“Good answer.” He pours me a water into the other hand without asking either, because he’s been briefed. The whole house has been briefed.
“Briggsy.” Coach Linwood, behind me, beer in hand, a palm landing on my shoulder. “Don’t keep him. He’s working.”
“That so?”
“He’s minding a wine for my daughter.”
Coach doesn’t take his hand off my shoulder. “Briggsy’s had eyes on you since you were sixteen, Stan. He’s the reason I knew to call your dad about the summer skate.”
I didn’t know that.
I don’t get a chance to do anything with it, because Coach pats my shoulder twice and tips his chin at the bar. “Take the wine to her, son. Glad you remember what she likes to drink.”
Hell, I don’t. I nod anyway and start walking over to her.
I cross the room, and I let myself look at her. She’s finishing something with one of the ladies. She glances up, sees me, and sees the wine. She doesn’t smile. She holds my eyes one full second.
I reach her and put the wine in her hand.
“Wine.”
She looks down at it. “Thank you.”
“Least I could do. I’ve been pinned in the corner with my parents and a doctor from Cornell for sixteen minutes.”
“I know. I counted.”
I look down at her.
She doesn’t look back up. She takes a sip and turns back to the two guys she’s been talking to. “Mike, Pete — this is Stanley Ermington.”
I shake two hands. I make a decent impression. I’m not fully present for it because my mind keeps replaying what she said.She counted.
Carolyn’s bell goes through the foyer — once, twice, and on the third she just calls over the lot of us. “Find your card.”
Aspen breathes in beside me. “Here we go.”
“You good?”
Her eyes flash around at the moving bodies. “Following your lead,” she whispers.
I take a step toward the arch. She follows.
The table’s set for sixteen — candles, a runner, real plates, real napkins, the whole thing built by a woman who’s been at it since five a.m. Aspen finds her card halfway down one side, between Aunt Lisa and a man I haven’t met. I find mine.
I’m directly across from her.
I’m next to my mother.
I look up, and Aspen is already looking at me. Her face hardens. She’s back to being annoyed, and I don’t know why.
I sit across from her and unfold my napkin. I lean half an inch over my plate like I’m fixing my fork, and I mouth it across the table, low enough that nobody else in the room can read me.
Smile.
She exhales through her nose. She forces one. It’s a bad one.
She looks at me. I look at her.
