Some premonition slowly iced his stomach. But surely it was just another blip in their schedule challenges, not a definitive blow off?
Finally, he texted back:
If I can help with anything let me know. I’ll be there in a flash.
He meant it when he’d said he hated games.
But he’d also just put the burden of asking for help on her. Which he also hated.
Suddenly he realized what was really bothering him about that text she’d sent: the two of them established a sort of radical, good-humored directness. And that text was oblique as hell. All apology, no humor, no real... intimacy.
Another text dinged in.
Thanks for understanding, Gabe.
And that was all.
Not even an emoji, for crying out loud. Not a heart or a smile or a cat.
He would have loved an emoji from her. And emojis got on his nerves.
He looked up when he realized it had gone silent. All of his friends were staring at him.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, looks like I can make the game after all.”
There was a long silence.
“Yaaay,” Louis said weakly. Finally.
“Nice, um, restaurant.”
Jasper seemed uncertain as to whether this was the appropriate word to use. A little wonderingly, a little amused.
She’d chosen Pasquale’s Pizza specifically for its unique qualities: it was way, way off the beaten path of downtown Hellcat Canyon, at the south end of town two streets behind the high school, where the buildings grew gradually more and more faded, drab and disreputable, as if the town was running out of toner by the time it got to them. And she was very unlikely to see anyone she knew there.
Its other unique qualities included a facade of dirty, chipping beige stucco; a no-frills rectangular marquee announcing PAS UALE’S PIZZER A; grubby, fissured beige linoleum that curled at its outer edges like potato chips; and battered and wobbly Formica tables crowned with glass shaker jars of cheese that had probably been powdered around 1977.
The pizza wasn’t horrible, which was perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about it.
“We’re not liable to run into anyone we know here, is the main thing. The pitchers are cheap. Free refills on iced tea, too.” She rattled her glass. Someone, somewhere, a few decades ago, might have passed a tea bag over the water, enough to give it its color. If she really gave her imagination a workout, she could almost taste tea.
One ordered at a glassed-in counter, behind which were the pizza oven and a trio of surly employees. They stared at Eden when she strolled in with Jasper, not so much in recognition of either of them but with vague hostility, as if customers were merely an inconvenient byproduct of running a business.
She’d taken a table way, way against the back wall, near a silent jukebox. She’d tied three knots in her straw wrapper so far. Three little knots to represent the great big knot in her gut.
Jasper had ordered a bottle of Michelob and wasn’t drinking it. He was percussing it with his fingers. Annelise did that, too: jauntily tapped things.
Eden inhaled. “Soooo...” she said on the exhale. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Soooo... well, I guess it’s that I’d like to get to know, um, our daughter.”
“The wordourimplies awe, and as I established, there isdefinitelynowe,” she said instantly and reflexively.
This was not off to a great start.
“Okay,” he said carefully. “I’d like to get to know the fruit of my loins?”
She closed her eyes. “So. Much. Worse.”