Exactly As You Are (Love in Louisville #1)

Chapter 5

5

J oan glanced at Christine, who cradled her phone between her shoulder and her ear. She moved it away from her mouth to speak to Joan. “Mom wants to know if you can take Mimi to her doctor’s appointment on Wednesday.”

“Why couldn’t she just ask me?” Joan slid her hands along her wheel as she turned into the parking lot of the ice cream place where she and her sister were taking Ben, their brother. Their other brother, Wyatt, was likely at soccer practice with his four-year-old twin boys.

Christine shrugged.

“I don’t know. But she said no one else was able to.” Christine listened as their mother talked again. “Actually, she says she maybe could, but she’s supposed to have a meeting that afternoon.”

Joan doubted she was the only one in her entire huge family who was available, but she didn’t mind hanging with her grandmother, either. She knew her mother asked her because Joan liked that sort of thing.

“Yes, I’ll do it.” She pulled into a parking spot.

Christine hung up with their mom before turning to her. “Sweet.” She glanced toward the nearly empty ice cream joint. “I hate when it’s crowded.”

They positioned themselves on either side of Ben as they walked through the parking lot. Ben was autistic. He needed a lot of assistance with his daily activities, though he used a tablet for some of his communication, and he always indicated when it was time for ice cream. Thursday was ice cream night. Joan could already smell waffle cones baking as they strolled up to the door.

Joan and Christine got Ben seated before they walked up to the counter. He usually wanted to sit in the same place, which presented a problem when the restaurant was busy. Joan glanced back at him, watching as he ripped a napkin into several tiny strips. Hopefully, they’d make it back to the table before he made it through the whole dispenser of them.

They got him his standard scoop of strawberry. Joan chose s’mores flavor for herself.

“I’m surprised you aren’t working late again,” she said to her sister.

“Eh. I’m trying to find better balance.” Christine smiled. “Ang and I are doing bungee fitness classes now.” Her roommate, Angela, convinced Christine to try new and adventurous experiences all the time. They frequented cooking classes and fitness crazes. Beyond that, they’d hung a hammock in the living room of their tiny apartment to make it more “inviting,” and they collected plants that lined the windows of their kitchen and bedrooms. She was always hauling in craft activities for them to do. Joan liked the girl, but she would have found all that novelty exhausting.

“That sounds fun,” Joan said, meaning it.

Ben glanced between the two of them, making sort of oblique eye contact like he always did. He often seemed to be listening to their conversations, but not contributing unless they asked him a direct question. He seemed happy with that, though.

“What’s Lucas up to tonight?” Christine seated herself next to Ben, who stopped shredding napkins once she handed him his ice cream. The pile of paper in front of him had grown.

“They’ve got an away game,” Joan said. She licked an errant drip of ice cream off the rim of her cup. “He sounded pretty confident about it.”

Christine laughed. “Of course. Nothing ever goes wrong for our Lucas. I was just thinking the other day about that time you guys rode your bikes into a mud pit. You came out looking like a swamp monster, and Lucas somehow managed to get only one smear of mud across his cheek.”

Joan remembered that, too. They’d been twelve years old and had challenged each other to a wheelie contest, which always ended poorly, but Joan couldn’t turn down a competition. She also noted Christine’s use of “our Lucas”—her friends and family all claimed Lucas as their own. He could do that to a person—make you feel like you might be the most important person in the universe. In Joan’s case, she was closer to him than anyone else in the world. They’d been best friends for twenty years.

“I can never decide if it’s good luck or if he just makes it seem that way. Like, he can put a positive spin on anything.” Joan handed Ben a napkin, this one for actual use, and gestured to his chin. He wiped ice cream off his whiskered jaw.

“I feel like I haven’t seen him a lot lately, actually.” Christine tapped one of her rings against the table as she chatted. “Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Joan said, probably too quickly. They were fine, honestly, but she’d finally encountered something she couldn’t share with Lucas, and the situation stressed her out.

Christine pursed her lips. “I wondered if Chet didn’t like him, maybe. Back when he was still around.” Christine turned to Ben to take his empty cup. He muttered to himself, but didn’t reach for another napkin to shred. “And you still haven’t told me what happened with Chet, anyway.”

Shame coated Joan’s tongue, preventing her from responding. Her family didn’t know why all her relationships ended. She’d dated Chet for almost a year, and the heartache from their fallout still echoed in her daily life. They couldn’t see how badly she wanted a partner, in spite of her repeated failures in that department. Maybe they thought Joan flippantly ended relationships on a whim, discarding them without care, but that wasn’t true.

“Hardly any of my boyfriends have been great about Lucas.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you that.” She cocked her head. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you pointedly not answering my Chet question. But it’s probably none of my business.” Christine’s eyes burned with curiosity.

Joan wanted to talk to her, but the mere thought of speaking to her family about her problem created a wave of anxiety.

Joan looked at Ben instead. “How was the strawberry?”

He offered a tiny shrug, and Joan almost laughed. He’d been ordering strawberry ice cream every week for at least a decade.

She and her sister took the last few bites of their ice cream. Ben didn’t seem too antsy yet, so Joan thought they could sit for a few minutes.

“Have you talked to Wyatt this week? He sounded grumpy yesterday.” Joan planted her elbows on the table.

“He mostly calls you when he’s grumpy.” Christine laid her hand on Ben’s arm. His fingers gripped the edge of the table, like he might be ready to take flight.

“I think that’s our cue,” Joan said.

After dropping Ben off at her parents’ house and Christine back at her apartment, Joan thought about calling Lucas, but she’d been feeling so down and lost that she wasn’t sure if even he could cheer her up. She had her other friends, of course, but they tended to be less spontaneous with their gatherings. She went home instead, wondering when her spirits had taken such a turn, but she knew she wouldn’t find a single moment. It was a series of insults, tiny pinpricks of pain beneath her skin, leaving her aching with resentment and a hollow depletion she couldn’t shake.

She was hardly ever dramatic, but some situations warranted turmoil.