paper off the box, his eyebrows lifting as he reads the wording on the side of the crate. Mr. Moo’s Chocolate Milk.
Archer looks at me in disbelief. “Seriously?”
“I tracked them down,” I explain. “The company moved to Humboldt County years ago, but they’re still in business. Had it shipped overnight in dry ice.”
He opens the box to reveal two dozen individual containers of chocolate milk. He takes two out and hands one to me. We clink them together in a toast before opening them to drink.
“Damn.” Archer takes a long swallow and lets out his breath in a sigh. “Better than I remember. I can’t believe you found them. Thanks.”
“Yeah, well…” I shrug and look out at the dance floor, working up the courage to tell my brother what I’ve felt for a while now. “Remember when you told me you’d straightened up partly because you wanted to be more like me?”
“I remember.”
“Over the past few months, I’ve realized the same thing,” I say.
“You want to be more like you?”
“No.” I throw him a look of mild exasperation. “I could stand to be more like you.”
He stares at me in surprise.
“I know for a lot of years I didn’t think you’d amount to anything,” I continue, rolling the milk container between my palms. “Never have I been so glad to be proven wrong. You have a…uh, a kind of intuition that I wish I had. And even though I know you’ve had it rough, you’re…well, you’re calm, you know? You know how to just go with it, to sort of let things unfold. Not to rage every time something doesn’t go the way you want. It’s a great thing, man.”
Archer doesn’t respond. Embarrassment crawls up my chest. I push my chair away.
“Now we’ll never speak of this again,” I warn.
He blinks. A slow smile crosses his face.
“Oh, I’ll speak of it, big brother,” he says. “In fact, I might even put it on a banner and hang it outside the garage. Or hire a skywriter to write it over the lake. Or make you walk around wearing a sandwich board, shouting about how much you want to be like me—”
“Dickwad,” I mutter.
We’re both grinning as I walk away from him.
I approach Liv, who is still standing at the bottom of the terrace steps by the dance floor. I come up behind her and slide my arms around her waist, lowering my head to kiss the back of her neck.
“There you are, my beauty,” I murmur. “I haven’t seen you all night. Now I’m not letting you go. Unless Bella needs to pee, in which case I’ll have no choice.”
“Lucky for you, Marianne just took the kids home.”
“Ah. Then you are truly mine.”
“I’ve always been truly yours.”
I tighten my arms around her waist, breathing in the sweet scent of her. I love the way she leans back against me, nestling her ass up against my groin. I trail my lips across the side of her neck, her skin like satin over the arch of her collarbone.
John Legend’s “All of Me” comes over the speakers. I turn Liv to face me and pull her closer, guiding her to the music.
“Are we dancing?” she asks, sliding both her arms around my waist.
“We are, indeed.”
“We haven’t danced since Allie and Brent’s wedding,” Liv remarks.
“Really?” Now I’m surprised…and more than a little disgusted with myself for not having taken every possible opportunity over the past decade to dance with my wife.
“What kind of asshat did you marry, anyway?” I ask.
She chuckles. “The best one ever.” Her arms tighten around me. “And we’ve always just danced together in a different way.”
We dance slowly for another few beats. I lower my head to croon the lyrics into her ear.
“Hey, you have a nice singing voice.” Liv pulls back to look up at me. “I didn’t know you could carry a tune.”
“I have a lot of talents you don’t know about.”
She looks skeptical. “I thought I knew everything about you.”
“No way, baby. I’m full of surprises.”
“You’re full of something,” she mutters.
I slide my hands down to squeeze her rear. “Lucky for you, you have plenty of years to discover all the surprises I have in store for you.”
“Like what?”
“For your eightieth birthday, I plan to play you a romantic ballad on the bagpipes.”
“You can play the bagpipes?”
“Not yet. But for you, I’ll learn.”
She laughs. “Well, now I know the true depths of your love.”
“There’s no end to it.”
We move together for a few minutes before I ease away