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“I’m going to beat you!” she called out.
“Lexi!” my mom scolded. “The whole neighborhood can hear that child when she screams.”
“Well, guess that means you don’t need the tornado sirens. Just give her a bullhorn and we can put her on the roof—”
Mom popped me on the butt with her hand and I chuckled. I might have been in my late twenties, but that woman still saw me as the smart-mouthed little girl who once stood up on a counter at a department store, folded my arms, and announced to everyone that perfume made you smell like a stinky pig. It was a protest because my mom wanted to buy me a bottle of the little girl’s stuff that smelled like overripe bananas.
Ever since then, I’ve despised bananas.
“Let’s go before it gets hot,” I decided. “Do you want to eat at Dairy Queen or come home and make sandwiches?”
Mom grabbed her purse and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. I reached out and hugged her tight.
“Let’s eat out.” She sniffled against my hair. “Maizy can get a chocolate-dipped cone. She likes those. I don’t ever want her to go through life not having the things she wants. Sometimes I still feel guilty for not buying Wes a skateboard when he was nine. I should have given himeverything,” she said in a broken voice.
Tears welled in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. “It’s okay, Mom. I know. You gave him love, and that was all he needed.”
We sniffed, sighed, and laughed at each other.
“My makeup is ruined,” she said, sliding a finger beneath her lashes to wipe away the mascara.
“That’s okay, Halloween is only four months away.”
“You’re never too old to be grounded, young lady.”
* * *
We madea brief stop at the cemetery to lay down a bouquet of beautiful white lilies. Maizy climbed on the statues for a while and then we watched her pluck tiny yellow flowers (which were really weeds) from an open patch of grass and place them on Wes’s grave, arranged in the shape of a heart. She’d never met her big bro, but he would have loved her to pieces.
Afterward, we swung by Dairy Queen. It was a new location that had opened earlier that year, and we stopped in once in a while to pick up a sack of burgers and fries, and of course a hot dog for Maizy.
We were sitting at a table by the window, watching Maizy color with a green crayon, when my mom gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh my God, is that who I think it is?”
I swiveled my head around in the direction she was looking. Sunlight reflected off the glass as the door opened and made me squint. Stepping through the front door of Dairy Queen… was Austin Cole.
Also known as my brother’s “best friend for life.” They’d met in the first grade and had been inseparable ever since. He and Wes had run with the same crowd, sometimes dated the same girls, and could finish each other’s sentences. Austin used to spend the night at our house and we’d treated him like a member of the family. In fact, when I was thirteen, I secretly decided we were going to get married. I had doodled Alexia Cole inside my notebook where no one would find it.
As kids, Austin used to pick on me without provocation. He once plucked off all the eyes on my stuffed animals and would dip his finger in my juice glass at the breakfast table and flick the drops at me. He didn’t have a sister, so he probably didn’t know how to deal with girls. Austin wasn’t doing it to be cruel—he just enjoyed getting a rise out of me. Iwasa dramatic little girl.
“He’s changed,” Mom said in a quiet voice.
Her sullen expression at his unexpected appearance told the story. The last time we had seen him was seven years ago at the funeral. He’d left town that week without any explanation. No phone call, no letter, and that hurt. We’d been like his second family.
The visual of his body standing in front of the door burned into my retinas. His swagger in those loose jeans, the way his tight T-shirt had come untucked on the right side, the black leather Oxfords, and most notably, the ropes of muscle in his arms. Austin no longer resembled the boyish young man I had last seen seven years ago. He had filled out in all the right places. While I couldn’t see his eyes behind those mirrored shades, I knew they were still crystal blue and the most remarkable feature he possessed, although the slight cleft in his chin came in a close second. Something about those pale eyes against his brown hair and thick brows could make a woman forget her own name.
He was dangerously handsome and held the attention of every woman of age in the room.
“Is she pretty?” Maizy asked, holding up her picture.
I blinked.
Princess in a green dress with an orange face. “She’s beautiful, Maze.”
My heart pounded against my chest and Mom stabbed the ice cubes in her cup with a clear straw. When her eyes lifted and locked, I knew right then and there he’d spotted her and they were engaged in a staring match. I waited expectantly for him to come up from behind and say an awkward hello.
Instead, I glanced out the window and saw Austin walking briskly to the adjacent parking lot where he had parked his classic Dodge Challenger. It was a badass model with black paint and tinted windows.
“Mom?”
