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Bloody hell, but the woman was up for adventure. She pushed him, and he pushed her, until they were lying on their backs, naked, sweating, and gasping, and he’d have to pick up her hand and kiss the back of it, just because—there she was. She pointed out when she was wearing the “fancy underwear,” and he told her that it worked for him, but he’d take the cotton ones, too.
And she still wouldn’t let him sleep with her. Or tell him she loved him.
He’d shut up about it after Halloween, telling himself,Let her take her time.He hadn’t expected it to be thismuchtime, though.
Janey, now. Janey had her volleyball friends, some of whom still seemed to be her friends now that the season had ended, and she still had Alexis, who still had a comment to make about everything and always seemed to be watching Beckett out of narrowed eyes, no doubt preparing her analysis. Janey went to the movies and over to people’s houses and didn’t bring most of her friends home. “Because it’s weird,” she told him when he asked. “When we have our own house, I will. In one week.” She sighed. “I can’twait.”
“It’s weird because of Quinn?” he asked, genuinely confused. “Heaps of people live with their partners, though, who aren’t their kid’s parents.”
“But it’s herhouse,”Janey said. “That’s what’s weird.”
They were installing double-paned glass in the sun porch, bundled up against the mid-December chill. She held the glass for him as he ran a bead of caulk around the edge, and he asked, not looking up, “How is that weird?” Trying to take the judgment out of it.
She didn’t answer for a moment, and he said, “Take your time.”
“I guess because …” she said slowly. “That itfeelslike her house. I mean, it’s not like we’re living here. We’re renting it, and she’s the landlady. Nobody else does that.”
“You don’t seem to mind baking with her, though,” he decided to say.
“Well, yeah,” Janey said. “Because I’ve learned to make all kinds of cookies, and I can take some of them to school. Mic— my friends really like them. And all right,” she hurried on, maybe worried that he would sail into dangerous waters and ask her about her romantic life, which apparently was even more forbidden than talking about her period, “I get that she’s nice to us. Sheisnice. It’s just—”
“She is,” Beckett said. “Having Carly here every morning and afternoon, for one thing. It’s not easy to open up your house the way Quinn has. She had a pretty orderly life, I’m thinking, before we turned up, and your house is a bit your … safe place, when you’re grown. She doesn’t come home to quiet anymore, does she?”
“She probably doesn’t mind,” Janey said, “because she wants to marry you. And, obviously, have sex with you.” Alexis again, Beckett suspected.
He said, “Hand me that smaller one that goes up top.” And when she did, he said, choosing his words, “I don’t think she wants to marry me. And is that still bothering you? The sex?”
“Are you still doingit?” she asked. “I thought maybe you weren’t, because you don’t, you know, have PDA or anything.”
“PDA?”
She sighed. “Public displays of affection? Alexis says that when people first start having sex, they hug and kiss and slow dance in the kitchen all the time, and kiss like mad in the movie queue, and you and Quinn never do any of that.”
“How does Alexis know?”
“Dad. It’s common knowledge. It’s in movies. People at least hold hands. And I’ve seen, in the movie queue. Well, that’s usually high-school kids, not grownups. It’s so embarrassing, especially if there are any boys there.”
“Ah,” he said.
“I asked Violet,” she said, “how she knows if her parents are having sex, and she says she heard her mum once making all this strange noise, and this loud banging. Violet was just a kid then and didn’t know, and she knocked on the door and her parents didn’t answer, so she went back to bed and was scared. And after a while, her mum came in and sat on the bed and said, ‘When Daddy makes love to Mommy, the bed shakes.’ Violet said it washideouslyembarrassing, so now she tries not to know. She says, ‘We turn a blind eye.’”
Parenthood was fascinating, that was all Beckett had to say. “Oh,” he said. Had he ever thought this much about his parents’ sex life? He’d triednotto think about it, as far as he remembered. Or he’d assumed they were too old for that.
“But I never hear anything like that,” Janey said. “And you and Quinn are never sitting with her feet in your lap at the table or anything—Violet says her parents do that all the time, and I’ve even seen them do it—so I thought maybe you didn’t like her that way anymore. Plus, you’re both pretty old.” Proving that Beckett hadn’t been the only kid who thought sex stopped after thirty. “So is that what happened? Are you just friends now?”
“Well, no. Sorry to disappoint you. Quinn thought it would be easier for you and Troy if we were discreet.”
“Oh,” Janey said. “But people break up all the time. You should probably prepare for it.”
“I don’t think you really get to prepare for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ready for the next pane. Big one this time.” When she handed it to him, he said, “I think ending a relationship is always going to hurt. It’s been a long time for me, but that’s how I remember it.”
“Not as much as Mum dying, though,” Janey said.
“Nothing hurts like dying,” Beckett said. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.” He tried not to think about Quinn’s breezy cheerfulness around their move-out date, or that she’d, of course, offered to help them move, and to help unpack the mountain of boxes still sitting at the movers’. Shouldn’t she seem alittleconflicted about it? He knew he was.
