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She does a happy little clap, sending a spray of bubbles into the air from her pickled hands. “I knew you could do it!”
“Mostly I think it’s my tutor.”
“It never hurts to have a good teacher. Is she nice?”
Dang. Again I’ve managed to give her an in where there wasn’t one before. Can’t lie to Mom though. “He’s a he, and yeah, he’s nice enough.”
“Married?”
Here we go. “No.”
“Engaged?”
“Not that I know of,” I say, stacking a pie plate on the growing pile and dreading the glint I know I’ll see if I slip and meet Mom’s eyes.
“Well,” she says. “That’s good he’s able to help you.”
I can tell she’s using the entire force of her will to hold back from asking all the questions now bouncing around her brain. Maybe if I meet the storm head-on, she’ll let it drop.
“We’re just friends, Mom. Not even friends—business acquaintances, more like. He’s all business. We don’t talk about anything but math.”
She looks up from her sink of soapy water, and I swear I can see her literally biting her tongue. I grab another pan to dry. Still, over the running water and her silence, it’s like I can hear the questions she’s dying to ask.
Is he attractive? Do you enjoy your time with him? Look forward to it, even? Does he make you feel smarter than you really are? Is his aftershave distracting? Does it make you want to study his jawline instead of your assignment? Maybe run your fingers along that shadow of stubble?
Whoa! Where did that come from? No way Mom would be thinking that! She couldn’t know how—
I pull myself back to the present only to realize I’m standing in front of the cabinet with a very dry pan, staring at nothing. I put it away quickly and reach for another.
But the dishes are all done, the sink is clean, the water is off, and Mom is looking at me like it’s Christmas.
Chapter 20
Astronomical Discoveries
It’s strange how Mom hasleft me alone about the dating thing since the fiasco in the kitchen. It’s been a whole day and she hasn’t said a thing. She’s uncannily perceptive, but even she couldn’t hear me thinking those questions about Noah.
What on earthwasI thinking, anyway? I wonder again why, when she asked me about dating, Noah was the first one to pop into my mind. Even before Ethan—the only male who has paid any semblance of romantic attention to me all semester. I guess I haven’t thought of Ethan in weeks, and Noah is the only other guy I spend any amount of time with.
Am I developing some kind of crush on my tutor? I shudder. That’s too cliché.
Also, I’m not attracted to him. I’m not.
He smells nice. That doesn’t mean anything.
So what if his jawline is ruggedly shadowed by early afternoon?
“Looks like we’ve got a nice break in the clouds.”
Dad’s voice draws my attention from where I’ve been stewing, sitting in the living room window seat with a book while the boys watch TV and wishing I hadn’t eaten so much of Mom’s turkey noodle soup at dinner. Dad’s annual Thanksgiving stargazing was foiled last night by the heavy cloud cover; today he’s been glancing out the windows every five minutes since sundown.
“Moonset isn’t until about one,” he says, bouncing on his toes, “but it’s only first quarter, so the seeing should still be decent. Saturn’s too close to the sun, but Jupiter will rise right before midnight.” He already has his winter coat on, along with the little-boy delight he wears stargazing. “We can check out craters until it’s up. Who wants to come?”
“I’m in!” I say, abandoning the book I’ve been “reading” and scurrying to my room for warmer clothes so I can meet Dad at the shed. The boys aren’t too far behind me as I grab my parka and go outside, pausing on the back steps to let my eyes adapt to the darkness before I make my way to the hill where Dad waits. I take in the crisp, clean air and feel some tension slide from my shoulders.
Open spaces have always calmed me. When I was ten and we moved to Cedar Ridge, Dad found this amazing land outside of town with a perfectly positioned hill for his favorite hobby. He always says he would have chosen astronomy if he hadn’t been so darn good with computers.
Just don’t ask him to fix anything mechanical. His talents lie in the abstract. When Mom insisted a few years back that he needed some kind of shelter if he was going to stare into space for hours on end regardless of the temperature, he insisted he would build one himself. Thankfully, she overruled him and hired a family friend to construct the shed—a dome-topped cube, complete with retractable roof panels and a slide-out platform for his second scope. In the end, I think Dad was relieved to hand over his vision for someone else to bring into reality.
