Internal DJ Tuned to: “Crazy” by Aerosmith
Thursday, I rushed home to make lasagna for dinner. That way there’d be leftovers, and I’d enjoy the fruits of my labors even though I wasn’t dining with my parents tonight. Denny had texted me earlier asking if we couldn’t make it 6:30 instead, so we could have dinner at Max’s Tavern before bowling.
That made it more like a date than I would have wished. But I said yes, because haggling over a half hour only made me more of a bitch.
I’d removed the lasagna from the oven already, but it was still a volcanic temperature. So I dashed into the dining room to set the table. Earlier I’d asked my mother to handle that, but she hadn’t bothered. Big surprise.
Mom wandered into the dining room just as I counted the napkins out of the hutch. I had to stop myself at three. Even three years later, I was regularly tempted to add one for Gavin. I used to mention things like this to my mom, hoping that talking openly would make it easier for her to move past her grief.
It didn’t. And tonight I didn’t need to start her on a weeping jag right before it was time for me to run out of the house. “Here,” I said, handing her the napkins. “What shall I pour you to drink?”
She took the napkins, but ignored the question.
Holding in my millionth sigh, I went into the kitchen to pour her a glass of iced tea and my father a glass of wine. I poured an inch of wine for myself, too, before setting everything on the table.
My father came downstairs just as I began cutting the lasagna into squares. How do men do that, anyway? It takes a special kind of skill to show up precisely when all the work is finished.
“Evening, Sophie,” he said, taking his place at the head of the table. Although he hadn’t been in the military for twenty years, he still had the haircut and the bearing. And a stiff greeting was the only kind I ever got from my father. Three years later, I was still being punished for my role in Gavin’s demise.
“Evening,” I murmured, sitting down to only a nip of wine.
“You’re not eating?” he set a piece of lasagna on mom’s plate and then eyed the empty space in front of me.
“I have a date.”
My father’s body went rigid. “With who?”
Wow. Watch Daddy panic. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Jude was back in town. Just to fuck with him, I waited a beat too long to answer, while his eyes bored into mine. “Denny from the hospital,” I said casually. Honestly, it was hard not to crack a smile. Because the look on his face was priceless.
“That had better be true,” he said, setting down the serving spoon.
“Why would I lie?” I asked softly.
“Why did you used to?” he returned.
Well, touché. Score a point for Dad. In high school I’d done a lot of sneaking around with Jude, and more than once I’d been caught in my lies.
Jude and I had started up shortly after our discussion about music outside the practice rooms. One rainy October day he offered me a ride in his car. Instead of driving me home, he’d brought me to a coffee house in the next town. For three hours, my hands sweat with nerves while he told me funny stories about learning to fix cars. I laughed too loudly about the time he’d left a tire iron on the roof of somebody’s car and had to cruise around the neighborhood until he found the car in question so he could get it back.
Staring into his silver eyes, I attempted to hold up my end of the conversation. His attention was like a laser beam—bright and impossible to ignore.
When it was time to go, we’d had to run across the rainy parking lot to his car. When the doors were shut, Jude cranked the engine. “The car needs a minute to warm up,” he’d said. “How shall we spend the time?”
“Thumb wars?” I suggested. I held out a hand to him. (I remember feeling impossibly bold for suggesting this.) I had no experience with boys, because nobody wanted to try anything with the uptight police chief’s daughter.
So I didn’t see it coming. He grabbed my outstretched hand, then leaned across the gearshift and brushed his lips over mine. “You’re so fucking cute,” he whispered. And then he slanted his mouth right down onto mine and kissed me.
Still shocked, I let out the least sexy noise in the world—something like “errrf!”