That draws a laugh out of me, and I look over at Daffy, who smiles devilishly. After a call to Gran to confirm that she is not, in fact, making only spinach for dinner, Chrys is much happier to go, and I don’t feel so guilty about going to Jake’s.
I arrive ten minutes later than I said I would, and when he opens the door, I’m already apologizing.
“I’m sorry, today has been so busy.” I step inside and start to toe my shoes off. “A?—”
I stop, realizing I was about to drop Aster’s name, my heart thudding in my chest. Jake watches me with a strange look, and I clear my throat, trying again.
“Actually, I can’t wait to see the house,” I lamely correct, and he laughs, swinging his arms out.
“Don’t take your shoes off,” he says, stopping me, “and don’t get your hopes up. I did a lot of demolition today.”
Jake plays the part of real estate agent, charmingly describing the various states of destruction throughout the house. The hole in the bathroom becomes a “charming little nook,” and the missing fixtures are “wide-open opportunities for just the right buyer.”
He stops outside one of the rooms. “And this was my bedroom.”
It’s stupid, but my throat catches at the thought of it — the room Jake slept in when we first met. Maybe if our situation had beendifferent, and he had a different home life, we could have spent time together in it.
He opens the door, and I walk in, not knowing why I expected it to still have posters, a bedspread. Instead, it’s completely vacant, like a dorm room awaiting its next student.
“Tell me,” I say, turning around in the center of the room and trying not to think about young Jake here, lounging on the bed, texting me. “Was teenage Jake a messy guy?”
“I haveneverbeen messy,” he assures me. “You’d love living with me, Lara.”
The sentence lands like a stone through water, splashing and sinking straight to the bottom, coming to a stop between the two of us. I know we’re both thinking about how, at one point, that was exactly the plan.
I clear my throat, trying to push past the moment for both of us. “Yeah, well, you’d hate living with me. I’mverymessy.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
It’s not true, exactly. It’s the triplets and the confines of our small apartment that make the mess, but the base of the sentiment is true. I can’t imagine Jake would like living with me, or my roommates.
He continues the tour like nothing happened, and I can’t stop thinking about the bed in the corner of that room, where he spent his time while our teenage relationship was blooming.
By the time we get back to the kitchen, I’m actuallyverycharmed by the place. One of the bedrooms has a little nook I could see Chrys reading in when she gets older. Aster would lovethe bedroom with the window facing the road, so he can watch thebye-byes.
“As you’ll notice,” Jake says, clapping his hands, “the oven is out of commission. But I still plan to make you a meal.”
“Oh, you do?”
I follow him out to the patch of concrete behind the house, and he sets me up in a folding chair, popping the cap off a lemonade and pulling a lemon slice from the cooler, sliding it on the rim.
“Fancy.” I laugh, sitting down when he insists that he doesn’t want my help. “Can’t remember the last time someone made me a fun drink.”
“What?” he jokes. “You don’t go out with your nursing friends? You really have that little free time?”
I nod and take a drink, averting my eyes, feeling the lies pile up inside me like grease, clogging up my insides. Jake either doesn’t notice or is nice enough not to press, instead busying himself on the grill. Whatever he’s making smellsamazing, and at one point, I see him pouring a container of queso from the Mexican restaurant on the square over the whole thing.
“Bon appétit,” he says, handing the dish to me, and I laugh, taking it, and the fork he hands me next. It’s a mess of meats — chicken, steak, shrimp — with veggies and rice, smothered in queso.
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” I tease, pointing my fork at him when I realize it’s too hot to take a bite right away.
“Il y a beaucoup de choses que tu ne sais pas sur moi,” he says, a smile splitting over his face when my eyebrows raise to my hairline. “There are a lot of things you don’t know, Lara.”
“Apparently.” I laugh, shaking my head and clinking my glass with him. Of everything — the new beard, broader chest, sure confidence — why is it that a bit of French has me feeling completely overwhelmed?
Jake speaks French, apparently. As we talk, he assures me that he’s not fluent, that he needed a year of foreign language in college and realized he really liked the challenge. That he might have double-majored if he’d had more time, but he finished after four years so he could head to the NHL.
I tell him about nursing school, about the really mean instructor who tried to fail me and told me I was too soft for nursing. He lost his accreditation a year later when a big scandal came out.
