Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around Pagán, Camille (best novels for teenagers .txt) 📖

FOURTEEN

“Libby! Libby, wait!”

I’d just reached the beach when Shiloh came running out of the guesthouse after me. Though he’d said he wasn’t going to check on Charlotte, my sullen silence must have changed his mind because he excused himself moments later. I’d quickly gotten dressed, and after overhearing that Charlotte had been howling because she’d stepped on one of the board-game pieces that had tumbled out of a cupboard, I slipped out the side door.

“You’re upset,” he said when he reached me.

The sun had reemerged, and the pale sand was already hot beneath my bare feet. “I’m fine,” I told him, shifting from one foot to the other. “I just wanted to call Paul before we met Milagros and Hector for drinks.”

“You’ll talk to your brother but not to me?” he said, frowning.

“I promised him I’d let him know we got here safely,” I said, but it sounded lame. I sighed and tried again. “Listen, I just need to cool off, okay? I don’t think there’s even anything to talk about. We tried to sleep together, but the girls were too distracting. End of story.” I shrugged.

Shiloh was staring at me, but I couldn’t tell if he was angry, upset, or grappling with some other emotion I wasn’t picking up on. “Given how touch and go things have been with Charlotte’s health, I was a little surprised you didn’t want to stop and find out what had happened,” he finally said.

For once, that hadn’t occurred to me. “Call it mother’s intuition, but I had a feeling she was okay. Her blood sugar doesn’t usually make her scream like she’s just seen a little green man.”

He lifted a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the sun. “Okay, but I wish you wouldn’t read into what happened. It didn’t mean anything.”

Right, because I’d never heard that one before.

“We can try again tonight,” he added.

“How do you know I’m reading into anything? And if it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to make a plan for tonight, or any other night.” This was starting to feel like a fight, so I tried to soften my tone. “You already told me you felt pressured. I don’t want to add to that.”

“Hey,” he said, frowning. “That’s not what I meant.”

Was there another meaning for pressured that I was unaware of? “Listen, I know this has a lot to do with me.” Possibly everything to do with me, not that I said that. “I’ve been kind of off lately. I’m trying to get my head on straight instead, so we can all move forward.” I sighed, thinking about how I’d erupted in the car earlier. The last thing I wanted was for that to happen again. “Do you mind holding down the fort for just a few?”

His shoulders lifted, then sank as he sighed. “Sure.”

“Thank you.” Even though I knew it would look as disingenuous as it felt, I smiled anyway because it was better than bursting into tears. We’d spent more than a decade side by side, raising our daughters and building a life. Why did it feel like there was a chasm between us that was growing wider when it should have been closing? “I love you,” I added.

“I love you, too,” he said.

I could feel him watching me walk to the ocean and down the beach, but I didn’t turn around. Instead, I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my shorts and hit Paul’s number. I expected it to go to voicemail, but he picked up right away. “You rang?”

“I know you’re probably in the middle of something—”

“While you may not be vying for Mary Kay marketer of the year, you might want to work on your sales pitch.”

The laugh I attempted got stuck in my throat. I swallowed hard and said, “Do you have a minute?”

“For you, dear sis, I have all the minutes. How’s Vieques?”

“Great,” I said, but I had to take a second before continuing. “So far we haven’t seen as much hurricane damage as we did in San Juan. And it’s really good to see Milagros.”

“So why do you sound like you’re about to go in for a root canal without anesthesia?”

I sighed even as I could feel the tears rising from deep within me. “You know I hate it when you poke around in my thoughts without permission.”

“I’m not the one who called to chat.”

“Your point. It’s just . . . when you said you and Charlie coasted, what did you mean?”

“Ruh-roh!”

“Paul,” I warned.

“Oh Libby, you know I can’t digest hard conversations if I don’t season them with a little humor. Now as to your question: I meant that neither of us did anything different for a long time, and then one day we looked up and realized we’d faded into the wallpaper.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, we became the background of each other’s lives, you know? We liked the way it looked, but it wasn’t particularly functional or important. Our therapist told us we should start dating each other, which sounded absolutely ridiculous to me at the time because—hello! You try being all romantic and spontaneous with two teenaged sons. But now I wonder if maybe that was better advice than I thought.”

“And yet you’re not asking Charlie on any dates, are you?”

“Too late for that now.”

“Is it, though?” I said, but at least I’d turned off my tears.

“Hey, lady, we’re supposed to be talking about you, not me. Are you worried about you and Shiloh coasting?”

I looked out at the ocean, wishing I could dive in, but the waves were too high and choppy for anything other than wading in the shallow surf. It took me a moment to respond. “A little bit, yeah,” I finally said.

“What’s going on? The last time I saw you guys, you seemed like your usual lovebird selves.”

Had we? When I thought back to our last dinner together, all I could picture was how Paul and Charlie had been interacting. In fact, I barely remembered anything