“Unless it gets removed.”
“Well, yes, there’s that.…” Her lips tighten. “Though it’s quite the ordeal.”
From her expression, I’m guessing she might have firsthand experience with tattoo removal, but I want her look of misery gone, so I tap the large bin of Legos at the end of the couch with a foot. “These yours?”
She blinks innocently at me. “Of course. I love Legos.”
We both laugh until she bites that lip ring and a ping of lust has my nerves twitching.
She knits her eyebrows together and frowns slightly at the bottle of wine on the counter. “I’m not sure I have a wine thingy to open the bottle.”
I tilt my head in thought. “Well, instead of pulling it out, we could push it in.”
She gasps.
A laugh bursts from me. “I’m talking about the cork, you pervert.”
She turns pink. “You must be rubbing off on me.”
My lips twitch as I hold in another laugh.
Her pink cheeks grow red. “Ugh,” she says, with a deprecating tone. “I need to shut up. We need to eat.” She moves toward the kitchen.
Digging a wine key from my pocket, I go to the bar.
Her eyes narrow on the corkscrew as I twist it in. “You are the perv. You set me up.”
I give her an innocent look.
“Fine, two can play at that game. Pour yourself a big glass of wine. You’ll need it after the extra spice I’m going to add to your dinner.”
I lower my eyelids seductively. “I like a little extra spice.”
She reaches into a colander next to the sink and whips a noodle at me. I catch it before it smacks me in the face. “I can get naked and lie on the table, if you want to eat off me.”
A laugh escapes her. “You are awful,” she says, turning to the stove.
After tossing the noodle back at her, I pull the cork out. “Should I have brought glasses?”
She pretends to glare at me and yanks the noodle from her arm. “We have glasses.” Her lips push together and that damn ring catches my eye again. She glances around the small kitchen. “Somewhere.”
She searches high and low for wine glasses, bending and stretching to reach inside the cupboards until I have to look away. Never thought something so innocent would rile me up so much.
“Ah, finally” she says, reaching into the cabinet above the refrigerator.
Finally is right.
She sets two champagne flutes on the counter. I’m not about to comment on the difference between wine glasses and champagne flutes. “Why don’t you go pour and I’ll plate.”
I reach for the glasses. “Don’t forget my extra spice.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
The table is already set for two, with bright linen and silverware. At opposite ends. Glancing at Allie busy in the kitchen, I move one setting next to the other. Allie raises an eyebrow when she comes in with two steaming plates but doesn’t say anything about the new table arrangement.
She sets the dishes down. “Hope you like chicken pad thai.”
I glance at the chicken, sauce, and noodles. “Never had it, but it smells great.”
“You like spicy, right?”
“I think we already covered that.”
She lets out a harrumph and sits. “It’s too spicy for Ben, so I rarely get to cook it.”
I spear a piece of chicken. “How old is Ben?”
“Five,” she says. She watches me mentally doing math as I chew. “I had him at sixteen. Well, I was almost seventeen.”
Fuck. That’s way too young to be having a kid. Afraid I might blurt the words, I point to the food. “This is really good. Nutty and spicy.” I twirl some noodles onto my fork. Then keeping my tone light, I ask, “So how does that happen?”
She blinks at me in confusion.
“I mean, I know how it happened. It’s just…what about protection?”
Her gaze turns level.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, realizing how she’s construing my question. “I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s probably—no,
The barbells in her eyebrow drop. “Sometimes condoms don’t work.”
A twinge of horror runs through my body and I blurt, “Don’t tell me that.”
“But it had more to do with alcohol and other substances that lead to not being careful.”
Still scared shitless at the thought of a condom not working—I mean, I’ve heard about that but never known anyone to have a
“Prior to being pregnant, way too much.” She shrugs. “After I got pregnant, never.”
“I’m having a hard time imagining you as a wild partier.”
“I wasn’t until I started dating Trevor. And really, only when I was with him. Trevor ruled my world from the moment he noticed me in art class at the end of freshman year. It didn’t help that he was a junior.”
Trevor is the last person I want to talk about. He’s the one big
“At first no. I was kind of in my own little bubble trying to figure out the changes happening to my body and life.” She stops cutting a piece of chicken, and sets her knife on the edge of the plate. “But when I started showing, people did act a little weird, even some of the teachers, and that made me feel weird too. My life changed faster than I could mentally keep up. Trevor had already graduated, so my social life at high school was almost nonexistent except for my art friends. Then he broke up with me and got back together with Jazz.”
I frown. I’d imagined they dated, had Ben, graduated, then married.
She picks up the knife again and absently taps at the edge of her plate. “The pity came at me in waves from people I didn’t even know. I started hating school. All those pitying looks reminded me of my heartbreak.”
Taking in her sad tone, I admit, “I would’ve quit.”
“After I had Ben in the summer, I went back senior year for about a month. But it was stupid for me to spend seven hours sitting around with high school kids while my baby was in daycare. I decided to take the GED and go to community college for a couple of classes.”
“And then marry the dick who left you,” I say, unable to stop myself.
She reaches for her glass of wine but stares at her plate. “I should have learned the first time, huh?”
I do not want to talk anymore about fucking Trevor, who is obviously a major fuckhead, and the idea of his having power over her makes me set down my fork. “Allie, you’re beautiful and sexy.” Her grip tightens around the stem of her glass. “But everything else about you is amazing too. Your direct personality, your talent, the way you handle your business, your commitment to your son—I’m attracted to it all. The idea Trevor would leave you is mind-boggling.”
Eyes wide, she lifts her glass with a trembling hand. “Um, wow, I’m a bit taken aback but thank you.” She takes a sip of wine and clears her throat. “What about you? What was high school like for you?”
Since she appears a bit shaken by my revelation, I lightly say, “It was all right. I played football and ran track. Partied a lot. Got semishitty grades. The ACT saved my ass for college.”
“I imagine you were popular.”
Her tone is light, but I’m guessing that coming from her little art circle the popular thing bugs her. I shrug. “In some ways, but I never had real friends like you. More like a circle I partied with.”
Watching me, sadness crosses her face.
Feeling like I opened up too much, I absently twirl more noodles on my fork. “So tell me about Ben.”
Her face lights up. “He’s in kindergarten this year. He’s read over thirty books so far. Granted, they’re like ten pages long, but he’s really smart. He loves science and anything to do with building. He was building complicated Legos structures by the time he was three.”
I don’t catch everything she says about Ben. It’s hard to pay attention to her words when her face is so
