“I don’t know, Dad,” Wilder said as he looked at me. “I wish I could ask her, but she’s a little closed off.”
Mom wiped her eye and offered a bittersweet smile. “I really hope you meet someone special someday, Wilder. Maybe you’ll forget all about this girl. She doesn’t deserve you anyway.”
I tossed back the rest of my margarita and blinked away my watering eyes. I adjusted my body toward Coco and away from Wilder. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
“I guess I’m just not what she wants. Nothing I can do about that.” Wilder stood up and went to the kitchen, presumably to grab another drink, only he came back with a bottle of water. Even in his drunken stupor, he realized he needed to cool it.
“Maybe someday she’ll come around,” Mom said when he returned.
“And when she does, I’ll be waiting,” he said, his words toneless. He uncapped his water and took a sip. “Because that’s what you do when you love somebody. You wait for them, no matter how hard it might be.”
“Well, don’t wait too long, son,” Vince laughed. “There are plenty of fish in the sea. Cast your net wide and you’ll find someone. Maybe you’ll find someone you’ll love even more. Sounds like she’s maybe not worth the trouble.”
“Can you all excuse me, please?” I slid out from the table and headed inside, grabbing my suitcase from the foyer and heading upstairs to an empty guest room. I couldn’t take any more. I couldn’t sit there and listen to him profess his love for me.
I loved the hell out of him. I just couldn’t be with him. It was never that he wasn’t what I wanted.
He was everything I wanted.
We played another round of Uno, though my mind wasn’t in the game. The empty seat next to me and the tepid ocean breeze that replaced it served to remind me that maybe I’d gone too far.
But she needed to hear what I had to say, and if that was the only way then so be it. I never expected her to run upstairs to get away from me, and I was almost certain I’d seen her crying.
“Uno!” Coco yelled, holding up her last remaining card. One more go-around and she laid down her final card, a blue seven. “Okay, I’m sitting this next one out.”
“Actually, I think I’ve had enough games for tonight,” I said. “I’m out, too.”
I stood up. I needed to go find her somewhere in that big, white house.
“I think Vince and I are going to go for a little late night stroll on the beach,” Tammy Lynn said, grabbing his hand. “It’s too perfect of a night not to.”
Coco stood to leave. “I need to get some work done on my laptop. I’ll be in the family room if anyone needs me, I guess.”
I waited for everyone to go their own way before heading inside and climbing the stairs. There were five bedrooms in that house, and I wasn’t sure where she was hiding, but I sure as hell was going to find her.
The first door I knocked on went unanswered, so I swung it open. Nothing but a small empty room with pastel peach walls and a blue bedspread covered in faded seashells.
The second door I knocked on also went unanswered, but when I barged in, I was met with half-open suitcases probably belonging to Dad and Tammy Lynn.
I knocked on the third door, the one at the end of the east hallway.
“Go away,” Addison sobbed.
Ding, ding, ding.
I ignored her plea and let myself in, closing the door behind me and heading to where she was curled up into a ball with her face buried in the ugliest, salmon-colored quilt I’d ever seen. Transparent curtains fluttered as the salty ocean breeze traveled in through the open windows.
We should’ve been laughing and talking and having a good time. We should’ve been trying to forge some kind of friendship. I should’ve been nicer to her, and maybe I shouldn’t have shown up in the first place.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, slowly crouching down to where she lay. She cried softly into the pillow. “I shouldn’t have said what I said down there. At least, not in the way I said it.”
She peered over her shoulder, her blue eyes wet with runny black mascara.
“I meant every word, though.” I climbed onto the bed, lying next to her and grabbing her thigh to hoist it over my hip. With my hand on the small of her back, I pulled her tight against me.
“You act,” she sniffled, “like I don’t want to be… with you… but you know that’s not… it’s not like that…”
I ran my hand over the back of her head, soothing her as she cried into my chest.
“W-why’d you come here?” she asked.
“Fuck, I don’t know. I thought maybe if you saw me again, you’d remember how much you loved me. I’m a desperate man, lovely. A fucked up, desperate man, and this was my final act of desperation.”
“Like I could possibly forget that I love you,” she whimpered. “I never stopped, Wilder. Not once.”
Without thinking, I leaned down and kissed away her salty tears. With my lips against her warm, soft cheeks, she pulled her face up. Staring into my soul with glassy eyes, she kissed me.
“One last time,” she whispered as she sat up and climbed on top of me. Our fingers interlaced. “I miss the way you used to look at me.”
I stared into the eyes of a girl whose world was spinning madly out of control, and she knew I was the only one who could fix it. My hands searched through the dark room until they found her face. Half her face glowed against the pale moonlight pouring in through the open windows. With her fingers tugging the hem of her top, she pulled it up and over her head before leaning down and kissing me again. The second her body was pressed against mine, I rolled her over, pinning her beneath me.