Seven years old, just to remind you.
Polly, Chad, and Logan all looked at Leo.
“Ice cream sodas all around, please, Roxie,” he said with a sigh. “You still have that bottle of scotch hidden back there?”
“Roxie, how’s that black tea coming? Hop to it!” my mother called out from the front of the diner.
I escaped to the kitchen, where I was greeted with smoke pouring from the grill, the cheesesteaks now fried, and a burned-beyond-belief kielbasa.
“What is happening?” I asked the world one more time, and someone finally answered me.
“Crazy has come to Bailey Falls,” Leo said in a deep movie announcer’s voice, peering around the swinging door, coughing slightly at the smoke.
I nodded in agreement. “And its name is Mother.”
Once the smoke cleared and the sausage was put out of its misery, Leo reached out and tilted my chin up toward him. “You doing okay with all this, Sugar Snap?”
“I’m trying, Almanzo. I really am.” I sighed. I let him pull me into his arms, wrapping mine tightly around his waist, feeling his good strength seeping into me. Resting my chin on his chest, I gazed up at him, losing myself in the eyes I’d first looked into in this very kitchen, only two months before. I sighed, rising up onto my tiptoes. “A kiss would help.”
“Coming right up.” His lips pressed against mine, hungry and hot.
And when Maxine opened the door, asking where the black tea and ice cream sodas were, the entire world could see us.
I heard a gasp and we both broke the kiss, turning to see my mother and his, one with a look of delight, the other with a look of distinct displeasure.
Chad and Logan with big grins.
And Polly. Her eyes widened. Then filled with tears. Her face crumpled. She climbed off her stool, ran to her grandmother, and hid her face in Chanel No 5.
Leo’s hands fell from my skin like he’d been electrocuted. And the look on his face . . . oh.
He left the kitchen without a word, running across the diner and scooping up his daughter, holding her close as she cried, as his mother tried to comfort her as well. He backed out of the diner, his arms full of his family, his eyes meeting mine.
Now I knew.
He mouthed, “I’m sorry.” His mother looked backed at me with absolute ice in her eyes.
Now I knew.
I stood in the kitchen doorway, dumbstruck.
Now I knew why they called it falling in love.
Because the fall was so very, very bad.
Moments after the Maxwells left, while I was sitting quietly next to Chad and Logan, my mother handing me the tea I was supposed brew for Leo’s mother, the bell tinkled and we all turned at once, hoping to see . . . I couldn’t say it.
A tall, good-looking man in his fifties came sailing through the front door, more salt than pepper in his hair. He held a bag in one hand and a map in the other. “I’m looking for Trudy Callahan? I’m Wayne Tuesday.”
My mom patted my hand made her way over to Wayne, and he kissed her full on the mouth, right in front of everyone. Jesus, everyone was getting kissed stupid right out in the open today. Like no one in town had anything better to do than watch people smooch it up?
As the kiss became two, then four, I felt that damn lump in my throat, and try as I might, it just wouldn’t swallow down.
“You know what, I think I’m gonna get out of here.” Pushing off from my stool, I untied my apron, grabbed my bag from under the counter, and nodded to Chad and Logan.
“You want some company? You can come over; we’ve got Beaches on Blu-ray,” Logan offered.
“That does sound nice, but I think—” I looked over their shoulder and saw quickly where this was going with my mother and Wayne Tuesday. “Ugh. I just need to get out of here.”
Because the lump, I was discovering, was quickly followed by tears, and they were already stinging, preparing to march down my cheeks. The guys both looked at me sadly as I headed out the front door.
My truck looked blurry through the tears now starting to spill. I jumped into the giant Wagoneer, which had carried me all the way across the country and back again, and as I started up the old familiar rumble, U2 came blaring out of the crackly old speakers, singing “One.”
Is it getting better . . .
Oh can it, Bono!
I pulled over on the side of the road, threw the car into park, and pressed eject. I had no patience for U2 today, and the way their words never failed to highlight exactly what I was thinking, exactly what needed to be said. But still Bono sang, words about having someone to blame. I pressed eject again. Still nothing. I pressed eject a third time, and when nothing happened, I punched the stereo.
Which still did nothing! Bono sang about asking me to enter but then making me crawl, and I slapped at the CD player, yelling and crying, trying to get the damn thing to stop.
And then I heard a very familiar Wrangler pulling up behind me.
Before Leo could get to my window, I grabbed my bag and slammed out of my car, walking up the road.
“Hey, Roxie, where are you going?”
“Leave me alone, Leo,” I said, not wanting him to see me crying, not wanting to see his face. He had a power over me that I’d never felt before, and I was weak with it. I was angry at myself for letting things get this far, but Leo was going to feel the brunt of my anger.
“Stop, please—Jesus, Rox, would you stop already!” he shouted, his footsteps loud on the hot asphalt as he ran after me, because that’s what happens in a romantic comedy, right? She walks, he chases, she protests, then they kiss and all is well—ha.
He caught up to me and I turned around, my face wet with tears.