My mouth flies open, prepared to deliver a promising blow, but before I can get a word out, Remmi and Gavin come bounding into the kitchen, throwing themselves at Jovi. He catches them both,one under each arm and starts spinning them in circles until they giggle.
It’s disgusting how tight my chest gets at the sight.
JOVI
I don’t know why I didn’t tell Liz I ended things with Casey. Somehow, I didn’t feel like giving her the satisfaction. And she would have been. Fucking satisfied. All self-righteous and thinking she knew Casey was a mistake first time she laid eyes on her.
Not that I agree with her. In the end, Casey wasn’t the mistake. I was. I had no business letting her get as involved—as attached—as I did. I was just too focused on other shit to see how hard she was working to link our lives up for the long run.
Unlike Liz. Whose life I’m now actually linked to for the long run despite her every effort to remove me from it.
“Did you bwing Biscuit Bawn?” Gavin asks, his cheeks all red from laughing by the time I set him down again.
“For dinner?” I chuckle.
“If you didn’t bring Biscuit Barn,” Remmi turns, redirecting her focus from me to Liz, “what are we going to eat?”
“I made you all a big batch of tuna casserole,” Tammy announces. It’s clear she’s attempting to reestablish her authority here in the kitchen after the unfortunate pots and pans incident. “I’ve got it in a cooler in the car. A few minutes in the oven and it'll be ready to serve.”
Liz turns a deep shade of crimson as the two wind up face to face at the island. Her eyes slip over to the pans she left on thecounter, and I’m sure she’s regretting having left them out like a flashing pile of evidence marking her betrayal.
Gavin tugs at my sleeve to get my attention again.
“What’s up, bud?”
He gestures for me to bend down and get closer, so I squat to meet him at eye level.
Gavin cups the side of his mouth with one hand, and proceeds to whisper at regular voice volume, “I don’t like tuna cassawole.”
Remmi’s eyes bug out at him in a silent scolding, and I swear Liz almost lets out a laugh.
Tammy seems to miss most of this.Thank God. “You’ll like it. Your father always loved it.”
Gavin isn’t sold on her argument. I can tell by the way he scrunches up his nose and the worried look in his eyes when he turns back to me.
I wink at him and smile, trying to let him know we’ll work something out without drawing Tammy’s attention again. We’ve offended her enough for one day.
Liz must be thinking the same thing. “Tuna casserole sounds perfect, thank you, Tammy.” She smiles broadly. It’s creepy. I haven’t seen her smile like that since high school and unpleasant encounters in the hall with Mr. Diamonti. “Will you be joining us for dinner?”
Tammy shakes her head. “No.” She turns her attention to the kids. “I think I better go track down Grandpa Abe and take him home. He’s been out fussing in the shed for long enough.”
The shed. So that’s where he's been hiding. I take mental stock of what Trent was keeping in there. Gardening shit, from what I remember. A safe space for his dad since it’s void of personalbelongings and Abe has always had a green thumb. He’ll have had plenty of busy work out there to keep his mind occupied.
“We’ll walk you out,” I offer, gesturing for everyone to follow her toward the door.
Once outside, it takes a good ten minutes to get Abe out of the shed and cleaned up enough to be permitted passage in Tammy’s pristine sedan. Over-the-top goodbyes with the kids follow while Liz and I get little more than a wave from her before they finally depart and make their way home.
Though not before she remembers to hand over her tuna casserole.
It's like one last hit before the final slam of reality I don’t think any of us are ready for.
The four of us. Alone.
“So,” Liz musters when we’re all still standing in the driveway, too scared to go in and face the life waiting for us, “Biscuit Barn?”
CHAPTER TEN
LIZ
