Page 59 of The Gift
“Ah… Prettysure.”
“So, text her back.” He bit my jaw lightly. “Tell her we’ll be evenlater.”
My heart was beating hard with a combination of lust andanxiety. I wanted desperately to do exactly what he’d suggested, but I also knew what the fallout wouldbe.
“She’s gonna start freaking out momentarily. Calling me. Asking where Iam.”
Daniel sighed and backed away. “And I guess you can’t just tell her you had a change ofplans?”
I snorted before the words even fully registered. My mother? A change of plans? “No,” I said sadly. “That would not go overwell.”
Part of me really wanted to give in, though. Really,reallywantedto.
Daniel tugged at the leg of his jeans, rearranging himself, and I did thesame.
“Later?” hesaid.
“Definitely.”
This was going to be the longest dinnerever.
* * *
The driveto my childhood home took way longer than usual, mostly because I kept glancing at the man in the passenger seat, unable to look away. My car, which was usually pretty spacious, seemed smaller and oddly free of oxygen, considering how many times I had to focus on mybreathing.
“It’s going to be fine,” Daniel soothed. “I’m, like, ninety percent housebroken, I hardly ever knock over furniture, I eat with a fork, and I can make polite conversation whenrequired.”
“I know, I know. They’ll love you, and you’ll love them. It’s just odd,” I said. “Having you, with me, withthem. When you and I are together, it’s always been just you and me, and it feels a little bit like worlds colliding.” LikeJulianscolliding. I was different when I was with Daniel. Or I felt different, atleast.
“It’s not too late,” he said a moment later. “You could take me back home. Tell your mom I changed mymind.”
“What? No. God, of course not. I want you with me. I just hope… you have fun.”I hope you like me when I’m withthem.
“If you’re sure,” Danielsaid.
I laid a hand over his where it rested on his thigh, strangely reassured because he needed reassurance. “About that part, I’mpositive.”
A second later, we pulled up in front of the immaculate white ranch house with its bright red shutters and detached garage. The lawn was still almost uniformly green, despite the cold weather we’d had, and only the barest sprinkling of leaves dared to dot the surface. No doubt my mother would be out here tomorrow raking again before she put up the Christmasdecorations.
Daniel peered through the windshield at the small front porch tucked to one side of the house. “Shit. Thedecorations,” hesaid.
I snorted. There were hay bales flanking the bottom of the stairs to the front door, each with a scarecrow perched on top, surrounded by gourds and pumpkins. The stairs themselves were lined with pots of chrysanthemums and sedums my mother had to have been keeping at the nursery or inside the house until this morning, or else they’d have succumbed tofrost.
“The perils of owning a landscaping and floral company,” I reminded him. “RossLandscaping?”
Daniel looked startled. “Oh, right. You mentioned that once when you had to helpout.”
Different Julians again. I was pretty sure most of O’Leary saw me as an extension of my family. Daniel knew hardly anything aboutthem.
Still, I nodded. “It’s rare—like, once a year—that she gets busy enough to ask me, but I don’t mind it. I like the work, I could just never do it full time.” I gave him a sidelong glance. “My mother’s constantly looking for ways to save her garden from the deer, while I’m looking for ways to save the deer from mymother.”
Daniel smiled, but his eyes took on a faraway look. “I understand conflicting parental priorities, believeme.”
I wondered if he was thinking of his own mother, and I was struck again by how much we didn’t know about each other, how much we’d never discussed. And maybe it was true that if none of those things had come up in all our conversations, they just weren’t that important. But it felt odd that I couldn’t ask him about his family. We’d known each other too long and too well for me to ask him basic information I should have already known. Like when you’d had a long, involved conversation with a stranger at a wedding but couldn’t remember their name and were embarrassed to reveal yourignorance.
Theo came loping down the steps before I could get too worked up over it and ambled over to the car. I opened my door and stepped out to greet him, but he surprised me by stopping at Daniel’s side of the carinstead.
“What’s up, man?” Theo asked, offering Daniel hishand.
