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How did he know that? Did my scream give it away?
He went on. “Did you come to see my mom?”
My head started nodding as my stomach turned cold. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t prepared to meet the family. I wasn’t even wearing my girlfriend clothes. But there wasn’t another answer. “Yes.”
“She just woke up,” Hank said. “I’m going for ice chips.”
“I’ll get them,” I offered, wanting to get him back into the room. He wasn’t Jack, but he was close enough to make trouble.
Plus, I needed a minute to regroup.
“You go on back,” I said. “I brought flowers, but I forgot them in the car. So—ice chips. Next best thing.”
Flimsy. But he shrugged and said, “Okay.”
On the way to the nurses’ station, I explained it all to Doghouse’s earpiece. “I’m going in,” I said. Then, ice chips in hand, I started toward Connie Stapleton’s room—but I paused when I caught my reflection in the chrome elevator doors.
Did I look like a girlfriend? Anybody’s, even?
It was hopeless, but I tried zhuzh-ing myself a little bit, anyway. I took off my jacket and hid it behind a potted plant. I rolled my sleeves and unbuttoned the top button of my blouse. I unwrapped my hair from its bun and shook it out to fluff it. I popped my collar for a second before deciding I was too nervous to pull that off.
I’d just have to make it work.
I mentally reviewed what I knew about Jack’s parents from the file. Dad: William Gentry Stapleton, a veterinarian, now retired. Went by Doc. Widely beloved by all who knew him. Once rescued a newborn calf from a flooded oxbow lake. Married to Connie Jane Stapleton, retired school principal, for over thirty years. High school sweethearts. They’d spent five years in the Peace Corps, rescued homeless horses, belonged to a recreational swing-dancing club, and were, by all accounts, good people.
I knocked on the door, and then I opened it as I said, redundantly, “Knock, knock.”
The three Stapleton men were seated around Connie Stapleton’s bed in chairs they’d pulled close. She was sitting up a little, wearing a dab of lipstick with her feathery white hair neatly brushed—and looking somehow more put-together than a postsurgery patient in a hospital gown had any right to.
Shecould have pulled off a popped collar. If she’d had a collar to pop.
At the sight of them—live, actual people—I started overthinking it. What kind of expression would Jack’s girlfriend have on her face? Warmhearted? Concerned? What did those expressions even look like? How did you arrange your features? How did actors even do this?
I settled on a half smile, half frown and hoped it was convincing.
Jack must have read my panic because he popped up and strode right toward me. “Hey, babe,” he said in a pitch-perfectly affectionate voice. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I brought some ice,” I said.
Jack was looking at me, like I thought you were staying in the hallway.
I just blinked at him, like Change in plan.
He could tell I was nervous.
That must’ve been why he kissed me.
A stage kiss, but still.
He walked right up to me without breaking stride, cupped both hands on either side of my jaw, leaned in, and planted a not-insignificant kiss on his own thumb.
And then he… lingered there.
His hands were warm. He smelled like cinnamon. I could feel his breath feathering the peach fuzz on my cheek.
I was so shocked, I didn’t breathe. I was so shocked, I didn’t even close my eyes. I can still see the whole thing in slo-mo. That epic face coming closer and closer, and that legendary mouth aiming right for mine and then docking itself on that legendary thumb, stationed right at the corner.
Technically, it was not a real kiss.
