She sat down on her front steps. Oh, God. She was doing it. Exactly what she’d hoped to avoid. She realized she was sitting in the spot where she’d first met him, the night she dumped Rudy’s TV. Where Patsy and Jacob sat out talking until the sun came up. Where probably countless others had done the same thing, their little beating hearts in their outstretched hands.
He didn’t real-love love her. Like she did him.
Shit.
“WELL, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?” MC KAY SAID. “A NICE, good-looking guy in D.C., going through a divorce? That’s like throwing a scrap of bacon to a pack of wild, hungry dogs.”
They were sitting on McKay’s front steps, while Oxo sniffed around, looking for a place to pee. It was actually getting too cold to sit outside at night. Pru wondered again that she and John hadn’t died, sleeping in the van. Was that only three nights ago?
She put her head in her hands. “I hate this stuff,” Pru moaned. “Boy stuff. I’ve been doing the same thing for twenty years now. When does it ever end?”
In fact, what was happening with John was a lot like the only high school crush she’d ever had. The boy had been older and there wasn’t much to distinguish him from all the other boys except that his locker was right next to hers, and he had this face that she couldn’t look at full-on, for whatever reason. Her crush on him was huge and preoccupying and dwindled her down to the size of a peanut, in her mind. She practically hid inside her locker whenever she saw him. There wasn’t even a question of the boy liking her back. She didn’t for a moment entertain the possibility that, if her hair caught on fire, he would even notice, as he stood there spinning out the combination on his lock.
But she had some reason to think that John would notice. That he had, in fact, already noticed. There was some possibility there . . . wasn’t there? No. She had been foolish to think so. The carrots in the waxed paper bag—the familiar, inevitable feeling of her hand in his—none of it meant anything. When she saw him a few mornings later at the Korner, she felt one part of herself removed, watching and listening with the eyes and ears of a Soviet-era spy. He was nothing but his usual, amiable self, although once or twice she thought he was looking at her strangely.
The other thing that was like her only high school crush was the amount of John Owens-related trivia she’d amassed. He had flecks of green in his hazel eyes. He tied his apron in the back, and when he cooked, he put a towel over one shoulder. He gave free coffee to the people who couldn’t afford it. He was nice to the delivery guys and beggars, everyone who set foot in his café. He had two sisters and they were always calling him on his cell phone. His heroes were Charlie Parker and Lyndon B. Johnson. He grew up wild, near the woods, and scampered over rocks like a billy goat. When he fell asleep, his body jerked exactly one time. She was like a John Owens philatelist.
Did Gaia know any of this stuff? Pru wondered. Probably not. Probably, that was the whole attraction.
A WEEK AFTER THE NIGHT IN THE VAN, SHE WAS SPEEDING up the BWI Parkway behind the wheel of Jacob’s convertible. Patsy called the color look-at-me blue. It was, indeed, very, very blue.
The convertible had a stick shift and ergonomic leather seats and a subwoofer that pounded away right underneath the seat, as she drove. The sun was out as they sped north, toward the Delaware shore. Her whole body vibrated deliciously. So this is what it feels like to be Jacob, she thought.
Jacob himself was sacked out in the backseat, fast asleep. He had tossed her the keys and jumped back there as soon as she’d come down with her overnight bag. He hadn’t even bothered to find out if she knew how to drive stick, much less whether she had a driver’s license, or any outstanding warrants for her arrest. He lay on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, wearing scrubs and sunglasses. Pru felt as though she had kidnapped a member of Prince’s band.
It was a beautiful autumn day, cool enough so that she had turned on the car’s heater to warm her toes. Patsy and Annali were already at the beach house, having driven in from the airport in Baltimore in a rented car a few days earlier. This was to be their last trip before the move. Nadine knew about it now, and professed, even in private conversations with Pru, to be thrilled.
Climbing the bridge over the Chesapeake, she gave the accelerator a little tap with her foot and the car leapt forward, out of the shadow of a semi in the next lane. She’d never driven a car like this before. Her only experience was with old beaters that you had to coax up the slightest rise, keeping your fingers crossed that the engine didn’t suddenly die.
Jacob’s head appeared in her rearview mirror, just as they were cresting the bridge. He looked around, stretching and yawning, then clambered into the front seat.
“Is that coffee?” he said, pointing to a styrofoam cup in the cup holder. He pried off the lid and drank the coffee in a long, undulating gulp, as if it were Gatorade. He replaced the empty cup in the holder and began riffling through a box of CDs on the floor. He flipped down the visor. He checked his cell phone for messages. Pru held her breath
