This is the reaction I expected.
This is the reaction I deserve. Maybe she’s only holding my face so she can slap it.
“So, so mad at you,” she continues. “Except you win, because I’m so fucking happy about you two that I’m willing to overlook your disappearing on me.”
Us two?
She points at me and then at Luke as she speaks.
Confused, I back away from her and get into a standing position.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say.
Luke is suddenly beside me, saying, “She means about us.”
I jump when I feel his arm snake around my waist, and I look down at it to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
“I ...”
“I know we were going to keep it on the down low, but I told her. I couldn’t help it,” Luke says.
I turn and gape at him, and that’s when he brings his hand up to my face and softly brushes the tears off my cheeks.
My heart stops at the feel of his skin on mine after so long.
“I hope that’s okay,” he adds.
Luke’s gaze is like a magnet, and there’s a message in his eyes. A challenge? No, a plea.
But a plea for what? What exactly is he asking me to do?
The silence stretches out so long that Mel’s curious stare is starting to burn a hole through the side of my face.
Finally, I croak out, “Oh, yeah ... it’s ... fine.”
Whatever else may have changed about her, Mel’s intuition remains unrivaled. “Okay, I wasn’t born yesterday. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What ... what do you mean?” At this point, I’m practically squeaking.
Mel narrows her eyes at us, and then Luke laughs.
I haven’t heard his laugh in so long. Up close, it’s like standing too close to the epicenter of an earthquake. I flinch.
“We might as well tell her,” he tells me conspiratorially, tugging me closer with the arm around my waist. “Mom, trust me, you don’t wanna hear how it happened. Us getting back together.”
She still seems skeptical, but she leans forward. “Tell me.”
“It’s kind of ... personal,” he says, and I’m just looking from him to her, entranced by this show, in which I have absolutely no idea who any of the characters are, not to mention what the plot is.
“All the better. Have you ever known me to have boundaries?” Mel says.
“Mom,” Luke groans.
“Don’t Mom me. You want to deny a dying woman one of her few pleasures in life?”
The atmosphere in the room turns at that, Luke’s expression becoming sober. The Mel I remember didn’t call it dying. She called it surviving her Big Bad.
“Another day,” he says quietly. “Marilyn should be here any minute.”
