Do you see that girl in the bed? The one curled up against the guy in a twin bed with ninja turtle sheets?
She’s in love. So completely in love that it’s hard not to smile when the sun peeks inside his room. I curl into him, never wanting the moment to end.
I thought I understood love. I thought I could grasp it, hold onto it when I had it, but I didn’t, not really. I experienced the smugness of it. The wild and free. The eagerness of it. I didn’t realize how it would change my life once it was taken away. And now that I’ve found it again, I didn’t realize how he could change my life. How he had from a very young age.
I nudge Tiller, knowing I need to get up and check on River. She slept in Shade and Scarlet’s room, and that in itself makes me nervous. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” I whisper.
He groans and rolls, taking the covers with him, wrapping himself up in a blanket burrito. I smile. River does the same thing in the mornings.
“I’m going to go check on River. And I think you have practice today, don’t you?” That gets his attention.
“Fuck, I do.” He rolls over cautiously and pulls the covers from his head. “Why did I agree to go Vegas?”
A waft of his smell hits me. He smells so good, like cologne and soap and the warmth of his body intoxicates me. Makes me want to curl up next to him. “Because you love it.”
I leave him in the room to find River downstairs, like she’s seamlessly part of the Sawyer family. She’s seated next to Camden at the kitchen island, eating cereal and laughing with Berlin, who’s next to her, looking at River like she’s her hero.
My eyes drift to Willa and Ricky. Everyone’s here and I feel slightly out of place, but then again, in the same sense, this feels like home to me. Scarlet wraps her arm around my shoulder and hands me a coffee. It’s an iced mocha “I got this for you.”
Willa glares at Scarlet. “You did not. I did.”
“Thank you,” I tell Willa. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
“I get credit for that at least!” Scarlet announces, still hugging me to her side. Then she stares at my hair. “What’s in your hair?”
I panic and grab at it, trying to see what she’s referring to. She laughs. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
Strong arms grab me from behind and pull me back against his bare chest. “It’s milkshake, Northwest. Not my cu—”
Twisting in his arms, I slap my hand over his mouth. “There are children present.”
He nods over his shoulder to River, who’s not paying attention to us. “She doesn’t understand.”
“I’m talking about Camden.”
He kisses my cheek. “Even he doesn’t understand what it means.” Moving around me, Tiller grabs a piece of banana bread from the counter and sits next to Camden. He nods to him but doesn’t say anything. Tiller’s not a morning person.
Camden smiles. “Good night, Wild Cat?”
Tiller grunts but doesn’t say anything and reaches for the coffee pot, pouring himself coffee. He looks so completely tired that his eyes are barely open. He pours me a cup and I shake my head. “Got some already.” I sit next to him, with my coffee in hand.
He stares at the iced coffee I’m becoming addicted to, thanks to Willa. She tells me I should thank Scarlet because that’s where her obsession came from initially.
Tiller’s voice is rough with lack of sleep when he asks, “Where’d you get that?”
My cheeks burn, thinking of why he only got two hours sleep last night. I point to Willa. “Her.”
He finally notices everyone around us. “What the fuck? Is this some kind of family meeting? Why is everyone here?”
Shade speaks first. “We have practice today. Time to perfect the triple, bro.”
Ricky laughs, moving around Shade with his hands on his shoulders. “Just because you pulled it off doesn’t mean we need to be making it a nightly show.”
That gets them talking about what they’re going to do in Vegas in two days. Conversation flows through the rest of breakfast. River tells me about all her gel pen tattoos.
“Just so I know for reference,” Camden begins, looking at Tiller as a chunk of banana bread falls from his mouth. “Were you going to say cum?”
Tiller doesn’t say anything at first, but then he stares at his empty plate. Camden ate his banana bread too. “Do you have a tapeworm? Why are you eating so much?”
“I’m growing. I’m eleven, and soon I’ll be going to puberty. Now what’s really in her hair?”
“You don’t go to it. It just happens. And the fact that you don’t know that, makes me question whether you know what the word ‘cum’ actually means.”
“Come, come, come!” Berlin squeals from her chair, tossing bits of banana bread at Ricky who’s trying to feed her.
Willa scowls at Tiller, yanking her kid out of her high chair. “Goddamn you.”
Tiller looks at her like she’s crazy and yells after her, “Like you’re any better, Willz.”
Beside me still, Camden pulls out a note from his pocket. “I can come with you.” Like how he grins and puts emphasis on the word come? Tiller finds humor in it. “My dad said so.”
Shade reaches over the kitchen island and takes the note. I notice his arms, inked to the point you can no longer see the color of his tan skin; it’s strangely glittery pink. River got him last night. I recognize the attempt at stars because she draws them constantly on everything from the walls to my car windows.
Laughing, Shade sets the note down. Tiller picks it up and smiles at Camden. “You wrote that.”
“Not true.” Camden reaches for what was left on Berlin’s high chair of the banana bread and eats that too. “He said I could go.”
“What would make you think we’d believe a handwritten note that we could take you to Vegas with us?” Scarlet asks, returning to the kitchen. I hadn’t even realized she’d left, but she’s dressed in jeans and a hoodie now, her bag on the floor beside her.
River moves from her stool to sit on Tiller’s lap with a handful of her gel tattoo pens. “Good,” Shade notes. “Draw on him for a while.”
She does. He lets her, while smiling and kissing her temple.
Camden groans, his head falling into his hands. “Come on! Please take me. I’m on Thanksgiving break.”
I hadn’t even noticed Thanksgiving was this weekend, but yet here we are going to be in Vegas for the week for the final two-night round of After Dark.
“Which makes sense that you should stay home with your mom and dad,” Shade adds, laughing. He knows they’re frustrating Camden.
“Stepmom,” Camden points out. “And my dad’s out of town.”
“Wouldn’t you want to spend it with your mom?” Scarlet asks, intentionally teasing him with the use of mom.
“Stepmom.” He slaps his hand on the counter. River takes a pen and leans over to draw a star on Camden’s hand. “And no. I hate her. She made me clean the bathroom yesterday.”
No definite answer is given to Camden, but I have a feeling they’re going to let him come. Everyone else is going so I wouldn’t expect them to leave him behind. But there is the fact of the matter he’s not family and technically they have no business taking him.
Scarlet nudges me. “Time for our spa day, girl.”
River jumps down at the mention of a spa day and runs. She hates them.
“Fuck off, Northwest.” Tiller wraps his arm around my shoulder. “No way. You’re not taking my girl.”
I smile and kiss the top of his crazy mess of hair. “You’re supposed to be practicing today.”
“I’d probably do a lot better if you’d—”
I shake my hand, untangling his hands. “Don’t give me that sex pout. I have to go get my hair done today. No time for sex pout.”
He frowns. “That’s just my face.”
“Your “fuck me” face.”
“I can’t help it.” He grins. “Say fuck me again.”
“No.”
Eventually I’m able to get away from Tiller and to the spa day with Scarlet. It’s when I return and I see River watching Tiller practice that I know for sure having him in her life is exactly what she needs.
Do you see her? She’s sitting on the very edge of the track with a helmet on, her stare focused, intent, captivated by the man soaring high above her under the lights of the track.
And in this moment, unlike the one where I found her alone, after the death of her parents, I pray she keeps this amazement she has for him. She doesn’t need to know the bad things he’s done. All she needs to know is he had a choice and he returned. In her hand, she has his shirt, holding it close to her face.
Swallowed by heartache once again, I remain out of sight, watching, her eyes light up when Tiller flies off the seventy-five-foot jump. Midair, he leaves the bike, only to catch the underside of the handlebars with the inside of his foot and raises his hands above his head, lifting his body as far from the bike as possible. Bringing the bike back to him, he rights his body and lands it.
River’s eyes, bright and excited, remain on him. Her auburn curls falling helplessly in her eyes under the helmet, completely enthralled with his every movement. I smile, watching him too, knowing he no longer turns to substances to calm his anxiety. He puts his restless ways into his riding and performances.
So much has happened in the three months since her parents died, and though sometimes it seems like forever ago, it really hasn’t been that long. I forget that at times like this. And I like to think it has to do with me, and the one holding her attention. While I agreed to one date, I knew when I made the agreement, it would be more. You can’t give a guy like Tiller just one date. He’s always going to want more.
I sit next to her and watch Tiller, Shade, and Roan practice doing side-by-side double backflips in unison, their movements exactly the same. I’ve never seen them do that together, and it’s amazing.
I look to River. “That was so cool, huh?”
River giggles, bringing Tiller’s shirt to her face, hiding it. “They’re crazy.”
She crawls on my lap and I kiss the side of the helmet. “You missed these guys, didn’t you?”
She nods. “I love them.”
A child is something you can learn from. They believe in magic, pretend to play and find pleasure in the simplest of treasures. They hope, cross their fingers, and make wishes they believe will come true. And they recover faster and survive the worst.
Sometimes the future you thought you’d have, changes, rearranges, disassembles and you’re left with a choice. Sometimes it’s not the jump you’d ordinarily take, but sometimes the reward is far greater than the fear of falling.
Being given a child, it changes you, in ways you’d never expected. Most of it is from lack of sleep, but there is love too. This unconditional love that nothing touches. They can cry all night long, wake you up at 2:00 a.m. because their sock came off, throw up, pee on you, doesn’t matter. When they smile, you forgot all that.
I had no idea what that feeling was until I held a little girl in a lilac blood-splattered dress and comforted her. I had no idea until I didn’t make her change out of the dress for a week in fear I’d upset her. That’s unconditional love.