On Any Given Sundae (12 page)

And, for the first time ever, it seemed, she
couldn’t take time to focus on her stuttering, couldn’t take mental
energy away from more pressing matters, like walking upright and in
a straight line. Weird.

Oh, and Rob was with her. Holding her.

What a night. It seemed as if it should be
unforgettable and, yet, she was already losing track of some of the
details. Like how she’d ended up with Maria-Louisa’s group, or
talking with that waiter Ivan, or at Hauser’s in the first place,
and how much alcohol she’d consumed. And why Rob looked so very
tense
.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

He laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “That’s just funny.”

She didn’t see why it should be so hilarious
but, then again, who understood the minds of men?

When they got to her apartment complex, Rob
walked her up the stairs, riffled through her purse to locate her
keys (because she just couldn’t
find
them but she was
sure
they were in there) and swept her into the place and
onto the sofa.

His face was really, really, unbelievably
close to hers as he pulled off her shoes and laid her down on the
cushions. She could see the dark shadow on his chin, the tiny
whiskers bursting out of his tanned skin. His pores looked so
huge
—but they were a
sexy
huge. His eyelashes were
maybe half a mile long. His hazel eyes had these little black
speckles in them if you looked extra close. Kind of like staring at
two very small double-chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Mmm.

This whole drinking thing had a definite cool
side. She could really
see
things that she would’ve missed
before.

Her gaze traveled to his lips. They were
moving, talking, asking her something. She motioned him even
closer, so as to get a super-magnified view of that amazing mouth.
And, while he was up there, her lips thought they should connect
with his. It wasn’t her idea. Really. Her lips were working with
their own irrepressible logic.

It was a warm, magical, delicious kiss. Like
hot bread pudding with a dash of rum. She didn’t want to stop her
lips from tasting more.

Only, Rob stopped her.

“What’re you doing?” he whispered, pulling
away and breathing in this odd, almost winded manner.

“I don’t know.”

This was a pretty truthful answer because she
didn’t
know why her lips did the things they did tonight.
She raised her head, her lips trying to touch his again. He leaned
down and then, at the last second, snapped his head away. Huh.

“I can’t kiss you, Elizabeth…or do anything
else with you tonight.”

His voice came out kind of strangled, she
thought, but maybe her hearing had been affected by the margaritas
right along with her eyesight.

“Why not?” This was a reasonable question,
right?

But he sighed like it wasn’t reasonable.
“Because you’ve had a little too much to drink.”

She struggled with this logic but, try as she
might, she couldn’t see the connection. How did drinking a couple
of…three or four margaritas have anything to do with kissing? No
relation that she could figure.

“So?” she said.

“So, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He said this in that gentle voice parents
used to try to get their boisterous darlings to go to bed when they
should’ve really been in bed an hour before, but they just wouldn’t
go and ended up being overtired and sort of hysterical. She always
hated that voice when she was a kid.

She tried being indignant. It wasn’t
difficult and she kind of liked it. “I do
too
know what I’m
doing.”

He kissed her forehead. A feathery brush, but
that was it. “Do not,” he countered. “Goodnight, Elizabeth. Sleep
tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. And you might want to take a
couple of aspirins tonight with water, and drink lots and lots of
coffee tomorrow morning. The strong, caffeinated kind. See you at
five-thirty for dinner.”

Then he stepped back and regarded her with
that very, very, exceptionally tense look again. His eyes squinty.
His full, kissable lips pulled tight. A moment later, he turned and
all but raced out the door.

Huh.

***

“Oh. My. God.”

Elizabeth cradled her head in both hands, but
the migraine-like aching was impressive in its intensity. It would
stop for no woman. No aspirins. No caffeinated beverages
either.

The morning light shined unmercifully through
her blinds, even when closed, and the sounds of the Father’s Day
brunch bustle on the street clanged like enormous gongs, their
voices like the rumble of deep bassoons in her ears.

“Oh, my God,” she said aloud again.

Her first hangover. So this was what one felt
like. Not a repeater experience and, if she had any brain cells
left, she’d try to remember that.

She vaguely recalled being bored last night.
At loose ends and in need of some adventure. Going out to Hauser’s.
Seeing Tara, the nasty witch. Seeing Maria-Louisa, the friendly
angel. Meeting a bunch of really nice, really funny strangers who
were wild about Garth Brooks and who danced whenever one of his
songs played in the bar. Having a laugh or two with that cute
waiter. And then Rob taking her home…

Did she really kiss Rob?

No, she couldn’t have. She must’ve imagined
it.

Hard to keep straight what was merely a
remnant of high-school fantasy and what was the current reality.
She’d been slipping into daydreams about him again. Never a good
sign.

The phone across the room rang like a school
bell. She clapped her hands over her ears, but it wouldn’t
stop.

“I know you’re there,” Gretchen’s obnoxiously
cheery voice said on her answering machine. “Pick up, pick up.”

Elizabeth struggled to get over to the phone,
strained to pick it up. Damn. What a Good Girl she was. Always
doing what she was told. Well, she didn’t last night.

“Hi, Gretch.”

A pause greeted her on the line. Then, “Do
you have the flu or something?”

“No.” Elizabeth explained her hangover in as
few syllables as humanly possible.

“
You
got drunk last night?” Gretchen
roared.

She moved the phone away from her ear and
curled into a ball on the floor, but Gretchen kept talking and
exclaiming.

“You, the woman who considers drinking New
Year’s Eve punch and eating English trifle with sherry on the same
night ‘over-imbibing’?”

Elizabeth groaned. “What’s your point in
calling me on a day when you should be annoying your immediate
family members instead? You have a father in good health. Go jabber
at him.”

“Already did that,” Gretchen said. “I’m an
early riser. What are you doing tonight?”

“Hmm—”

“Nothing, right? So let’s have a Treat Swap.
Jacques and I were talking about it yesterday. He said Nick was up
for it after his closing shift. We could ask Rob if he wants to
join us. I mean, if you want him to join us.”

She groaned again and clutched her stomach.
Rob… She’d talked with him about this not so long ago. About him
tagging along for one. Snippets of that conversation were still in
her long-term memory.

“I guess he could come,” she said.

“Okay. I switched shifts with Jacques for
today, so I’ll be at Tutti-Frutti in an hour. I’ll tell Rob. Maybe
we can put up the ‘Closed’ sign, shut all the blinds, light some
candles and have our little party right there in the shop.”

“Fine.” Oh, God, she was going to throw
up.

“Hey, can’t wait.” Gretchen’s delighted voice
was too much for her to take. “I’ve been dying for an excuse to try
these amazing little jam tartlets I saw in
Feasting
magazine—”

Oh, cripes. Don’t talk about food.
Please.

“—and maybe some chocolate-covered Brazil nut
clusters or strawberry-flavored truffles drizzled with a
creamy—”

NOT strawberries!

“Bye, Gretchen.”

She hung up and raced to the bathroom.

***

Five-thirty and Rob’s nerves jangled like ice
cubes in one of The Playbook’s crystal goblets. Five-thirty and the
rain just transitioned from a light sprinkle to a downpour.
Five-thirty and she wasn’t here yet.

Damn.

Five-thirty-
five
and Elizabeth’s
stocky little Toyota pulled up in front of the shop.

“Sorry. R-Running late,” she said, sprinting
up to the sidewalk, her hair more frizzly than usual, cascading
down her shoulders like rainwater off the awnings.

Other than looking a bit paler than normal,
though, she acted completely, frighteningly as if nothing had
happened last night. As if she hadn’t gotten drunk, told him to his
face (and without even stuttering) that she’d pick up
Ivan
another time but that he had a hot body. So she lured him into her
apartment (well, okay, that part’s an exaggeration—he went in
willingly) and then kissed the air out of him until he was forced,
for honor’s sake, to put a halt to it.

“Ready to go t-to your mom’s house?” she
asked, holding out a fruit salad to take along and smiling at him
pleasantly but with her typical aura of competent detachment.

Oh, hell. Now he understood. She didn’t
remember.

“Sure,” he said.

Man, had she been
that
drunk that she
couldn’t recall the charge zipping through their bodies when their
lips met? Or, maybe, hers didn’t feel that charge. Maybe this was a
one-sided thing. Maybe…

He needed to be more careful. Something was
happening here. With him. She was beginning to get to him. And he
didn’t like it.

Dinner started. Dinner ended. Rob sat through
it with the jarring disbelief he’d felt the first time he watched a
movie through 3-D glasses. Everything was too overwhelming to see,
to concentrate on, so he blanked out into a kind of hazy
non-awareness.

Mama talked nonstop about the Summerfest
concert. Conversation from him was not required, even though Tony,
Maria-Louisa and the kids weren’t there. (She was fixing him a
special Father’s Day dinner at home.) How his five-foot-two,
110-pound sister-in-law could even stand straight today was the big
mystery, but she’d been bright-eyed and cheery when he’d last seen
her this morning.

Women.

He glanced at Elizabeth, hugging his mother
goodbye. Strange, incomprehensible creatures. Who knew how their
minds worked?

His kissed Mama his thanks, too, and they
hopped into his car.

“Can we drop by m-my apartment for a minute?”
she said.

An icy fear ran through his fingers as he
remembered the feel of her beneath him on the sofa last night. He
gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Why?”

“I n-need to pick up my dessert for the Treat
Swap. You can wait in the car. I’ll be quick.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He’d been excited about this thing when
Gretchen mentioned it this morning. He had his sweets stashed and
ready to share at the shop already. Now his gut was churning a
little, though, making him wish he hadn’t eaten that second helping
of fettuccini primavera at Mama’s.

When they walked into Tutti-Frutti, Gretchen
and Nick were filling orders for nine teenagers, a family of five
and an older couple. They looked swamped, so he grabbed an apron
and an ice cream scoop and dug in.

“Thanks, Rob,” Gretchen said. “But I’ve got
another five minutes left on the clock.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I want to help.”
Well, he wanted to have something productive to do with his hands
or he might grab Elizabeth and pin her against the wall.

He stole a long glance at her as she swung
open the refrigerator to store whatever dessert she’d brought over.
She caught him looking at her legs and sent him a mystified but
kind of distracted smile.

He still couldn’t believe it. Not a single
meaningful reaction in over two freaking hours. She remembered
nothing.
Nothing!

He attacked the Mocha Madness, giving the
five-year-old kid a scoop so large the little guy’s eyes crossed. A
couple of teens saw this, left Nick’s line and crossed over into
his.

Jacques walked in carrying an
aluminum-foil-covered tray.

“Hello, everyone,” the Frenchman said. “Looks
like the party’s starting early.”

And, to Rob’s amazement, this appeared to be
true. Jacques came early, Gretchen didn’t run out when the clock
struck eight and Elizabeth didn’t hightail it home to write. They
all just hung around with him and Nick during their shift, pitching
in with orders, chatting in a lighthearted, neutral way when the
customers were there and in a baser, more personal manner when they
weren’t. Nick, especially, had a mouth on him, talking and digging
up stuff like a Roto Rooter.

At about ten minutes before closing, when
things were winding down, Nick said to the group, “I gotta tell you
all, when this guy first came back to town—” He gestured at Rob. “I
thought for sure he’d be some arrogant, hotshot ex-Wilmington Bay
dude, a quarterback legend and all, but too far into his own
super-cool world that he wouldn’t stick around to see this gig
through for the month. But—”

“
What?”
Rob said, having already been
good-naturedly attacked six times in the past hour about his choice
of pricey casual wear, his taste in gourmet coffee and haute
cuisine, his quick departure from the rarified environment of
southeastern Wisconsin when he was eighteen and whatever else Nick
wanted to rib him about.

Nick held up his palm. “Wait, wait.
But
, I was just going to say, that you surprised me, man. I
think you surprised all of us. Hanging out here for the past few
weeks, working so hard, getting into town life. You done us
proud.”

“Well, uh, thanks,” he said. What else could
he say?
Nice of you to mention my sense of duty, but no way am I
hanging around here for twenty-four hours longer than I have
to.
Yep. That’d go over well.