“You don’t mean that,” Mom said, as she always did when I disagreed with her. She’d been doing it since I was five. It felt like gaslighting. “Olivia’s not on Spark.”
“I am on there, but I never get any matches,” Olivia pointed out. “Everyone is either straight or deep in the closet.”
Poor Olivia. Her dating pool was even smaller than mine in Lake Sanguis.
“If you’re really dying to date someone,” Mom told me, “I’ll set you up.”
I barked a laugh. “With who?”
Mom thought for a minute. Then she glanced out the window, and her face lit up. “How about Jude?”
I glanced out the window and saw the man himself, known legally as Percy Julian, but Jude to his friends, gingerly backing his white Volvo SUV into a parking spot outside Koi.
“The cheese scientist?” I sputtered a laugh. He spent his afternoons peering at cheese curds under a microscope to ensure customer quality, and if you ever had the misfortune of standing next to him at a party, he’d bore you to death with talk about the dangers of listeria. Since he and Oscar had been besties since kindergarten, I was already obligated to see good old Jude at holidays and also, randomly, in Chicago when he went for his annual cheese symposium.
“Jude finished his PhD. He’s a doctor now,” Mom said.
“Incheese?” I snorted as I watched him manage the tight parallel spot on the first try. “What was his thesis on? Mozzarella sticks?”
“Be nice!” Mom chided. “You know that my psychic said you two would get together.” I watched as Jude slipped out of the car, the autumn sunlight making his poreless and bronzed umber skin look flawless.
I rolled my eyes. “By psychic, you mean Octavia?”
Octavia was one of her regular makeup artists during her modeling days. She famously told Mom she’d get her biggest modeling contract ever in her mid-sixties, and also told her that her children would only be successful if she gave them names starting with the letterO. I’m sure Octavia’s own name had nothing to do with her advice.
“Yes, and she’s right most of the time.”
“Except for the time she predicted you’d be on the cover ofVogue.”
“I haven’t been on the cover ofVogue—yet,” Mom said. “There’s still time.”
Jude flipped a button on his remote to secure his car and then made sure it was locked by pulling the handle because that’s the kind of worrywart he was. Jude looked surprisingly put together in his half-zip gray sweater and pristine white sneakers.
He looked buffer than I remembered. Leaner. He exuded a level of sexy nerd energy I’d failed to notice before. Also, was he headed this way? “Why is he coming toward us?” I asked.
“Because he’s going to help me with my Calc 101 homework,” said Olivia, who was finally finishing the few credits she needed for her degree. Olivia leaned over and waved at Jude through the window of my Airstream. Jude never met a science or math class he couldn’t ace with his eyes closed. “He does that every Wednesday.”
“Because the man is a saint,” Mom declared. She studied me. “You know he almost married the custard queen.”
“Kenzie Gordon?” I couldn’t fathom it. She was the blond statuesque winner of Miss Wisconsin a few years ago, my high school class’s homecoming queen, and heir to the Gordon’s Frozen Custard fortune.
“Andhewas the one who broke up withher,” Olivia said.
My brain felt temporarily overloaded. Dr. Cheese had… game? Since when?
“Good thing, too, or he’d have the world’s worst father-in-law.” Mom made the sign of the cross to emphasize her point.
Everyone in town hated billionaire Allen Gordon, owner of Gordon’s Frozen Custard, the dessert chain with the annoying jingle: “Yum. Yum. Give me some!” He was also known for emptying out all the “leave-a-penny” trays and dumping the change in his pocket, despite being the richest citizen of Lake Sanguis.
His literal penny-pinching entitlement rankled everyone.
A hard knock came on the Airstream door, and Mom rushed to answer it. “There’s my favorite adopted son!” Mom cried, pulling Jude into a massive hug.
“Hi, Mama Jenny!” Jude said sweetly, as he’d done since he was a little boy. Mom released him so Olivia could hug him. Suddenly, with Jude’s massive shoulders, there were too many people in my little trailer.
“Oh, hey, El,” he said.
“Jude,” I returned formally as I stood awkwardly in the small space and gave him a cardboard hug, thin and stiff, like I did every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and six months ago outside McCormick Place when he was in Chicago for the cheese symposium. When I touched the middle of his back, I definitely felt the hardness of new muscles I didn’t remember being there before. I inhaled the sweet and spicy scent that was Jude, a signature deliciousness that should be bottled and sold. I forgot how good the man smelled.
