“One dinner,” he said. “If you don’t want to… try anything after that, I’ll accept it, I promise. I just… please give me one more chance, Cadence. One last chance to prove how sorry I am that I let things fall apart. Please.”
She squeezed his hand once before letting go, and Tyler held his breath.
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. One dinner.”
And Tyler knew nothing was fixed yet, that nothing was set in stone, but he couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face. It was the most hope he’d had in ages, and he would enjoy it to its fullest.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I… think I’m coming down with a bug. We should probably stay home.”
June poked her head out of her closet to see Eleanor giving her a highly skeptical look.
“You are not,” Eleanor retorted. “You’re just nervous.”
“Okay, maybe,” June allowed. “But does itreallymake a difference if I end up throwing up all over the place?”
“You’re not going to throw up,” Eleanor told her. “Goodness, you’re worse than Jeremy when there was a math test that he didn’t want to take.”
This time, it was June’s turn to look skeptical.
“Jeremy never tried to skip school,” she accused. She’d never met Eleanor’s son, but she’d heard enough stories of how well he was doing at college in Pittsburgh to doubt that he was ever anything but a model student.
"Not when he got older,” Eleanor admitted, “but when he was in elementary school, he used to get really anxious about tests. And, lo and behold, he would have a super mysterious stomachache the morning of each and every math test.”
“How’d he get over it?” June asked. She was not above taking advice from a long-ago elementary schooler, not at this point.
“I made his butt go to school, he kept doing well on math tests, and eventually he realized that his nerves were for nothing.”
“Oh.” June frowned. “I hate that advice.”
Eleanor’s chuckle followed her as she ducked back into the closet.
“Yeah, I thought you might. Now. No more stalling. Pick your outfit or we’re going to be late for the open mic. Anddon’tsay that’s your plan. I’m onto you, woman.”
Inside the closet, where Eleanor couldn’t see her, June wrinkled her nose. Would it be theworstthing if they missed the open mic? There would be another one in two weeks. What was two weeks in the grand scheme of things? Nothing, that was what. After all, every week felt as though it went faster than the one before. It was a blink of an eye!
“Chop, chop!” Eleanor called, as if she could read June’s thoughts.
“But what about--?”
“Get dressed!”
June might be a mom herself, but she found herself helpless in the face of Eleanor’s bossy mom tone.
“All right, all right,” June grumbled, feeling like she was playing the role of the moody teenager. “I’m coming.”
“Okay,” Eleanor said when June emerged. “That’s, what, seventeen outfits?”
“I needoptions,” June insisted. “Do you know how long it has been since I’ve gotten all dolled up?”
“Probably since the time ‘all dolled up’ was in the vernacular,” Eleanor teased.
June stuck out her tongue in response.
It was the last time she felt playful for the next half an hour.
She changed in and out of different outfit options, grateful that Benjamin was having a sleepover with Izzy and Cadenceand wasn’t there to hear the less than gracious language that June let slip during the process of figuring out what to wear. She’d felt a little guilty about sending Benjamin to Cadence without explaining to her friend exactly why she needed the evening clear, but June wasn’t ready yet to share the news about her tentative foray back into singing… not just yet.
