by Serena Bell
“I’m serious, Sawyer—keep it clean.”
“You’re the one whose mind obviously went to the worst, dirtiest place the second you saw my text.”
She presses her lips together to hide a smile, then—unintentionally, I think—licks them.
Aaaand I’m hard again.
Concentrate, Paulson.
“This is a big ask, but is there any way you’d be willing to play chauffeur for the party on Saturday? I just realized I screwed up and I have no way to get the boys back here after bowling. If I’d thought it through, I could have done the whole party package, but I was being cheap and I didn’t want all the grandparents to have to schlep out there.”
She smiles. “Not cheap. Sensible. Those party packages are insanely overpriced. And it’s nice of you to think about the grandparents. So you want me, what, to just show up with the van at the end of the bowling, and load up half of them?”
“I—guess so?” But now that she says it, it sounds kind of mercenary. “Why don’t you come bowling with us? I should have invited you to begin with. It would be great to have another adult, and Jonah likes you.”
Her expression tightens. And I hear my own words a second later.
Nice job, Paulson.
I take a deep breath. “It would be great—for me—to have you there.”
A smile teases around the corners of her mouth. She is so freaking pretty when she smiles. I reach out and touch her cheek, soft as satin.
She draws back, wagging a finger. “None of that.” She tilts her head. “Yes. I would be happy to do the driving, and I would be honored to be included in the birthday festivities.”
“And—no pressure—pizza and cake afterward. If you don’t mind two sets of grandparents.”
I think better of it as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Lucy’s parents will probably get emotional at some point, and I don’t want to subject Elle to that.
But it’s too late to retract the invitation now, and Elle seems like she can handle it. She’s pretty unflappable.
“I’m used to grandparents,” she says dryly. “They can’t be any more horrifying than Trevor’s parents.”
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?” I wager.
She grimaces and shakes her head. “You got that right. Speaking of signs I should have heeded.”
“I guess I’ll get to meet them, or at least admire them from a distance, at Trevor’s wedding.”
“Lucky you,” she says, rolling her eyes and peeking at her watch.
“You have a few more minutes.” I raise one eyebrow and let my gaze drop down over her skin-hugging outfit.
She twists one hand in the other uneasily. “I like to be sitting in my chair, fingers on the keys, ready to dial, a few minutes before the actual appointed time of the interview. So I can, you know, clear my head.”
I can’t ignore a red flag waved in my face like that. Before she can react, I bend to kiss her, deep and thorough.
She moans into my mouth.
I let her go, and she takes an uneven step back against her front door. Her mouth is open, her lower lip is soft and wet, and her eyes are glazed with desire.
I want to do it again, but I’ll have to be satisfied with my work—for now.
“Now you really need to go clear your head.”
“I hate you,” she says, but she’s smiling all out, and what the hell, I grab her and kiss her once more for good measure before I trot back to my house.
I whistle as I walk.
Chapter 27
Elle
Eight-year-old boys in a bowling alley are like an unconfined litter of twelve-week-old puppies. They boil and bubble around and over each other, they race off before you can stop them to God knows where, they are fearless and dopey, totally lovable and totally terrifying.
It’s a good thing I came along, because even under ideal circumstances this is not a one-parent job.
We bowl in two adjacent lanes. Sawyer and I each take a lane and five boys. Madden and Jonah told us ahead of time they wanted to be together, so I read off two lists of boys’ names so the boys won’t fight about who goes where. I take Madden and Jonah and three other boys, Griggs, Emmett, and Caden. The boys immediately begin fighting about turn order and bragging about their past bowling exploits.
Once we’ve got their names entered into the bowling computers and the gutter guards up, things settle down, and the boys begin to bowl with singular focus. Which frees me up to take in my surroundings. They’ve redone this alley since the last time I was here—faux wood lanes, big screens everywhere blasting entertainment, fresh carpeting, and a startling amount of neon.
Sawyer steps down the runway into a low lunge or stretch or whatever you call it when you step out to release the ball—I know squat about bowling. He’s so graceful in motion. He has dexterous fingers for someone with such big hands, and a surprisingly athletic and nimble body considering the amount of muscle he packs.
Mmmm.
The ball rolls true down the middle of the lane and hits the pins dead center.
Strike.
He turns toward me and winks, as if he knows I’ve been watching him lustfully.
“Your turn, Ms. Dunning,” Griggs says.
I yank my mind back from where it’s gone and send the ball down the lane with considerably less grace than my next-door neighbor, but the boys couldn’t care less. They’re too busy trying to beat each other to worry about the adults.
After a while, Sawyer and I drift out of our respective games and stand back, surveying our fiefdoms.
“You throw a good party, Paulson,” I tell him.
His expression fills with regret.
“What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head and ducks his chin. “Nothing.”
I narrow my eyes at him—then get it, suddenly. “Lucy?”
Startled, his eyes come up to meet mine, dark with grief.
“You must miss her a lot, times like this. Birthdays, holidays.”
His gaze shifts again, off beyond the neon horizon. “She wouldn’t have forgotten about driving the boys from the bowling alley back to the house.”
I’m about to reassure him, to insist that anyone could have forgotten about that (or maybe I just mean I could have), when he bursts out, “Hell—she wouldn’t have had a party at a bowling alley to begin with.”
“She wouldn’t have?”
Part of me hates that he’s still so in love with Lucy, but the other part is aware that it’s unusual for him to reveal his feelings like this, and I don’t want him to stop.
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, then opens them again. “She would have done it at home. There would have been a theme, and decorations—one year it was a pirate party, and she turned the dining room table into a pirate ship with giant cardboard waves rising from the floor. She painted the waves with this blue glitter paint. She had the boys make homemade eye patches and homemade swords and scabbards, and then she let them climb up on the table and have sword fights. The boys loved it. That was how she was. She didn’t do anything halfway—” He stops. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
My insides are all twisted up in sympathy and over-identification—I can’t help thinking of Jonah, who had, and lost, Lucy, and imagining what it would be like for Madden if something happened to me. My heart lurches horribly at the thought.
Plus, on top of all the other emotions, there’s this ugly knot of envy, because—well, because despite everything, I like this guy an awful lot, and he’s madly in love with a dead woman who might also turn out to be Martha Stewart.
Cardboard waves? Glitter paint?
I’m. Just. Not. Crafty.
Madden comes running up. “Mom, Caden and Alexander are in the arcade—are they supposed to be in ther
e?”
“Not really.” Sawyer sighs. “I’m sorry.” He rubs his forehead. “I didn’t mean to go off like that.”
“She sounds amazing.” She does, and what else is there really to say?
“She was.”
We stand there a moment. His eyes are still sad and abstracted, like he’s looking far into the past. He tugs one earlobe, frowns, then seems to come back to the present. “I’d better collect Caden and Alexander.” He shoots me one more look—one I can’t read—and jogs off to retrieve his wayward charges from the arcade.
I stand, watching him, dazed.
I don’t think Trevor ever would have talked about me that way. Like the most ordinary things I did were infused with magic.
I drag in a shallow breath, then another. I’m shaking, I realize. But it’s not because of how much I wish Trevor had felt that way about me.
It’s because of how much I wish Sawyer did.
Elle Dunning, what are you doing????
Chapter 28
Sawyer
Elle and I drive the boys back to the house—three in the back of my truck, seven in her van.
On the drive, I barely hear the boys’ rowdy Pokémon conversation in the backseat. I’m too busy chastising myself for going off on that Lucy tangent. I mean, everything I said was true, but Elle didn’t need to hear it. After all, she went out of her way to help me on a Saturday—when she didn’t need to. And it’s bad form to talk about exes—even the dead kind—with someone you’re messing around with, even when you’re not technically in a relationship.
But I have to admit, too, that it was a relief to be able to talk about Lucy.
All those words, I think they’ve been waiting for a chance to come out, and Elle makes it easy. She listens without judgment. She doesn’t push or pry or prod. She’s just…open.
The other night when I came in her mouth, it felt like I was pouring myself into her. And that’s what it feels like when I talk to her, too, like letting all the pent-up stuff just flow out, and she takes it in and accepts it.
But I have a bad, hangover-ish feeling about it now. Like I mixed beer and whiskey in the wrong order.
I pull the truck into my driveway and Elle is right behind me, pulling up to the curb in front of my house. Boys spill out of both cars, and we head up the front path as a pack. The front door opens to greet us.
“Uncle Brooks!” Jonah cries in delight.
Whoops, I forgot about Brooks. I’d mentioned the party to him in passing, and he’d muttered something about his work schedule and how much he hated spending time with packs of children and old people, so I figured there was no way he’d show up.
His eyes take in the scene, including Elle, and narrow in my direction. As in, What the fuck, bro? I need an explanation, pronto.
I shrug. As in, She’s my next-door neighbor I have phone sex with and use for her minivan.
I suddenly do not want to explain Elle to Brooks.
“Well, look who’s here!” booms a familiar voice—my dad. He’s big, like me, six-feet-plus and two hundred pounds, only with a crown of silver hair instead of my near-black. Until about five years ago, he was a really successful general contractor, but now he’s retired and drives my mother crazy doing projects around the house that probably don’t need to be done. “So who do we have here?”
Behind him presses my mother, no slouch size-wise at five foot eight, with long gray hair in a single braid, and behind her are Lucy’s parents. They’re the same age as my parents but look ten years older, and they’re quieter than they used to be, almost as if they take up less room in the world. Seeing them squeezes something painful in my chest. They’re the only people besides me and Jonah who know how hard the last two years have been, so when I’m with them, it’s a blessing—because I feel understood—and a curse—because their grief multiplies mine and makes it heavier.
The grandparents greet Jonah like he’s a celebrity and demand to be introduced to all of his friends. It takes a while to get the boys to settle down enough to make introductions. When the fray subsides, I introduce Elle.
“This is Jonah’s friend Madden’s mom. Elle Dunning. She was kind enough to help out with the logistics today by lending her minivan. I promised I’d reward her with pizza,” I joke.
Lucy’s mother’s eyes are sharp. They absorb every detail of Elle’s face, and then shift to mine with a question. I shake my head, a barely perceptible no—
Except I feel like a liar. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but there’s a compass in the center of my chest, and when I do something that veers me off course, I feel it, like a judgment. A nudge. The disappointed look your mom gave you when she caught you with your hand in the cookie jar.
There isn’t anything going on between Elle and me, not anything that would give Lucy’s mom pause, and yet—
I look up to find Elle’s eyes on me, and I swear that before she turns away, I see hurt.
There’s a stack of pizza boxes waiting for us on the kitchen island, and a big pink box that contains a birthday cake set off to the side, all courtesy of my parents. The boys dig in, hoovering the pizza at an alarming rate. The adults hang back a bit, jumping in only when it’s clear there’s plenty of pie left for everyone.
Lucy’s mom, Diane, eats only one slice, then comes up beside me, at my elbow. She touches my arm. Her hair, which held only streaks of white before Lucy’s death, is almost all white now, but her eyes are Lucy-blue. She’s a beautiful older woman, elegant-featured and dignified. I curse the disease that decided that Lucy wouldn’t get a chance to grow old. She would have done it so well.
“I couldn’t find the birthday candles,” Diane says. “Patrick and I ran out and got some.”
“Oh, shit,” I say, smacking myself in the forehead. Lucy wouldn’t have forgotten the candles, either. “Thank you.”
We arrange the candles on the cake and set it in front of Jonah on the dining room table. His friends gather around, and we sing to him. In the flickering light of ten candles (one to grow on), his face glows, and he beams up at us. “I gotta think of a really, really good wish,” he says.
“It doesn’t have to be that good,” Griggs protests, impatient for cake.
“Let him think,” Madden chides.
My eyes find Elle’s, thanking her for having such a great kid. She smiles back at me, and warmth spreads in my chest.
Jonah blows out the candles in a single burst of breath, and his smile gets even bigger when everyone claps for him.
I cut the cake into slices and my mom adds a scoop of ice cream to each plate. The kids eat at the table, the adults hanging back along the walls. Elle’s on one side of me, Diane on the other.
“He looks so happy,” Diane says.
I know she doesn’t mean to, but she sounds grudging, like she isn’t ready for Jonah to be happy on his birthday without Lucy.
I’m ready for it, though. He’s suffered way too much.
“He reminds me so much of Lucy.” Diane leans across me and addresses Elle. “Lucy loved birthdays. She glowed like that. She didn’t give a fig that each birthday meant she was getting older—she just loved that there was a day that was hers. On her birthdays, she’d give herself a massage, take herself out to lunch, buy herself a gift. And Jonah and Sawyer always took her out to Din Tai Fung, her favorite dim sum restaurant, for dinner.”
My mom has drifted near, overhearing Diane. She puts a hand on Diane’s arm. “We went on one of those Din Tai Fung outings. Lucy was like a little kid, she was so excited about the menu and about everything that came to the table.” My mom draws Diane into a hug. “She was a marvelous woman, Diane. You did good. We all miss her.”
I can’t help myself; I look at Elle. Her face is—expressionless. Not angry, not sad, just blank.
“Help me see if any of the boys wants more ca
ke or ice cream?” I ask her.
Elle casts me a grateful glance and we make the rounds, loading the boys up with enough sugar to power a small city.
“I’m sorry about that,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Everyone loved her. They need to be able to talk about her.”
“They think you’re just my friend,” I say. “They don’t realize—”
“I am just your friend,” she says sharply.
I want to correct her, but I don’t know how. She’s right, and she’s wrong, and I don’t want to make this too complicated or put either of us in a situation we can’t handle. So I just say, “It doesn’t feel fair to you. You’re the one who’s here. You’re the one who’s helping out. You’re the one who gave up your Saturday to make things easier for me.”
It feels like there’s more to say. About how she’s the one who’s been there for me and Jonah a hundred times in a hundred ways over the last few weeks—and not just in the scratching-my-itches sense, although God knows I appreciate that. She’s made things easy that should have been difficult. She’s made me smile and listened to words I didn’t know were waiting to come out. Certainly that all means something. Surely instead of talking about a woman who isn’t here, my parents and Lucy’s parents could be asking Elle what she does for a living, who she is, what she means to Jonah—and me?
They could have, if I’d introduced her as my friend, as someone who matters, instead of as “Jonah’s friend Madden’s mom who helped out with her minivan.”
I want to go back and do the whole party over again, just to get that part right.
But what, exactly, would I have said?
“Would you mind,” Elle asks quietly, “if I took off for a bit, just to get some work done? I’m a little behind where I meant to be this week…and Madden’s having such a good time, and I know you want to be with your family—and Lucy’s—and Jonah—”
She bites her lip, but this time, instead of seeing sex in the gesture, I see the vulnerability. And something slips a little in my chest, some resolve, some certainty. I want to put my teeth where hers are, yes, but what I want to do most is to take her in my arms and smooth a finger gently over the lip she’s hurting.