“Yeah,” Jake said, adjusting the kitten in his arms, something softer than the mischievous grin he’d given Mom earlier crossing his face. “I’d love to.”
Mom sent me a knowing look, somehow not anywhere near as shocked as I was that Jake wanted to come over, just like he used to forever ago. I didn’t see why he would. After all, he wasused to things like screaming crowds and different cities every week and fireworks flaring out over him onstage. Helping the café was one thing, coming over to eat dinner with my mother was another.
I sent Mom a sideways glance. How had she been so sure Jake would say yes?
But her face gave away nothing, just that she seemed inordinately smug.
“So, six o’clock sharp,” Mom said, pleased. “Dinner with US.”
***
Which is why,” Aspen said, waving around his chopsticks for emphasis, “if I was stuck on a desert island and could only bring one item with me, I’d bring seasoning.”
I blinked at him. “Let me get this straight. You wouldn’t choose a boat, or a machete, or a flare gun, or anything like that. You’d pick seasoning?”
“Yeah. I mean, first of all, the practical answers areboring. And secondly, I’d need something for flavor if I’m going to be eating fish every single day and nothing else.” He paused to think about that. “And maybe seagull.”
Mom stared at him across the table. “Seagull?”
“I’d like to see you try to catch a seagull,” Jake snarked.
“Me too,” Phillip agreed. “Remember that time a pigeon got stuck on our tour bus when we were in Frankfort, in your American South? Aspen screamed and locked himself in the bathroom.”
Jake snickered. “Aspen was shouting, ‘There’s a bird in here!’ through the door, right as Phillip walked in. Phillip justraps on the bathroom door and goes, ‘You know there’s no girls allowed on the bus, mate.’ It wasn’t until the pigeon buzzed him that he realized Aspen meant an actual, flying, feathered bird was inside the bus.”
Twirling chow mein noodles around my fork, I asked, “How’d you get the bird out?”
Phillip cleared his throat. “Well, I wasn’t sure what to do, since we have staff for that at our country house in West Berkshire—”
“Okay, Mister Downton Abbey.”
“But Jake got it out with a sheet,” Phillip continued. “He’s the official bad boy, after all. He might as well handle the dangerous things.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Dangerousmeaning a Kentucky pigeon?”
“At least I wasn’t screaming in the bathroom,” Phillip replied primly, shifting in his chair to dodge Aspen’s kick under the table.
I laughed, and they joined in, all our voices crisscrossing.
What would it be like, to have dinners like this regularly? To know they’d come back?
To knowJakewould come back?
I pushed the thought out of my mind and got back to the present.
“So this is really how you guys pass the time on tour?” I asked curiously. When they first sat down and started asking random questions, I’d been a bit surprised, until they mentioned it was a game they played.
“Yeah,” Jake answered with a shrug. “We’re not allowed to have our phones thirty minutes before showtime. Or water gunsafter the Rhode Island incident. So we have to do something to stop the boredom.”
“It’s your turn, Lucy,” Leon told me. “What’s your question?”
Besides what happened in Rhode Island? “Um...” I thought it over, my mind landing on one of my favorite hobbies. “If you could dedicate a song to someone on the radio, what would it be?”
Phillip, surprisingly, had an answer at the ready. “‘Love Will Find a Way.’ Dedicated to Seraphina Steele.”
“Seraphina Steele, the supermodel?” I questioned with an arched brow. “Doesn’t she already have a boyfriend?”
Unaffected by this question, Phillip stared at me sagely across the table. “Love will find a way, Lucy.”
