Page 46 of Back for Seconds

“Forget about that clown,” he said.

I flashed him a gracious smile before turning my attention back to our spread. “I want you to forget your clown too.”

“I have. I just…” He pulled his eyes away from mine. “I’m a little worried she’s going to find out that we’re hanging out and…”

“Spray paint cheater on the side of your minivan?”

“Who knows,” Joey said quickly. “Amber can be a little…reactive.”

“Then let her react.” I shrugged. “That’s not your circus anymore.”

He let out a hiccup of a laugh. “You’re right. I keep forgetting that.”

“Of course I am.” I grinned at him. “Now, tell me why everyone’s freaking out that you put a shirt on today.”

“You can’t send me a text but you’ll watch my daily videos?”

“Oh my god!” I rolled my eyes. “I totally texted you back.”

I was being loud, I knew I was. It was something Brian had always hated—how big my voice could become, how I could fill a space with noise. I’d never noticed it before Brian had pointed it out. I’d grown up around kitchen noise, family noise, Jersey noise, happy noise. My world before Brian had been as neon as the boardwalk. Our relationship had been short—brutally short—but he’d done a very good job of quickly and efficiently eliminating all that noise. He’d made himself my world. And with that, lights out. Monochrome. Inside voices only.

Joey tilted his head back and let out a bark of laughter. A loud laugh. “How is it possible I didn’t receive this magical text?”

We both raced to pull our phones out of our pockets, voices overlapping as we rushed to explain the timeline.

I would have texted you back, June, you know that.

Dude, I had to get the hell outta dodge.

Dude? Don’t call me dude.

I texted you when I got home, I swear.

No, you left and I woke up to nothing!

Finally, we both managed to rip our phones free at the same time.

“I knew it!” Joey flipped his phone around to show me our text thread.

I hadn’t texted him. I opened my side of the conversation—and there it was. My pathetic little text (hey, sorry had to go. emergency.) with a little red exclamation point next to it.

My jaw went slack, eyes wide. “It…never sent.”

Joey let out another laugh, his square jaw jutting into a broad, lopsided grin. “Aw, Junie.” He half stood to lean across the table, taking my cheeks between his big, warm hands. Then he pressed his lips to my forehead. “Don’t look so sad. You’ll get used to being wrong.”

I didn’t have time to glare a hole in Joey’s head before Sandra arrived with our Joey paninos. Homemade ciabatta rolls still warm in the center, sliced open and drizzled with balsamic reduction, then stuffed with marinated eggplant, roasted red peppers, tomato sauce, topped with a garnish of fresh pesto. On my sandwich, Sandra had also added a thick, dripping slice of fresh mozzarella and a dusting of pecorino cheese.

We went completely silent while we ate. It was the first time we’d shut up since we’d come through the door.

***

After dinner we continued down the highway to the big box hardware store, where we picked out the perfect shape and shade of tree lights. Joey convinced me I had to have a lawn sign, some garland for my front railing, and little fake candles to go in each panel of my bay window.

Back at my place, he helped me carry everything inside and, just as easily as I’d started washing dishes, Joey got to work draping my pathetic little tree in lights.

I slipped out of the living room into the kitchen and put on a kettle, and when I came back out, he’d connected his phone to my speaker and put on a playlist with Samara Joy and Frank Sinatra in equal measure. We worked together, unwinding the lights and rewinding them around the tree. My little house felt full again—with conversation and laughter and our tandem breathing when we both fell into extreme concentration. Mimi had been a great roommate when she was home, but I hadn’t felt this way about the blue house on Venus Avenue since…

Maybe ever. Brian didn’t like Christmas the way I did. He liked a version of Christmas that appeared on December fifteenth and disappeared on December twenty-sixth. He liked matching ornaments and spiral ham. Brian’s entire family was obsessed with the stuff. Christmas, Easter, funerals. Ham, ham, and more ham.