“You want to get dinner?”
“Yes.”
Thirty-Eight
Cary suggested a pizza place where they used to go in high school.
Shiloh told him it sucked now and proposed an all-day breakfast place near his hotel.
She met him there at seven. She wore a sundress over boot-cut jeans with a cropped cardigan. Shiloh loved the dresses-over-jeans trend. Dresses had always been too short on her.
She almost wore heels... but something about heels would make this feel like a date.
She decided that eyeliner was platonic. Lots of people wore eyeliner every day. Not Shiloh—but Cary didn’t know that.
He was waiting in a booth for her. In another plaid shirt. Flipping through the oversized laminated menu.
Shiloh smiled when she saw him. “Hey,” she said, when she was still too far away.
Cary looked up at her. He smiled, too.
She squeezed his shoulder before she sat down across from him. “You look better.”
He still hadn’t shaved, but his eyes were clear. His hair was clean.
“Thanks,” he said. “You look great.”
“Oh, well... thanks. That’s the bright side of not having the kids, I guess. I get to pretend I’m human.”
“Does their dad have them every weekend?”
“No,” Shiloh said. “That would be awful.” She picked up her menu. “We split them fifty-fifty, actually. It’s complicated. It’s called two-two-three.” She looked up. “This is more than you want to know.”
“Fifty-fifty,” Cary said. “Like, right down the middle?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t know people actually did that.”
“When we were growing up, they didn’t. It was every other weekend. For dads.”
Cary looked like he wasn’t sure what to think. He wasn’t smiling. “How do you feel about the arrangement?”
“I hate it,” she said. “Iactivelyhate it. But it’s probably good, right? None of my friends grew up with their dads. I don’t even know who mine is.”
“Well. You know. Me neither.” Cary turned back to the menu. “Though my mom is going to go to her grave without talking to me about it.”
Cary had found some paperwork in junior high that showed his sister Jackie was his birth mother. His mom had probably never even been his legal guardian. His dad was unnamed.
“She’s still never talked to you about it?”
He turned the page and shook his head. “Nope.”
“And you haven’t tried to talk to her?”
He sighed. “What am I supposed to say? Every version of ‘I know you’re not my mother’ sounds terrible. And sheismy mother. What do I get out of rocking the boat?” He looked up at Shiloh.“What are you ordering?”
“Hot turkey sandwich.”
