Chapter 10 #2
“All right. I should have asked,” Jonah said. He glanced toward the refrigerator. “I’ll get lunch. Have you finished with the chicken?”
“Do you actually think that?” Summer asked. She moved the chicken toward him, then left her hand beside the plate. “Or do you want me to stop talking about it?”
“I think if I’d known it mattered to you, I would have waited.” His voice had hardened a little. “I don’t think I’d have minded you letting someone try my mask. So no, it didn’t occur to me.”
“You don’t have to mind about yours.” She pulled the bread bag farther from the edge of the counter. “I wasn’t there to say whether I minded about mine.”
He leaned back, looking at her across the table. “Is it the mask, or is it Kylie?” This time there was no attempt to make the question casual. The laptop screen dimmed between them, and Summer could see the reflection of the kitchen window in it.
“Both.” It was a relief to say it and immediately frightening. “I didn’t like finding her standing in my bedroom. And I didn’t like having to explain that I’m allowed to object.”
“Nobody said you weren’t allowed.” He stopped when she picked up her plate. She put it on the table and sat opposite him, moving the laptop aside to make room.
“You keep giving me reasons why I shouldn’t mind,” she said. “I come home and she’s got my mask on, and now I’m sitting here arguing with you.” The bread had stuck to the roof of her mouth; she pushed the plate away.
Jonah collected the application notes, then put them down without straightening them. “She asked for help with a letter. I thought we could manage that.”
“After what she said at the society?” Summer asked.
“She apologized Summer. What she said was rash, and thoughtless, but who hasn’t said things they regret?
I’m not going to throw away twenty years of friendship over one argument.
” He pushed the papers farther away. “She’s called me for things like this since we were teenagers.
When her dad was waiting for his operation, I went over almost every night.
Reading one letter didn’t seem like a great deal to ask. ”
“This has nothing to do with her wanting you to read a letter.”
Jonah looked toward the hallway. “Mom asked if we were all speaking again. Kylie’s been helping her. I thought if I could get through one ordinary afternoon with her, everything would be normal again.”
“Did you tell your mother what she said about our wedding?” Summer asked. His silence answered her. “Then what does she think happened?”
“That Kylie said something stupid and I told her to stop.” He rubbed his forehead. “Which is what happened.”
Summer got up for a glass of water. At the sink she could see the old table through the back-room door, the folded dish towels he’d left on it that morning. She’d come home wanting lunch and an hour on the sofa with him. Now she was angry enough to want the afternoon by herself.
“You’ve made it sound like I’m sulking,” she said. She turned from the tap.
“I wasn’t trying to make you sound anything.” He stopped.
“And Kylie?” Summer asked. She left the glass beside her plate.
“No more afternoons here.” Jonah looked at the abandoned application. “She can ask somebody else to read the next one.”
Summer sat down again and finished her sandwich. Jonah closed the laptop, leaving Kylie’s crossed-out pages beneath it.
“I didn’t think you’d mind this much,” Jonah said from the sink. “I thought she’d finished upsetting you.”
“She’s standing in our bedroom trying on my things,” Summer said. “I don’t think she’s finished.” She left her plate beside him and went upstairs to change the marked bedcover.
They spent the rest of the afternoon in the same house, doing separate things.
Summer answered the last of her order emails, checked the society’s collection time, and put a clean box aside for the cake labels.
Jonah went out for groceries and came back with everything she had written down.
When he asked whether she wanted to watch something after dinner, she said yes, because she did, although they had not yet recovered the ease with which they usually occupied the sofa.
Before bed she took the mask upstairs. One gray ribbon was creased where Kylie’s knot had tightened; Summer smoothed it on the dresser, then laid it beside Jonah’s.
In the mirror she remembered Kylie lifting her hair from the ties.
She put the masks together in the drawer and went to brush her teeth.
On Tuesday evening, Summer found Jonah sitting beside the old table in the back room. He’d taken one leg apart and set the pieces on newspaper. She stood in the doorway while he worked a stubborn screw loose, waiting for him to notice she was home.
“Are you fixing it now?” she asked. She put her bag down. “After we’ve bought another one?”
“I can use it in the basement. It still wobbles.” He looked up. “I’d like to put something on it without checking the cardboard first.”
Summer smiled. She sat on the floor beside him, close enough that he had to move the little dish of screws, and for a while watched his hands without interrupting. He worked more slowly than she would have; the patience made her want to touch him.
“Kylie’s sent me the cake she made,” she said. She took out her phone and showed him the photograph. “From the recipe.”
He glanced at the photograph. “Looks all right to me. What did you say?”
“She said it sank in the middle.” Summer put the phone away. “I told her it was supposed to.”
Jonah tightened a screw without answering. Summer pressed the phone deeper into her pocket. She leaned back against the wall and watched a car’s headlights move across the ceiling.
Jonah put the screwdriver down. “I told Mom the rest of what Kylie said. She wants to call you. I said to leave it until you had time.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Summer said. “I can’t face it tonight. I don’t want to think about Kylie anymore. I want to think about Saturday,” she said. She reached for his hand. “I want you looking at me like you did in the shop.”
He came closer before she could decide whether she regretted asking.
His hand settled behind her neck, warm and certain, and when he kissed her she put her fingers into his hair and held him there.
The unfinished table pressed against her shoulder; she moved toward him, and he laughed softly against her mouth before drawing her onto his lap.
“I’m looking now,” he said. He brushed her hair away from her face. “I’ve been looking since you sat down.”
She kissed him again, slower this time, feeling the answering pressure of his hand at her waist. When his mouth moved to her neck, she closed her eyes and pulled his shirt free of his jeans. His hand tightened at her waist as her fingers found bare skin.
“Leave the table,” she said when he glanced toward the pieces on the newspaper. She stood and held out her hand. “It can wobble until tomorrow.”
He let her pull him up. Upstairs, she shut the bedroom door behind them and turned into his arms before he could switch on the brighter light. He caught her against him, smiling at the impatience, and she kissed the smile away.