Night Road(24)

He pulled her into his arms. “Can we come here again tomorrow night?”

They were going down a bad road here; she should hit the brakes now, tell him it was too bad that they loved each other and let it go. Now, while she still could. She should tell him no, say she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her friendship with Mia, but when she looked at him, she had no strength to turn him away. He made everything inside of her stop hurting.

Dangerous, Lexi, she thought, say no. Think of your best friend and what matters. But when he kissed her again, she whispered, “Okay.”





Six





Jude sat in bed with her husband, listening with half an ear to the late-night news. An expensive down comforter, covered by a custom silk duvet, floated like a cloud around them. In the past few days—since the dance, in fact—her mommy radar had been emitting a strong signal. Something was wrong with Zach, and she didn’t know what it was. Nothing bothered her more than being out of the loop in her kids’ lives. “Zach broke up with Amanda,” she said finally.

“Uh-huh,” Miles said.

She looked at him. How was it that no matter what drama unfolded in this house, he never seemed to worry? He accused her of being a helicopter parent, all noise and movement, hovering too close to her children, but if that were true, he was a satellite, positioned so far up in the sky he needed a high-powered telescope to track the goings-on in his own home. Maybe it was the medical school training. He’d learned how to suppress his emotions a little too well. “Is that all you have to say?”

“I could have said less, actually. It’s hardly an event.”

“Molly said Bryson said Zach was acting weird after football practice. I don’t think he’s handling the breakup as well as it appears. You should talk to him.”

“I’m a man. He’s a teenage boy. Talking is hardly our best sport.” Miles smiled at her. “Go ahead.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re dying to ask him what’s going on. You can’t help yourself. So, go. Just listen to the kid and believe him when he says Amanda doesn’t matter. He’s seventeen. When I was seventeen—”

“Your horndog past is not comforting.” She kissed him on the cheek and climbed over him to get out of bed. “I won’t be gone long.”

“Believe me, I know.”

Smiling, Jude left their bedroom.

The second floor was ablaze with light. As usual, neither of her intelligent children had mastered the incredibly complex hand-and-eye coordination necessary to turn off a light switch. She paused outside Mia’s door, listening. She could tell that her daughter was on the phone. No doubt she was talking to either Lexi or Tyler.

Jude made her way to Zach’s room. At his closed door, she paused. She would not batter him with questions or bury him under advice. This time she would just listen.

She knocked and got no answer. Knocking again, she announced herself and opened the door.

He was in his game chair, wielding the black remote as if he were a fighter pilot, which, on-screen, he was.

“Hey you,” she said, coming up beside him. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to beat this level.”

She sat down on the black shag rug beside him. This room had been decorated once by a professional and redone over the years by Zach. Expensive chocolate-colored wallpaper had been covered by movie posters. The bookshelves were an archaeological display of his childhood: a graveyard of action figures, a tangled heap of plastic dinosaurs, stacks of video game cases, a dog-eared copy of Captain Underpants, and the five Harry Potter novels.

She wanted to say, Can we talk? but to a teenage boy (or most any male), one might as well say, May I please rip out your spleen?

“Let me guess,” Zach said. “You think I’m doing drugs? Or spraying graffiti? Maybe you’re worried that I’m a girl trapped in a dude’s body.”

She couldn’t help smiling at that. “I am so misunderstood.”

“You do worry about the weirdest shit. I mean stuff.”

“Do you want to talk about Amanda? Or how you feel? I’ve been through a few broken hearts in my time. Keith Corcoran in high school almost ruined me.”

He put down the controller and looked at her. “How did you know you loved Dad?”

Jude was pleasantly surprised by the question. Usually she had to pry this kind of conversation out of her son. But maybe he was growing up, or maybe he’d actually been hurt by Amanda.

There were so many things she could say, memories she could share, and if she were talking to Mia, she might have done just that. But this was Zach. She didn’t want to ruin this moment by talking too much.

“The first time I saw him, I knew. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. When he said he loved me, I believed him, and I hadn’t believed anyone since my dad. Until Miles … and you kids, I used to worry that I was like my mother. Your dad reminded me what love felt like, I guess, and when he kissed me for the first time, I cried. I didn’t know why then, but now I do. It was love and it scared the bejesus out of me. I knew I’d never be the same again.” She smiled at her son, who for once was soaking up every word. “Someday you’ll meet the right girl, Zach. I promise. Only you’ll be grown up and she’ll be a woman, and when you kiss her, you’ll know you belong with her.”