Page 91 of Wide-Eyed
And I didn’t ask again, even though I was burning with curiosity.
We had time to have that discussion later.
Well. Kind of. I was freshly aware that I was here on a holiday visa, and Root Beer was at home waiting for me. I needed to do something about that. Root would hate the flight and the quarantine period, which the internet said would be at least two weeks. But we could do it. We could make this work. Details were just … details. Everything would work out. It had to.
Mike fell asleep first, and his snores made me briefly reconsider living here. But when he cuddled me close and mumbled my name in his sleep, I flip-flopped.
Staring up at the dark ceiling, I surrendered to the mental montage of babies with brown eyes, mommy content sponsorships, petting zoos, watching Mike box literally every day, and families.
Sure, Mike had originally wanted to keep things between us secret, but what we’d done had changed that. Obviously. You didn’t bareback with girls you weren’t serious about. That’s why Paul was always so persnickety about condoms—because he didn’t actually like me. Mike liked me and wanted to come inside me. Mike loved coming inside me; right now he was mumbling in his sleep about doing it again.
I was so happy my cheeks ached. The things that had brought me here, the things behind me pushing me forward, driving me, didn’t feel as big anymore. My mother? A concept, arbitrary. Loneliness? A phase, insignificant. Ambition? My career was regenerating now, and I was stronger and more resilient than the trolls ever imagined.
Call me a bad person, call me selfish, but I’d mentally put my life in New York behind me now. Bossi, Paul, the apartment my mom owned, my routine as a third wheel with Chase and Caroline, even Root Beer—I’d mentally wrapped a bow around my old life to focus on portraying an idyllic new one in Aotearoa, and I’d done it so well, it had become real.
Lying in bed, my limbs felt weightless. Experimentally, I flopped my arms to check they still worked. Affirmative.
Root would like it here. Mike had socks he could steal.
It didn’t matter anymore that I hadn’t gotten the family I wanted in life’s genetic lottery. I’d found a better one. Honestly, I wished it had occurred to me sooner to shop around.
Nothing behind me could hurt me anymore.
There were only good things ahead.
CHAPTER 23
MIKE
Considering my life had gone down the toilet yesterday, today was going surprisingly great. Morning sex, a lie in, and now dinner with people I loved.
Lyssa was carefully setting the table with my gran’s china, handling the pieces like they were family heirlooms. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that most of it was stolen.
Dad had closed Levitate early to prepare. He was giving tonight the same fanfare he usually gave Christmas dinner—and to be fair, Caroline hadn’t been home for a Holliday holiday in forever, and now she and her moneybags boyfriend were here.
“What’ll you have to drink, Spoons?” I asked the wallet in question.
Chase hesitated. “Just water, thanks, Mike. Bottled, if you have it.”
I made a face. “No, sorry. We’re not environmental terrorists.”
Caroline smacked my chest with the back of her hand. “Don’t be a dick.” To Chase, “It’s safe to drink the tap water here. It’ll taste the same, I promise. Better, even.”
“I know a fact about Woodville’s water supply,” Lyssa offered suddenly.
Caroline and Chase swapped a look that had my teeth grinding. Lyssa shared her fact (something complicated about rainwater and clean energy—it was too smart for me to follow), and I forced myself to unclench and focus on getting everyone drinks. This was my usual task at family dinner. Hannah wanted a cherry margarita tonight though, which really put my bartending skills to the test.
Once everyone was fisting their liquid of choice, we moved into the main dining area of Levitate, where Dad and the staff had set up one long table. We were at the café rather than Dad’s house because Levitate was bigger, and basically home anyway.
Tessa had been flattening cardboard beer boxes when Lyssa swooped on her like a seagull on a chip, taking the cardboard and turning it into place cards with her big, looping writing. The sight of her, leaning over the front counter with her marker in hand, had given me a kind of cute aggression feeling—like when you saw an especially fluffy duckling or a really curly cow.
We were all milling around the table, looking for the place card with our names, when Dad lit the candle on the sill between the kitchen and counter and whispered, “There you go, Wan,” to it.
Dad lit a candle for Mum at every family dinner. At the end of the night when he blew it out, he’d talk to her, telling her about the evening. He’d done this for as long as I could remember. At first, it made me sad. Then, for a few of my teenage years, angry—it wasn’t fair that I didn’t have a mum when everyone else did. Now I found it comforting—not the candle itself, I had no strong feeling about that, but I liked how much it meant to my dad.
Lyssa cocked her head when she noticed my dad run the backs of his knuckles down the glass vessel, then quickly sucked in a breath as she realized what it meant.
Mouthing like she wanted to say something, she first looked to Caroline, who smiled tightly, then purposely busied herself rearranging dishes in the center of the table. Trembling, Lyssa then looked to me, her wide eyes searching for an outlet for her sympathy.
