Page 41 of Falling for You Again

He had a brother? All our time together in Maui and he didn’t mention this once.

Oh, Aaron.

“What was his name?”

“Liam. He was ten months older than me. We were thick, really close. People thought we were twins.”

“How old were you when he died?”

“Seventeen.” He swallows roughly.

My hand finds his. “What happened?”

A pause. “It was stupid. We were hiking, messing around. He fell and broke his neck.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. A few more years, he’ll be gone as long as he’d been alive.”

Rising onto my knees, I hug him, pressing my face into his neck. He stiffens, then his arms come around my back. He lets me hold him. After a moment, he lifts his head and I sit back.

“What was that for?” he asks, pinching his nose bridge, not meeting my eyes.

“I wanted to.” He seemed like he needed it.

We sit quietly for a beat. “Well,” he finally says with a shaky laugh. “That was heavy.”

“Go big or go home, I always say. Thank you for telling me.”

“I don’t like talking about him.”

I have the impression he doesn’t talk about his brother at all. This is something he doesn’t share with anyone. I’m honored he told me.

He rubs his palms along his slacks. “What’s up for tomorrow? I don’t have any plans. Want to do something?”

I have so much to do. Loan applications, number crunching, planning for the upcoming week. But couldn’t that wait until Monday? I could afford one day off.

“I’d love to.”

Chapter 15

Life Is Not a Rom-Com

Aaron is waiting for me downstairs the next morning. He proposes we handle the day like we had our night in Las Vegas. No plans. See where our wanderings take us.

“You’re pulling a Ferris Bueller on me,” I tease, wondering what sort of trouble we’ll get into. After Calvin had dropped us off at the Venetian after our first marriage, Aaron indulged me with a visit toKamu, an ultrahip karaoke bar Emi once told me about. We tossed back a few drinks to settle our nerves and befriended a couple who’d just eloped. We told them our wild story, that we’d met on the flight here and married on a dare, and they invited us to join their wedding party in a private karaoke suite. We took turns with the mic. Aaron had been honest on the plane when we wrote our list. He couldn’t sing. But that didn’t stop him from hogging the spotlight and crooning “Sweet Caroline.”

Perhaps today will hold a similar adventure. “What do you have in mind?” I ask.

“Up for playing tourist?”

His question triggers a flood of memories of spending time with my parents as a kid. There’s much to see and do in Boston, from the Freedom Trail to public art displays, and we spent many weekends exploring, making up stories about the people we saw along the way. I miss thosedays, and I especially miss us being a family. But I guess Aaron’s my family now, at least temporarily. Better than not having one at all, I suppose.

“I’m up for it. Let’s do it. Where do we start?” Dad used to poke a city map, like playing pin the tail on the donkey, and that’s where our day began.

Aaron grins and swipes his ball cap from the table by the front door. “We start with coffee,” he announces, and outside we go.

It’s a gorgeous late-spring day, and he takes me to Perkatory, a coffee shop a few blocks from his town house, for coffee and egg sandwiches. We sit at a window table and people-watch, guessing where they’re going. When I tell him about the game I used to play with my parents, we start making up stories about their lives. I point at a man walking his golden retriever and tell Aaron that he’s quitting his hedge-fund-manager career tomorrow to start a dog-walking business.

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