“Tea’s on!” Oliver’s mother yells from downstairs, and we both startle, like the rising heat in the room was just let out through suddenly opened windows.
17
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FOR ISLAND FIRES AND FAMILY BY DERMOT KENNEDY
Mum calls upstairs and I jump back from Addison like shrapnel. I feel sixteen again, caught with a girl in my room.
Addison stands up slowly, pulling her sweater off and neatly folding it on the bed. She tugs at the hem of her shirt like she’s trying to settle something inside her.
She follows me down the stairs, and I’m glad she can’t see my face. I’m stuck, pinballing back and forth between a nervous blush and wanting to grin like a teenager.
Mum’s setting the table when I round the corner into the kitchen, the smell of roasted herbs enveloping me like a warm blanket.
“Perfect timing, you two.” Mum gestures toward the table and smiles warmly at Addison. “You hungry, love?”
Addison smiles back, taking a seat at the table. “Starving.”
I slide into a chair next to her, deeply inhaling the scent of dinner. “I can’t wait for this. I’m Hank Marvin.”
“What?” Addison leans close to me. “Is this another alias?”
“No.” I chuckle, shaking my head. “It’s another way to say I’m starving.”
She raises a brow, puzzled. “Why not just say starving then?”
“Now, what’s the fun in that?” I ask her, laughing.“It’s a Cockney rhyming phrase.”
“A what?”
“Cockney rhyme. It’s the pairing of words to replace a similar sounding word,” I explain.
“That’s so confusing,” she says, shaking her head. Mum stands at the stove, stirring the gravy, giggling.
“Here’s another,” I say, nodding at her phone on the table. “Dog and bone.”
Addison narrows her eyes at me and holds up her phone. “Phone?”
“Exactly. See, you’ve got it. Might need to get you a bigger dictionary,” I say with a wink.
She stares at me. “Why can’t people just say what they mean instead of putting a riddle over it?”
I raise my eyebrows and laugh. “Oh, that’s rich coming from the PR expert. Isn’t it your job to spin straw into gold?”
“Touché.” Addison bursts out laughing, and for a second, I’m frozen just watching her smile, the kind of smile that spreads across her whole face and lights up her eyes.
Mum sets the dishes down on the table, and Addison’s eyes go wider and wider with each one. The roast pork looks perfect—crispy skin, steam curling off the meat. The potatoes are roasted to perfection, the gravy thick and rich, and the Yorkshire puddings are just sitting in a basket waiting for me to devour them.
Mum looks over the table and lets out a proud little sigh. “Right then. Wine?”
Addison grins, leaning forward. “Absolutely.”
Mum grabs a bottle of red from the kitchen counter and pops the cork. She pours each of us a glass, sits down at the table, and raises hers. “To having my boy home for the weekend.”
Hervoice goes soft over the word “home.” I smile at her, but it hits me in my chest, because I know exactly what she’s feeling—a mixture of gratitude and sadness. The ache of having one son at the table and not the other. She doesn’t have to say it, because I feel it too.
Addison looks back and forth between my mother and me and seems to realize the moment needs levity. “And to Hank Marvin and his dog and bone,” she says, lifting her glass to meet ours.
