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“Trevor.” That was Mrs. Jenkins again. “Am I mistaken in thinking that you enjoy singing as well as playing the guitar?”
“I…”
My brain rolled back to this morning when I’d grabbed my Les Paul and tried to run a few scales. They sounded like crap. I’d been too distracted and eventually had given up, playing a few chords over and over again until Taylor screamed at me to shut the hell up. She was still mad and blamed me for the fact that Mom had grounded her an extra two days because of her epic meltdown.
Maybe she didn’t deserve it, but then, she’d apparently dropped the f-bomb more than once. My parents are fairly tolerant when it comes to certain things, but the f-word wasn’t one of them. The f-word was not allowed. Ever.
“I’m slowly getting my chops back,” I eventually replied.
She was filling up her wineglass again, and I caught the way Everly’s bottom lip stretched thin as she stared across the table at her mother.
“Eric used to play the guitar for us, but it’s been a long time. Honey, why don’t you get out your acoustic and play us a song after dinner? That would be so nice. Don’t you think that would be nice?”
“I haven’t played in ages, Terry.”
“No,” she answered, rolling out the one word. “No, there are a lot of things you haven’t done lately.”
Okay. Now she was saying what she meant, and I was wishing she’d kind of kept that one to herself.
“Jesus,” Everly muttered.
“What was that?” her father asked, though his eyes never left her mother.
“Nothing,” Everly replied. “Nothing,” she said a little louder before turning to me. “Are you done eating?”
There was still food on my plate, so technically I wasn’t, but the look in her eyes said that I was.
“Yeah.”
She pushed her chair back. “I’ll take you home.”
I had no idea what was going on with her family, but there was a weird vibe I hadn’t noticed before. Mrs. Jenkins was reaching for the nearly empty bottle of wine, eyes on her husband, and I could almost hear the f-word falling from her lips. It was like she was daring him to say something.
From my experience, limited as it was, alcohol and weird vibes meant trouble. It was time to go.
I thanked Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins for dinner, and though they protested strongly and said dessert was going to be delicious, I think they were probably relieved when I left. Or at least the pastor was. Everly’s mother was already searching for another bottle of “God’s juice,” I think she called it.
I scooped up my stuff and followed Everly out to the car, and we took off toward home.
Except we didn’t go to my place. She kept driving, and I kept quiet. It just kind of felt right to sit there and not say anything. Eventually she pulled into Baker’s Landing and cut the engine.
“Do you want to…” Her eyes were shiny, her voice a little wobbly. I nodded.
“Yeah. We can sit by the water if you want.”
I followed her to the edge of the pond and sat my butt down beside her. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but something had happened back at her place, and I could tell that she was upset.
“Hey, are you all right?” I asked, nudging her with my knee.
She took a few seconds, shook her head, and whispered, “No.”
Shit. I wasn’t real good at this kind of thing. Most of the girls I’d dated—and not that Everly and I were dating, so this was just a general snapshot of what I knew—but when those girls got all emotional, it was usually because (A) I hadn’t paid enough attention to them, or (B) they thought I liked someone else (hell, I can’t help it if a guy and a guitar is all it takes for some random girl to send you inappropriate text messages), or (C) I’d just broken up with them.
For each of those scenarios, I was good. I knew what to do, how to act and how to react. But this here? What was going on with Everly? This was new territory, and I wasn’t sure of the right protocol. I guess it’s because I’d never really been friends with a girl. Sure, I’d done the friends-with-benefits type of hookup, but this was so not that. This was something more. Something undefined, at least for me.
Did I put my arm around her? Did I just shut the hell up and listen?
I thought about it for a few moments and opted for the shutting up and listening, because those shiny eyes of hers were now filled with tears and I didn’t want to do something wrong and make them spill.
