‘I still want to ask her, though. She’s just…she’s it. I’m sure of it. Y’know?’
No. I did not know. I started walking around again as a middle-aged man was invading my personal space to see the books I was standing next to.
‘Surely, if that’s the case, it can wait a little longer? Until you’re certain that she’s ready, too? You’re not going to lose her because you haven’t offered her a commitment. There’s no hurry.’
‘It feels like a hurry. Now I’ve decided, it’s this constant pressure sitting on my chest.’
‘Like a heart attack?’ I asked, grimly.
‘No.’ He snorted. ‘Like…like the first time you tell someone you’re in love with them. Once you realise, you need to release it or you’re going to explode.’
‘I think I’d prefer the heart attack,’ I responded dryly. ‘Look, I’m honoured that you want my opinion on the ring, but we both know relationships aren’t my area of expertise, are they?’
‘They could be if you wanted them to be.’
If only it were that easy.
‘Matrimony isn’t for everyone,’ I said absently as I noticed a book on the opposite side of the table with an image of rolling hills and the author’s name picked out in bold font. As bold as the author herself: it was one of Elle’s. I found my hand reaching for it, slowly, as though she might leap out from beneath the table and cry out ‘Gotcha’. When I had it firmly in my grasp, I tested the weight of it. How odd to hold a downloaded version of her formidable brain in the palm of my hand. I wondered if it ever occurred to the other people browsing in the shop that the author of this book could be a royal pain in the arse?
‘If you say so,’ Nick said. ‘Look, call me when you find him.’
I blinked at the abrupt return to the previous topic of conversation. ‘OK.’
‘No. I mean it, Stephen. I want to know how you are. It’s understandable if it’s messing with your head.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Let me be there for you…the way you would have been there for me after Mum…if I’d let you.’
I released a slow breath through my nose. I didn’t want to push him away when he was being so honest with me. I knew what it cost him to talk about that, so I nodded and said the only thing I could, which was the truth. ‘I just want it over with, Nick. I want to deal with it and put it behind me.’ Put my biological father behind me.
And then I could get back to my uncomplicated life.
Chapter Eighteen
Elle
And – just to make sure I’ve understood correctly—’ Keisha said softly as she watched me slide the poster onto the Xerox machine at the public library, ‘this is all to help that cute British guy who you don’t like, and who doesn’t like you?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ I agreed. ‘But only because it’s going to help me, too.’
My index finger danced over the numbers on the screen as I debated whether fifty or one hundred was the best number of copies to make. Little Italy wasn’t a big neighbourhood, but if we got a tip-off for another area, then a few extras would be useful. I compromised and decided on seventy-five, hitting ‘copy’.
Sun streamed in the window behind Keisha, lighting the edges of her black hair auburn, a halo of dust motes floating above her. Knowing she spent most of her mornings here doing the research for her historical novel, as soon as I’d finished perfecting the poster on my laptop using one of those clever ageing apps, I headed down here and surprised her with her favourite butterscotch Frappuccino as a thank you for the Friday-night bar-counselling session, while I got my copies done. Now she was playing with the paper straw in the top, ice rattling in the bottom, and looking at me with concern.
‘Are you sure? I know I said to give yourself some space to think but I didn’t really mean…’ she waved her hand in a circle toward the machine, which was whirring and spitting out warm A4 sheets of paper ‘…this.’
‘Trust me, Keesh, this is going to work. I can feel it.’
‘Yes, but haveyoudone any actual work?’
‘A bit,’ I hedged, thinking of the Post-it Notes on my wall – they totally counted. ‘And I’m going straight back home to get down to it after I’ve done this. I swear.’
‘You’re not going to stick these up around town?’
‘No. I have two delivery boys for that who’ll be turning up any minute now.’ I took the pile of paper off the tray and carried it over to the table where Keisha was set up.
‘The twins?’ She smirked, dropping into her chair. I nodded, counting out a couple dozen for my bag, then splitting the stack and turning one pile sideways on top of the other, ready to pass to my brothers. ‘How d’you rope them into that? Are you paying them?’
‘Oh hell no. When we went out for tacos the other night, they had too many beers and spilled alotof college stories they don’t want Mom and Dad to know about. Those boys will never learn that, even though I’m smaller, I have eight more years of experience at holding my liquor.’
‘You’re such a mean big sister.’
