“This is why I don’t date,” I note as a car passes us without switching off its brights.
“Why is that?”
“I just said something wrong and I don’t even know what it was.”
“You didn’t say anything wrong, Lance. I just got to thinking about a phone call from my mother,” she frowns.
The street lamps get few and far between as we get farther away from town. She’s quiet for a long time.
“Want to talk about it?” I offer, needing her to come back around. When I’m the one who pisses her off, I’m okay with that. I don’t really know what to do when she’s mad at someone else.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she admits. “My mom just … let me ask you this. Does your mom have favorites? I know that sounds ridiculously juvenile, but does she prefer one of your siblings over the others?”
“Well,” I say carefully. “My mom passed away a few years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Her hand falls to my arm. Her palm is so small it barely covers half my bicep. We both look at the point of contact. I force a swallow down my parched throat, feeling the weight of her hand all the way down to my groin. My thighs ache, my balls burn, every piece of my body practically begging for more.
“I’ll be sorry if you move your hand,” I utter.
Naturally, she does.
“No,” I continue, clearing my throat, “she didn’t have a favorite. Not really. Blaire got better Christmas presents growing up because she was the only girl. Machlan had bigger birthday parties because his birthday was in December and Mom was worried it would get lost in the mix with Christmas and all that. They paid for my college and gave Crank to Walker. So, I guess I never really felt that way.” Glancing at her again, I decide to press. “Does yours?”
“It’s a fact my mom prefers my sister over me.”
“I need to meet your sister,” I mumble.
She smacks my arm. “Lance!”
Chuckling, I rub the spot she just marred. “I was kidding.”
“Sure you were.”
“I was,” I insist, looking at her until she looks at me. “I know I’m just your friendly co-worker and ride home from bad dates, and that you get off to me every night—Ow!” I yelp as she smacks me again. “Truth hurts.”
“So do lies. Wanna see?” she asks, making a fist.
“I was going to finish that by saying I can’t imagine a mother being anything but proud of someone like you.”
She makes a face like she might cry. It’s not real, it’s totally put on, but I love it.
“Think about it,” I say. “You moved out on your own, got a real job, and I bet you pay your own bills.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And,” I say, nudging her shoulder, “you’re pretty as hell, smart, and sweet when you want to be. Your mother must be an idiot.”
“Lance Gibson, that was nice. Thank you.”
“All truth, Ms. Malarkey. All truth. Even the parts you deny.” Listening to her giggle fill up my car is the best thing I’ve heard all day. “So your mom is a jerk. Do we like your sister?”
“No. Big. Fat. No.” She shakes her head adamantly. “We don’t like Chrissy.”
“Got it. Do we have a dad we like? Brother? Grandma? Aunt?”
Her head rests on the seat angled a little to the side. She looks perfectly content in the seat of my car. It’s hard not to pull over and, as weird as it is to acknowledge it, I don’t want to just fuck her. I want to hear what she has to say. And then fuck her. Hard.
It’s a thin, dangerous line and my toes are edging it.
“My parents are divorced and my dad has some trophy wife up in New Hampshire. I haven’t seen him in years. No aunts, no brothers. Grandma Betsy was amazing, though,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. Her chin drops to the side so she’s looking at me. “She’s who taught me to bake.”
“So we definitely love Grandma Betsy.”
“Definitely,” she smiles. Heaving a deep breath, she blows it out slowly. “You know what, Lance? You’re not a bad guy.”
“I’ve been telling you this.”
An easy little song hums through the speakers. She closes her eyes.
Her body sinks into the seat as the crinkle in her forehead disappears. I want to ask her another question, to hear her voice again, but I don’t because seeing her like this is new. And I like it.
I also like the look of her breasts in that red sweater.
As we drive through the night, I imagine what life would be like without my family. Even when my brothers and Blaire make me crazy, which is often, I appreciate them. We’re a tribe, along with Peck and his brother Vincent and our Nana. We’d be nothing without each other.
Imagining no Sunday dinners or church services or Friday nights at the bar with Peck getting tossed by Machlan—what would I do with my time? I take a peek at Mariah and wonder if that’s why she works a lot. She has nothing else to do. No one to hang out with, reminisce with, or enjoy a meal with.
Or bake with.
The exit to Linton approaches, the turnoff lit with a bright yellow light. I look at it, at Mariah, and plow forward.
“Hey,” she says, opening her eyes. “That’s the exit.”
“I know. I have something I need to do.”
Rubbing my forehead, I know a quick exit I can take a half mile up the road and I know I should take it. I should turn this car around and head into town and get her out of my car. Stop the madness.
Squirming in her seat, she sits upright. “Can’t you drop me off first? Or take me to Goodman’s and I’ll walk from there?”
“Relax,” I instruct.
“I don’t want to relax.”
“Clearly.” Biting my lip, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, I skip the second, and the last, exit into town. “Don’t laugh.”
“I promise nothing.” She folds her arms over her ample chest. “Where are we going?”
“I have to go by my Nana’s.”
“You’re kidding me?” she balks. “You have to go to your grandma’s at eight o’clock on a Saturday night?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“Reasons.”
She flops back on the seat again with a huff. “You really can’t take me home?”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I say with a simple shrug.
“You sure sound real sorry.”
My laugh is the last sound either of us make until my car pulls into Nana’s driveway a few minutes later. Parking behind her crossover vehicle, which she bought last year because it holds more casseroles for her church supper club than the sedan she had, I cut the engine.
“Two things you need to know about Nana before we go in,” I say as seriously as I can. It’s almost impossible not to laugh at the soberness in Mariah’s face. “First, don’t say anything bad about Elvis.”
“Got it.” She runs a hand through her long, dark locks. With every movement, the smell of her shampoo—something rich and flowery—almost kills me.
“Second,” I say, pointing at her, “call her Nana.”
“What’s her name?”
Opening my door, I climb out. “I’m not telling you. You have to call her Nana.”
She rustles around behind me then smacks the car door shut. Before I know it, she’s at my side with wild eyes. “Just tell me her name. Or I can call her Mrs. Gibson, I guess.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I say. My hands go up in defense as we climb the wooden steps Peck built a few summers ago. They creak with our weight, adding to the music from the crickets under the porch.
The house is small, built in the early nineteen-twenties. Granddad kept it in perfect condition, then Dad took over. Now my brothers and Peck and I come by and do tasks for her when she needs them done. If we don’t get here quick enough, she calls a service guy and that makes us nuts.
“This place is so cute,” she notes as we look across the back yard. The grass is freshly cut, probably by Walker. The remnants of Nana’s garden lie dormant by the shed. “It’s like a book, all quaint and lovely.”
“Quaint and lovely?” I balk, turning towards the house. “Nice vocabulary you have there, Ms. Malarkey.”
She doesn’t bother with a comeback. Instead, she files in behind me as I head for the sliding glass door into the kitchen.
“I can stay in the car,” she whispers roughly. “I don’t have to go in.”
“Do you want her coming out here to get you?”
She taps me on the shoulder. “She doesn’t know I’m here. Why would she come out?”
“Why are you whispering?” I whisper back. We’re eye-to-eye, our faces close enough that I could kiss her in a half a second. Her irises dilate as I lick my lips. “Relax,” I say turning back to the house before I do something stupid.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her start to reach for my hand. My heart jumps in my throat as I wait for it. She stops herself before our skin makes contact. That’s probably for the best because if she touched me right now, I think I’d lose it. She’d be ass up over the deck chair in front of God and Nana. I don’t even give a fuck.
Peering through the glass, I spy Nana at the farmhouse sink. She’s washing a mixing bowl while doing a little hip sway to a song I’m not privy to. I consider the ramifications of this. How she’ll be jumping to conclusions about me bringing a girl here. The fact that she’ll tell my brothers and I’ll be assaulted with endless questions tomorrow. I know she’ll even invite her to dinner tomorrow because she invites everyone to Sunday dinner. But how will Mariah take that? Will it be weird if she accepts? Will she think there’s more to it than there is?
“She’s adorable,” Mariah says beside me. “What’s on her apron? Roosters?”