Sweet

When she was home for winter break, I brought her to my place on Christmas Eve. “I have one more gift for you,” I said, leaving her standing in the middle of the living room with no lights on but the ones strung through the tree in the corner. “Stay right here.”

The Christmas tree was the first one that trailer had seen since I was seven years old. I’d threaded white lights all over it and called it done, which was all manner of wrong according to Sam. “Jeez—lazy much? Where are the ornaments?” she’d said. “It looks dumb with just lights.”

“I don’t have any,” I’d admitted. “I haven’t had a tree since I was a kid.”

She’d shown up with four boxes of shiny ornaments from Walmart the next day. “Merry Christmas from me and Dad. It’s sorta lame to give you Christmas ornaments for Christmas, but I had no choice.”

When I brought a kitchen chair out to the living room and sat Pearl in it, facing the tree, her expression was a blend of a worry, laughter, and total confusion. “Boyce…? We set gift limits—you made me promise not to go beyond them! What—”

I knelt in front of her and she sucked in a breath and fell silent.

I took her left hand, pretty sure we were both shaking. I just hoped to hell it wasn’t all me. “Once upon a time, an undeserving boy pulled a little half-drowned, wannabe mermaid out of the ocean. He laid her on the sand, thinking his heart would break if she didn’t wake up. The moment she opened her big dark eyes and looked up at him, his heart wasn’t his anymore. After that moment, his life’s quest wasn’t a matter of searching for his other half, because he knew right where she was. His mission was waiting for her to know he’d left his heart in her hand that day on the beach and hoping that someday it would bring her back to him.”

She raised her trembling right hand and covered her mouth. Glassy with tears, her eyes reflected the lights from the tree like handfuls of stars in a clear midnight sky.

I pulled the small, carved driftwood box Thompson had converted into a ring box from my front pocket and opened the lid. “Pearl Torres Frank, I want to have you and hold you and love you for as long as we both shall live. Will you let me do that, sweetheart?”

She nodded and burst into tears.

I’d waited five more months for her to come home. Five months for me to have that trailer hauled off and a little house erected in its place with help from Vega and Thompson and a few customers who were happy to barter construction services for car maintenance and repairs. Five months to develop the cold feet I never got. Maxfield had nothing to worry about on that score. I knew what I wanted, and I was about to stand under a flower-covered arch in front of half the town and get it.

Whether Pearl believed in luck or not didn’t matter. I believed enough for the both of us.

Pearl

This morning, I woke up in my bedroom for the last time. I was only moving ten minutes away—again—but for a happier reason. Mama brought me coffee to wake me up, but I’d been lying awake, thinking, for at least an hour. When she opened the door, I sat up and slid my glasses on. “Morning, Mama.”

She perched on the edge of the bed, her dark hair damp from an early shower. She and Thomas liked to get up at dawn every day and watch the sunrise from the little terrace off their room, Tux on one lap or the other. They were in love, but they’d become best friends. Boyce and I were best friends who’d fallen in love. Our way to each other was more convoluted than theirs had been, but we’d come to the same good end, no matter the path.

“No second thoughts, mija?”

I took the mug from her and smiled. “None.”

She cupped my face and kissed my nose. “Good.”

• • • • • • • • • •

Mel and I peered out the window. The courtyard was filled to the brim with flowers and people. I spotted Mr. and Mrs. Thompson next to Mrs. Echols, who’d started bringing Boyce cookies and casseroles after he was shot and hadn’t ever stopped. Lucas’s girl, Jacqueline, sat next to the Hellers—Carlie, Cindy, and Charles. They had given me the perfect grad-school home for the past nine months. Next to them were Ray and Arianna Maxfield, who’d shocked the entire town last October when they eloped to Houston for a shotgun justice-of-the-peace wedding before anyone even knew they were seeing each other. Their spontaneity became more obvious around Christmas when Arianna started showing. Lucas’s little sister was due next month.

Sam wheeled down the aisle just ahead of her dad. In thanks for her assistance at Wynn’s while he was recuperating, Boyce had helped Mr. Adams find a used, adapted truck for her seventeenth birthday last week. The girl who loved cars finally had her own. She’d driven herself and her dad here—Brit and I watched her taking five minutes to park it exactly between the lines in the lot.

“New drivers.” Brit laughed. “Give her two weeks. She’ll be lurching that thing into a spot inside five seconds, lines be damned.”

Sam had also instructed me to aim for her with the bouquet. “It’s not like I can lunge for it,” she said. “I might run over somebody’s toe.”

I told her I’d do my best.

Mel told me to aim as far from her as possible. “I do not wanna hear it from my mother,” she said. “If that thing comes my way, I swear I will spike it like a volleyball.”

Mr. and Mrs. Dover were seated behind the seats reserved for my parents, who tolerated them the same way Boyce tolerated their daughter—with frequent asides.