Page 31 of This Might Hurt
Once all the dishes have been arranged on the table, we sit down in the breeze from the open back door.
Over Ramona’s shoulder I can occasionally see a bee buzz in, turn around in confusion, and fly back out again.
I stir my salad around pointlessly, focusing on how the two of them cut into their steaks with watery trails of blood, so that I can ground myself in a deeply familiar sense of uneasiness.
“What did you boys do today?” Ramona asks after a few minutes of silence. I’ve been bracing myself for an interrogation about who I am and where I’m from, but she doesn’t seem terribly interested.
I glance at Jude, who twitches his head in a tiny no gesture. His eyes beg me to shut up until he’s done chewing and let him answer.
“He gave me a tour,” I say, to show him I can manage at least one thing without his help. “The house, the property. It’s a beautiful place.”
“Oh, you should come see the library tomorrow,” she enthuses, delight dawning on her face. “Jude just finished the Children’s Book Week display. He’s going to become a high school English teacher, but I keep telling him he’d be so sweet with younger kids too.”
Jude coughs loudly. His lean face, with its careless day-old stubble, looks pink. “I never even finished community college. I’m not becoming any kind of teacher,” he mutters, his eyes fixed on his plate. But he has to prop a fist in front of his mouth to hide a shy smile.
Before Ramona can answer, my phone starts vibrating loudly against my thigh. I forgot to turn the damn thing off when I left home. For one split second that sheepish grin of his erased everything else. Now fear creeps along my veins as I mute the call through the denim of my shorts. “Sorry.”
Five seconds later, it goes off again. I check the clock above the fridge, but there’s no need. It’s almost time for the wedding to start. This morning I told my mother I was traveling to fetch some elaborate gift for Daxton, but I should have been back thirty minutes ago.
Without looking at the screen, I know it’s Archie. It’s too much of a crisis to waste time with anyone else. If I answered, he’d probably convince me to come home even now. Jude could watch him take me apart.
Ten seconds after I mute it, he tries again.
I put down my fork, my heart thumping. “Sorry, I should—” I meet Jude’s eyes helplessly.
He leans around the corner of the table without a word and shoves his hand into the oversized pocket of my shorts.
The agitating vibration against my skin disappears as he steals the phone and studies the screen with a flat expression.
He stands up and leaves the room with it, and I hear the buzzing stop, followed by his feet thumping upstairs.
“Sorry,” I say again, as the room goes quiet.
Ramona smiles and shakes her head. “I’m very happy you came.
” She offers me the salad bowl with a keen glance that tells me she’s choosing not to ask questions.
I don’t want more food, but I take the dish anyway and shovel greenery onto my plate to keep my hands from shaking.
“I’ve never seen Jude have a friend,” she says quietly.
My tense shoulders begin to relax. The breeze from the door smells like the gorgeous honeysuckle that grows on the south face of Carrick House. “Is he your grandson?” It seems unlikely, given their different ethnicities, but he could have been adopted.
“Not quite.” Her face lights up with so much fondness it suffocates me.
“Sometimes I forget he isn’t, but we only met the February before last. Every time it snowed, I found this scruffy, hungry boy with a big backpack hiding in the corner of the library.
I was worried at first, because we aren’t used to homeless folks around here.
But all he did was come in and read for an hour or two a day.
He got through all of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, then half of The Overstory, and that’s when I said hello.
All the boy would talk about was books, like his mind was more starved than his body.
He said he liked sad stories the best because they were the easiest to understand. And that’s how we met.”
I gawk at her, fascinated. “Did he—” I cut off when Jude thunders noisily back downstairs.
He reappears with the massive cat cuddled up in his arms, purring so loud I can hear it halfway across the room.
But his bright amber eyes have gone darker, more watchful, and he’s not smiling anymore.
The coiled energy leaking off his skin sends both heat and cold through me at once. This is the man I came to find.
“So,” he says without sitting down, fidgeting on his feet as he rubs his chin on the cat’s head.
He picks up a tiny bit of steak from his plate and feeds it to the animal.
“Andrew and I are going on a road trip this week. Is it okay if he stays here tonight?” He was the one who insisted on this dinner, but he seems over it now.
“Of course, honey.” Ramona starts gathering plates and stacking them with a soft clinking sound. “Get the things off the bottom shelf of the linen cupboard and make up the couch for him.”
“Thank you.” Jude and his cat disappear again abruptly.
“I’ll help with the dishes,” I offer. Yet another line I learned from TV and books instead of real life.
“Why thank you.” She turns on the tap and opens a drawer full of sponges and dishcloths.
“You can wash and I’ll dry.” It’s too late to back out now, but god I wish she wouldn’t help me.
It’s torture standing next to her in the quiet twilight thinking about the mess I’m dragging her surrogate grandson into.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her trying to tactfully scrub off leftover bits of food with her drying cloth, because I didn’t do a good enough job.
Colin would laugh his ass off at the sight of me. Right now, I feel like I deserve it.