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Stepping close to me, Daniel looked at my lips and then my eyes. My heartbeat picked up; my breath caught in my throat. I felt dizzy, like I’d eaten an entire cone of cotton candy and now I was on a soul-ascending sugar high.
Daniel licked his lips. I went up on my toes to make it easier for him.
“Tell your mom thanks from me,” he whispered, a teasing grin spreading wide. “They’re beautiful.” Tweaking one of my curls, he turned to shut the front door. “C’mon.” He started back down the hall to the kitchen without looking back.
My cheeks burned as I followed. Had he almost kissed me? I was pretty sure he’d almost kissed me. I wasn’t delusional, was I?
“You can put your things there for now,” he said, motioning toward the breakfast nook.
“How can I help?”
“You can’t. Have a seat.”
I heaved the backpack off and slid into the booth.
He bustled around the delicious-smelling kitchen, putting the roses in a vase with water and placing them on the table in the nook. I could smell their fresh scent even over the cooking odors.
“Where’s Milky Way?” I asked, surprised she hadn’t greeted me at the door with Kennedy. “And your mom and Paul?” I looked around. Kennedy had also disappeared.
“Downstairs watching TV. They ordered pizza earlier. We recently got Domino’s delivery out here, and the kids are loving it. Milky Way, too. She’s a big fan. That’s why she didn’t come greet you. It’s not that she doesn’t love you anymore. Don’t worry.” Back by the stove, Daniel put on oven mitts before reaching inside to pull out a bubbling pot pie. “We’re going to eat on the upstairs deck for some privacy.” He settled the pie on a metal trivet. “That okay with you?”
“Sure. But they’re not joining us?”
“No. It’ll be just you and me.”
“Oh. I’d thought—” What was I supposed to say? That I’d spent the week picturing his mom and siblings being here in order to keep myself from imagining this was a date?
Daniel cocked his head and teased, “I mean, if youwantto eat with my whole family, I can call them up here, and we can endure the awkwardness of me and my mom in the same room. It’s intense and shitty, but I’m game if—”
“No!” I interrupted him before he could go on. “I’m happy for it to be just us. Alone.” Daniel and I had almost never been alone. I could only think of a handful of instances in all the months we’d known each other.
“Good. Me too. I’ve been looking forward to it.”
My pulse picked up again. “Me too. I mean, I’ve been looking forward to tonight. Seeing you.”
Grinning, Daniel poked a fork into the pie, pulled it out, examined it and nodded. “That’s done. Now, just let me throw these green beans on the stove to make Kennedy happy, and then we’ll take the pie and anything else we need up to the deck. After that, it’s possible, but not guaranteed, that we’ll be left alone.”
“She’s going to eat green beans andpizza?”
“She’s weird,” Daniel said, like that explained everything.
I guessed it did. When I was a kid, I liked to mix Pop Rocks and mashed bananas in a bowl and eat them, so who was I to judge?
“What’d you bring?” Daniel asked, nodding toward my backpack as he stirred the canned beans over the heat.
I unzipped the bag and pulled things out one by one to show him.
“A folder of pictures from earlier in the summer. I thought you might like seeing them.” I skipped over the new box of condoms. “Well, I didn’t bring this so much as it was already in here. I don’t know what to do with it.” I pulled out the manila envelope full of proof of my uncle’s life. I hadn’t looked inside it since that first day with my dad, and most of the time I forgot about it. Except for when I’d accidentally grabbed it instead of the right notebook for a class.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“Remember how I told Bobby about my uncle’s journal and stuff?” I waved the manila envelope in the air before returning it to my backpack. “That’s what.”
“Ahh. Bobby asked about that when I talked to him on the phone two nights ago,” Daniel said. “He wanted to know if you’d read the journal or the letters yet.”
“Such a gossip hound.”
“He is.”
