She looks around. “There are no signs saying I can’t.”
“Mom, I work here, andI’mthe one telling you,” I hiss.
“Oh, Hattie.” She sighs—sometimes I feel like our roles are reversed andI’mthe adult—but she slides off and gives me a dazzling smile. “There, now stop delaying. Dish.”
I wince.
Guess I really was that transparent.
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatdon’tI want to know?” Her eyes are shiny and she’s wearing a matte red lipstick, making her look a little like a painted clay character. “How did you get together?”
“Well,” I say awkwardly, “we knew each other as kids.”
“Oh, I knowthat. But didn’t he go away? And he just came back?”
“Basically, yeah.” I feel like I’m reciting bullet points of Ethan’s vague personal history. “But we, uh—we kept in touch? Margot was an easy bridge. I think she always wanted to set us up.”
If he finds out I said that, I’m dead.
Here I am, making up a history on the fly even I won’t be able to keep straight.
“Wow. He’s been in love with you since you were teenagers? That many years ago?” Mom has whale eyes bigger than an excited puppy, clasping her hands together.
“No. God no. We didn’t get along too well when we were young, if you remember.”
She nods. “Okay…”
“I don’t know. Things just changed. It was all very sudden.” I think about Ethan’s intense blue eyes and the way he forbid me from ever speaking to Cooper Daley again.
Almost like he wasjealous.
I’m misreading signals, I’m sure, because Ethan Blackthorn doesn’t strike me as the jealous kind.
Certainly not when he’s only pretending to be into me.
Then again, how can I know for sure if I’ve never seen him into anyone else?
He used to be a serial dater, yeah, but that’s not the same. It’s not like I was there for that.
“There must be more. Tell me,” Mom demands. “They said you lookedverycozy with him in Kennebunkport.” She wags her eyebrows. I want to scrub the image out of my brain with bleach. “Was the proposal romantic? Are his parents still nice? How long have you been dating? My, I haven’t seen the Blackthorns in years…”
The questions keep coming like machine gun fire.
“Um. Um!” I say. “We weren’t dating that long, but…” God, what do I say? My palms are slick. Whatever I say now, I’ll need to remember to tell Ethan later and suffer the consequences. “I haven’t reconnected with his parents yet. We’re having dinner soon.”
That is,ifI can get the time off.
Mr. Sneed is a notorious tightwad when it comes to PTO. He doesn’t like to handle customers on his own, preferring to hole up in the back office.
I’m way better at customer service anyway than his wooden, grouchy face.
The ball of stress in my stomach snowballs.
“Oh, dinner?” Mom echoes. “That’s perfect. Make sure you let me know when and where. I’ll join you!”
“What?” My heart leaps up my throat. “Mom, I don’t think that’s—”
