"Do you have any more of those scones?"
I blinked a few more times before I realized he was wearing glasses. Simple, wire-rimmed frames that glinted in the passing light. I dug through my memories, pressing into the moments when I'd been too much of a whiny toddler to notice anything but my exhaustion and trying to find those glasses hiding in there all this time. I didn't come up with anything. It was just like Jude to spice up his standard uniform of denim and black with something so casually academic.
He'd always been a closeted nerd, after all.
My voice sounded like crushed ice when I said, "Yeah. I'll grab the scones."
But in my new fixation on those glasses, I forgot I'd swaddled myself. After a minute of wrestling my way out ofthis homemade straitjacket and remembering how to work my limbs, I dug the container from the bottom of my bag.
"Shit," he muttered.
I glanced up to find road crews and flashing lights ahead. Signs announced construction and detours to come. "Is that the way we're supposed to go?" I asked. Jude nodded, an impatient noise rattling in the back of his throat. "Is it going to take much longer?"
He tapped the navigation system and groaned when the map rerouted. "That's just wrong," he grumbled. Our arrival time flipped from nine in the morning to shortly before noon. "For fuck's sake. This has us going all the way down the 15 and cutting around Vegas."
"That seems like a big detour," I said as I popped open each side of the container. "Like, into a whole other state. And the states are big out here. We're not talking about cutting through Rhode Island to get to Connecticut."
"Yeah. We'renotgoing that way. We'll take the old country highways and pick up Highway 89 past the construction."
I glanced at the narrow road ahead of us. "You're telling methisisn't the old country highway?" When his only response was a sharp side-eye, I decided to revisit the obvious. "You're sure you don't want to find somewhere to stop? Even for a few hours?"
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushing the glasses up to his forehead. There were greater matters at hand, but I had so many questions about these glasses. I couldn't wait for the moment when he glared at me over the rims. Because he would, and it'd scratch some kind of nostalgic itch I didn't know I had. I really needed Jamie to explain to me what was happening here.
She'd say something about uncovering my kinks and that it was about damn time I got around to it.
"My mother has planned this week down to the hour. We've already missed one dinner party and now we're going to miss the red rock Jeep tour she booked for tomorrow. Today. Whenever the fuck."
"I get that," I said carefully. "But it's really going to mess with the schedule if we veer off the road and die in a ditch."
He exhaled for an entire minute. "We're not dying in a ditch tonight. I've driven from the naval air station in northern Nevada to my mom's place. Twice. I know these roads, even in the dark, and the conditions are good."
"Okay, yes, I appreciate the optimism, but you should know I'm halfway through a couple of Netflix series that I hate. If I die before finding out how they end, I'm going to haunt you forever."
He laughed and rattled the ice in his coffee cup. "I wouldn't mind that. Might be nice to see you do the chasing for once."
I couldn't decide if that was a joke or a jab or something else altogether. I just knew it landed in a tender place that made my belly swoop. I held out the scones. "A few of them fell apart but those two on top are in good shape."
Jude took one that'd broken and ate it in two bites. He went for another piece, humming as he chewed. "These are incredible."
There was a note of admiration in his voice I hadn't expected. I hadn't let it bother me that he'd passed on the scones yesterday morning. Not everyone favored scones. Some didn't fully understand where they existed on the muffin-biscuit-bread spectrum.
But I'd wanted him to try them. A small, mostly pathetic part of me wanted him to be impressed. To take something I'd made from my own two hands and an alarmingly large collection of cookbooks, and appreciate it. I wanted him to see me do something right.
And when he did, nothing could force the smile off my face. My cheeks burned. My throat tightened. If I let myself, I'd cry. I had to look out the window to keep myself from flailing under his praise. Or throwing myself at him.
"How's Cassidy these days?" he asked.
I stifled a groan. That killed my silly grin. Most of the time, I didn't think about my younger sister at all—and I knew the sentiment swung both ways. She probably had her hands full with harassing baristas who weren't nice enough to her and blaming mental health disorders on sunscreen or something. "Married. Two kids. Lives in Palm Beach."
"Sounds like things are still going well between you two?" he asked with a chuckle.
Cassidy's claim to fame was being a two-faced agent of evil skilled enough to switch between backstabbing and playing the victim on a second's notice. I never understood how anyone took her seriously but that didn't make her any less vicious. She'd had a girls' volleyball coach more or less run out of the state by the time she was twelve. All because the coach made her run an extra lap after cutting corners the first time around.
My parents adored her. They'd gotten it right with her, or so they liked to say. It helped that she was the blank slate they wanted, if we didn't count the faked fragility. Sometimes I wondered if that was the true basis of their value system.
Either way, Cassidy delivered a stunning performance of the loving little sister role throughout my high school years while secretly gathering enough information to end my life as I knew it. She found out about my IUD, about the hours spent at Semantic when I'd claimed to be at the dance studio, and our plan to go to New York City together after graduation. Then, in the spirit of her profound "concern" for me, she made sure my parents knew too.
I'd go to my grave with my jaw clamped around that grudge.
