“No, thank you.Anyway,” my kid went on as I made my way to the kitchen, “please don’t tell the cops.I’ll never do it again.I’m not sure I’ll ever get my license.I didn’t enjoy it one bit.Too stressful.”
I found a glass in a cupboard and turned on the faucet, then filled it.Chugging over the sink so as to not leave drips on Gabrielle’s floor, I stared out the kitchen window at the never-ending rows of grapes in the fleeting light of dusk.
“You okay?”came a familiar, friendly voice.I spun around to find Naomi.“Migraine back?”
I filled my glass again.“No.But I need to remember to drink more water.”
“Do you get migraines often?”
I shook my head.“No.And this one wasn’t too bad.It started when we were here.After my phone call, and then got progressively worse as we drove home.”
“Bad phone call?”
“You could say that.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
Not unless she was willing to use that wolfsbane to finish off a woman who should have been shivved in the kidney in prison.I just shook my head again.“It’s all good.Thank you though.This has been nice.Mabel’s never been keen on making friends, or very good at it.So getting her to interact with children her own age is beneficial.”
“These kids are all so chill.Nobody is going to judge her or be mean, even if she does say a few things that make us pause.And Austin guessed that she was autistic.Said she’s a bit like his friend Luca in class who is also on the spectrum.”
I huffed a laugh, then filled up the glass a third time.“She’s a stickler for the rules and justice.The girl has always been about doing what’s right and what’s fair.”
“Funny that she’s an only child.She’s never really had to share or have a piece of cake cut into two equal slices.”
That made me chuckle.“You’re right.I’m sure if she did have a sibling, she’d get out a ruler and a scale to make sure that each piece weighed the same amount and had the same frosting to crumb ratio.”
This woman was just so easy to talk to.Funny, smart, relaxed, not to mention beautiful.Even in denim overalls with an olive-green long-sleeve shirt underneath, and those adorable braids hanging over her shoulders, she was downright stunning.I’d never felt a pull or an urge to just reach out and cup someone by the back of the neck and haul their lips against mine the way I did with Naomi at this very second.
“How old are you?”I blurted out.
She blinked a couple of times, caught off guard by my question.
To be fair, I wasn’t expecting to say it either.
“Um, I’m thirty-seven.Why?How old are you?”
Thirty-seven.That made her eleven years older than me.
Eleven was a lot.
She was already going through puberty when I was taking my first breath.
And when I was going through puberty, she was a grown woman.
Now a new kind of heat was infiltrating my body, one accompanied by a spinning in my stomach, sweaty palms, and tingles racing down my arms.A ringing formed in my ears, and my vision grew narrow and tunnel-like.
I swallowed by it felt like a gob of peanut butter had lodged itself at the back of my throat.“Mabel,” I called out, leaving the kitchen and heading back to the living room.“We need to go, honey.”
Everyone spun around to face me.Even my kid looked confused.
“But the game isn’t over yet,” she argued.“We have to finish the game.We need to have a clear winner.”
“Everything okay?”Gabrielle asked, standing up and inching her way past people on the couch.
“Everything is … fine,” I said, heading to the table to grab our pizza boxes.“Mabel, we have to go.”
“But the game isn’t over,” she protested louder.“I want to stay to finish the game.It’s not fair.”
