It all had become so normal.

And in some ways, weird.

Like I had two places to live.

Sometimes my house. Sometimes Jake’s house. Sometimes I’d be on the deck with a notebook, having a drink, and Jake would just show up.

That’s what happened tonight.

In the back of my mind I was still thinking about the daycare situation. The classroom was being shifted into a castle. The girls were talking about their favorite princess things, with Sadie leading the way each day. The girls talked about their mothers coming for the tea party. Sadie didn’t speak a word about that. The boys were more interested in the dangerous stuff like dragons, fire, swords, fighting, the typical boy stuff.

My head and heart were just battling over… everything.

I put the pencil to paper when I heard a little whistle.

I turned my head and a shadowy figure walked up on my deck.

“Good evening, my princess,” Jake said in a some kind of weird accent.

He walked to me and kissed me.

I reached for his face. “Advice?”

“What?”

“Quit it with the accents,” I said. “They don’t fit you.”

“Ouch,” Jake said. “What are you working on?”

I hurried to close the notebook. “Nothing.”

“Secretive, huh?”

“No.”

“Then let me read it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Jake…”

“I get it,” he said. “I’m just curious. Is that stuff going to get published?”

“It might. Some stuff I send to my editor, some stuff I don’t. It’s up to me.”

“You’re the princess and the queen, huh?”

“Sure,” I said. “Can we stop with the castle talk? I’m burned out on it.”

“Don’t tell that to Sadie, it’ll break her heart.”

“Funny,” I said.

Jake reached for my hand. “Hey. Are you sure everything is okay?”

I looked at him and swallowed hard.

The last few days had been hard. And I couldn’t figure out why. It was like something bad had happened or was going to happen and I didn’t know what, when, nothing. And I didn’t like like that.

Jake stood up. “Em, if you close up on me…”

“I don’t know,” I said. I put a hand to the notebook and shoved it away. “I don’t fucking know right now, Jake. I’m stuck in between everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at this,” I said. “Look at us. I… I have this house. I just bought it. I don’t even feel like it’s my home anymore. But I can’t feel like your house is home because it’s not. It’s your home. It’s your… life. I don’t know what I am to Sadie or what I should be to Sadie. Or to you. Or what I should do or say next. I feel like everyone is watching us. Watching me. Questioning me. Talking…” I shook my head. “I’m not like this. I don’t do this.”

Jake put his hands to my shoulders. “Em, take a breath in and hold it for a few seconds. Then slowly let it out.”

I did what he said.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“No.”

“I know. They tell me to do that and it doesn’t work for me either.”

“They?”

“Shit. Okay. Come with me, Em. I want to show you something. Tell you something.”

Jake took my hand.

He walked in the direction of his house. I went with him.

Through the back door. To the stairs.

Up the stairs.

A quick pause at the top.

Slight hesitation.

Jake glanced back at me, a somber look on his face. The look I remembered first seeing not that long ago. When he was just the man next door. When I knew nothing of him. When I wondered about his life. The man so wickedly sexy, ruggedly beautiful.

He gave a nod and did something I never thought he would do.

He walked toward the master bedroom… the room he hadn’t been inside since Everly died.

* * *

Jake opened the door and I grabbed at his arm.

“You don’t…”

“I do,” he said. “For you, Em. I do.”

My heart raced. Faster than I could remember in a long time.

I stepped over the threshold of the master bedroom. Where Jake and Everly had shared their love together.

Jake made just a handful of steps before he stopped. I watched him look around the bedroom. The large, white bed. The white dressers and night stands. Lamps on each nightstand. Pictures on the dresser, stuck in the mirror.

Jake walked to the dresser and grabbed a picture. I watched the way he held it, so delicately, like it was his newborn baby.

“Can I see?” I whispered.

He turned and I saw his eyes were already glossy. “Here.”

I took the picture.

It was of him and Everly. Jake’s face was clean cut, no facial hair, his jaw line cut smooth. He had a hat on backwards, trying to look cool and tough. Everly had her head on his shoulder, her beautiful face… a perfect match of Sadie.

It actually left me breathless for a moment.

The eyes. The hair. The cheeks. Even the big smile, like her mouth was too big for her face.

My thumb ran across the glass frame. I felt heartbroken. I felt guilty.

“Jake… she’s beautiful.” I looked at Jake. “Sadie is her twin.”

“I know,” Jake said. “I know. From the second Sadie was born, they were identical.”

I held the frame out and Jake took it back. He placed it right where it had been. He put his hands to the dresser and lowered his head.

I saw one of the closet doors open.

Had it been like that for years?

“When it happened, it was so fast,” Jake said. “It wasn’t like anyone was waiting for it. Okay?”

“Like my grandmother?”

“In a way, yeah. Not that it should lessen your pain, Em. But for me, it was just so sudden. And Sadie was only two. I had this baby in my arms… and I had to talk to the police. I had to go to the hospital. We had nobody to even call for help. Her parents were flakes. Living in southern Florida, never believing in anything but the beach. Stacked with so much debt, they would file bankruptcy and then emerge, her father creating some new scheme. The only good they did was pay for all the funeral services. You know, they didn’t even attend.”

“What?”

Jake nodded. “They only met Sadie once. And after Everly was gone, so were they. Never heard from them again. And my parents… that’s why we connected. We kind of came from nothing, Em. We appreciated little things. I was slugging a wrench around a garage since I was thirteen. Working under the table. Doing anything to survive. Then she walked into a pizza shop and my life changed. She was helping a friend move. Our first date she complained about her friend being so stuck up. All Everly wanted was a simple life. So did I. It just worked, Em. And it scares me because it works with you. You and me. This whole thing. And… I can’t control what people do or say. When Everly was gone I became a hermit. People brought me food. Flowers. Offering to help. All of a sudden, there were people in my life. People that a week before didn’t give a damn. I became a tragic celebrity. I thought about moving but I couldn’t leave Everly’s memory behind. So I stuck it out. I did dumb shit, Em. I drank too much sometimes. I had to have Mickey pull my ass out of the fire more than once. I never once put Sadie in harm’s way though. I forced myself to see a doctor. She was nice. She gave me pills. I refused to take those pills. I didn’t want to be fucked up around Sadie. But it all just collapsed around me.”

Jake looked at the pictures. He reached and put his pointer finger to one stuck in the mirror.

“I get it,” I whispered. “Not in the way you do, but I get it. And I would never look at you and think anything. I do love you, Jake. And I’m not afraid to love Everly’s memory either.”

“But it’s not your job,” Jake said through gritted teeth.

“But it is,” I said. “For Sadie.”

Jake looked at me. I saw the glimmer of a tear as it fell from his eye. It was like slow motion, falling and splashing to the dresser.

That’s when Jake let out a grunting growl sound. He threw his arms to the left, clearing one side of the dresser. Before I could get to him, he cleared the other side. It happened so fast. Picture frames flying through the air. Smashing to the floor. Two of them shattering with ease.

He grabbed for all the pictures stuck in the mirror and raked his fingers at them.

I grabbed his arm and hugged. I pulled.

“Jake, don’t,” I said. “Don’t do this. Don’t let it out like this.”

Jake finally turned and looked down at me.

“I can never let her go for good,” he whispered.

“I would never ask that.”

“How’s that fair to you? What can I give you in return for that?”

“This,” I whispered. “The real Jake. The raw Jake.”

I slowly reached up and slid my thumb across a tear on his cheek.

Jake lifted me and turned again, walking me to the bed. He threw me down and collapsed on top of me. His lips crashed to mine. We kissed, my hands clawing at his shirt. His hands grabbed my sides a little too tight but I let it go for the moment.

He broke the kiss. His nose against mine. Moving left to right.

“If I do this, Em, with you… fuck, I already am.”

“Then don’t stop,” I said. “I’m right here, Jake. I know the pain. I know the loss. Whatever you need. Thank you for showing me this room. Where you loved her.”

“I’m fucked up, Em. For leaving this room like this. Right?”

“No, Jake. You’re not. It was the last of what you had with her.”

“The last…”

Jake curled his lip. The anger swept across his face. I started to shake, never experiencing a moment so powerful in my life. I could only hang onto his shirt and hope that I was still hanging onto his heart.

Jake slid from the bed, taking me with him. My back was against the bed. Jake put his head to my chest. I slid my fingers into his hair. I held him tight. I kissed his head.

I looked forward and saw one picture left dangling on the mirror.

A picture of Everly.

I promise… I’ll love him like you did… he’ll never forget you…

We sat there in silence but I knew Jake was emotional.

I wasn’t sure if it was ten minutes or an hour later, but Jake finally looked up at me.

“Em, will you do something for me?”

“Anything, Jake.”

“I want you to read your poetry to me.”

* * *

Open the crack filled sky

Desire tumbles

Soft and sweet

A grass filled hill

Down into flowers

Down into you

Counting the clouds and waiting for shapes

The only shape that matters

The way your hand fits into mine

I can offer the dull knife

If you want to carve what’s left of us

We don't have to watch anymore

I’m a giant against the picket fence

The one I dreamed of when I was a little girl

Riding a secondhand bike with a ripped sticker of a happy girl

Missing one streamer

A bell rusted, unable to sing

Silenced

Me

Pausing in front of the crack

Wishing it were bigger

Falling into the darkness but knowing…

It has to be better than this

The white fence, red roses, blue door

The gold numbers, perfect mailbox, swing set dancing in the wind

The matching curtains, two car garage, basketball hoop attached above

Nothing is missing, misplaced, cracked, broken, or ruined

Everything I am not

I swallowed and looked up from the notebook. Jake sat at the top step of the deck. His back against the one post, left foot on the second step. A beer in his hand. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen anyone so sexy in my life. To the point that is scared me how it made me feel.

“That’s beautiful, Em,” he said. “I mean… wow. I can feel that. I can see it. I don’t read at all, but I get that. I would read more. Actually, I used to read poems to Sadie to help her sleep. Silly kid stuff but it soothed her.”

“Well, I have plenty to go here,” I said.

He looked at me. “I love you, Emily. I want you to know that. I’m pissed off that you’re going down this path with me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I know the whole fate thing is just…” I stuck my tongue out and rolled my eyes. “… but look where we are right now. So why don’t we just see what tomorrow brings? I’m not looking into forever.”

Even though I sort of want that with you.

“I like that way of thinking, Em. I’m so happy you moved in here. I’m so happy Sadie has you. And I want you two to get closer. I’m okay with that. And I love you for wanting to preserve Everly’s memory. It’s so hard to do that.”

I closed the notebook and sat next to Jake. I put my head to his shoulder. I could smell his skin. It made me tingle everywhere.

“So what do we do now?” I whispered.

I could feel we were both emotionally drained.

Jake turned his head. I saw the corner of his mouth slightly curve into a smile. “I say there’s something in your eye and you should sleepover.”

“Mountain troll,” I whispered.

He touched my chin and kissed me. “Now you’re one too.”

We kissed again.

And we kept kissing.

Writing sweet, tragic poetry with our tongues…