped Ellie, and she smiled and nodded at Mrs. Lange's chatter instead of coming back to me.

Dad followed my eyes. "She seems nice."

"She is," I said. "I'm lucky."

"There's a word for women like her."

Did he mean gorgeous? Hypnotic? Goddess?

He snapped his fingers. "Rubenesque. I hope she watches out for her health."

This from the man who drank whiskey like it was water? "She's fine."

He shook his head mournfully. "For now. You've been seeing each other for long?"

"A few months."

"So still in the honeymoon phase. I remember that with your mother. She was so tiny and delicate back in college. I could pick her up with one arm."

I didn't know what to do with his fond smile. It was such a rare sight.

He took a big sip from his glass and was suddenly all business again. "I want to give you some advice, now that you're on your way up in the world."

I blinked. Advice? From him?

"Make sure Ellie knows your work always comes first," he said like he was handing the knowledge down from on high.

But the words weren't landing. "Ellie knows work is important," I said slowly. "She's really good at what she does, too."

He shook his head. "That's not what I mean. You're more famous than her, and I'm sure you earn more. She's just a writer; she's always going to barely scrape by. She'd be better off giving it up and making things nice for you at home, helping you with whatever you need." A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. "Besides, success is something you have to keep working for. You can't be complacent, and you cannot ever lose focus. Do you understand?"

The Sprite turned bitter in my mouth. All of a sudden, I understood why I only started to see him at night once I was nine or ten—he was constantly working late. Why he'd ignored me on the weekends except to yell at me when I did something he didn't like. I understood how tense and tired my mother had looked whenever she'd heard his key in the lock, how she'd practically run out the door on the days she had a shift at the library or the monthly bridge game with her friends.

What a cold, sad life.

But I would only be a success in their eyes if I lived that same life. Valued working and working, with no time for pleasure or joy or love. Their value system had about as much worth as a steaming pile of trash.

"You don't know anything," I blurted.

My father's face took on a look I'd never seen before. I'd actually stunned him. "About what?"

The novelty made me brave. "About me. About my life. And especially about Ellie. So keep your shitty advice. I don't want it."

Suddenly I smelled roses, and felt a soft hand in mine. "Honey?" Ellie said.

I twined my fingers with hers, and the last chains I'd felt binding me to my family's fucked-up ideals fell off. Instead, something new and strong and golden was growing where our hands touched.

"I was just talking to Dad about you," I said a little loudly. "How lucky I am that you agreed to go out with me."

Ellie glowed with happiness as she looked at my dad. "Oh, I'm the lucky one, Mr. O'Neill. He's incredibly talented."

"I'm glad you think so," he said, raising his eyebrows at me. "He appreciates having you on his arm."

"I'm so happy to hear that." Her voice and expression were sugary sweet, but there it was, the tart twist in the corner of her mouth. My dad would never see that she was brilliant, and driven, and didn't put up with shit. Only I knew that, and I relished the taste of that knowledge.

"I only speak the truth," I said grandly, and lifted her hand to kiss it, just to mess with my dad's head.

I'd watched Ellie's hands a million times in the past three months as she scribbled notes, chopped vegetables, stirred soup. She used them when she argued, gesturing to make detailed points, and when she thought, tapping her fingers on her cheekbone. But now as I brought her hand closer, I could really see it. The pale, smooth skin, green-blue veins faint underneath. The tiny cinnamon freckles across her knuckles. A waft of sweet citrus and rose from where she must have dotted her perfume on her wrist.

Then my lips touched the back. She was warmth, and softness, strength and capability underneath.

I'd been a dumbass, making fun of this idea. Of course kissing a woman's hand was hot. I could guess what she looked like right now, silently teasing me. Her eyebrows would be raised, her mouth curled with the snarky comment she'd be holding back.

But then I heard a little sigh, and my eyes jumped up to hers. They weren't sparkling with humor.

They were dreamy. Dazed. Like we'd woken up together and she needed all of my skin against all of hers.

I'd forgotten that hands were sensitive .

Ideas bloomed in my head. I could kiss her wrist and feel her pulse flutter. Kiss her fingertips and make her shiver with a flick of my tongue. And finally, finally, when she was squirming a little, gasping for air, kiss her mouth where her raspberry lower lip was the fullest.

Dad coughed. I jerked back just as Ellie pulled her hand away, and I ran my shaking fingers through my hair.

My father grumbled from a mile away, "Your billing and cooing's sweet, but I should go see where Maureen got to."

He stalked off. Ellie's hand came up and smoothed my tie. Was she shaking too? Just a little bit? "Good, keep looking at me like that," she whispered, her voice cracking a little.

I couldn't have looked away from her if I wanted to. "Like how?"

She reached up with her other hand and rubbed her thumb gently over my scarred eyebrow, the ghost of the piercing. "Like you worship me." Her eyes flicked to the side.

I saw my parents staring at us, their arms folded, lips pursed.

I whispered, "Maybe we should kiss? Just to be convincing?" And the instant she said "Yeah," I touched my lips to hers.

Every time I'd kissed someone before, the kiss had said, "You're hot," and "Get naked." A preview of coming attractions, fast and hard.

But Ellie's fingertips brushed over my cheekbone, soft as rose petals. Traced my temple, my jawline.

She touched me like I was precious.

No one in my entire life had been gentle with me.

And her lips said, "I'm here," and "Be mine." But wait. She was faking it . We both were. A fake kiss could taste like vanilla milkshakes and prosecco and feel like floating on a cloud.

"Are they gone?" Ellie whispered against my mouth.

I lifted my head, even though something inside me howled to kiss her more. "Yeah, they stormed off."

Ellie said, "They're a match made in heaven. I think they drink vinegar for breakfast. But only champagne vinegar, because otherwise someone might judge them."

I barked out a harsh laugh. She was so mean and it was amazing .

"Really, how are you doing?" she asked. "Because I think this is the worst party ever."

The tension came out of me in a big breath. "You're not wrong."

She bit her lip, then said, "I'm not sure the canapés agreed with me. Would you mind if we went back to the hotel?"

Protectiveness surged in my chest. "Oh no, I'm sorry."

She leaned in and whispered. "I'm not sick. But I basically told your mom she won the Lifetime Worst Mom Ever award, so you need to get me out of here before I do worse."

I almost cheered. "Of course we can go," I said loudly. "I'm sorry you're feeling bad, love."

I almost slapped my own face at the strength of that word, how easily it had come out of my mouth, but after a split second, she just said back, "Thanks, honey."

I leaned close and whispered, "Thank you." Her temple was right there, and I leaned forward and brushed my lips over it. I told myself that Mom and Dad might come back any second. I wasn't thinking that she was the perfect height for me to kiss her there, wasn't thinking about how we'd fit in other ways.

I led her to my parents and made our excuses, Ellie suddenly pale and grimacing as she rubbed her stomach. Mom fell for it instantly, but then again, she'd always hated when we were sick.

But then Ellie and I were walking down the street, and I realized that if we went back to the hotel, she would bury herself in her book, and I'd put my headphones on. I wanted more time.

"Can we go somewhere?" I asked.

She laughed. "We can go anywhere that isn't that stuffy party."

"Fresh air sound good?"

"Perfect," she said, grinning hugely. "Race you to the car!" and she suddenly sprinted down the street.

And as I ran after her giddy laughter, I felt like I could fly.