Page 23 of Give In

“You should be sleeping,” I tell her.

“Probably,” she agrees. She tucks her feet up underneath her and looks out at the dark water. “How are you doing?”

“I’m good.” I pause. “I’m really good, actually. Which is a strange thing to say after the evening we just had.”

She tilts her head. “You seemed pretty good in there.”

“I felt good in there.” I turn my water glass in my hands. “I feel like I handled it. Like I stayed and dealt with the thing instead of—you know.”

“Running for the proverbial hills?” she asks.

“Something like that.”

We sit for a moment in the comfortable silence. The ocean does its thing. Somewhere down the beach something is playing music quietly, something with a slow beat that drifts up and then away again.

“Can I tell you something?” Juniper asks.

“Always.”

She’s quiet for a moment, looking at the water. “Leo talks about his dad a lot. It’s not so much hero worship, but just recognizing that this is your person who showed up. Every single time. No exceptions.” She pauses. “He told me once that his dad used to read to him every night, even when he was traveling for work. He’d call and Leo would hold the phone up to the page and Heath would read from wherever he was. Hotels, airports, job sites. Leo would stay with his aunt and uncle during those times, and they both offered to do the reading, but Heath insisted.” She smiles at the water. “Leo said he didn’t realize until he was older that his dad must have bought the same books twice so he could follow along.”

I look at her.

Something happens in my chest. Something quiet, yet tectonic.

“He never told Heath he knew,” she says. “He just kept holding the phone up to the page every night.”

I press my lips together very firmly because I am not going to cry on my sister’s wedding night over a story about a man buying books twice, even though it is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard. I take a breath. I take another one.

“Juniper,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

“That’s—”

“I know.”

I look at the water for a moment and let the ocean do its work on my tear ducts, which are staging a protest. “Why are you telling me this tonight?”

She turns to look at me then, and her face in the low light is the face I have known my entire life, every version of it, the six-year-old who held my hand on the first day of school and the teenager who stayed up with me when I had my heart broken for the first time, and every face in between and after. She is my person. She has always been my person.

“Because I want you to know what you’re walking into,” she says. “Not the complicated part. Not the family logistics or the how-do-we-explain-this. I want you to know the man.” She reaches over and puts her hand over mine on the armrest. “Leo didn’t have the easiest start, with Kiki being who she is. But he turned out the way he did because of his dad. Because Heath decided that being Leo’s father was the most important thing he would ever do and he just—he did it. Every day. Without making it a performance or a sacrifice. He just showed up.”

I look down at her hand over mine.

“So if you’re looking for some sign about the kind of character he has or to justify feeling the way you’re feeling about it.” She shrugs. “That’s the man he is.”

I turn my hand over and lace my fingers through hers. We have been doing this since we were small, this particular handhold, and it still fits the same way it always has.

“I already let him in,” I say quietly. “I think that happened somewhere around the third time he caught me staring at him on the plane and didn’t make me feel like an idiot about it.”

Juniper laughs, soft and delighted. “Of course it did.”

“Is it going to be weird?” I ask. “Be honest with me. Not the version you told Leo, not the champagne version. The real version.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Considering it honestly, which is what I asked for and also what I love about her, that she will always give you the real answer even when the easy one is available.

“Maybe sometimes,” she says finally. “Holidays might be slightly chaotic for a while. And there will probably be a learning curve for everyone involved.” She squeezes my hand. “But weird in the way that good things are sometimes weird at the beginning before they just become the thing. Before they become normal.” She looks at me. “Leo loves his dad. And Leo is going to love you. And I already love Heath because of what he built in the man I’m marrying tomorrow.” She shakes her head slightly. “It’s not weird, Clo. It’s just our family being our family. Which has never been particularly conventional.”