Shuffle, Repeat(19)

I gawk at him. “You know poetry?”

He places a hand over his heart. “At their core, my power ballads are poetry.”

“At their core, your power ballads are schlock.”

“You have no soul,” he says lightly. “I happen to be an admirer of the well-placed word.”

“I happen to have several words I’m considering placing,” I tell him.

Oliver laughs, and I suddenly realize how much I like the sound of his laugh. “I’m going to say good-bye to your mom and her not-boyfriend.”

I trail him into the kitchen, where Cash is opening a bottle of wine and Mom is chopping arugula. They smile when we enter. I hope Oliver is going to do the polite nice-to-meet-you thing and make a fast getaway, but instead, he freezes, pointing to something on the counter. “Is that what I think it is?”

I peer around him to see that it is—fantastic—a dirty hunk of old mushroom. This day couldn’t be more humiliating.

Except that yes…yes it could, because Cash lifts the mushroom and holds it toward Oliver. “Want to smell?” To my vast horror, Oliver obligingly ambles right over to sniff the object held between the fingers of my mom’s not-boyfriend.

Oh.

God.

I open my mouth to protest or to apologize or maybe to start opera singing, because that might at least distract everyone from the fungal horror show before us, but then Oliver looks at me with a face of pure delight. “June, you have to smell this truffle.”

Truffle.

I know it’s something culinary and fancy, but that’s about all I know. I’m pretty sure I’ve never tasted (or smelled) one before. Since everyone is waiting for me to do something, I walk over and take a whiff. The scent is earthy and rich and not altogether unpleasant. “Nice,” I say, even though everything about this is decidedly the opposite of nice.

“Abruzzo’s gave it to me,” Cash tells us.

“The restaurant?” Oliver asks.

“Yep. I built them a new hostess stand and fixed their outer deck.”

Suddenly, it’s all making sense. Cash lives the same bartering lifestyle as my mom. Oliver must think we are absolute gypsies.

“That is the coolest thing ever,” he says, and I try not to imagine how he’s going to relay this whole experience later to Ainsley or Theo. “You guys are so…”

Bizarre.

Bohemian.

Weird.

“…authentic,” Oliver concludes. “I love it.”

He sounds like he means it.

Cash glances at my mom and they have some sort of unspoken conversation through their eyebrows, because then he’s inviting Oliver for dinner.

“It’s risotto,” my mother chimes in.

“With shaved truffle,” adds Cash.

“I’d love to,” Oliver says.

I look back and forth between them all. Apparently I’m the only one who’s freaking out.

? ? ?

Against all odds, dinner is a huge success. The truffle risotto is to die for, and so is the apple-rhubarb pie we have for dessert (baked, of course, by Mom’s friend Quinny after some complicated trade involving Mom, Quinny, and their friend Morgan). Oliver and I talk about our SATs and where we might go to college (me: maybe New York; him: no idea) and Mom explains to Cash that she and Oliver’s mother were roommates a long time ago. I tell them about my volunteer work with the nature center, and Mom shares funny stories about the lengths some of her students will go to try to get out of their assignments. It’s all very easy, and I can’t help contrasting how the evening would have gone if our guest had been Itch instead of Oliver.

If Itch had been here, we would have taken plates into the family room. We would have eaten dinner in silence while watching a movie. After, we would have made an excuse to go up to my room or for a drive so that we could be alone. Then, when we were alone, we still wouldn’t talk.

After dessert, Mom and Cash go upstairs to discuss the trim in the guest bedroom. The minute they’re gone, Oliver waggles his eyebrows at me. “Discuss the trim, my ass,” he says, and I whap him. “You know he wants to drop the ‘not’ from his ‘not-boyfriend’ status, right?”

“Yeah. That’s what it looks like.”

“Is that cool with you?” Oliver asks as I walk him to the entryway.

“What do you mean?”

“Your mom dating someone. Are you okay with that?”

I suppose it makes sense that he’s curious. Oliver’s parents have been together since forever, since college, since some wild party where both of our moms flirted with Oliver’s dad—Bryant—and he ended up asking for the future Mrs. Flagg’s phone number. The way Mom tells the story, there was no fighting it. Marley and Bryant belonged together. They made sense together.

“What about you and Dad?” I asked Mom once.

“He came later,” she said. “And the only thing that ever made sense between us was you.”

“I’m fine with it,” I tell Oliver, watching him push his long arms through the sleeves of his coat.

“Good,” he says, “because I think they’re a thing.”

Part of me is startled that he would check in with me. “You know you just asked about my feelings.”

“Friends do that,” he says. “See you Monday.”