“Okay. I’d rather spend the weekend with you, though.”
She was curled into my side on my couch Tuesday night. She’d come over to see Tuck, bringing him a bone and squeaky toy. I’d poured her a glass of wine, and we joked about how I shouldn’t be serving her.
“I could get arrested, you know? Giving alcohol to a minor.” My finger poked her side, a small ticklish spot right below her ribs.
“Stop!” She giggled and held her wine tighter.
“Who cares if you spill? Not my place, really.”
“Don’t be crass,” she said. “That’s not you.”
“You mean the criminal in me, getting my girl tipsy on expensive vino instead of downing cheap alcohol out in the fields?”
“Is that what you used to do when you were a teenager?”
Her hair spread all over me, I ran the tips of my fingers through the ends of it. I’d thought Moira was it for me, but we’d never had an ease like this. Just chilling, chatting, doing nothing.
“We did. We’d steal liquor from our folks and haul it out to the middle of nowhere, which is basically all around us, and get wasted. We’d lie around the fields, looking at stars and waxing poetic. We were nothing but a bunch of nobodies—and still are.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t start with that. You are somebody.”
“To you, I guess.”
“To a lot of people, I’m sure.”
That right there—the way she kept pumping me up—was doing a number on me.
Of course, Moira and I did that, but in the rearview, it didn’t feel real. Like we were pretending.
“Hey, I’m off school a little while longer. Want to go to the beach next weekend?” I changed the subject, turning us toward something less about me and my insecurities. “You can show me where you grew up. I’ll drive, and we can take Tuck.”
“Oh, sure, my dad would love that. Fallen for another guy, let me just drag him home and throw it in his face.”
“Well, I’m a better man. I can win him over. We’ll do it G-rated and all that.”
“I’ll think about it.”
We didn’t talk much more. My mouth found hers, and we spent a long while kissing, my hand roaming down her back and up again. She tasted like peaches and sauvignon blanc. I wanted to drown in the flavor. She didn’t ask if I’d be seeing any girls back home, and truthfully, I didn’t want to see any but my mom.
“I should go home,” Emerson finally said, breaking the moment.
I nodded. “Let me call Johnny to take us.”
She stood. “No, let him be. Walk me outside, put me in a cab.”
“I’m giving you the money.”
She shrugged and started putting on her sandals.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, a little sad. I miss my dad. It’s not that I don’t want to see him. I just don’t want him to go all judgy-judgy. And I need to find my mom. I’m close. Did you know Bev knows her? Or her mom?”
“What?” I stood up straight after hooking Tuck to his leash.
“It’s a coincidence how it all happened, and I haven’t told Bev yet.”
“Em, you need to tell her. Even I know that.”
