Days Like This (11 page)

Her best friend, her only real friend,
had been Rob.  She’d been friendly with his first wife—the four of them had
lived together in New York during that brief marriage—and later on with Kitty
Callahan, a singer she met on Danny’s first tour.  But neither of those superficial
relationships had ever developed into real friendship, and she hadn’t realized,
until now, just how much she’d missed the company of other women.

She sensed Rob’s presence an
instant before he slipped an arm around her from behind, took her hand in his,
and fluidly danced her from side to side in time with the music playing on the stereo. 
“Excuse me, ladies,” her husband said, “but I need to borrow my wife for a
second.”

At least one pair of eyes watched
in appreciation as he spirited her away from the group and halted a few feet
away, where they could speak privately.  Over her shoulder, he glanced at the
group of women.  “I’m sorry to drag you away,” he said.  “You looked like you
were having fun.  Listen, I can’t find Paige.  Do you know where she is?”

“I’m sorry, I forgot to tell
you.  She’s not here.  She left with the boys an hour ago.”

He raised both eyebrows.  “You
let her go off with them?”

She reached up to straighten his
collar.  “Stop worrying.  She’s perfectly fine.  Mikey and Luke are both good
kids, and Mikey’s a careful driver.  He won’t let anything happen to her.”  At
his stricken expression, she moved her hand to the back of his neck and began
to rub it.  “You know how bored the kids get at these gatherings.  They never
stick around for long.”

“I know, but it was never
my
kid not sticking around before.”

“She’s fifteen.  Yes, we have to
keep her on a leash, but unless she gives us some reason not to trust her, we want
to keep that leash relatively loose.  With kids, you have to choose your
battles.  It’s a trade-off.  Giving in on the little things helps you to build
up more ammunition for the big things.  And believe me, there will be big
things.  You just have to follow your instincts, because it isn’t always easy
to tell the difference between the two.  But if she wants to leave an adult
party to go into town for a burger with her cousins, I don’t see any reason to
tell her no.”

“We have burgers right here.”

“When did you turn into such a
curmudgeon?  Have you forgotten what it was like to be a kid?  Did you want to
hang out with your adult relatives and their friends when you were fifteen?”

He sighed.  “You’re right.  I
know you’re right.  Why is it so hard to accept?”

Still rubbing his neck, she said,
“It’s a heavy responsibility you’ve taken on your shoulders, the responsibility
for somebody else’s life.  It’s scary.  Just remember, you’re not bearing it
alone.  I’m right here with you, taking half the load.”

He wrapped his arms around her
and she rested her cheek against the front of his shirt.  “I feel eyes on us,”
he said.  “Why are they watching us?”

She raised her face to his.  “They’re
just jealous because I have the hottest date here.”

He let out a soft, choked laugh. 
“You are so full of shit, Fiore.”

“But I made you laugh, didn’t I?”

“You did.  So what’s the real
reason they’re staring at us?”

“They’re just jealous because I
have the hottest date here.”

He rolled his eyes.  “I am not
hot.”

“Oh, stop it, Mister Broken
Record.  You know as well as I do that women find you attractive.  And they’re curious
about us.  It’s natural, isn’t it?  The places we’ve been, the things we’ve experienced—”

“Like starvation?  And cockroaches?”

“Like winning Grammy Awards.  Like
playing on stage in front of fifty thousand people.  Like that nasty ‘R’ word
you so hate.”

“What ‘R’ word?”

“Rock star.  Ring a bell?”

“Damn it, woman.  Now it’s my
ears that are bleeding.”

“I hate to have to break it to
you, my friend, but because of these things, by the standards that plague small
towns like this one, you and I are considered exotic and fascinating.”

“I don’t want to be exotic and
fascinating.  I just want to live my life in peace.  I’m just an ordinary guy.”

“Now there is where we disagree,
but I’m not going to argue over it.”

He glanced over her shoulder
again.  “Maybe we should give ‘em something to talk about.”

“Make up your mind, Flash.  You
either want to be the center of attention, or you don’t.”

“I just think we should make it
clear to all of these women that I’m taken.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “You’re
wearing a wedding ring.”

“Oh, of course.  I forgot.  Wedding
rings scare off even the most predatory of women.”

“I don’t think there are too many
predators in our little group.  Also, lest we forget, one of those women is
your sister, one is your sister-in-law, and one is my nephew’s very pregnant wife. 
That leaves just three possible predators.”

“Who are all looking at me like I’m
their next meal.  You have to save me from a fate worse than death.”

“You’re so transparent.  You’re
just looking to cop a feel.”

“Every chance I get.”

Inside the house, the music
changed, and Lenny Welch began singing in his sweet, plaintive tenor about getting
the blues most every night.  Green eyes met green eyes and held a brief,
wordless conversation, and there on the grass, they began swaying together in
time with the music. “They’re still watching,” he said.

“And they won’t stop until you
remove your hands from my butt.”

“We’re married.  I can legally
feel you up any time I want.”

“This reminds me of high school. 
They used to have this unbending rule at school dances.  If a teacher couldn’t
slip a sheet of paper between a couple, they were dancing too close.”

“Hunh.  Too close for what?”

“Alarming social diseases.  Like
syphilis.  And pregnancy.”

“So what you’re telling me, in
your delightful roundabout way, is that we’re in danger of getting detention.”

“Exactly.  And since we’re
already in deep trouble anyway—”  She tilted her head back, took his face
between her palms, and kissed him until every nerve ending in her body was on
red alert and both of them were breathing heavily.  She drew back, studied his
eyes, gone a soft, smoky gray.  And said, “Now see what you started.”

He waggled his eyebrows and said,
“We could go home early and finish it.”

“I think not.”  Toying with the
top button on his shirt, she said, “I’d suggest you go find something to keep
yourself amused.  Try not to break anything or injure yourself.  When your
daughter gets back, we’ll think about going home.  If I determine that you’ve
behaved properly, you might get to finish what you started.  If not…”

“It’s off with my head.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,
but I can safely say that if you misbehave, you won’t be getting any tonight.”

“Guess I’d better walk the
straight and narrow, then.”

“If you’re hoping to get lucky
tonight, then yes, you’d better.”

“Got it, Sarge.”  He clicked his
heels together and saluted smartly.

“Glad we have that clarified. 
Now can I go back to what I was doing?”

“Only if I get to stand here and
watch you walk away.”

She gave him a secretive little
smile.  “Letch.”

“And damn proud of it.”

She planted another quick kiss on
the corner of his mouth, stepped out of his arms, and walked away without a
backward glance. 

But because she knew he was
watching, she added a little extra sashay to her walk.

Comfortably buzzed.

That was the only way to describe
how she felt.  She wasn’t stupid enough to get really drunk.  She knew enough
to eat something first, knew she needed to pace herself, knew when it was time to
stop, but she hadn’t reached that point yet.  She took another swig from the
bottle of Jim Beam that Luke had pilfered from his stepfather’s liquor cabinet,
then handed it to him, lying beside her on the blanket at the edge of the old
granite quarry.  From this vantage point, with the massive quarry in front of
her, all that wide-open treeless space, the night sky was like a wide swath of velvet,
hung heavily with stars.  She’d never seen so many stars in her life, dancing
across the heavens, melting into a band of white that Mikey said was the Milky
Way.  He’d pointed out various constellations, and when she’d asked him how he
knew all this, he’d said his dad had taught him, years ago, when he was just a
little boy.

Luke drank from the bottle and
handed it back to her.  She offered it to Mikey, sitting on her other side, but
he declined.  Earlier, both boys had stripped down to their skivvies and taken
a swim.  Mikey said the quarry was a hundred feet deep, and there were any
number of things at the bottom, including a car that somebody had pushed over
the edge a couple of decades ago.  It was rumored that there were even a couple
of skeletons down there, but Paige suspected that was nothing more than a ghost
story manufactured by some horny teenage boy in the hopes of scaring his pansy-ass
girlfriend into letting him get a little closer than she ordinarily would. 

Paige was not a pansy-ass girl,
and ghost stories didn’t scare her.  To be truthful, not much scared her, but on
the other hand, she didn’t have a death wish.  Since she wasn’t that good a
swimmer, while the boys dove and splashed, she’d stayed on the blanket,
clutching the bottle and studying the stars, swatting at the occasional
mosquito, enjoying the warm summer night.

She had never been a religious
person.  She wasn’t even sure if she believed in heaven or hell.  But lying
here, gazing up at that vast, star-spangled sky, she couldn’t help wondering if
her mom was up there somewhere, looking down on her.  If so, Sandy wasn’t
pleased to see her fifteen-year-old daughter drinking whiskey straight from the
bottle.  She might not be surprised, but she definitely wouldn’t be pleased.

Paige took another sip.  It
burned all the way down, but left a comfortable warmth in her belly when it was
done.  She handed the bottle back to Luke.  He was an okay kid, laid back and
carefree and fun.  Mikey, on the other hand, was an enigma.  She couldn’t quite
figure him out.  He seemed so serious, appeared to have no interest in drinking
or smoking or partying.  Although, now that she thought about it, he hadn’t
been the least bit fazed by her seeing him in his underwear, so he couldn’t be
quite the stick-in-the-mud that he seemed.

“I suppose we should be heading
back soon,” she said.  “He’ll be looking for me.”

“He who?” Luke said.  “Your dad?”

“He’s not my dad.  He’s nothing
more than a sperm donor.”

“I don’t get it.  Uncle Rob is
the coolest guy I know.  Why do you hate him?”

“He deserted us.  Why wouldn’t I
hate him?”

“He didn’t desert you.  He never
even knew about you.”

“Hah!  Says him.”

“I’m telling you, you’re way off
target.  I was home the night before last when he and my mom got into it
because he’d just found out about you, and Mom and Aunt Meg and Grandma all
knew, and nobody bothered to tell him.  It wasn’t pretty.”

“You were eavesdropping on their
conversation?”  She liked the idea of her cousin snooping around, hiding in
corners, practicing clandestine surveillance on his elders.

“Trust me, when two MacKenzies
get into an argument, eavesdropping is totally unnecessary.  The neighbors can
hear for a mile around.”

“Yeah, well, he probably just
wanted to make himself look good.  Because there’s no way my mom would have
lied to me.  She told me he left because he didn’t want the responsibility of
being a father.  He didn’t want
me
.  And I can never forgive him for
that.”

“You can go on believing whatever
you want, but you’re dead wrong.  And you’re not the only one with parent
problems.  My dad’s a real jerk.  He treated my mom like crap, then he went out
and got a new wife.  One who’s not much older than my sister.  And Mikey’s mom
left when he was just a kid.  So don’t think you’re special just because you
grew up without a dad.”

Her head swiveled around, and she
studied Mikey, who thus far hadn’t uttered a word.  Outraged, she said, “Your
mom
left
you?”

Lying beside her on the blanket,
Mikey folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.  “It’s not as bad
as it sounds,” he said.  “Mom got pregnant at seventeen and married my dad, and
I think she didn’t have any idea what she really wanted.  She was too young.  When
they split up, Dad was the stable one, so they agreed that I’d stay with him. 
It’s not as though I never see her.”

“Wow,” she said.  “That must have
sucked, all those years without your mom.”  She’d gone just two weeks without
hers, and the pain was almost unbearable.

“I had Aunt Trish, and Grandma
Millie, and Aunt Casey.  And now, I have Luke’s mom.  My dad’s amazing.  I wasn’t
raised by wolves, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Wait a minute.  I’m confused. 
Why do you call her Aunt Casey?”

He opened his eyes and looked at
her like she was an idiot.  “Um…because she’s my aunt?”

She scrunched up her nose and
studied him while she tried to work it out in her head, but finally gave up. 
“How is that possible?”

“My mom is her sister.”

“Holy batshit.  Are you people
all inbred, or what?”

“It just seems that way,” Luke
said.  “Once you get all the relationships worked out in your head, it makes
more sense.”

Still trying to puzzle it out,
she said to Mikey, “Let me make sure I understand this.  Your father’s sister is
married to your mother’s brother.  Do I have it so far?”

Those dark eyes were indecipherable. 
“Correct,” Mikey said.

“So that means…you and the
Bradley kids are double cousins.”