Archive of Our Own

It’s almost nine when the taxi drops me off at the summer house.

Traffic was bad on our way back to Boston from Providence and Jere nearly missed the Nectar meeting because of it. I offered to wait in the lobby until he was done, tried to convince him to sneak out for a couple of hours after the meeting and drop me off at the train station later so we could spend a few more hours together before my train left, but he gave me a quick kiss and said he didn’t want to push his luck with his dad.

Sitting at the train station for three hours gave me a chance to look at all the links Kayleigh sent me this week that I’ve ignored. Yay.

I get it. I do. He’s trying really hard to impress his dad and that’s always been a sticky spot with Jeremiah. It doesn’t matter how bad Adam treats him or anyone else—Jere always hopes his dad will see him as more than the leftover son. Now that Adam is coming around, involving himself in the wedding when not even my mom is willing to do that, Jere is doubling down on proving his worth. Sometimes when he comes home, I catch his dejected expression before he can hide it behind his smile and kisses.

He doesn’t have me there to cheer him up now, just like I don’t have him to keep my spirits up about all of this crazy wedding stuff. What a mess.

I let myself into the house, leave my rollerbag by the door, and head for the kitchen hoping to find something to eat. The snacks I bought on the train weren’t near enough and now my stomach is growling. My mind’s already on where Conrad might’ve hidden the decent food when I lurch to a halt just inside the doorway.

Conrad is at the counter eating with headphones on doing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. In front of him sits a plate of pale-looking chicken, green beans, and a small cob of corn, and a bowl of salad. Next to that is a bottle of seltzer water. Seltzer water. My hopes of finding anything edible in the house drop at the sight.

“Oh,” he says, taking off his headphones. “You’re back.”

“Yeah.” Why did he say it like that? Like a question wrapped in judgement that he doesn’t actually want an answer to. I stand there awkwardly, not sure what to do.

“You’ve been gone for a while,” he says in that same odd tone. “I…” He glances at his plate like it might tell him what to say to me. “There’s some more chicken in the fridge if you want something to eat.”

Oh God. Not the chicken. The only thing worse than that would be sticking around long enough for him to find his words and tell me what’s on his mind. After what happened the last time we were alone, that would be a terrible idea. Why couldn’t Adam let me stay in Boston? I could’ve cleaned more. Fixed his coffee machine. Anything.

I take a step back. “Uh, I’m… I’m not hungry. I’m just going to go to bed. Night.”

He nods once as I turn away.

Guess I’ll be eating Kit Kats for dinner tonight.

Feeling deflated, I drag my roller bag and duffel upstairs to Jere’s room and flop onto the bed.

After sitting in an uncomfortable chair at the train station, the long train ride itself, and all those nights on Adam’s floor, my whole body groans in relief. This is so much better than that air mattress. The only thing that’s missing is Jeremiah. Two weeks of waking up with him felt like finally coming home after the month we’ve had. Between my mom keeping us apart, that week between Finch and the memorial, and the week I spent here with Conrad and all the tools I’m not convinced he knows how to use, the summer has been kind of awful.

Well, other than the getting married part. I’m happy about that. Would Jere freak out if I asked him to elope? I don’t want the crazy things Kayleigh’s suggesting or the long guest list Adam is putting together or any of that. Jere and I standing on the beach promising to love each other forever is all I need.

My stomach rumbles unhappily but not unhappily enough for me to go back downstairs and take Conrad up on his offer. Sighing, I roll over and grab a couple of my emergency Kit Kats out of the nightstand. Normally they’d be in the kitchen in the cabinet where I keep my strawberry Pop-Tarts and Oreos, but with Conrad lurking around the week it was just me and him, I hadn’t wanted to risk running into him on a midnight snack run—something Jere and I do in our underwear or less when it’s just the two of us here—or that he’d find them and throw them away.

I toe off my shoes, get situated in our pillows, and unwrap the first Kit Kat.

Today, I felt a little like Goldilocks, but in reverse. The first place was amazing, but Jere’s credit for sure would’ve disqualified us so we didn’t bother applying. The second place was tiny, but cute and loud. I could’ve handled one or the other but not both. It felt like a coffin. The third was filthy. Just no. The fourth might have worked if not for the cat pee smell.

I told Jere FeBreze isn’t a magic potion. Enzyme cleaners kind of are, though. He probably doesn’t know about those with how he grew up. The Fishers never had a pet of their own, just the dog Jere found on the beach when we were little and had to give right back. Even if they did, Susannah would’ve hired someone to take care of cleaning up after it. Whoever lived in that apartment either didn’t have a litterbox or had ten cats and they definitely didn’t know about enzyme cleaners.

Taylor told me I’m being too picky and that a lot of couples have to slum it in their first apartments and I know that, I do, but I want this to be perfect. If that means we have to look harder and longer with Jere’s credit issues, okay. I wish I’d known about that ahead of time so I could’ve adjusted my search, though. We’re going to have to talk about that soon. My mom drilled the importance of credit into my head while Adam shoved cards into the boys’ hands and paid the bill every month. There’s no way Adam will keep paying that after we’re married, right? This is going to be a big adjustment for Jere.

Actually, maybe we should get a cheap place.

We’ll try looking again when he isn’t rushed. This weekend might work. We have the tasting with Paige on Saturday that I know he’s looking forward to but we can drive up to Rhode Island after. Maybe stay in a hotel so we can get a headstart on day two?

I grab my phone out of my purse and call Jere.

“Hi, beautiful,” he says with a big grin on his face when he picks up. “You make it to the house okay?”

“You tell me,” I say and pan the phone along my body and the bed. My dress rode up a bit when I flopped back onto the pillows, so I make sure he gets a good look at my legs. Tug up the hem a little higher while I’m at it.

He groans. “You’re in our bed teasing me with almost getting to see everything and I’m not there. Take off your dress.”

“Drive home tonight and take it off yourself. Like your dad said—you’ll beat the traffic if you come back early. I’ll wait up.”

“I wish I could. You have no idea how much.”

Humming, I munch on a Kit Kat stick as I soak in the sight of him. He’s laying on Adam’s couch and there’s a baseball game on the TV in the background.

Jere squints at the screen. “Bells, please tell me that chocolate is dessert and not dinner.”

“I was going to make something else, but Conrad’s in the kitchen.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “And?”

“And he’s trying to get me to eat his chicken again. I can’t do it, Jere. It’s awful even when I dump half a bottle of ketchup on it. Please cook for me this weekend. And…maybe leave some reheatable meals before you go back to Boston? You can take as many dresses off of me as you want as payment.”

He chuckles. “Deal, but in the meantime, don’t you have any packs of ramen? I’ve never seen you without at least one in your room and another mine.”

“I ran out the first week you were gone. I’ll try to pick some up tomorrow on my way back from the club and put sticky notes saying ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ on them so he doesn’t throw them away. At least, that’s what I assume happened to the stuff we bought on Fourth of July. The cabinets and the refrigerator are full of healthy stuff now. Inedible stuff.” I point my last Kit Kat stick at him, then stuff it in my mouth. “If it wasn’t for my emergency candy, I’d starve.”

“You are not going to starve or live on emergency candy. I’ll talk to him.”

I can’t imagine how that conversation will go.

Stop trying to feed my fiancee healthy food. Or, you know, stop trying to feed her at all. It makes her uncomfortable for reasons she can’t figure out and hasn’t told me yet because she doesn’t want me to worry.

He starts typing something on his phone and panic shoots from my head to my toes. “Wait, are you texting him right now? When I might run into him later?”

“Nah, that’s an in-person kind of conversation. Just replying to an email real quick.”

An email? When he’s talking to me? I frown. “I don’t want to share you with work.”

“You’re not, but you know that’s going to be a thing, right?” he says. “These last two weeks in Boston were a pretty good preview of what my weekdays are going to look like after I graduate no matter where I end up. The only difference will be that I get to come home to a place that’s just ours and spend every night with my wife. And then there’s the weekends…” He gives me a wink.

The weekends, where we’ll pack in all things fun and us into two days. Why does being an adult have to take up so much time?

“Once you graduate, we’ll figure out what we want to do next,” he says, stretching out and settling with his arm tucked under his head. “Companies fuck up every day in every part of the world so there’s never going to be a shortage of jobs for me. I can find something to do wherever you end up going to grad school. With how hard you’ve been studying for your GREs, you’ll get in somewhere good, I know it.”

“Thanks, Jere.”

“So what are you going to read me tonight?” he asks.

A smile tugs at my lips. During my senior year of high school when we were long distance, we’d study together over the phone until one of us started to fall asleep or he had to leave for a Beta Sig event. On the nights he didn’t have to be anywhere, he’d ask me to read him something until he fell asleep. He got to hear a lot of French poetry and all the short stories I had to read for English class. We restarted the tradition during the weeks we’ve been separated this summer.

I glance at the stack of books on the bedside table. “How about a little poetry?”

“Only if it’s in French.”

I know this, which is why the only poetry book in the stack is in French. This particular book is one of the easier ones that I bought at Whale of a Tale specifically for Jere. He’s been trying to pick up French words and I fall a little more in love with him every time he gets one right and his face lights up. I flip through the pages until I find Janvier, one of the poems he’s more familiar with.

Janvier pour dire à l’année “bonjour”
Février pour dire à la neige “il faut fondre”
Mars pour dire à l’oiseau migrateur “reviens”

“Yes, come back to Boston,” he says. “I’ll find somewhere to hide you. Maybe my dad won’t notice?”

I give him a pointed look. “You’re the one who left me at the train station. I wanted to stay. Is reading French poetry aloud all it takes to change your mind?”

“We really need to find a place of our own,” he grumbles. “Preferably one that’ll let us move in now. I’ll commute if it means getting to sleep with you every night. We’ll drive back to Cousins for the wedding and then get the hell out of there the second you’re mine.”

Hope shimmers through me both at the thought of living together sooner than expected and at the way “mine” always sounds coming from those full lips I love to kiss in the voice I love more than anyone else’s. “After you fall asleep, I’ll start looking for more places.”

“Send me links. For now, keep reading? We’re getting to the good part and I know more of the words.”

Smiling, I find my place again. The summer months are his favorite.

Avril pour dire à la fleur “ouvre-toi”
Mai pour dire “ouvriers nos amis”

“Here we go.”

He says it like we’re about to run out onto the field on game day. Jere approaches everything with so much enthusiasm that it’s hard not to get caught up in it.

Juin pour dire à la mer “emporte-nous très loin”

“June and the sea,” he says. “Makes me think of your birthday and running into the ocean together.”

Juillet pour dire au soleil “c’est ta saison”

“The sun.”

Août pour dire “l’homme est heureux d’être homme”

Jere hums. “Being your husband is going to make me the happiest man.”

My heart warms and melts. “You being my husband will make me the happiest girl.”

“I’m really glad you feel that way, Bells.” The slow smile that takes over his face melts the rest of me. Clearing my throat before I actually do take off my dress for him, I power on.

Septembre pour dire au blé “change-toi en or”

He nods. “Gold.”

Octobre pour dire “camarades, la liberté”
Novembre pour dire aux arbres “déshabillez-vous”

“Mmm. I want you to undress.”

“Focus.”

“I’m very focused. It’s not my fault you’re thinking about getting naked for me and the poem is telling you to do it.”

“You did not just say that,” I laugh.

“What? I’m not wrong.”

No, he’s not. Cheeks heating, I bury my face in the book.

Décembre pour dire à l’année “adieu, bonne chance”

Before I can read the final verse, he says, “And twelve more months to tell you I love you.”

“Et douze mois de plus par an, pour te dire je t’aime,” I finish. “Very good.”

“I like this poem. Very invested in some of the verses, but especially that last one. Whatcha got for me next?”

We spend the next half an hour running through poems he knows and a few new ones he doesn’t. In the middle of Le Chat when the doorbell rings.

Frowning, I set the book aside. “Who the heck is here this late?”

“Why don’t you go see? Take me with.”

“Okay.” I don’t know how I feel about answering the door at almost 10 p.m. by myself, but Cousins isn’t anything like Philly. It’s probably the neighbors or something. At least if Jere’s on the phone, he can call the police if something happens.

I tiptoe down the stairs hoping I don’t run into Conrad. Surely he’s asleep or doing whatever he does in his room by now. The light was on when I slipped out of Jere’s room and hurried to the stairwell. I do not want to deal with him asking about the stupid chicken.

No such luck. Conrad is closing the door when I get to the bottom of the stairs holding a plastic bag.

He frowns at me. “You ordered food?”

A huge grin spreads across my face as I take the bag. “Jere!” I shout happily at the phone. “You DoorDashed me dinner?”

“Couldn’t have my girl starving,” he says. “Hey, Con.”

Conrad looks a little disgruntled as he glances from the bag in my hand to the phone and his brother’s smiling face. His smug smiling face. Oh, geez. He gives Jere a halfhearted wave and a quick “Hey,” then retreats back to the kitchen. I wonder if he’s still working on the crossword puzzle.

“Jeremiah Fisher,” I whisper as I dash back upstairs. “You did that on purpose.”

“Yes, I purposely ordered you dinner. And like I said, I wanted to talk to him in person.”

“Oh my God, that was not talking to him let alone in person,” I laugh. “Fortunately for you, I can’t bring myself to care about that or you lying about replying to an email because I’m starving and this smells incredible. What did you get me?”

“Open it and see.”

“Uncle JouJou's,” I moan happily when I pull out the boxes. There are a couple of grilled shawarma wraps, a little hummus bowl, and my absolute favorite thing they make—a Nutella fruit sandwich.

“Strawberries and bananas, just how you like it,” he chuckles when I unroll the pita bread to check and moan again. “And those are beef shawarmas. Chicken sounded like it might be triggering.”

“So triggering. I love you so much that I’ll even eat the hummus.” I pick up a shawarma and take a bite. The rich, garlicky spice immediately warms my mouth and my stomach settles in anticipation.

“My work here is done. Now get eating. I’ll hang out and watch the game until you’re done and then maybe you can read to me some more? I miss your voice already.”

“Actually,” I say, taking another bite, “I was thinking maybe we could talk about your credit?”

He breathes in slowly and lets it out even slower. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about any of that and wound up embarrassing you.”

I feel bad while also not feeling bad which is confusing. Of the two brothers, Conrad is more responsible about practical things, but Jeremiah is the caregiver. Case in point, the food I’m happily devouring right now. He always takes care of me and he took care of Susannah when she was sick too. No one took care of him that determinedly until he and I came back together for good. I want to be that for him for the rest of our lives, and if that includes stuff like sorting out credit problems, fine by me.

“I wasn’t embarrassed, exactly. More like surprised,” I say. “So…how many payments are you behind and by how much? If we start picking at this now, by the time I graduate, maybe we can get into a place like the first one we looked at.”

While I finish my shawarmas, he pulls up the card’s app on his phone and finds out he’s four payments behind, spaced out over a year, and currently owes $205. That’s it.

“Jere, that’s only, like, a couple weeks of tips at the restaurant. I can pay that off myself now that your dad is paying for the wedding.”

“Not a chance,” he says, sounding offended. “I’ll save up my per diems and pay it off at the end of the month. Then we can start August in the clear.”

Frowning, I start cutting up the Nutella sandwich. We haven’t really talked about finances before and maybe we should have. Jere won’t have access to his trust until he’s twenty five. We’re going to have to get creative until one of us gets a decent job after graduation, and that means falling back on whichever one of us can afford to pay for something at any given time.

“Okay, but you know we’re going to have to pool our money for the next few years, right?” I say between bites of chocolatey hazelnut fruit goodness. “If I have the money to pay it now, let me pay it now. You can take care of whatever comes up next.”

“That isn’t how this works. Husbands are supposed to take care of their wives.”

And he’s getting this from where, exactly? Now would probably be a bad time to point out that while his dad is doing great now, Susannah once told me that it was her family’s money that got his foot in the door at the bigger companies and helped him start Breaker. Even the summer house was hers until Adam bought it from Julia. I felt so grown up when Susannah told me because it sounded like such a big secret. Who knew I’d be on the phone with her son years later trying to rewire his brain about husbands paying for everything?

“We’re not our parents,” is the response I decide on. Not his or mine. My mom has never let my dad pay for anything. She and my dad didn’t even have a joint banking account—information she volunteered over dinner the first week I was stuck at home after Jere and I announced our engagement. I don’t want to be anything like them. “Besides,” I say in a brighter voice, “haven’t you ever heard of what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine? That’s, like, half of being married.” Or so I’m told.

He eyes me through the phone. “I’ve more than heard of it. I’ve lived it with you forever, right down to chewing on the same toys when we were babies.”

“See?”

“This is different, Bells,” he says, sounding a little dejected. “I’ve really been looking forward to taking care of you.”

“You do take care of me.” I hold up the now-empty food container. “You’ll have plenty of time to take care of me and whatever else you want in the future. Let me pay off this card.”

We stare at each other for a long moment. So many thoughts flicker one after another in his eyes, most of them conflicted, some of them sad. I love him for being so set on taking care of me but I’m not going to back down on this. Partners for life. That’s what I want.

“Fine,” he eventually says. “But I will be buying our first house or flat or whatever you end up wanting when we pick somewhere to settle down eventually. It’ll be my gift to you.”

The stubborn look on his face is so adorable that I don’t bother to argue that a $205 credit card bill isn’t even in the same solar system as him buying me a house. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

“Great! We’ll pay it when you come for the tasting. I can hear your credit score rising already.”

He shakes his head and sighs, but a smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Our first married-people issue and you won. I should’ve just agreed and saved us five minutes.”

“You’ll figure out how this works soon enough,” I say sweetly. “Me winning comes with rewards, you know. Is your dad home yet?”

“Rewards, huh? And no. He probably won’t come home at all if he’s still out. I think he might be dating someone. Maybe that’s why he wanted you to leave. If you’d been here on a night he didn’t come home, you’d ask questions.”

“I’m not that nosy. Geez.” I prop the phone against the lamp on his nightstand and clear the food containers off the bed. “If you’ve got the place all to yourself…”

His quiet groan when I unzip my dress and let it fall to the floor is very rewarding. Yeah, he knows what I’m going to do. We did it a lot when we were long distance our first year we were together and maybe it’s time to remind him how much we both liked this.

“Panties too,” he says in a tight voice.

I shimmy out of those and sit on the edge of the bed. “Just me tonight?”

“Definitely not. I just want to look for a bit first.”

As I scoot back onto the bed, I make sure he gets plenty to look at, then give him even more.

“Fuck, Bells,” he says in a rough voice. “You don’t know how close I am to getting in my Jeep and throwing away my whole internship right now.”

“Take off your clothes instead.”

“Now you want me to stay in Boston,” he grumbles as he shrugs out of his shirt. “What happened to you begging me to come home?”

“Can’t have you losing your job after your big speech about taking care of me.”

“Right now, I want to take care of you in a very different way.”

His eyes track my hand as I run it down my body to where I know he’d much rather his fingers be—or knowing him, his mouth. When I dip them inside and give myself a little swirl, my body lights up like it’s his touch and I gasp.

“Mmm. What a sight,” he says in a voice I wish I could taste. “More.”

I spend a couple of minutes giving him and myself what he wants until my breathing starts to shake and my knees draw up and fall all the way open.

“So fucking beautiful.” He curses under his breath as his hand moves lower, off screen. Knowing what he’s doing tightens the heat already starting to build as I move my fingers faster, in, out, and all over the way he always does.

“Wish it was you touching me,” I gasp. “Or…licking me.”

“Ah, hell. Don’t say that or I will drive home.” The phone shakes a little in his hand as he works himself faster. “I want you so damn bad. Hold the phone. Show me where my mouth would be.”

A whimper falls from my lips. We’ve never done that before. Hand trembling with how much I suddenly want this, I fumble the phone off of the nightstand and bring it closer, giving him a better view of what I’m doing and the rest of me, too.

“Holy fuck,” he moans. “I can see everything. This is the best and worst idea ever.”

Fully panting now, my desperate gaze follows the strong line of his arm to where it disappears off screen. “Can I see?”

He tilts the screen and…oh. My mouth waters at the sight of what he’s doing, the roughness that’s so different than when I touch him, and that tightness deep in my stomach dials all the way up in an instant. Gasping, I thrust my fingers inside like he does over and over as my thumb moves faster.

“Oh God.” My voice comes out high and sharp. “Jere?”

“I’m there too. Let me see.”

I have no idea if he gets to because my orgasm hits so hard that my vision blanks out and my body loses control as I writhe in the waves. In the distance, I hear a muffled curse and his familiar moans as he lets go.

All of me is still fluttering and shimmering when Jere curses again, not in pleasure this time, but in panic. I grab the phone I dropped beside me and try to see what’s going on. The ceiling. That’s all I can see. “Jere?”

“Shhh,” he hisses. There’s the rustle of clothes and in the background, what sounds like…Adam.

I slap a hand over my mouth in horror but also to keep the giddy and totally inappropriate giggles bubbling up in me from slipping out. Oh my God. Did his dad walk in on him doing that? Did he hear me?

“Just watching the game,” I hear Jere say, his voice way too chipper for a guy laying on the couch watching baseball late at night. “Going to turn in here in a second. Long day…”

One of the giggles slips free.

Jere picks up the phone and gives me a scowl that has no heat because his eyes are so wild. “You.”

“Is he gone?”

“For now.” He flops back onto the couch and rests his arm over his eyes. “That…was way too close. I barely managed to stuff myself back into my boxers and throw my T-shirt over the rest before he poked his head into the room. Now I need to shower and bleach the couch.” His arm falls away and he gives me a stern look. “No more getting off over the phone when there’s a chance someone might walk in, you little temptress.”

The mental image of him trying to hide himself and the mess I’m sure he made breaks the dam and all the giggles I’ve been trying to hold back spill out everywhere and then he’s laughing too.

Once we pull ourselves together, I let him go so he can take care of business before things get too sticky. While he showers, I put on one of his T-shirts and my little sleep shorts, gather up the food containers, and slip down the stairs to the kitchen. Conrad is gone, his dishes already washed and put away.

Crap. Was he in his room for all of that? Maybe Jere and I should switch rooms to put some space between ours and his brother’s. We can move anything important over, clothes, dressers, whatever he wants, at least until the wedding. Then Conrad will go back to California and we can go back to not worrying about privacy again. Or, if Jere has his way, we might not need to worry about that at all because we’ll be moving into our own apartment immediately.

I’m snuggled up in bed when Jere calls back half an hour later. As we’ve done countless times in the last few years, we pull up Netflix on our respective laptops and scroll through the movies we’ve added to our “continue watching” list.

“How about Always Be My Maybe?” he asks.

“Sounds perfect. Except, I want you to always be my always.”

He smiles his crinkly Jeremiah smile. “I promise with all my heart.”

We get a little lost in each other’s eyes for a moment, but eventually we manage to hit play at the same time and pretend the two of us are cuddled up in our bed watching the movie together, holding hands through the whole thing.