“You really don’t need to do that,” I say. “Tomorrow’s book is The Stinky Cheese Man.”
“You can’t talk me out of it.” She angles herself back toward Miles. “What about you? You want to rage tonight? I’m sure you could afford to blow off some steam, judging by the . . .” She gestures toward his jaw.
He grabs the edge of the counter and lets his hips sink away from it, stretching his back with a groan. “Julia,” he says. “I’m thirty-six. If I get drunk, I pay for it.”
“Oh, bullshit,” I tease. “Last time, you were up on a breakfast sandwich run while I was still shaking with the sweats in bed.”
“Ha!” Julia cries. “Gotcha.”
“I can manage that every once in a while,” he allows, “but we’re supposed to go out Sunday night with our friend Ashleigh.”
I’m surprised he remembers. Then I look over his shoulder and realize he’s added it to the calendar, right next to the long arrow through the Sunday column.
“You’ll like her,” Miles tells his sister. Then his forehead wrinkles. “Or you’ll hate her. I’m actually not sure.”
“Time will tell,” Julia replies with a shrug and a slurp of seltzer. “Should we order pizza?”
He chances a glance at me, his voice a teasing scrape: “I’m sure Daphne would love that.”
A whisper shivers down my backbone: I love the sounds you make.
“Actually, let’s do something else,” I say.
I try to think of the least sexy food I can come up with. Most food, I realize, is at least a little sexy.
“Nachos?” I say.
14
SATURDAY, JUNE 22ND
56 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
Unfortunately, Julia was serious about Story Hour.
They’re late, of course, but just barely. I smell sun-warmed grass and the spicy kick of woodsmoke, and when I look up, they’re there.
Julia picks her way through the concentric rings of parents, babysitters, and kids, with Miles whispering apologies in her wake.
He’s shaved his beard. No doubt thanks to Julia’s badgering, which had peppered our conversation until late into the night when she accepted my fifty-eighth attempt to go to bed.
Some people grow beards to hide or accentuate certain features, the way I switched my hair-part at nineteen and, when I saw how it balanced my slightly crooked nose, never looked back.
The thing, it would seem, Miles has been hiding all along is that he’s diabolically handsome, with angular cheekbones and a jaw that sort of looks like it might cut you if you were to run a hand over it. Or your tongue. You know, whatever.
Fairly cruel timing, for us to have just agreed not to cross the platonic-friends boundary.
His eyes catch mine, and his mouth quirks—that part of him is still soft, playful, even with this new look. It makes me feel like I swallowed a sword inside of a helium balloon.
Under the best circumstances, surprises are not my thing. But if I were going to unexpectedly see the man I hooked up with the night prior, I would at least prefer it not happen (a) while I’m reading aloud and (b) on a day he looks better than ever and I decided to walk to work, during which a surprise drizzle frizzed my hair and raccooned my mascara.
I did my best to clean myself up after I clocked in, and of course it immediately stopped raining, but we’d stuck to an inside Story Hour, just in case, and I’m sure the buzzing overhead lighting isn’t exactly giving me a heavenly glow.
When I finally reach The End, Julia jumps onto her feet, clapping with extreme enthusiasm. Everyone else breaks into the polite applause I’m used to. After a chorus of squeaky voices saying thank you at their parents’ urging, the crowd disperses, and Julia bounds up to me.
“Miles wasn’t kidding,” she says. “You’re really good at the voices.”
I peek over her shoulder to where her brother has paused to “give directions” to a mom who I’m pretty sure was born here. A young mom—it seems he was right about the beard’s effect on the older ladies, because they’re not the ones eyeing him this time.
Julia follows my gaze and guffaws. “Oh, look, he made a new friend. How novel.”
“Has he always been like this?” I ask.
“As long as I’ve been around, yes,” she replies. “God knows where he got it from. Definitely not our asshole parents.”
I’m jarred by the casual mention of their parents. It’s like turning over a locked box, only to realize there was a crack in the bottom all along.
“Miles once bumped into the high school band teacher at the grocery store and left with an invitation to her wedding,” she tells me. “He wasn’t even in band.”
An image of crisp stationery, elegant typeface slanting across it, blossoms in my mind.
Julia’s face softens. “Shit, sorry. He told me about the invitation thing.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
Julia cocks her head, curious. “Really? Fine?”
