“I did,” I said as I turned to face him fully. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.
“I’m glad I got to see it on the big screen,” he said. “That’s how Ingrid Bergman was meant to be seen.” I laughed as my mother opened her door and my father gave me a wink. “Don’t tell your mother,” he added.
“Don’t tell me what?” my mom asked, smiling, as she started the car and pulled us out of the now mostly deserted parking lot.
“Just something about Ingrid Bergman,” my dad said, his voice sleepy, his eyes drifting closed again. I saw my mother glance back at him in the rearview mirror, her smile fading.
“Let’s go home,” she said in a voice that sounded like it was straining to be upbeat. “I think we’re all tired.” She’d pulled back out onto the road, and by the time we made it home, five minutes later, my father was totally asleep.
My parents had gone to bed as soon as we’d gotten back and my mother had collected Gelsey from next door. I’d noticed that, as they made their way up to their bedroom, my mother was now walking slightly behind my father, watching him carefully, like she was worried that he might fall backward. And as I noticed for the first time how slowly my dad was taking every step, how heavily he was leaning on the railing, it seemed like this might have actually been necessary.
I’d gotten ready for bed, but felt far too keyed-up to even try to go to sleep. When I’d heard a car pull into our driveway, I’d walked out to the porch, where I saw Warren just sitting in the Land Cruiser, the engine off, looking straight ahead. When he saw me, he got out of the car and walked up to meet me on the porch steps. Technically, he walked. But there was something about him that made it seem more like floating.
“Taylor,” Warren said, smiling at me pleasantly, like I was someone he’d known, vaguely, many years before. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and trying not to grin. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” Warren said. He smiled again—that big, genuine smile that I was still getting used to. “Thanks so much for arranging it.”
“Sure,” I said, looking at him closely. I really wanted details, but this was so outside the realm of what my brother and I normally talked about that I had no idea how to even broach this subject. “Will you need me to arrange another one?”
My brother’s expression became slightly disdainful, and therefore much more familiar. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re going out tomorrow night. Miniature golfing.”
“Sounds fun,” I said, smiling, suddenly very impressed with Wendy and her ability to get my brother to do something that I knew, only a few days before, he would have scoffed at.
Warren started to head toward the door, then stopped and looked back at me. “Did you ever have a night that just… seemed to change everything?” he asked, sounding happy but a bit bewildered. “And everything is different afterward?” I didn’t, and Warren must have seen this on my expression, because he shook his head as he opened the door. “Never mind,” he said. “Forget it. ’Night, Taylor.”
“’Night,” I called to him. And even after he’d gone inside, I stayed out on the porch for a few minutes, looking up at the stars above me and turning over Warren’s words in my mind.
But for now, I was at work. It was a cloudy, overcast, humid day—the kind that threatened rain, but never quite delivered it. It was chilly to boot, which meant that we’d had approximately three customers that morning, all of whom had either wanted coffee or hot chocolate, and all of whom had wanted to complain about the fact that this wasn’t summer weather.
Lucy looked at me closely, clearly not ready to let me off the hook that easily. “Just because something didn’t happen with Henry,” she said, “doesn’t mean that you don’t want it to.”
I felt myself flush as I looked around for something to do and started straightening a stack of cups. “I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t, even though thoughts of Henry had kept me awake most of the night before. I had no idea what he wanted, and was just getting used to the idea that we could be friends. The possibility of more made my stomach clench, in a good way, but also in a real and scary way.
“Don’t know what?” Lucy asked, pushing herself up to sit on the counter, looking at me, waiting for my answer.
The cups were as straight as they were ever going to be, and I shoved the stack away. “There’s a lot going on right now,” I said. I met her eyes and saw that she knew what I was talking about. “So I’m just not sure it’s the right time….”