Finding the Right Girl (A Nice GUY to Love spin-off) (19 page)

While Skylar continued to jabber and squeal in the back as she looked through the photos they’d taken throughout the day trip, Brian reached over and grabbed Tessa’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you,” he said quietly, bringing her knuckles up to his lips.

They’d been driving for nearly three hours, and Skylar had been talking for about two and a half of it. It was really great to have his daughter back.

When finally nothing but deep breathing echoed out from the backseat, he looked and saw Skylar was fast asleep.

“This was all you, Tessa. I think I’m going to go in the dad hall of fame for this one.”

“You’re already in it,” replied Tessa sleepily as she too started to drift off to sleep. “In my book, and in Skylar’s, you’re definitely already in it.”

She stifled a giant cat-yawn. “Maybe we should stop for coffee. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open.”

“Go on and sleep, babe.”

“No,” she protested weakly. “Then I’m going to be wired when we get home, and I’ll be up all night listening to you snoring.”

His heart leapt up to his throat.
Home
. She’d never done that before, even by accident. The only home he’d ever heard her reference was her childhood home that she’d lost to foreclosure. She’d only ever say, ‘my place’ or ‘my apartment’ or ‘your house.’ But never, simply, ‘home.’

With an intensity that kind of stunned him, he wanted to hear her say it again, keep saying it.

Forever.

With him.

S
KYLAR PLOPPED
her backpack on the ground and bee-lined it straight for the cordless. “Hold it!” Brian called out. “Shower first, missy. You’re getting sand everywhere. You can call Becky afterward.”

With a mock salute, Skylar rushed down the hall and called out on her way to her room, “If Becky’s not doing anything, can she come over later?”

“Did you finish all your homework?”

Silence.

Brian sighed and shook his head. “How about you tell Becky to bring her homework with her and then you two can pretend to study while you tell her about the trip. Then, afterward, you two can study for real with pizza as an incentive.”

“Deal!”

Tessa wrapped her arms around his waist. “Nicely done. It’s always impressive to see a hall-of-famer at work.”

So she remembered that. He wondered if she remembered the rest of what she’d said in the car, too.

He brought her in for a kiss. “We should hurry and shower too. Do you want to save some electricity
and
water by—”

She clapped her hand over his mouth and gave him the cutest little scowl. Adorable rabbit. Even though Skylar was ecstatic that they were dating, Tessa was always extra mindful when Skylar was in the house. No showering together—especially not in the dark—no PDAs, and no sleepovers.

Though he was starting to wear her down on the latter two.

As Tessa ambled away to take a shower in his master bath—alone—he noticed a cell phone on the ground near her bag, but not a smartphone, a flip phone that he didn’t recognize. “Tessa? Do you have two cell phones?”

Tessa froze, patted her pockets quickly and spun around to check his hands. Eyes zooming in on the phone, she rushed over to swipe the phone from his hands.

“I found it on the ground; it must’ve fallen out of your bag or your pocket. It’s a little wet.”

That seemed to alarm her even more. Frantic now, she flipped the phone open and began madly hitting the keys.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“I shouldn’t have taken it with me,” she cried out softly, sobbing as she fell to the floor. “But I wanted to take her with me.”

That made absolutely no sense to him. But he didn’t think this was one of her cute eccentricities. Seeing tears streaming down her face for the first time, true and real panic filled his veins and he raced over to pull her into his arms.

“Tessa, sweetheart, tell me what’s going on, please. Let me help you. Is it your phone? Because if it’s broken, we can fix it or replace it.”

“I can’t replace it. And it was already broken.”

More incomprehensible answers.

“Talk to me, baby. Please.”

“It was the last thing I had left.”

Oh god.

Tessa was curled in a ball against his chest, clutching the phone to her heart. “It’s an old phone that doesn’t work anymore, but it’s the only thing I had left that still had Willow alive in it.” Tessa opened it again and pressed at the buttons, slowly, carefully this time, staring at the screen as if it would light up any second now. It broke his heart when the phone didn’t turn on.

“Now I’ve lost her forever.” Hot tears slipped down her cheeks. “Willow was the
only one
that used to remember my birthday. Did I ever tell you that? The only one. Every year, my mom would forget…or rather, she just didn’t remember because she never bothered to. My dad, on the other hand, would remember when he could, but he was usually bone tired from working all day in construction, and all night as a handyman that it’d usually just end up being an apologetic, belated wish, weeks later.”

“But every single year, Willow remembered. Even with everything she was going through, even if she was in the ICU, she’d always, always remember and wish me a happy birthday.”

“The year her memory started going, she’d taken my phone and told me to leave it with her for the day. I figured she was going to bedazzle it or something so I didn’t anything of it. In fact, when I found it the next day on her nightstand looking exactly the same, I’d forgotten that she’d wanted it for some reason. I didn’t remember until I got the ping on my calendar the next year. Willow’s dementia had fully set in by then so she hadn’t remembered it was my birthday, and I was prepared for that. But when I got that ping on my phone, I started bawling like a baby.”

Tessa looked up at him, a trembling smile peeking through her tears. “Willow had left me a calendar note to wish me a happy birthday for the following year, knowing her disease would make her forget.”

“Not just that, but she’d had a little note as well on the calendar agenda. For years, Willow and I used to fantasize about dream getaways that we’d take together. We would imagine that there would be some miraculous cure for Huntington’s and she’d be all better so we could travel the world. I’d borrow books from the library, we’d check out specials on TV and the internet—anything to learn about these far-off places.” Tessa shook her head remembering something only she could see. “So on that calendar note, she listed Greece as the destination of choice and eating our way through it as the getaway goal we’d discussed. And just like that, it was like she was right there with me again, dreaming with me.”

She slid her fingers down the phone. “She input a calendar note for my birthday for every year since then. With her fingers having been affected, similar to Jilly’s, it must have taken Willow the entire day to input all of those words.”

“Nine years now, and the calendar pings haven’t stopped. We’ve traveled the world together via our dreams in those nine years—boating around New Zealand, going to a hot spring in Japan… I don’t actually know how many years the phone has in the calendar—never wanted to look and ruin the surprise—but I’m positive she went until she couldn’t go any more. Even after the phone stopped working five years ago, the calendar still functioned. So I bought dozens of new batteries and I’ve always kept the phone stored safe until I could take it out on my birthday.”

Her voice crumbled. “Willow was alive for one day every year in this phone. And it was just for me. My little birthday present. The only one I’d get that year, from the only person who’s ever remembered my birthday for the last nine years.”

“This Pismo Beach trip…it was the first vacation trip of my life and I wanted her to share it with me. So I brought the phone with me. To keep her close on our first real getaway adventure. I even thought about putting my own calendar note as a new memory. The first new memory we’d have together. ATV racing in Pismo beach.” She buried her face against his chest and wept. “It was stupid.”

Brian held her tight. “No, honey. It wasn’t. It was beautiful. She would’ve loved it. For nine years, she’s taken you around the world. And today, you got to take her.”

“But now the phone is broken for good,” she cried out in agony. “I wasn’t careful and now I won’t ever have any more notes for any more birthdays. When those calendar pings would come in, I’d be able to see her face crystal clear in my mind, and hear her voice as if she was sitting right next to me. It’s like I had her back. Even if for that one short day.”

Claws of pain and sympathy squeezed over his throat.

“Now she’s finally gone. And even though I’ve had no family for more years than I can remember, this is the first time, I feel like I’m truly, completely alone.”

He just held her and let her cry until no more tears would come. Smoothing her hair back, he asked gently, “Tessa, what can I do?”

“Can you just take me back to my apartment please?”

“Anything but that, honey. I don’t want to leave you alone by yourself.”

“Please, Brian. I know you think I’m so strong but I’m not always. Not now. Not over this. I just want to go to bed.”

She looked like she was hanging on by a thin thread so he didn’t push.

“Okay, sweetheart, let me just make a quick call.”

Twenty minutes later, he was tucking Tessa into bed, holding her as she continued to cry silently. He held her in her bed until she fell asleep.

He’d asked Abby to watch Skylar for the night so he could stay with Tessa. That was the only way he was going to let her stay here.

But if it were up to him, they wouldn’t be here at all.

Walking around her apartment, he noted again how little she had to make it a home. And that thought brought him right back to Tessa’s mother. God, his stomach felt like it was being sent through a meat grinder every time he thought about what Tessa’s mother had forced upon her when she’d been even younger than Skylar was now, how she’d treated Tessa, inadvertently or not, weak and hurting though her mother must have been.

The fact that Tessa turned into the strong, amazing woman that she is just made him all the more impressed with her, in awe of her.

That much more in love with her.

Bringing her back here had been tough. She didn’t belong here, not anymore. She deserved a home. She deserved a family so she didn’t feel like she was alone in the world.

And more and more, he wanted that home to be one they shared together.

T
ESSA WAS BEAT
. It’d been a grueling week, and one that she hadn’t been ready to face after her meltdown last weekend. She’d gotten three grant proposals rejected, she’d discovered that one of her freelancers had submitted an ‘accidentally’ plagiarized piece, and to add insult to injury, she’d caught a nasty bug that had made the entire week move even slower. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a day. But she’d promised Skylar she’d come to the picnic at their house this weekend.

After parking in the driveway behind Connor’s Charger, Tessa went around to the side gate to head out into the backyard. The sizzle of the grill and a chorus of chatter greeted her like a warm summer wave.

“Ooh, ooh, she’s here!” Skylar jumped up to give her a runaway train hug. “Okay, now we can officially start the picnic!”

Brian came over and slid his arm around. “Skylar apparently has an announcement she wants to make before we start eating. And she didn’t want to start until you got here—she said she wanted her whole family to hear it.”

Family. Tessa looked around at the sea of happy faces. Brian and Skylar, Skylar’s grandparents, Connor and Abby, Becky and her parents and siblings.

Yes, this was definitely a family. One that Tessa would be honored to be a part of, in whatever capacity.

Okay kiddo, you’re up,” called out Brian.

“Hi everyone!” Skylar waved. “Okay, I know everyone’s been really worried about me so I wanted to make an announcement.
For now
, I’ve decided
not
to do the genetic testing. For the last couple of weeks, I got to talk with so many kids and adults who are living with HD.” A small smile was directed Tessa’s way. “All of them were out there living, dreaming, and fighting. And they’re great. But here I am, spending so much time thinking about what
might
happen IF I have the HD gene. That’s why I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to focus on living, and being a kid. It doesn’t make sense to waste a whole lifetime being afraid of my disease instead of being happy with my life. These kids I met can’t have a normal childhood but I can. So, I don’t think it’s fair to them or myself if I didn’t live my life to the fullest, without worrying about the HD gene until I have to.”

Tessa’s hand flew to her chest. For her, it had never been about whether Skylar took the test, not really, but rather, whether or not Skylar came to the decision on her own..