Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CORMAC
Text conversation with Dad
How are my plants?
Thriving. [Sends screenshots]
When are you returning from your mystery trip?
This evening.
Moira and I would like to have you and Nora over for dinner on Monday at 5:00 p.m.
Monday is Nora’s usual day off.
Moira purchased matching sweaters for you both.
They are not visually appealing, and I tried to dissuade her, but I’d appreciate it if you could try to appear grateful.
As long as I only have to wear it around her.
[Thumbs-up emoji]
Text conversation with Nora
I don’t think they saw us.
I require further context.
Our parents. I just got a text from my dad.
They’re inviting us over for dinner on Monday.
Spoiler alert: we’re getting matching sweaters.
How couple-y of us.
We can wear them when we go on our next double date.
Please tell me it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
It’s a done deal. We’re going on Thursday. Pansy’s already been texting me about it. She’s pretty insistent on going bowling. In Apple Ridge. [Puke emoji]
What if I have a finger injury?
From all the finger-banging you’ve been doing to me?
That could be a fun story.
Yup, you’ll DEFINITELY be the death of me.
When can I come over to do stalking research?
I’m busy with band stuff this weekend.
After dinner on Monday?
Ugh. I have to spend the whole night with you?
Also yes.
The weekend passes in a blur of shows, boxing practice, and work for the foundation. I try not to think about Nora, but it’s as hopeless as trying not to breathe.
On Sunday, the not-so-little-and-old ladies stop by to pass along their gift for the new Mr. and Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles.
It’s a medium-sized box wrapped in floral paper.
The box is heavy, but I’d assumed the gift would be some kind of large plant or ugly statue—something that would require placement in the house before my father and Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles return from their vacation.
This gift looks like it could easily have been given to them at any point.
It’s only as I accept it from Dottie that I realize it was a ruse all along. For some reason, Dottie and Ann have taken it upon themselves to oversee my situation with Nora, and they will not be denied.
Sure enough, they invite themselves into my house for a “tipple” and plant themselves at the dining room table.
Dottie hardly takes a breath before she forces me to sit and asks me to tell them everything.
Ann, in great anticipation, turns on her hearing aid, insisting she doesn’t want to miss a single word.
“Did you know my dad was going to Apple Ridge on his honeymoon?” I ask Dottie as I hand them both bottles of ginger beer.
“Of course. Didn’t you?”
I clench my jaw as I sit opposite Dottie. “And you didn’t think to mention it to me when I told you where Nora and I were going for our double date?”
“Did you see them?” she asks excitedly. “Tell us everything, dear.”
I do not tell them everything, for obvious reasons, but I confirm that Nora and I kissed. Honestly, I can’t help but tell them. It keeps playing through my mind on repeat.
“It was just a fluke, though,” I say. “She doesn’t like me like that.”
It’s obviously true. She may have been confused in Apple Ridge, but I haven’t heard from her at all beyond the texts we exchanged on Friday. All of her friends were at Garbage Fire’s concert at Silver Star Brewery on Saturday, but she was notably absent.
She was presumably at work. Still, it felt like she was drawing a boundary—and I was on the other side of it.
Ann shakes her head. “Son, what does this woman have to do to show you she likes you? Strip down naked and climb on top of you? My goodness, you young people and your games. She wouldn’t be pressing her mouth to yours if she didn’t want to be.
You can depend on it. She likes those shirts you’ve been wearing. ”
“Maybe she likes me a little,” I amend. It certainly felt like she did for a while there. “But not enough to risk an awkward situation with our parents.”
“Oh, tosh. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a crumpled ten-dollar bill. “Now, you show her a good time on Monday. Buy her an ice cream cone. Nothing gets a woman in the mood as much as a nice ice cream cone.”
“I’m not taking your money,” I object, horrified.
She’s already pressing it into my hand. “You don’t need to worry about it. My George is coming to visit the weekend after next. He’s going to take good care of me too. Just you watch.”
Dottie raises her eyebrows skyward, indicating they’ve had this conversation several times. I try to give the bill back, but Ann presses it more firmly into my hand.
“Please tell me you’re not meeting this man alone,” I say, accepting the money for now. I tell myself I’ll sneak it into her bag later, or use it to buy something for her.
“Honey, I’d like to do lots of things to him alone.”
Dottie and I exchange a glance, and I turn back to Ann, all the more determined. “Tell me where you’re going. I’ll sit at another table in the café.”
I’ll get Liam or Mick to go with me, and we can collectively intimidate whoever this guy is into leaving Ann alone.
No offense to her, but she is obviously not meeting with a movie star next weekend.
If some trafficking weirdo with a taste for old ladies is going after her, he’s going to have to deal with me first.
Okay, more realistically, he’s going to have to deal with Liam or Mick.
“Don’t fuss yourself,” Ann insists. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Let the boy feel useful,” Dottie urges.
Ann gives me a pointed stare. “I’ll only agree if you’ll follow my advice with Nora.”
“Haven’t I been?” I’m wearing the shirts she badgered me into buying, and I’ve been making polite overtures.
“You’ve been following the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it,” she says primly. “Did you tell her what you want?”
“That would be difficult. I don’t know what I want.”
She sniffs as if this is as much as she should have expected from me.
“If you don’t even know whether you want the girl, how can you blame her for not wanting to risk everything to be with you?”
I sigh, feeling a swarm of anxiety. “Look, I want her,” I admit, the words coming out firm but too loud. “I know that. But up until a couple of weeks ago, dating her felt as far-fetched as…well…as you dating a celebrity.”
“See,” Ann says, as if I’ve proven her point. “Miracles happen every day, my boy.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t picture that happening at all. I don’t know what it would be like. With our parents, and…” I wave a hand.
The truth is, I’m not at all sure what the future holds. I do want to stay in Asheville. It’s hard to imagine ever living anywhere else. At the same time, Kenji has renewed his campaign to get me to move to San Francisco. It would make sense, given that we’re working on the foundation together.
I could do that. I could leave and start a new life.
A month ago, I was actually weighing the possibility. I’d have to leave the band, obviously, which would be a shitty thing to do, but I could do it. I could quit Garbage Fire, rent out my house, and go.
Being there in person, working on our project together, it would be thrilling.
But now the thought fills me with sick dread.
“Sometimes our imaginations aren’t big enough,” Dottie says with total conviction. “I can imagine it quite easily.”
“Tell her you want her,” Ann insists. “If you do that, I’ll let you babysit my date with George, although I assure you it’s entirely unnecessary.”
I nod, although not because I agree. I sense it’s the only way they’re ever going to leave. Also, I can’t possibly allow Ann to go on that “date” unchaperoned.
The next day, Nora and I are sitting at the dining room table in her mother’s house—now our parents’ communal house—wearing matching apple-patterned sweaters much too hot for the weather.
Nora’s only inches away from me, near enough that I could easily reach out and place my hand on the sweet curve of her thigh, but it feels like she’s unreachable.
The other day, she was cradled on my lap. Laughing with me. Kissing me.
Now, she’s acting aloof, as if the last two weeks happened to someone else.
Maybe it’s an act, put on for our parents’ benefit…
Or maybe the past couple of weeks was the act.
The mere thought is making me want to throw something.
Maybe I shouldn’t care, but dammit, this woman has gotten under my skin.
Again. Meanwhile, I have to listen to our parents talk about their honeymoon, even though I have absolutely zero interest in long stories about berry picking, farm-to-table cuisine, and couples’ spa treatments.
Our parents seated us on the same side of the table, while they’re sitting across from us, holding hands when they’re not serving food—roast chicken, potatoes, and broccoli, because Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles apparently believes in the food pyramid now as much as she did when she was my second-grade teacher.
“What have you been up to while we were gone?” Nora’s mom asks, her eyes landing on Nora.
“Not much,” Nora says. Then she shocks me by rubbing the side of her socked foot against mine.
(Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles has a strict no-shoes-inside policy.) She’s not smiling, precisely, but her lips have risen at least two millimeters on either side—nothing a person who’s not obsessed with her face would have noticed.
I sit up straighter, my pulse thrumming faster. “Yeah, nothing too exciting. Just some band performances.”
My father skewers me with a pointed look. “Are you sure about that?”
“Uh, yeah.”
He adjusts his glasses and makes a humph sound. “So there’s nothing special you two would like to tell us? No big reveals?”
Suddenly, I feel like I did when that old geezer with the cane drenched us with water in Apple Ridge.
They know something, or at least they think they do.