“Because it’s what you do. It’s what we do. We don’t share.”
He starts to laugh, then takes a closer look at her face. “Wait—-are you serious?”
“Yes! No. I mean . . . I don’t know.”
“Ro? What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just . . .” She’s just exhausted and emotional and terrified that everything is going to change; that she’s going to lose Jake.
“Hey.” He reaches across the table, finds her hand, grasps it. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m just . . .” She forces herself to look up at him. His face, viewed through the reading glasses, is a blur. “I’m just so tired, and . . . it’s hormones, I guess. I told you. You’re married to a middle--aged lady. This is what you get. Isn’t it fun?”
She manages a laugh, and he squeezes her hand.
“I love my middle--aged lady,” he says, “and someday I’ll love my little old lady, too.”
She swallows hard, unable to find her voice. She’s grateful when the waitress, the owners’ daughter, Gina, comes over to take their order: the usual for Jake, eggplant rollatini for Rowan. She notices that Jake doesn’t call Gina by her first name, even though he’s known her all his life and it’s printed right there on her name tag in case he can’t remember what it is.
Back when she was regularly eating lunch in diners with Rick and the kids, she got it into her head that Jake was a little standoffish. Now she decides that Jake is appropriately unobtrusive and Rick a little too presumptuous.
Left alone with Jake again, she finds him watching her intently.
“What? I should have shaved this morning?” she quips, rubbing her chin, and he laughs.
She asks him about his dinner last night, and whether Mick had done any schoolwork this afternoon, and if he heard from Braden or Katie today. He volleys back questions of his own—-perhaps too many questions?
He’s just asking about your day. There’s nothing unusual about that.
She resists the impulse to change the subject, telling him about her hours spent shopping, stores she visited, gifts she bought. Maybe it’s just her imagination, but he seems to be watching her more closely than usual as he sips his wine and nibbles a roll from the bread basket, almost as if he’s . . . suspicious?
Or is it something else?
A new and frightening possibility flutters at the edges of her consciousness, but she pushes it away, unwilling to let it in.
At the high school hockey game with a -couple of his friends from the basketball team, Mick is surprised—-and relieved—-when Brianna Armbruster climbs into the stands just as the team skates onto the ice. She’s with a group of female friends, all fellow seniors, all really pretty. But not nearly as pretty as Brianna.
If she really were seeing a college guy, as Zach had claimed, then shouldn’t she be with him on a Saturday night?
Mick decides that she should and would, choosing to ignore the little voice inside his head pointing out that unless the college guy lives on a nearby campus, he’s probably away again until Christmas break like Mick’s older siblings are.
It’s much more appealing to assume that Brianna has since broken up with the guy, or that Zach got it wrong in the first place, tormenting Mick with some stupid rumor that isn’t even true.