“Is she likely to do that now?” he asks, looking faintly alarmed.
I shake my head. “You want to go for a walk? I could use some fresh air.”
“Sounds good.”
After heading down the hall, I tap on Aunt Gabby’s door. “Shane and I are going out. Don’t worry about cleanup. I’ll take care of it when I get back.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Probably to the Coffee Shop.” It’s not like there’s much to do here on a Sunday night.
“Be back by nine,” she says.
“Not a problem. I still have homework … and Shane probably does, too.”
He nods at this. “Plus it’s a long walk home.”
If I could think of a way for Aunt Gabby to drive him that wouldn’t end in a bunch of awkward questions, I’d ask her. “Come on. The weather won’t be warm enough for us to do this much longer.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Once we’re walking down the drive, I ask, “How was work?” With so many people around, lunch didn’t give us much chance to talk, and I’m wondering how he did at the P&K.
“It sucked about as much as I expected. I opened boxes. Priced and put cans on shelves. Twice, I mopped up stuff that other people broke.”
“But you can deal?”
Shane nods. “I’m looking forward to my first paycheck.”
There are a lot of questions I want to ask him, like if he misses his dad and whether he likes living alone, but it seems too soon to poke around in his head that way. I’m full of blazing curiosity about how he dealt with something so big by himself. My control slips, and I think of my mother. I start to shake. Somehow, I lock it down before it turns into anything worse. I imagine melting down in front of Shane and my cheeks fire up.
He seems to think the tremors mean I’m cold, though it’s in the sixties today, unseasonably warm for this late in the fall. Not that I mind. Life gets downright uncomfortable in the winter. Because he’s sweet, Shane takes off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. I’ve seen this move a hundred times in romantic movies and, until this moment, I always rolled my eyes. But now I’ve got his warmth wrapped around me, his smell enveloping me, and this is pretty close to the best thing ever.
“Better?” he asks.
“Yeah, but you’ll be cold now.”
“It’s worth it if I am.”
This is me, melting like butter on the sidewalk. Somehow I keep my knees from turning to total jelly. I’m not sure what we talk about the rest of the way, only that Shane is murmuring and I’m nodding at whatever he’s saying. It’s wrong to zone out, but I can’t help it. His coat feels and smells so good. I wonder how he’d respond if I don’t give it back.
Knowing Shane, he’d be nice about it, even though he doesn’t have anything to spare. We have that in common. I can’t relate to people who get whatever they want, just by asking. Aunt Gabby would do more if she could, but our budget doesn’t allow for it. She pays the mortgage, utilities, and buys our food; she says it helps that we don’t eat meat. Anything extra, like my clothes, comes out of my paycheck. I’m trying to save for college, now that I’ve bought a laptop, but it’s tough sometimes.
Shane’s scuffing his feet on the leaves littering the sidewalk; sometimes they crunch and sometimes they quietly dissolve. “It’s hard to believe things can be this way. Like nothing happened.”
“I don’t know how you coped.”
“Mike helped. He was a friend, someone she met in group.” At my blank look, he explains, “She was in a support group for cancer survivors. Mike beat the odds. My mom didn’t.”
“He went into remission and it didn’t come back?”
“I think it’s been seven years. And at the end, I was just so mad. Mike has no close family. No people. No reason to stick around, you know? But my mom, she had me. So why her and not Mike?”