That was a good idea.
I turned to the picnic basket, which also held my phone, this move necessitating me untangling my legs from Johnny’s. I dug it out. I looked to Johnny and he held my nephew and my eyes as I called my sister.
She didn’t answer.
“Where are you?” I said into her voicemail. “Call me.”
Then I hung up, broke eye contact to bend my head to the phone and text.
“No answer?” Johnny asked.
I shook my head and texted.
When I looked to him, he said, “Pull up a picture of her, give me your phone. I’ll give you this little guy and you look after him while I go look for her.”
“You’d do that?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah,” he answered.
“Okay, I’ll . . . okay,” I mumbled, head bent to my phone again to find a photo of Addie. I turned the picture I found to him and said, “That’s her.”
“Almost as pretty as you,” he muttered, reaching out to the phone and taking it at the same time shifting like he was going to hand Brooks to me, but I didn’t go for Brooks.
I was so relieved Johnny was there and I could stay at the blanket and wait for Addie should she return but he was going to go out to look for her that I didn’t think.
I just did.
And what I did was lean in and press my lips hard to his.
I did it grabbing tight to the side of his neck, and when I was done, I left my hand there.
“Thank you,” I said with feeling, giving his neck a squeeze.
“Welp, Mayberry seems to have a good effect on my sister. I go to get some souvlaki and goody two-shoes here scores herself a hottie.”
I jerked my head back, my hand on Johnny staying where it was, and I saw my sister with a little cardboard tray in one hand, a huge soft drink cup with straw in the other, standing at the edge of the blanket.
“Where have you been?” I asked, finally letting my hand fall away from Johnny.
I might have done that but his free arm moved when I did to curl around my hips.
Addie didn’t miss his movement.
She also ignored my question, shifted her attention to her son and back to me. “He go down okay?”
“Where have you been?” I repeated, my panic gliding away and my focus returning.
And what I was focusing on was that her hair was in a haphazard pony when she’d left, but now it was in a significantly more haphazard pony that, knowing her as I did, stated a variety of things, all of which, again knowing her as I did, I knew to be true.
She didn’t have a taste for souvlaki.
Harking back, she’d eyed up the man in the Greek tent and he’d eyed her up in return.
She had a taste for the Greek guy in the souvlaki tent.
She’d been a wild one but she was true to Perry. I knew it. She loved him, adored him, against all my advice married him. And she told me everything (eventually). If she ever strayed (which she wouldn’t do and not simply because now she didn’t have the time), she would have told me.
Unless there was a reason to stray and that straying had happened so recently, she hadn’t yet had her shot to share.
“Addie,” I snapped.
She dropped to her knees, planted her soda in the grass, fell to her hip and took up the plastic fork in her tray, but she didn’t take a bite.
She skewered Johnny with her eyes.
“And you are?” she demanded to know.
“Johnny Gamble,” he rumbled.
“I was thinking you’d answer Magnus McHotterson but that works too,” she quipped, finally digging into her pork. “So, I know my sister and she wouldn’t score a hot guy and start making out with him in my thirty minute absence, so my guess is that someone wasn’t entirely forthcoming during margarita night last night,” she noted conversationally.
“That makes two of us,” I retorted.
She whirled a fork with pork stuck in its prongs in the air and then shoved it in her mouth.
She barely swallowed before she asked, “How long you been seeing each other?”
“We aren’t—” I began.
“Three weeks,” Johnny declared.
I looked to him to see his entire focus was on Addie.
“I’m taking his response,” Addie stated, and I looked to her to see her focus was on me. “You don’t suck face with someone you aren’t seeing.”
“We weren’t sucking face.”
“Girl, if you grabbed tighter hold on him, your fingers would have fused with his neck,” Addie returned.
I felt heat hit my cheeks and started glaring at her. “Let’s stop talking about Johnny and me.”
She arched her brows. “So there’s a Johnny and you?”
I ignored that. “Let’s talk about where you’ve been.”
“Uh,” she pointed with her fork to the paper tray, “souvlaki?”
“Getting souvlaki gives you sex hair?” I asked sharply.
Johnny burst out laughing, doing this using his arm around me to snatch me closer to him, fitting me tight to his side.
Addie’s eyes narrowed. “We’re not talking about this in front of your new boyfriend.”
“He’s not my new boyfriend.”
Johnny’s arm spasmed and Addie didn’t miss it.
She looked to Johnny. “Only Izzy would be in hot guy denial. She was practically dateless all through high school and convinced herself it was because she was ugly when it was because the guys were pissed at her because they wanted to date her but she refused to put out.”
“Addie, stop sharing stuff with Johnny,” I snapped.
This time, Addie ignored me.
Spearing more pork, she shared, “She’s probably convinced you’re only hanging around because you want to be her friend.”
“We’ve had sex eight times, Addie,” I informed her stiffly.
Her eyes sliced to me. “Eight? You’re counting?” She again looked at Johnny. “Well done. Three weeks, eight goes. She usually makes a guy wait for a year before she gives him the goods.”
Johnny chuckled and I turned to him. “Stop laughing.”
“Right, sp?tzchen.” He gave me a squeeze and his body kept rocking but he beat back the audible of his humor.
So it was now him I was glaring at.
“Sp?tzchen? What’s that mean?” Addie asked.
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Little sparrow,” Johnny answered.
“Cute,” Addie said through a mouth full of pork and a grin. “And so you,” she added, her blue eyes twinkling at me.
“I don’t make a guy wait a year,” I bit out.
She jabbed her fork at Johnny. “Apparently not anymore. Then again, for that,” she started swirling the fork, also at Johnny, “I wouldn’t wait five minutes.”
“Oh my God, someone kill me,” I said to the roof of leaves over our heads.
“Not gonna happen,” Addie replied cheerfully.
So I turned to Johnny, carefully pulled Brooks from his arm into my own, and decreed, “I’m going for a walk and I’m taking Brooks with me.”
“Don’t take Johnny. We have all sorts of fun things to talk about,” Addie said.
I speared her with a look.
She grinned through more pork at me.
And it was then the most adorable white Labrador in the world bounded toward us then to us, invading the blanket and jumping all over Johnny.
So the exuberant dog wouldn’t wake Brooks, I leaned away but then I stilled.
Completely.
Because Johnny was stilled.