Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(90)

Lawson is still inside using the restroom when I get to the car, so I wait.

When he comes out, our eyes meet and he gives me a sad smile and says, “Are we there yet?” (His jokes could still use work.) When he gets close, I pull my purchase from behind my back and hand it to him.

He grins and starts to unwrap the package. “What’s—” A small porcelain cat falls from the paper into his hands. His grin fades, as if he were a little boy seeing a present under the Christmas tree that he had completely abandoned any hope of receiving, and his brain’s pleasure center is too overwhelmed by joy even to keep telling his mouth to smile.

He looks at me quickly, looks back down. Up. Down. Up.

His eyes look like firelight on polished oak when the sun catches them. I didn’t notice that before. How has a face that struck me as so ordinary the first few times I saw it become the most beautiful face in the world to me?

His brow furrows. He clenches his fist around the cat and comes for me. I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead, he grabs me up in a powerful embrace, almost squeezing the wind from me.

“Okay, tiger, don’t Yuri me.” I gasp and giggle.

He lets me go. He attempts to say something and stops. He tries once more and stops. He hugs me again, more gently this time, so I can breathe. Then he puts his hand on my cheek, presses his body against mine, and kisses me like he’s on fire and I’m water.

Sometimes you know you’re getting a fever way before you do. Days. A week. It’s there, ticking away in the back of your mind. You still feel fine, but your body tells you something’s waiting to overcome you. It’s a premonition. Falling in love is like that. Like the most welcome sort of fever, a perfect delirium descending on you. You feel it coming long before it reaches you. Long before it knocks you flat.





“All right, later,” I say, not meeting Josie’s eyes as she drops me off.

“DeeDee?” she says in an imploring voice.

But I ignore her, grab my bag from her trunk, and walk quickly into my trailer. I know I’m acting like a dick to one of the people I love most in this world, but I can’t help it.

Mom meets me inside the front door, dressed for bed. “How’d it go, sweetie?” she asks.

I shake my head and try not to look at her, but then she hugs me and I unravel, sobbing. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, DeeDee. Wanna talk?”

I shake my head again.

“Did someone hurt you?” Mom raises my chin to meet my eyes.

“Not in the way you’re asking.”

She looks at me for a second before dragging me gently by the hand over to our couch. She sits and pulls my head onto her lap and strokes my hair and tear-sodden face.

She knows. I can sense it. I never truly believed in her gift the way she does, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that she knows and hurts with me.





It’s almost one a.m. when I slip inside my house after dropping off Lawson. I sneak into the kitchen without turning on any lights and pull a carton of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream from the freezer. I grab a spoon, sit at the table, and settle in for a good stress-eat. Buford shuffles into the kitchen and gives me a reproachful woof.

I shush him and scratch him behind the ears. “Someday I’m going to try to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies using only the cookie dough from chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream,” I whisper.

Buford gives me a quizzical look.

“But you can’t have any, Bufie Bear,” I continue. “Because I can never remember the two hundred and sixty-seven different human foods that are poison to dogs, so I play it safe.”

Buford gives me a forlorn look. He is aware on some level that there are things in the world he’s not allowed to eat, and this causes him great sorrow.

“Jo?” My mom’s sleepy voice startles me.

“Hey, Mom. Sorry for waking you up.”

“I’m glad you got home safe.” She pads in and sits beside me.

“Sorry. I know you hate it when I do this.” I hold up the spoon and the ice cream container.

“I do. But you wouldn’t be my Josie if you didn’t do it anyway.” She regards me in her bleary, unfocused, contacts-out way. “So? How’d it go in Florida?”

“Well, I’m eating ice cream from the carton with a spoon, which is one of the most clichéd ways writers of film and television convey that someone is undergoing emotional turmoil, so you tell me.”

Mom rests her chin on her palm and strokes my hair with her other hand. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

I inhale deeply through my nose. “It feels weird to wish something had gone better but also be glad it went how it did.”

“Learning what you don’t want can be as important as learning what you do want.”

“Yeah, well. Anyway. You and Dad win. I’m doing the internship. Congrats.”

Mom stops stroking my hair and folds her arms on the table. “It was never about getting our way. We win when you’re happy. That’s all we want. I know it might not seem like it, but I think you’ll be happy getting out and seeing more of the world.”

We look at each other for a long time. “I’m worried about Delia,” I say finally.

“You’re a really, really good friend to her.”