floppy and awkward, and then he said, “I’m going to hunt up these philosophy books, okay, babe?”
“Sure. Let me know if you need help.”
“I got it. See ya, ladies.” He kissed Lia’s cheek and scampered for safety.
“’Ladies,’” Harriet smirked. “What is he, a member of the Rat Pack?”
“Shut up,” Lia said, laughing. “He’s sweet.”
“Look at you,” Kayla said. “You are the definition of googly-eyes. You really do love him.”
“I told you I did. He’s amazing.”
They watched him walk slowly down an aisle, stop and scan the shelves. “Definitely amazing to look at,” Kayla muttered. “I still can’t believe he was your bodyguard all that time. It makes total sense in retrospect, but I still can’t believe it.”
“It’s way hotter than what we thought he was,” Harriet added. “Pathetic stalker boy just doesn’t have the same ring to it as hot bodyguard.”
“It’s so romantic, though. Falling for your bodyguard.” Kayla sighed dreamily.
Lia’s attention was wholly fixed on the handsome, strong, kind man shaking his head at the cost of a philosophy textbook. That man loved her, as much as she loved him. He was the center of her world, as she was of his.
She barely heard the running commentary from her friends. But she was glad they were there. It made her happy to be here, at Brown, in the bookstore, gathering up her supplies for the new fall semester. Her life was hers to claim, hers to make. She would begin to make it here, in this place, with her friends and her love around her, and her family lifting her up.
She felt happy, and for the first time all year, it was full and free, carrying no weight but its own.
~oOo~
On the evening before Lia was set to go back to Brown, she knocked on her father’s office door. When he called, “Come!” she went in.
“Hi, Papa.”
His smile was wide and warm. “Hi, gattina. You all packed up? I’m just wrapping up a few things and then I’ll be out.”
They were having a family movie night, with pizza and popcorn. Alex wouldn’t be joining them; he was having a last evening just with his mom.
They were only going to Providence, barely an hour away, and no doubt they’d be home all the time. But, just as it had the first time she’d left for college, that time with Elisa, this felt like a turning point—and this turn, she hoped, would lead forward and not in a circle.
So much had changed in her life, in all their lives, in this single year. They themselves had changed, too. Lia felt, perhaps strangely, stronger than ever, more assured of who she was and what she wanted, and that it was okay to make room for herself to be and have those things—or to change her mind and be something else she wanted to be instead.
And she had love! So much love. Whether what she and Alex had was like what her parents had remained to be seen, she supposed, but to Lia it felt the same. Just comfortable—not in the broken-down, boring way, but in the way that meant she was where she belonged. Loving Alex had unfurled something in Lia that she meant never to allow to close.
Carina had settled down. She was still mouthy and sarcastic, but she didn’t go for the mean so often or have to turn everything into a fight. Ren was still his slouched, gloomy, emo self, but he hung out with the family more and had started working at their mom’s bookshop this summer.
Mamma and Papa were changed but healing, too. Mamma was almost like the way she’d been before, but in some ways she was better. Losing Elisa had sent her back to therapy, and Lia thought she’d worked through some other troubles she’d felt and had buried over the years.
Papa was Papa, an impossible mix of warm and stoic, accessible and reserved, keenly observant and unreadable. But the other world he believed he lived in had been calm now for months, and he had visibly relaxed. Their life was fundamentally changed, yet much like the best it could be. It was good.
Elisa was gone, and that hole in their family would always be there, but they were learning to live around it. A meteor had crashed down in the middle of their world, but the crater it had left was filling, like rain making a lake, a new place around which they were building a new life.