One #3
“Because he’s going to help me with my Calc 101 homework,” said Olivia, who was finally finishing the few credits she needed for her degree.
Olivia leaned over and waved at Jude through the window of my Airstream.
Jude never met a science or math class he couldn’t ace with his eyes closed. “He does that every Wednesday.”
“Because the man is a saint,” Mom declared. She studied me. “You know he almost married the custard queen.”
“Kenzie Gordon?” I couldn’t fathom it. She was the blond statuesque winner of Miss Wisconsin a few years ago, my high school class’s homecoming queen, and heir to the Gordon’s Frozen Custard fortune.
“And he was the one who broke up with her,” Olivia said.
My brain felt temporarily overloaded. Dr. Cheese had… game? Since when?
“Good thing, too, or he’d have the world’s worst father-in-law.” Mom made the sign of the cross to emphasize her point.
Everyone in town hated billionaire Allen Gordon, owner of Gordon’s Frozen Custard, the dessert chain with the annoying jingle: “Yum. Yum. Give me some!” He was also known for emptying out all the “leave-a-penny” trays and dumping the change in his pocket, despite being the richest citizen of Lake Sanguis.
His literal penny-pinching entitlement rankled everyone.
A hard knock came on the Airstream door, and Mom rushed to answer it. “There’s my favorite adopted son!” Mom cried, pulling Jude into a massive hug.
“Hi, Mama Jenny!” Jude said sweetly, as he’d done since he was a little boy. Mom released him so Olivia could hug him. Suddenly, with Jude’s massive shoulders, there were too many people in my little trailer.
“Oh, hey, El,” he said.
“Jude,” I returned formally as I stood awkwardly in the small space and gave him a cardboard hug, thin and stiff, like I did every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and six months ago outside McCormick Place when he was in Chicago for the cheese symposium.
When I touched the middle of his back, I definitely felt the hardness of new muscles I didn’t remember being there before.
I inhaled the sweet and spicy scent that was Jude, a signature deliciousness that should be bottled and sold. I forgot how good the man smelled.
“You staying long?” Jude asked me.
“Hopefully forever, so she never has to go back to that nasty old Chicago,” Mom groused because her steady diet of twenty-four-hour news meant she thought every American city was simply the movie set of The Purge.
“Chicago is amazing,” I said. “The restaurants are awesome, there’s always something to do, and there are tons of shows and movies filmed there. They’re filming the new Spider-Man movie there right now!”
I wasn’t going to mention that I recently hooked up several times with a Spider-Man stuntman I’d met on the Spark app. I called him Spider-Man Mateo, because, to be honest, I couldn’t 100 percent recall if we’d actually exchanged last names or not.
To his credit, he did bring some fairly acrobatic moves into the bedroom, and without his mask, he was gorgeous.
He had an accent to die for, as well as a stack of for-real washboard abs.
I liked him because he never asked for commitment and didn’t pester me with awkward exclusivity talks.
In fact, he didn’t pester me with much talk at all, which was my idea of the perfect date.
Just thinking about Spider-Man Mateo seemed to summon a small spindly little spider, which crawled onto the counter near the sink. Mom screeched, “Spider!” and raised her tray of muffins, ready to squash the bug.
“No!” I shouted, grabbing her arm. “Don’t kill it.” I grabbed an empty mug from a hook over the sink and gingerly edged the spider into the cup, pushed open the door of the Airstream, and gently released it outside. It scurried into the grass and disappeared.
“Can you believe she saves those things?” Mom muttered in disgust. “She reads one book as a kid, and spiders are her friends forever.”
“Charlotte’s Web is a classic,” I argued.
“Remember when a spider made a web outside our bedroom window?” Olivia said, wistful. We shared a small room with white bunk beds for most of our childhood.
“Of course I remember!” It was a big web that took up half the window. We watched it nightly. I kept expecting it to spell out messages to us.
“I remember that when it died, you made us bury it in a matchbox in the yard,” Mom groaned, rolling her eyes. “We had to have a whole funeral.”
“Oh, I remember,” Jude said. “She asked me to play violin.”
I’d forgotten about the scratchy notes of Mozart floating through the yard as I dug a hole under the elm tree behind the Airstream with a garden spade.
“You made us all say a few words,” Olivia recounted.
“Right, and I believe I said, ‘Why are we here, again?’” Mom quipped.
“Spiders get a bad rap, but they’re good to have around,” I pointed out.
“You don’t mean that,” Mom said, trying to gaslight me again. “Jude! Tell my daughter spiders should be killed on sight.”
Jude just laughed a little. “Mama Jenny, I would never tell any woman what to do.” He put up both hands in surrender, making both Mom and Olivia laugh. “Especially not one with a black belt.” He eyed me. “And who won the Junior Krav Maga Championship.”
Sophomore year, I nabbed the title by beating another fifteen-year-old girl who was built like a Teamster.
“That’s just because you’re too nice,” Mom said. The only person Mom adored more than Jude was Oscar, her clear favorite of the family. “That’s the kind of good men you find here in Lake Sanguis.”
Mom was as subtle as a freight train.
“Lake Sanguis is boring,” I declared.
“It’s safer than Chicago,” Mom pointed out. “We don’t have serial killers running loose.”
“Low blow,” I told her, even though she was right. Lake Sanguis’s biggest crime last year was the theft of a tandem bike from Margaret Morton, and we were pretty sure her husband disposed of it himself to avoid summer rides with his wife down the lakeside trail.
“Jude, will you tell Ella that she needs to get off the Spark app? It’s dangerous,” Mom pleaded.
Oh, Lord. Why did she tell him I was on the Spark app? Jude might be a cheese scientist, but I’m sure he didn’t live under a rock. He had to know that the Spark app was best known for casual meet-ups. Jude looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Er…” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Mom, Jude does not need to know this,” I said, but that just fueled her more.
“You know Ella used to have such the crush on you,” Mom continued, because there wasn’t any situation she couldn’t make more embarrassing if she tried hard enough.
I felt my face flame hot as I remembered a starry-eyed, fifth-grade me writing his name and circling it with pink puffy heart stickers. Why’d she have to expose me like that?
“I also had a crush on the red Power Ranger,” I quipped, trying desperately to recover. “Don’t take it personally.”
“So, your crush on me, is that why you were always trying to bash my head in?” He was referring to the fact I’d often hide under the staircase, or in hallways, and launch myself at Oscar or Jude to try out a new roundhouse or uppercut.
“I was just trying to show off my moves,” I said. “When I was ten, that’s how I thought you impressed boys—by showing off my best spin kicks. I was an awkward kid.”
“Oh, I remember. I was there,” Jude teased, his brown eyes bright. “Case in point: the spider eulogy.”
I had to laugh at that. I couldn’t help it. The spider funeral might’ve occurred the same year I cut my own bangs the day before school pictures.
My phone dinged again. CanceledKill sent another message.
You’ve been a bad girl, Ella. Time to be punished.
Ready or not—here I come.