I think I would have been embarrassed if I’d been on a date with anyone else. My mother, sobbing drunk the night before she left for prison. But I knew Emma didn’t judge. That’s just not how she was. She judged this situation less than I did.
When she finished handing out Kleenex, Emma stayed turned in her seat. “You know,” she said, “I worked for three months in a women’s prison.”
Mom raised her head.
“I have never met cooler people than the women in prison,” Emma said.
Mom sniffed. “Really?”
“Yeah. You’ll make lots of friends. They had a cosmetology school for the inmates. You can get your hair done. And you get to do soooo much reading.”
I glanced in the rearview and I could see it. The sudden hope in Mom’s eyes that maybe prison wouldn’t be as bad as she’d built it up in her mind.
Emma sat back in her seat and twined her fingers in mine between us. Her turn to comfort me.
After that, Mom stopped crying. Leigh and Mom went back to laughing and giggling. They got their Culver’s. They held their baby trash pandas and ate their sundaes and Emma chatted with Mom and Leigh. And even though it was the last night Mom would be here and it was awful and sad, it was also sort of all right.
CHAPTER 20 EMMA
We’d dropped off Leigh and Christine and were parked on the curb in front of Neil’s house. The front door to the mansion was wide open and Fleetwood Mac was blaring from inside.
Justin lowered his head to get a look at the open door. “Should we go check that out?”
“No,” I said. “Probably Amber working on her rose wall. I’m not worried about it.”
I got out of the car, and Justin met me on the lawn.
“Sorry for the side quest,” Justin said, stopping in front of me.
“They were fun,” I said honestly.
“Mom doesn’t drink. You were treated to a show.” He smiled a little.
So handsome.
I’d been admiring his side profile as we drove. Little glances while his focus was on the road. The way his eyes creased at the corners when his mom and Leigh were laughing from the back seat. The way his jaw ticced slightly when they weren’t. The look of gratitude he gave me when I held his hand.
I liked being there to help him through that, the way he helped me the day Mom showed up. Even if it was just a tiny moment in a long lifetime of moments, I was happy to be a part of it.
Justin deserved good things. He deserved for the hard things of his life to be made a little easier, the way he made everyone else’s life easier.
“Leigh seems like a good friend,” I said.
“She is. She would do anything for Mom. She’d probably take her place if she could.”
I nodded. I understood that. Maddy and I had that.
It was weird to think it, especially given the circumstances, but I was glad I met his mom. I wasn’t making plans with Justin. We’d be done once I left Minnesota. But for some reason, it was important to me that when he talked about her over the next few weeks, I’d be able to put a face to a name.
That she’d be able to put a face to mine.
I liked the idea of Justin talking about me to her, I realized. Of him talking about me to anyone. Being important enough to come up in conversation.
And then I realized that I’d actually feel hurt if I wasn’t. If I was just some fling for him that didn’t warrant mentioning to his friends and family.
But why would that bother me?
That’s essentially what this was—a fling.
I couldn’t care less about whether the guys I dated previously talked about me. Sometimes I preferred they didn’t. What was the point? I was going to move on and drift into their oblivion anyway, why even waste the time to tell their friends my name?
But I wanted Justin to think about me and talk about me. I liked that he planned things for me. That he spent so much time making his surveys and invites and picking out the perfect places to take me.
“Dreams” ended and then Peter Cetera came on with “The Next Time I Fall.”
Justin stood there with his hands in his pockets. He was supposed to kiss me.
I thought maybe he’d do it somewhere in Stillwater, but he hadn’t.
He took a step toward me, and my heart launched.
“Is it okay if I kiss you good night?” he asked, his eyes flickering to my lips.
“Yes, you may kiss me.”
I slid my hands up his chest. He smelled so good. I’d been leaning into it the whole evening. Something spicy and warm mixed with the scent of mint. Justin was so… familiar. Like I was dating a boy I grew up with and I hadn’t seen him in a few years and when I did, he’d turned into someone irresistible. Obviously that whole scenario was impossible. I knew nobody from my childhood. There was nothing before I moved in with Maddy. Just a smear of people and places and schools and foster homes. But I just knew without knowing that this comparison was the right one.
Maybe a wall that I usually had up was coming down a little—probably because of the circumstances of our arrangement.
