“He overheard me.”
I stopped.“What?”
Mrs. Alford stepped out onto her porch. “Boris heard me saying something on the phone to another neighbor, something about Lyra and her parents. I didn’t tell him directly but I…maybe I shouldn’t have said it at all. He remembered. Probably stuck with him because he doesn’t live with his own mother, either. He doesn’t do well with that.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
She shrugged, and then she went into the house and the screen door slammed. I walked across the street as Lyra watched me from the front window.
“Did she yell at you?” she asked me anxiously when I went inside.
“No, we just talked. I said that you were sorry, because I heard you tell Silas that.” Her lip started to poke out. “I don’t think Mrs. Alford is going to yell at anybody. I hope not. And I hope that her grandson apologizes to you for saying something that wasn’t true.”
“He won’t.”
I didn’t think so either but there was always a possibility, even if it was faint. “This was a fun day that turned into something hard,” I mentioned, and I watched her eyes get wet. So then, just hopefully, I opened up my arms as if I was ready for a hug. I was, but maybe Lyra wouldn’t ever be. She looked at me and walked up the stairs, and I listened to the soft thumps of her feet and sighed.
Chapter 7
“Idon’t know about this. I don’t know, Camille.” Silas tugged at the tie and I pulled his hand away.
“We just got it right!” It had taken three different videos and a lot of tweaking by me, but it was finally on him and I didn’t want it to move.
“I like it,” Lyra volunteered, and I smiled at her.
“Doesn’t he look handsome?”
“That’s what you say to all the guys,” he told me, but his sister readily agreed with my assessment.
“Silas is very handsome. Not just today,” she stated, and he said thank you and he was going outside to cool off. I thought that he probably wanted to get away from my fussing.
I had to agree that he was handsome all the time, but Silas in this suit was something special. He cleaned up very nicely—except he still looked like himself. You could see the tattoos on the backs of his hands that showed past his white cuffs, forexample, and his long, thick ponytail still rested between his broad shoulder blades. You could definitely see how big he was and even when wearing a suit and tie, he still seemed like he could kick anyone’s butt.
I was hoping that wouldn’t happen to anyone at Rashelle’s wedding—yes, he would be there. She had sidled up to me the week before and explained a little problem they were having. “Uh, about Saturday,” she’d mentioned, and I had waited. “Well, you did the RSVP for two people. Is that still right?”
Months before, when I’d still been with Dax, I had replied that I would have a plus-one, but I was now minus that one. “I’m sorry,” I had said. “I didn’t even think to change that.”
“No, it will actually work out perfect. My cousin Darian just broke up with his girlfriend,” she’d told me. “I got the idea to put you two together!”
“Together?”
She had nodded happily. “You’ll hang out, dance…if you end up a couple, it’ll be such a cute story to tell about my wedding. Darian is a male escort so you know he’s good-looking, kind of, and he isn’t interested in settling down but that won’t bother you.”
“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t that bother me?”
Rashelle shrugged a little at my confusion. “You were with a club promotor and everybody knows how many girls they get. Anyway, you’ll have fun with my cousin. He’s a little younger than you so he’ll have lots of energy, great for dancing. He’snineteen,” she had told me when I hadn’t been able to speak due to my shock.
And as I’d remained mute, she’d taken my silence for assent. “Perfect! Just ignore the seating chart when you come in and look for the family tables. Oh…” She had suddenly frowned. “I have an uncle who’s kind of…well, we all call him ‘Uncle Horndog,’ if that gives you a clue. But you can just sit across from him. Definitely keep your distance.” She’d left my office and, unfortunately for her, had run right into Octavia. They’d gotten into a protracted discussion about the sign that Rashelle had recently hung in the employee lunchroom asking us all to please refrain from reheating fish in the microwave. It had turned into a minor skirmish that expanded beyond the noxious lunches, with Octavia accusing our paralegal of making her miss deadlines on the Four-Squared project and possibly…she’d bent and looked into Rashelle’s eyes, but had seemed satisfied that our colleague was a human.
By the end of the day and before I’d headed out to the gym, I had talked to Silas, and he thought the whole situation was hilarious. “Uncle Horndog,” he kept repeating, and then laughing. But he’d also agreed with the plan I’d come up with, and I had passed it on to Rashelle. She’d been disappointed but resigned, acknowledging that maybe her cousin was a little young for me, but he really was cute. Kind of, she had added.
My plan was that Silas would accompany me to the wedding instead of that cousin or Uncle Horndog. The teenager who had babysat for Lyra in the past had already arrived at the house today to watch her, and Silas had apparently told someone atChâteau Moderne that he wasn’t coming, with no excuse and barely any notice. He didn’t seem to care if they’d get upset by that.
So here we were in the final stages of getting ready. With him outside (and hopefully not messing with his tie), I went back upstairs to sit in my room at the dressing table, a piece of furniture that I’d never had before and that I loved. But I wasn’t sure whether I loved my hair. I had gone back and forth about the style and I did that again now, as Lyra came in and sprawled across my bed. Up or down? Dax had liked it down because he thought it was sexier. He’d wrapped it around his fist and made me…anyway, the things we’d done in bed didn’t matter now, whether I’d liked them or not. Relationships were about giving and taking, but mostly giving.
“Why do you keep looking at yourself?” Lyra asked me, and I hadn’t realized that she’d been paying attention. I’d assumed that her eyes were on her book, as they were most of her waking hours outside of school. That was probably also true about her hours while she was in school, because I’d realized just the day before that she’d been sneaking books into her lunchbox.
“I’m wondering about my hair,” I confessed.
