Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Devon
I should have locked Jeff in the shed.
He and my mother have exchanged phone numbers, favorite recipes, and their deepest darkest fears.
We are moments away from him braiding her hair.
I’m watching him across the table, his face alight as he talks about his family—Jenny and her second-grade class antics, Sammy and her glorious troublemaking, and his mother.
Oh, his mother. And all I can think of is how much I want to meet these women.
He meets my gaze across the empty plates smeared with my mom’s sauce and reads my mind.
“You’d love them,” he says quietly.
I’m nodding like a bobble head doll when I feel Meredith’s claws dig into my thigh, reminding me we are at a table of five—not two. I dig my claws into her thigh, but I don’t dare to look at her. I know what I’ll see there. And she can’t be right. No matter how much I might want her to be.
Kevin swirls his red wine in his glass and asks Jeff about his residency in Chicago.
The gold in Kev’s hair catches the light from the pendants dangling above and I shift my eyes from him to Jeff.
Jeff to him. These two men are so easy to admire.
Good looks aside, the way they discuss their patients, the way they care—it’s the same tone I use about my students.
I don’t understand a word they are saying about subdural hematomas, but the tone—the tone I can relate to.
The concern etched between Kevin’s brows and around Jeff’s mouth.
That feeling of responsibility. I glance at Meredith and she winks and grins. Immediate regret.
Of course I can’t completely understand them—what they face. If I screw up as a teacher, which I do by the minute, someone doesn’t die. Worst case scenario for me is a lifelong inability to calculate tax. And who wants to do that anyway?
“Devon, you’re doing that thing you do where your face changes with your thoughts,” my mom leans in and tells me.
Pfffft. I don’t do that.
“You’re doing it again.”
I turn to her and she pats my head like I’m Brutus, who currently has his head in Jeff’s lap waiting for food to drop into or around his mouth.
“Are you all going up to Tara’s next weekend?” my mom asks.
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
It’s not that she’s not happy for Tara. She’s worried.
Which is a baseline state for her, a constant piece of motherhood amplified of course by her condition.
And there’s something else there tucked into the corner of her semi-smile.
Regret, maybe? Guilt that she can’t be a part of this.
“Unfortunately, I’m at the hospital all weekend,” Kevin answers, meeting my gaze.
The same regret I just saw on my mother’s face frowns back at me from his.
Despite the cold hard logic of “he chose this life,” I feel badly for him, too.
Kev will never stop working to impress his father—Chief of Staff at Lankenau Hospital and Chief of Pricks along the Main Line.
But his daddy issues don’t stop that small, bitter voice in my head that reminds me of his priorities.
“I can’t,” Meredith says, softly. But she doesn’t glance my way to see my surprise. Mer never misses an opportunity to go to NYC. “I’m on call.”
She says it like she’s being tortured.
“Will you be going, Jeff?” my mother asks. I go to kick her, but she’s already shifted her legs to the side. Clairvoyant bitch.
Jeff looks at me. I look at the table.
“I have an interview in New York City on Saturday, so I’ll be up there anyway,” he says. If I look up, I know there’ll be eight eyes on me—ten if Brutus looks away from the food for once. This is more awkward than a sixth-grade dance.
“Well, that will be nice. I’m sure Tara will be happy to see you. She can’t stop talking about how nice it was that you came to Devon’s aid that morning.”
I lift my gaze and Jeff shrugs, his eyes serious, and on me.
“It was nothing. Whenever—whatever she needs,” he murmurs. My cheeks flush under his focus.
My mother’s hand reaches out and pats his shoulder and she goes to stand and Kevin and Jeff get up at the same time like we are in Victorian England. Curtsey, Mom!
“We’ll do the dishes,” Kevin tells her and she puts her hands up in surrender.
“Maybe you two could move in?” my mom suggests.
“Maybe Devon could go fetch the cupcakes from under her bed,” Jeff says, lifting his brows at me while he clears my plate.
I narrow my eyes on him. How’d he know my secret spot? I open my mouth to say I have no idea what he’s talking about and my mom gives me a look that I have yet to perfect in front of the mirror. It would be so useful during assemblies to have that look in my arsenal.
As I leave the kitchen, I keep my eyes on Jeff to let him know I’m watching him. Gosh forbid he follows me up to my room like he did in the shed. I’d be pregnant by midnight.
I’m like a hormonal teenager around him and I want to chalk it up to my lack of sexy time, but in Syd’s words, “denial isn’t just a river in South America.
” Whatever is going on here with Jeff needs fixing.
This is not a Katy Perry song and I am not seventeen in my skin-tight jeans—though they do feel a bit tighter after that chicken parm.
I’m a grown-ass woman with at least a modicum of self-control.
Ooooh! Cupcakes!
I slide them from beneath my bed and lift the lid, inhaling their sweet, decadent aroma, and stare down at the cream cheese icing that glides across the red-velvet like skis on fresh snow.
He even got a few with cookie crumbles on top, just the way I like them.
I lift one from its spot in the corner and turn it in my hand.
I dab my tongue into the icing. It’s just a cupcake, Devon. Just a perfect, delicious cupcake.
But no one has ever brought me my favorite cupcakes before.
The fact that he even knows my favorite cupcake is making the walls of my chest feel too tight for my heart.
This is not good. I’ve got to do something about this situation—STAT.
Shut. It. Down. Before someone, namely me, gets hurt.
And ends up with a half-a-dozen fat chickens, terrified to leave the house.
Jeff’s a friend. A very kind, very platonic, annoyingly sexy friend. That’s all he can be. He proved that when he didn’t show up that night for dinner and sent me spiraling into the past like Marty McFly. He has priorities that are not me. Just like my Dad did. And look where that landed us.
I just need to add a few things to my rules and everything can go back to normal, safe, panic-free life. No more sheds. No more balconies. No more anything that architecturally separates us from others. Make-out prevention at its finest.
I open my mouth to take a bite of the cupcake-that-is-just-a-cupcake.
“Devonnnnnn!”
Damn that she-witch.
I yell back. “Comingggg!”
Then I shove the whole cupcake in my mouth.