Page 263 of ClickBack

“I can do that.”

She lets go. Zion comes next, all new height and limbs he has not yet learned where to put.

“Thank you, Gigi.”

“You’re welcome, baby.”

He offers Jarrett a hand. Jarrett ignores it and pulls him into a hug, then tells him to keep working on his left.

“You saw me at the pool,” Zion says.

“I saw you call a foul every time you missed.”

“Vet move.”

Jarrett laughs and sends him to the car. We stand outside waving until Jeremy turns at the end of the street. When we go in, the sloth is still beside our photograph.

“I see how this happened,” I say.

“Housewarming gift.”

“We’ve been here for months.”

“He just got here with the gift.”

I leave it where it is.

In a few hours we are leaving for Fiji, the first stop on the honeymoon we put off until after the season. We chose three weeks because Jarrett initially said two, then kept sending me places he wanted to take me. I told him to look at a calendar and count the days he was promising. He added a week.

The Storm’s season ended in June. For several days afterward, I found him watching stretches of games he had already watched. Sometimes he wanted to explain a possession. Sometimes he shut the screen when I sat down. I learned to ask before deciding what he needed.

In Costa Rica, he left his phone with me and went down a water slide because Zion said he was scared. I have a picture of him at the bottom with his eyes shut and his mouth open. He has offered me unreasonable money to delete it.

It is in my favorites.

Upstairs, my suitcase is open across the bench. His are beside the closet. We have somehow filled the whole room despite agreeing to pack less after the last trip.

This house has an office for me with a view of the courtyard and enough space for his recovery equipment without turning the bedroom into a treatment room. There are still two paint samples on the dining-room wall. We disagree about them whenever somebody asks when we are going to decide.

I kept the Cedar Mill house and rented it out. The property manager knows to email photographs when something needs attention, though she is getting better at telling me when it does not need mine. I am getting better at believing her.

I open the dresser drawer for my spare reading glasses and find the navy notebook underneath them.

The washi tape is lifting at one corner. I press it down and open to the only page I ever filled.

Jarrett comes in with the luggage scale. “What’s that?”

“My brief career as a diarist.”

He puts down the scale and leans toward it. I close the book before he reaches me.

“You wrote about me?”

“I wrote before I met you.”

“Damn. What did you have to say?”

“Things.”