Page 2 of Only and Forever

My brother lays down the lastowith a jaunty snap. Sitting back, he smiles wickedly, then says, “Escondido.”

I glare at him. “Yes, thank you. I can spell.”

“You can’t use proper nouns!” Seb calls.

“Yes, you can,” Oliver and I reply in unison, locked in our mutual stare down.

“Or more than seven tiles,” Seb adds. He frowns in confusion. “How did you get so many tiles?”

“You get to sneak one extra tile per turn when you draw,” Oliver tells him, still holding my eyes, “unless someone catches you, then you have to return it.”

“Bergman rules,” Ziggy explains.

To which Gavin adds, grumbling, “It’smayhem.”

Oliver’s smile deepens. “But it’s awfully fun mayhem.”

I glare at my brother. He’s doing it on purpose, taunting me like this. As I once said to him when he was fresh off heartbreak back in college, it’s better to be mad than to be sad. Oliver’s going for that, poking me about Escondido.

While my trips from Los Angeles down to Escondido aren’t a secret, to my family’s dismay, their reason is. That reason is the only private part of my life, which is no small feat—I suck at keeping secrets, and my family’s so close and communicative, secret keeping is basically unheard of. This is a secret I’ve kept because it’s something I feel deeply vulnerable about—the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, the greatest dream I’ve ever let myself cultivate and try to follow through on, which isn’t a strength of mine. My ADHD brain lovesnewness—new ideas to explore, new projects to kick off, new skills to learn. So many things bring me joy. I’ve never seen why I had to settle on only a few of them.

But this plan, this hope and its possibility, brings me a kind of joy that’s eclipsed anything I’ve ever dabbled in before. So, step by step, I’ve worked toward making it a reality.

“Escondido?” Linnea, Freya and Aiden’s daughter, four and a half, as smart as a whip and highly observant, lifts her head, those dark waves she inherited from her dad frizzy from hours spent running around outside. “Mommy says if she got a dime every time Uncle Viggo drove to Escondido, she’d—”

Freya leaps from the table and scoops up Linnea from Gavin’s lap. “Bath time for you!”

Aiden bites back a laugh as he hands over their one-year-old, Theo, to my mom, who takes him with a raspberry to his tummy that makes him laugh. “I warned you she was listening,” Aiden tells Freya.

“She,” my sister says, tickling Linnea, who giggles, “was supposed to be asleep when we had that conversation.”

“But spying on you is so much more fun!” Linnie yells.

Freya sighs and hitches Linnie higher on her hip before starting up the stairs. “You, little miss, are a troublemaker.”

Linnie’s giggle echoes up the stairwell.

“On the subject of Escondido, and while you have the family’s attention,” Oliver says, leaning his elbows on the table, “care to tell us why you’ve been regularly burning two hours’ worth of gas each way, driving down there for the past year, Viggo?”

“Up until two months ago,” Ziggy chimes in.

I blink at her, stunned.

“What?” she asks.

“How do you know where and when I’ve been?”

Ollie rolls his eyes. “V, we have mutually agreed phone tracking, remember?”

“To my continued dismay,” Gavin grumbles.

I blow Gavin a kiss. He flips me the finger, safe to show his true colors since Linnie’s made her exit.

Seb snorts, highly amused by this. I glare at him, then redirect my ire at Oliver. “Ollie,wehave phone tracking, but since when do you share that highly classified information with the siblings?”

“Since Ziggy wanted to know where you were and what was taking you so damn long to deliver those gluten-free cookies for Seb.”

Everyone at the table says, “Awww.”

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