When Sydney wandered out after a few minutes, a long silence filled the living room. I looked over at Ro on the other couch, but to my surprise, he was already looking at me. Or, more specifically, he was looking at Luke’s hand on my leg.
“Did you and Eric have a good game?” I blurted. I knew they’d spent the afternoon playing pickup basketball.
“Yeah,” Ro said shortly, then stood. “Going to go take a shower.”
“Thank God. I can smell you all the way from here,” I said, feeling the need to lighten the mood. Maybe there was no need, but I could have sworn something changed when Ro saw Luke’s hand.
Rowan snorted and started toward the stairs.
Before he went up, he turned and looked over at us again, his eyes resting on the hand Luke still had on my leg.
Luke’s gaze remained trained on the television, but the feel of Rowan’s eyes made me warm and self-conscious. Our eyes caught for a second, and he looked at me as if asking something. If his eyes held a question, I had no idea how to answer it, so I didn’t. Just stared back at him.
After a moment he turned and started up the stairs. “Cool story,” I heard him mutter to himself, and then he was gone.
For the next few hours I kept expecting Ro to come back down, but he never did.
I didn’t see him again the rest of the night.
THEN
Ro knew something was up.
The way he’d looked at me told me he did. Half of me wanted to leave it at that, or leave it to Luke or Mel to tell him, but I couldn’t do that to Rowan. No matter how absent he’d been from my life lately, he deserved to hear it from me. And I didn’t know why exactly, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t like what I had to say.
By the time Luke and I said goodbye that evening, kissing for minutes in the Cohens’ driveway, I had decided that I’d tell Ro the next day, after Luke left for State.
I came bounding downstairs on Sunday morning, planning to borrow Mom’s car to drive to Ro’s house, when an unfamiliar sound stopped me in my tracks.
A laugh.
Deep and short.
My father was laughing.
In general, our house tended to be pretty light on laughter.
When I entered the dining room, my father was sitting at one end of the table, his hand wrapped around a mug of coffee. His iPad was in front of him, and he was grinning. It shouldn’t have surprised me so much, finding Rowan in the chair beside my father, eating a blueberry muffin like he lived here, but it had been a while since he’d come over for one of his and Dad’s “chats.” They happened sporadically. Every once in a while Ro would drop in on Dad and chat his ear off about tennis. Ro claimed he liked doing it, that helikedbeing regaled with optometry school anecdotes and eye horror stories that Dad offered in turn, but I knew he was just being nice. That just the way he’d looked at me years ago and seen a lonely little girl who needed a friend, Ro had looked at Dad and seen someone who could use a distraction, could use some levity, if only for a few minutes at a time.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Dad said now.
“Brought you guys some of the muffins Mom made yesterday,” Ro said, talking with his mouth full. He slid a large Tupperware container over to me and patted the chair beside him. “I was just telling Jeff how I got out of a ticket last week.”
“Let me guess—all you had to do was blink and show your teeth,” I joked, sitting down beside him. I nudged his thigh with mine, and he nudged me back.
“You wound me,” Ro said, but he was grinning. He was in a better mood than I’d seen him in weeks. “I also gave Officer Hamilton an autograph.”
“Of course,” I said, reaching for a muffin and taking a bite.
For the next few minutes the three of us sat around the table talking and laughing. I felt an unfamiliar ache then, and it took me a second to realize what it was: I wished my mother were here, that we were the kind of family that sat around on Sunday mornings, laughing and telling stories.
“I’m just going to go up and check on Jessi’s mom,” Dad said, excusing himself as if he’d heard my thoughts. “She has this head cold.”
Ro gave me a knowing look, but said nothing.
After Dad was gone, I turned to Rowan. “He loves you.”
“They all do. Can’t say I blame them either,” Ro said, and I shoved him.
