Locke catches me staring and drops his eyes to his chest. “What? Do I have something on me?” He brings his eyes back to me, and my face goes scarlet.
“No,” I mumble. “I just—I like your shirt.”
He flashes me a grin. “Thanks.”
I’m still pink-cheeked as we wind through the house and locate the living room, but his smile is infectious, and it makes me smile too. Locke’s mom’s house is warm and cozy, which helps soothe my nerves, and when Locke stops us in the living room, I recognize all the faces from the family photos that line the walls.
“Everyone, this is Greer. Greer, this is my aunt Cindy and her husband, Patrick.” Cindy looks like Dorothy, down to their high cheekbones and twin haircuts. Locke points at a younger version of his mom. “My sister Maggie and her husband, Nate. Maggie runs an art and pottery studio over in Shoreline. The rugrats are Stinkbutt and Unicorn Poop.”
The little kids, who must be four and six, squeal a protest.
“Uncle Locke,” groans the boy from his spot on the carpet.
“Alright, alright.” Locke grins at me. “Logan and Charlotte.” He cups a hand around his mouth and stage whispers to me, “They answer better to the first names I told you.”
He bends down and presses a kiss to the soft, pale cheek of the white-haired family matriarch. “And of course, lady of the hour, Grandma Betty.”
I give hugs to all of them—I’m pretending to be Locke’s…something…after all—and then Cindy makes space on the couch for me and Locke to plop down next to Grandma Betty. I make sure to leave room between me and Locke when we sit, but I still drag in the scent of him—the smell I don’t let myself indulge in too often because I don’t usually let myself sit close enough to smell him.
Maggie hands me a glass of wine with a wink, and I accept it gratefully. I take small, careful sips of the red, and loose, liquid heat blooms in my chest. Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s Locke’s family, who’s comfortable and welcoming and who lets me slip into the conversation like we’ve known each other for years. We make small talk for a bit—mostly Locke’s family asking about work—and then Grandma Betty clears her throat.
Every eye in the room swings to her as she raises her small glass of sherry in consideration. “We don’t get to put Locke through the wringer nearly enough. What do you say we break out the family photo album to show our guest?”
Locke shakes his head. “I don’t think Greer needs to see that.”
A chance to see Locke as a little kid?
“Heck yes, I do.” I flash Betty my biggest pretty-please smile. “How could I say no?”
Betty cackles with glee, and Cindy produces an album from the built-in bookshelves that line the wall near the fireplace. Cindy sets it on the coffee table before us, to the collective groans of Locke and Maggie.
By now Dorothy’s wandered back into the room, and she looks over my shoulder at the first photo in the album—a picture of a man in his late twenties standing at the edge of a cliff with a snow-capped mountain range unfurled behind him like majestic stone wings. The man flashes the camera a gregarious smile and holds up two fingers in the peace sign.
“That was before your dad shipped out to war,” Dorothy says. She doesn’t say which war, and I don’t ask. I figure if Locke wants me to know about it, he’ll tell me.
Dorothy casts a wistful glance at the album. “We would have been together forty years if he were still alive.” Love and nostalgia tinge her voice. “Marry your best friend, kids. That’s all I have to say.”
If only it were that easy.
My breath catches in my chest, and beside me, Locke freezes, studying the photograph so intently that he seems almost lost. I’m too far away to see details, but from here, Locke’s dad doesn’t look like him. Or, I guess, Locke doesn’t look like his dad. His dad’s pale skin contrasts with Locke’s olive tone, and his eyes shine blue to Locke’s brown. I see his mom in Locke, sure—the shape of his smiling eyes, those cut-glass cheekbones—but there’s nothing of the man in the picture in the man sitting beside me. Guess his mom’s genes run strong.
I stay put in my seat even though I want to lean forward, and Betty gives me and Locke a sideways glance, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Scoot closer so you can see better. You kids don’t have to be shy around us.”
Her words break the spell, and Locke and I look at each other for a second before he slowly turns back to Grandma Betty. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t touched Greer the entire time we’ve been eating snacks and grilling you,” Locke’s grandmother says. “You don’t have to hold back with your girlfriend for our sake, Lachlan.”
He doesn’t correct her to say I’m just his friend.
He doesn’t correct her to say I’m just his friend.
Instead, he shoots the room a shit-eating grin and drops a hand to my knee—casual, like he does this every day—and sets off a thousand fireworks inside my chest. His hand is warm on my knee, and his thumb brushes the inside of my leg like it’s been here before and plans to be back again. My heart has a fucking conniption, and, for the love of god, my body blooms with involuntary arousal so I’m sitting in Locke’s mom’s house in front of his entire extended family more turned on than any date’s gotten
