Starfire (Peaches Monroe #3)(52)
Author: Mimi Strong

I reached for the basket of bread, feeling more confused and mixed up than ever.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Are you really marrying that guy, or just doing the appearances? You should probably start wearing an engagement ring, because I’ve been reading some of the gossip sites. I’m not the only one who suspects your timely engagement is a stunt.”

I dropped the bread and covered my face with my hands. “Oh, Adrian. I’m the f**king worst.”

“We promised to be honest with each other.”

“I know. Things have been crazy.”

“I can imagine.”

“I just want to climb into my bed with a book and make the whole world go away.”

“I feel the same way sometimes, but everything falls apart if you close your eyes and ignore your problems for too long.”

With my hands still over my face, and my eyes closed, I asked Adrian if anyone was close enough to the table to hear what I was about to say.

“Just me,” he replied.

“Please don’t ever tell anyone. Your parents don’t even know, because my mom didn’t even tell your mom.” I kept my eyes closed and my hands over my face. “When I was fifteen, I had a baby. That’s Kyle, who my parents took as their own.”

“And you only missed school for a week.”

My hands dropped and my eyes flew open. “You knew?”

“Don’t worry. I never told anyone. My mother doesn’t know. My parents bought the cover story that your mother never told anyone, and hid her baby bump because it was a high-risk pregnancy.”

He kept talking, saying that he’d noticed my body changing shape, and my weight loss when I returned to school from being sick. He’d come to his own conclusion after seeing my mother with the baby, but respected and cared for me enough to never ask, despite his curiosity.

His words became foreign, like a language I couldn’t understand. How could I have been so stupid? I was still the same dumb kid, oblivious to what was right in front of me. Would I ever use my brains, or was my father right about me being prone to whimsy?

Oh, f**k. Everything was such a mess.

I tried to fight the tears, but they came. The waitress arrived with more food, and I turned away, blowing my nose on a napkin.

A hand landed on my shoulder and I opened my eyes to find Adrian kneeling on the floor in front of me.

“I’m here,” he said. “Tell me what to do. Should we leave here? Can I get you something?”

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered.

He stayed right there, one hand grounding me on my shoulder and the other hand on my knee, completing a circuit of touch.

He said, “We’ll just take a minute here. Nobody’s paying any attention to us. I can drive you home if you want.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “I understand.”

“I’m scared.”

“Life is scary, but you’ve got people who care about you.”

I sniffed. There was a break in the tears, like the sun coming through the fog. I wiped the wet napkin across one cheek then the other.

My voice gravelly, I said, “I’m okay now.” I licked my dry lips. “Wow, that sampler plate smells good.”

Adrian gave me the most heartbreakingly sympathetic look, and I nearly started leaking from the face again, but swallowed it down.

“We should try to eat a little of that food,” I said.

He squeezed my shoulder and knee again before slowly removing his hands.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with fire and my nose with aromatic herbs. The sounds of the music and people chattering around us came back to me.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Adrian said.

“A red-eyed nightmare?”

“Soft and vulnerable.”

I shook my head. “Oh, no. Do not call me soft. Do not make me double-punch you in the ass**le.”

Chuckling, he got to his feet and made his way back around the table to his chair. I gave my nose one final swipe, then pulled my chair in to better survey the feast before us.

“Fuck, yeah,” I said as I used the large serving fork to transfer some deep-fried tortellini to my plate. Everything looked so good. I even took a bit of green salad, though it looked suspiciously like kale.

“Fuckin’ fried pasta, yeah,” Adrian said in agreement, doing the same.

For the rest of our dinner, we talked about the bookstore, and the big move that would be starting the next morning. Gordon had sprung for professional movers, agreeing that the expense would be worthwhile, because we’d have less downtime.

Adrian and I joked about the town-wide panic that would begin Tuesday, when all of Beaverdale went from having two bookstores to having zero. By the time we re-opened a week later, there’d be so much built-up demand.

Giggling, I said, “We might sell fourteen books by lunch time.”

“We’ll be run off our feet,” he said.

“What’s that called when two people want to pay for stuff at the same time?”

He grinned. “A lineup. We’ll probably have one of those happening all the time.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He laughed. “So I should cancel the order on that deli-style, take-a-number system?”

“No, keep that. We can use it to keep track of who we’re dating.”

He blinked for a minute, then started laughing so hard he had to hit his hand on the table.

Our waitress came running over, worried he was choking, and the confusion that ensued made me laugh so hard, I must have looked like I was choking.

We finally finished eating, working together like a team to finish every item on the platter.

The owner, Mr. Russell DeNirro himself, came over to our table just as we were finishing, to ask us what we thought. I got nervous, because he’s basically a celebrity chef in the town, plus I’ve had a crush on him probably since I was twelve. I’d always wanted him to flirt with me the way he did with my mother, and not refer to me as “kidlet” when he brought out my birthday cake with sparklers and candles on top.

“How is your beautiful sister?” Mr. DeNirro asked me. He meant my mother, whom he’d been jokingly referring to as my sister for the last decade, since she couldn’t possibly be the mother of such a mature-acting kidlet.

“Still married to that guy,” I said, playing along.

Mr. DeNirro shook his head. “That guy! A man should be so lucky.” He turned to Adrian. “And you’re Stormy’s son, aren’t you.”