“A favorite color?” Her eyes, which were the same color, followed my fingers trailing over the shiny, solid body from its neck to its waist, down to the pickups, bridge, and switches I had installed, and the cable that was connected to its port.
“Deep blue,” I said, looking at her.
“Like the mood?” She shifted her eyes from the guitar to look at me.
“Like the ocean.”And your eyes.
“Does Milan have an ocean?”
“Milano. And no, but Italy is a peninsula. I should teach you some chords, even just to hold a guitar and get the feel of it.”
“How do you know I never tried?”
“I can tell.”
The cell phone she brought with her to the living room began vibrating on the coffee table. June stretched from her seat and leaned toward it, looking at the screen and sliding to reply without picking the device up. “Tammy, I’ll call you later.”
“Just calling to see how you’re doing, June the Prune. Call me.” Her sister’s voice was audible, although she wasn’t on speaker.
June shot a gaze at me.
From the way I pressed my lips together, I figured she knew I’d heard that.
Hanging up, she straightened back in her seat, looked at me, and shrugged. “Just a nickname my sisters have for me.”
“Maybe we could start with them,” I said, gesturing toward the phone. I couldn’t tell her that I thought her sisters were spot on.
June took her phone and swiped it open while I slid across the sofa to sit next to her, bringing the guitar with me and resting her on the sofa on my other side.
She scrolled through a few pictures. “That’s my mom,” she said, showing me the first pic.
“Julie,” I said.
“Right. And these are my sisters. We took this one last Christmas. These are Tammy and Danny’s kids. And these are Will and Lennox.” She scrolled through the photos.
“She named you like that on purpose?”
“It started with me. She loved the name, and I was born in June, so … Then January was born in …” She raised her free hand and made a you-can-guess-the-rest gesture.
We both huffed a chuckle. Her eyes were bright with that smile. The ocean in them was calm. She then wet her lips, and my eyes dropped to that.
June noticed. She moved her gaze back to the phone.
“Good thing your mom’s name is Julie. She could have been July.”
She huffed another breathy chuckle and continued flipping through the photos.
“Then September was born,” I commented just to focus on something else rather than feeling her thigh touching mine, warmth seeping through the fabrics of my jeans and her soft brown lounge pants.
“Yes.” Her eyes were still on the screen.
“When did your father die?” Memorizing her family members for our last interview, I knew that much about her.
“When I was six. January was four.”
“September was a baby?”
She raised her eyes again to look at me. “She was born two years later.”
