Sleeping in Eden (18 page)

“Jenna will be home in a minute,” he muttered.

Though he intended for his blatant reminder to snap Angela back to reality, to awaken the guilt that should be grinding away at her conscience, the girl was unfazed. She merely flopped back down on the couch, picked up the TV remote, and cranked up the volume. No word of explanation. The superior tilt of her profile made it seem to Lucas as if she had dismissed him.

Now, the same woman was in his kitchen, approaching him with the same half smile that was burned forever in his memory. And Lucas panicked. It wasn't that he found her irresistible, he had resisted her before. Sort of. But that night was ancient history, and much had happened in the time between. Lucas's
mind flashed to Jenna and the startling kiss in the mudroom only minutes before Angela sauntered back into his life. It was worlds away from the tenderness of the encounter that had made a younger Angela's implicit offer easy to disregard. Much had changed.

Lucas was sure that Angela could sense that. That she could take one look at his face and see the hurt there, read the long, sad poem of their brokenness in the lines around his eyes and mouth. He knew what she was going to say, what she was going to do. And he didn't know how he would respond.

“Why am I here?” Angela repeated, stopping inches from his rigid chest.

He waited for her touch, for her hand against him in an act of desire, maybe even longing. Something he hadn't felt from a woman in a very long time. But it didn't come. She cupped the apple below the curve of her neck, pulled it tight against the striking line of her collarbone as a talisman of sorts.

“I'm here because I'm going to clear my father's name,” she whispered. She reached around him and dropped the uneaten apple in the trash can beneath the sink.

Then Angela walked out of the kitchen, hips swaying against Lucas's shirt, pulling the fabric tight, and he couldn't form a single coherent thought.

It was the last thing he'd ever expected her to say.

T
he day after the garage kiss, Jess drove up to the Painter house at a quarter to eight and gave the horn of his hand-me-down Citation a cheerful honk.

“What is Jess Langbroek doing in our driveway?” Meg's mother asked, peering between the slats of the Venetian blinds. One hand was on her hip and the other still clutched the spatula that she had used only a moment before to flip a neat row of pancakes on the long, flat griddle that straddled two elements of her expansive stove.

Meg's head jerked up in shock. She was at the counter, pretending to eat a bowl of Cheerios even though her mother was happily pouring rounds of sweet, fragrant batter for her dad and brother. Linda's from-scratch pancakes were world-famous, or at least Sutton-famous, but Meg wasn't in the mood. Her cereal was untouched, sparkling with a fine dusting of sugar and dotted with fat slices of banana that were slowly turning brown.

“Honey?” Linda prompted, and though her endearment could have been intended for any one of the members of her family, she looked directly at Meg. “Do you know why Jess is here?”

Meg cleared her throat and stirred the soggy Cheerios with her spoon. “I don't know, Mom. Maybe he's here for Bennett.”

Bennett was only a year older than Jess, but the two hadn't been close since preschool, and he was already shaking his head
no. Swallowing a mouthful of pancake, he shot Meg a meaningful glance. “Jess's not here for me,” he said.

She shrank. How could he know? But he didn't know, he couldn't. Meg tried to glare at him, but mustering the appropriate disdain was beyond her. She had barely slept at all the night before, and the evidence of her insomnia was apparent beneath her eyes in pale blue smudges that shone like the memory of a faded bruise. No one had warned her that first kisses caused sleeplessness.

If her mother had noticed the dark lines, she hadn't pressed her, and was even gracious enough not to fuss when Meg turned down pancakes and opted for cold cereal instead. Though it wasn't like her daughter to turn down warm food, Linda's only interference was to lean over Meg's shoulder and slice half of a ripe banana onto the little O's.

But Jess's appearance in their driveway made Linda look at Meg again, her eyes flicking between the girl and the window as if the answer resided in the strained air between the two.

“Well, he's coming to the door,” Linda said. She quickly tested a pancake, then flipped all four of them with a practiced twist of her wrist. Depositing the stack on a serving plate in front of her husband, she set the spatula on the counter. “Don't anyone get up now,” she teased. “I'm not doing anything anyway. I'll get it.”

Meg was grateful that her mother answered the door, because there was no way she could have trusted her legs if Linda had told her to go. The truth was, as ordinary, as commonplace as Jess's kiss had been, she had spent every minute of the night reliving it. Face turned into the pillow, she thrilled at the thought of her first kiss, remembering the scent of his cologne, the lay of his hand, the way her hair fell against their cheeks side by side. And then, as quickly as her chest danced with butterflies at the memory, her stomach filled with dread.

It should have been Dylan.

But there was no time to contemplate the back-and-forth of her excitement—the almost bittersweet sense of both joy and
loss—because suddenly Linda walked into the kitchen, trailing Jess behind her like a puppy on a string.

“Look who's here for Meg,” Linda said, her voice blithe and her eyebrows raised just a touch higher than their normal, attractive arch.

Meg's dad put down his fork and pushed away his empty plate. Sliding off the stool where he had been sitting, he said, “I don't know why you're here, Jess, but Linda will be insulted if you don't stay for a pancake.”

“Thanks, Mr. Painter.” Jess grinned, taking the stool without a moment's hesitation. “I won't stay long. I'm actually here to pick up Meg for school.”

Meg was grateful that Bennett was between her and Jess so that she didn't have to watch him as he spread butter on a pair of pancakes and drizzled warm syrup all over them. But though she didn't have to look at Jess, she couldn't miss the fleeting glance that her dad darted at her mom. Something instant and wordless passed between them. Meg closed her eyes. She didn't want to know.

“School is only a few blocks away,” Greg said. “Meg's been okay walking so far.”

“Just under a mile,” Jess corrected without malice. “And it's getting cold.” He peered around Bennett and gave Meg a hopeful, conspiratorial smile.

Her lips pulled up faintly in reply, but she was too shy to meet his gaze for more than a second.

“Meg?” her father asked, giving her permission to answer for herself.

She gulped. “Okay.”

The entire exchange was light, insignificant. But when Meg accepted Jess's offer, the room seemed to exhale, to acknowledge that Jess wasn't asking out of neighborly benevolence. Greg sighed a little, and Linda took Meg's bowl and emptied the sloppy contents into the sink, pushing the cereal into the garbage disposal with her spoon, each swipe deliberate but calm. Bennett was the only one who seemed unfazed, and he
downed the last inch of his orange juice and left, his brooding shoulders hunched no more or less than they usually were.

“Well,” Linda said, taking charge of her kitchen with the one drawn-out word. “Better hurry up. You two don't want to be late.”

Half of a syrup-drenched pancake was already gone, but Jess grinned between bites and assured her that he would get Meg to school on time.

“It's not you I'm worried about,” Linda told him. She wiped her hands on a dishcloth and wiggled her finger at Meg in summons. “Come on, hon. I have that note ready for you.”

Meg had no idea what she was talking about, but she was happy to follow her mother to the front door where Linda dropped the subterfuge with a knowing chuckle. “Meg, Meg,” she sighed, untangling a scarf from the collar of her favorite coat. It was a shapely tweed woven in browns and creams, and as Meg watched the pretty, matching scarf unravel in Linda's hands, she focused on the wide collar of the coat, the cut of the straight hem.

“You know,” Linda said turning to wind the scarf around Meg's neck, “you're not allowed to date until you're sixteen.”

Horrified, Meg sputtered mutely. “I—I'm not—”

Linda buttoned the corner of her mouth in a wry pucker. “I saw the way Jess looked at you. He's been looking at you like that for a long time, but I think you may have finally noticed it.”

“For a long time?” Meg repeated.

“A year at least. Maybe years.” Linda tilted her head thoughtfully. “He's a nice boy, Meg, but he's older than you.”

“He doesn't feel older than me.”

“He is.”

“Two? Three years? That's not so much.”

Linda pushed her breath out with a decisive nod. “It's irrelevant, really. What's done is done. If I told him to leave you alone he'd only want you more.”

“Mom,” Meg whispered, peeking over her shoulder to make sure that Jess hadn't finished his pancakes and wasn't standing
behind her listening to every mortifying word. He was nowhere to be seen.

“Just a few rules,” Linda continued, ignoring her daughter's obvious embarrassment. “You can't be alone with him. Group dates only. And no kissing.”

Meg's heart sank so fast and so visibly that her mother laughed a soft laugh and pulled her close. “I'm teasing,” she whispered. “Well, not about the date part. But now I know you kissed him.”

“He kissed me,” Meg amended, but then, remembering how she had leaned into Jess, she immediately felt guilty.

“It's okay,” Linda assured her. “But promise me you'll be careful.”

It was the second time that somebody had warned her to be careful with Jess Langbroek, and Meg resented the intrusion. “I can take care of myself,” she told her mom.

“Oh, I know. Maybe I should be cautioning Jess.”

“Leave Jess to me,” Greg said, sneaking up behind his wife and daughter and enfolding the both of them in his ample arms.

“Dad,” Meg complained, pushing away. “You guys are ridiculous. This is insane. I'm not a baby.”

Greg pulled his wife close and rested his chin on the top of her head. She fit so perfectly against his chest that it seemed to Meg as if her mother's every contour was made for that spot alone. Closing his eyes to enjoy the feel of his wife against him, Greg mused as if Meg wasn't even in the room, “You know, I always thought Dylan would be the first in line. I have to admit this comes as a bit of a surprise. We were worried about the wrong boy.”

At the mention of Dylan's name, Meg's skin bristled. All at once she felt hot and cold, restless and tired, as if the mere thought of him was enough to whip her into a discouraging frenzy of contradictions. She wondered if she would be feeling this way if Dylan had been the one to kiss her in the garage. If she would be standing here, stunned with the understanding that something had been lost, had slipped between her fingers
before she had a chance to realize it was gone. But she couldn't stand to think like that, so she muttered, “Dad, please.”

“Okay, okay,” he relented. “I won't make fun of you anymore.” Greg unwrapped himself from his wife and grabbed Meg by the shoulders to plant an earnest kiss on her forehead. “But whether you like it or not, you're still my baby.”

It felt different to Meg, her dad's heartfelt blessing, and something inside her loosened and floated away as if she had come undone. She pulled the edges of her innocence tight around her and tried to tuck in the flapping corners, the places where Jess's kiss had begun to unfurl the bud of her youth like a flower forced to bloom in December. But it was no use.

When Jess bounded into the entryway and said it was time to go, she followed him resolutely, stepping out of her expectations with an air of determined acceptance. Life's not fair, her dad had once told her. She hadn't known what he meant until she saw Jess almost reach for her hand, almost, and then stop himself because her parents were watching. She realized that it wasn't fair because this could only end badly. It wasn't fair because she didn't want Jess; she wanted Dylan. It wasn't fair because she had grown up without warning, overnight.

It wasn't fair because nobody ever got what they wanted, no strings attached.