Page 56 of Midnight Surrounds Us

“Oh, please don’t mind me,” I said, flashing a smile that somehow reminded me of picture day in elementary school. Andthere wasn’t a “mess” for ten miles in any direction. I couldn’t find one single thing out of place. “Your home is beautiful. Thank you for havin’ me. It’s nice to see you again.”

When Calla finally let go of my hands, I adjusted the tote bag’s strap over my shoulder and then remembered why it was there in the first place and pulled out the bottle of wine. I handed it to her, and she took it, but her face did a thing; her nostrils flared the smallest bit and her forehead scrunched up. Maybe white wine would’ve been a better choice?Dang it.But I thought red paired better with beef, and I was standing smack in the middle of the place beef came from!

“Yes,” she said, “it’s been too long. How are you, honey? We haven’t seen you since Thomas’s funeral.”

Yeah, great. Thanks for the reminder.In Calla Graves’s eyes, I was still Tommy’s widow. How could I betray him by dating her son?

We were off to a great start.

She handed the wine to Rye, who shook his head almost imperceptibly, his eyes full of apology for his mama’s rudeness, but then she grabbed my hand again and tugged me further inside, past the dining room to the kitchen.

Rye followed silently with his dad on his heels, like any good husband who knew if he abandoned his wife now, there’d be hell to pay.

Calla guided me down onto a chair at her kitchen table, then opened her fridge and began to empty it of all its contents. “What can I get you to drink, Aubrey? Coffee? Or I made a fresh batch of sweet tea yesterday.”

The kitchen was just as fancy as the rest of the house, but more lived in. Photographs of cute kids covered the fridge along with stick-figure drawings of a large family surrounded by cows.

I saw a few dishes in the deep basin sink, and the small kitchen table looked similar to the one in my kitchen, but theappliances were all state of the art. The only thing that looked out of place was a red cooler resting on the granite countertop.

“Thank you. Water’s fine, if you don’t mind. The caffeine would just keep me up tonight.”

“Oh, well I know that’s true,” she said. “The older we women get, the less we can tolerate such things. It’s important to drink enough water. Keeps the skin elastic.” Under her breath, she mumbled something that sounded eerily like, “Too bad it can’t unshrivel your eggs.”

Oh, so not only was I Tommy’s widow, which in Calla Graves’s view meant basically still married to him, even though he’d been dead ten years, but I was also too old for Rye. I couldn’t give her grandchildren, so what good was I to her? She didn’t have to come right out and say it. I spoke “judgy mom” just as fluently as the next girl.

“Mama,” Rye warned, and he handed me a glass of water he’d filled from a filtered jug in the fridge.

She didn’t respond to him, so I said, “Thanks, babe,” laying the fake-girlfriend schtick on thick. I smiled at him, and he leaned down to kiss my cheek.

Rye’s mama watched us out of the corner of her eye. “So how did you two…”

“Hook up?” Rye asked, knowing it would push her buttons. The little wink he threw me gave him away.

Again, her face pinched into definite disapproval, but she caught herself and forcibly morphed her expression back to bland indifference.

Rye was having the hardest time not laughing, which made it hard for me too.

“We ran into each other in town,” he said. “I’ve always had a thing for her, so I asked her out, and she said yes.”

He beamed. It was all true. Kind of. But his mama scoffed and that pinched-up look was back.

“Ryder, you did not have a thing for her. She was Junior’s friend and way too old for you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you go through puberty with a goddess like Aubrey hangin’ around all the time.”

I felt my cheeks heat and probably blush the color of a red chokeberry. It sounded like Rye’s mama actually choked, and his dad mumbled something that sounded a lot like “Can’t blame him for that.”

“Grady Graves!” Calla scolded, and now I had to bite down on my lip to hold back my laugh. So, it wasn’t Rye’s dad who needed to be won over after all.

It felt like it took forever to get to the actual eating part of the evening, but Rye and I made good use of our time, flirting and touching every chance we got. Given the amount of time I’d spent worrying what Rye’s parents might think of me dating their much younger son, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself having fun.

While Calla beat her mashed potatoes into submission with a hand-held mixer, Rye leaned against the counter, holding me in place in front of him, his chin on the top of my head, his legs touching the outsides of mine, and his arms wrapped around my stomach, while his mama droned on loudly about her auxiliary club and how they’d just made her president for the seventh year in a row. She checked every few minutes to see if her son was still touching me.

Another of Rye’s delicious appendages was perceptible behind me, and visions of another marathon session filled my head, but then my manners got the best of me, and I offered and tried to help Calla set the dining table and get everything ready to serve.

She said, “No, thank you. You’re our guest. Don’t worry your pretty little head,” and pushed my hands away.

The phrase “cold shoulder” kept coming to mind. Surprisingly, though, Rye’s dad seemed to warm up as the night wore on.

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