“Mae sent me over to grab a bag she left here last night.”
Mae. He calls her Mae?
Nonna waves a hand around. “I know just the one you mean. Found it last night after everyone left but didn’t know whose it was. Let me go get it.”
She steps out of the room and I turn my back to him, digging into my food.
“How long are you in town?” I ask, still not looking at him.
“The week,” he answers.
God, why would you want to stay a week with Aunt Maggie Mae?
“It’s not that bad,” he says, defensively, and I realize I asked that question out loud. Whoops.
Thankfully, Nonna’s back. “Here it is,” she says. “Are you sure you don’t want some food?”
It’s a nearly impossible feat to visit this house and leave without consuming something.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure. But thank you,” he says. And then to me: “See you later, Charlie.”
I raise one hand and answer, “Yeah. See you around.”
I’m washing my dish when Nonna gets back from walking Leo to the door. “He’s such a nice young man,” she says.
I tilt my head and shrug. “Yeah, I guess.” I give her a loud kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the fill-up.” And then I’m out of there.
I’ve got twenty minutes to get to that store, grab the gift, then get to Bailey’s house.
The store is in one of those glass-front strips. Parking in the closest spot I can find, I dash to the front door and arrive just as a girl in her twenties is unlocking it.
She pulls the door open and eyes me up and down, clearly trying hard to keep a straight face.
It’s the first moment I realize I’m still in the pj bottoms and T-shirt I slept in.
“Oh, uh, yeah, I’m here to pick up a gift my aunt ordered. Lisa Perkins.”
“Sure thing. Right this way,” she says, and leads me to the counter in the back of the store. The metal shelves behind the register are stacked full of gifts. It takes her a minute to locate the one Aunt Lisa ordered.
“Are those grad gifts?” I ask.
“Yes! Graduation and Christmas are our busiest times of the year,” she answers.
Seems like a racket. But whatever.
She pushes a ledger in front of me and I sign for the gift, then run back out to my truck. Just as I’m cranking the engine, there’s another text from Aunt Lisa.
MOM:Oh good! You got the gift! Send me a pic of it so I can see how they wrapped it.
What. The. Actual…She wants a pic of a present? And it’s no joke what Olivia said. Aunt Lisa probably tracked this phone all the way to the store. There’s no way the trip to the golf course would have gone unnoticed.
Trying to figure out where to put the present for the pic without giving away that this is not Olivia’s car, I end up stepping back outside and putting the gift on the hood. I frame the shot so that the store is in the background and I cut the image off at the bottom edge so she can’t see the color of my truck. I snap the pic and send it to her.
And then I haul it to Bailey’s before another text can come through.
Olivia
I get to Bailey’s before Charlie. Crawling into the backseat, I’m thankful for my tinted windows as I change quickly into the pj’s I’d stashed here this morning. The simple short-sleeve tee and shorts have become my favorite set since Sophie gave them to me a few months ago, and it shows from their frayed edges and slightly faded mint-green color.
