“Hi, Zaney,” Robin said with a shy little wave.
“Robin! Look what I got!” Cole said excitedly as Jake shut the door behind them. He came rushing toward her with a new pair of sneakers that looked like spaceman shoes, definitely an appropriate addition to his already bizarre wardrobe. “Grandma got ‘em for me,” he said, proudly holding them up, and Jake marveled how, in moments like this, Cole could still seem so childlike.
“Hey . . . sweet!” Robin exclaimed. “And huge!”
Cole grinned broadly, a rare sight.
Jake glanced up, saw his aunt Wanda and cousin Vickie, and made quick introductions. Thank goodness for Vic—she was, as usual, all smiles. “Hi, Robin! We’ve heard an awful lot about you!” she said, nudging Jake playfully in the ribs.
“Oh, is that right?” Robin asked, stealing a look at Jake.
“These are my kids, Elissa and Nicholas—” She paused, barked, “Kids! Get over here and say hello to Robin!” The two kids hurried to their mom’s side, looked at Robin warily as she smiled down at them and wiggled her fingers in a childlike wave.
“Robin, look what else I got!” Cole called, oblivious to the introductions being made, bursting in on them so quickly that little Nicholas stumbled backward. Cole was holding a super-sized T-shirt with bright red flames licking up from the hem.
“Now that is cool,” Robin said admiringly.
“It cost twenty dollars!” he added, then disappeared again.
“Would you like something to drink, Robin? Some iced tea?” Vickie asked.
“Thank you, I would love some.”
“That’s a real pretty jacket you got on there,” Vickie said as she motioned Robin to come with her. “What is that, linen?”
“Yes,” Robin said and looked over her shoulder helplessly at Jake as she followed Vickie to the kitchen.
“I saw something similar at Target I thought was real cute.”
As Jake watched Robin disappear into the kitchen behind his cousin, he placed a mental bet with himself how long it would be before she bolted.
“I think they’ve got some real nice stuff now,” Vickie was saying in the kitchen, still talking about Target. “They had their Easter sale last weekend, and I got Elissa a real cute little Easter dress,” she continued as she fetched ice and tea from the fridge. “But you know, Elissa’s at that age she doesn’t like dresses. She’s sort of a tomboy.”
“Ah,” was all Robin could think to say, but she didn’t have to look far to see where Elissa had gotten those tendencies. After all, her mom was wearing a KFLX Radio T-shirt, blue denim jeans, and caveman sandals. Her brown hair was pulled back tightly in a long ponytail that reached halfway down her back, and her bangs looked like they had been shellacked around an orange juice can.
“Now Nicholas, he’s the one who’s into clothes,” Vickie blithely continued. “It has to be Nike or Reebok before he’ll even look at it. Do you know those sneakers cost seventy-five dollars on sale? Can you imagine paving that much for shoes? Well, his daddy said to him, said, ‘Son, when you start paying the rent around here, you can buy whatever shoes you want’—sugar?”
“No, no thank you.”
“—‘so just forget it.’” Vickie paused to hand Robin the glass of iced tea. “Kids are so silly,” she said cheerfully. “So. How long you been dating Jacob?”
Talk about getting right down to brass tacks. Robin sipped her tea. “Just a little while now.”
“Is it serious?” Vickie all but whispered behind her glass of tea.
Oh man. “We enjoy one another’s company,” Robin said pleasantly and mentally patted herself on the back for being so smooth.
“No, but I mean, are you thinking about making it permanent?”
“Permanent?” she echoed dumbly.
“Like marriage,” Vickie prompted her.
“Marriage?” Robin squeaked, choking on her tea.
“Jacob’s never been married, can you believe that? He’s thirty-eight years old and never been married. But I have to tell you, I am so glad he didn’t get hooked up with that Lindy—oh my God!” she exclaimed with a roll of her eyes.
Gossip. Well, all right then—now Robin was on familiar ground.
“She was just . . . stupid, you know what I mean?”
Yes, yes, she knew exactly what Vickie meant. “So you met her?” Robin asked carefully.
Vickie shrugged, sipped her tea. “She came by here one day looking for him, carrying a pie, if you can believe that. I mean, you don’t start right off making pies for Chrissakes until you at least got him a little interested, because then he’s just gonna expect it. You know what I mean?”
Robin nodded earnestly that she did, and decided she and Vickie were going to be great friends. “So he wasn’t really interested in her, huh?” she asked, dredging for all the dirt.
“Ah, hell no,” Vickie said with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Just trying to be friendly is all. He hadn’t really been interested in anyone since Gloria a couple of years back.”