Don't Forget to Write: A Novel(43)

“And how does he like my lipstick?”

She was watching me carefully to see if I had any tells. “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But my secret husband loves it.”

Ada swatted me playfully with the pages. “Get out of here.” I took the papers, but she called my name at the door. “You know what it needs?”

“What’s that?”

“A sassy aunt.”

I shook my head with a small laugh, exhaling a huge sigh of relief as I reached my room.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


“I hate sneaking around like this,” Freddy said. We were parked down by the jetty at the north end of town and were in the process of readjusting our clothes in the backseat of the car.

“We’d be sneaking around no matter what. No one is letting us do this anywhere.”

“You know what I mean.”

I sighed. As desperately as I wanted to spend time with Freddy, I didn’t want him talking to my father. I didn’t want to get married and move to Philadelphia and keep house for a year while he finished school. If he wanted to transfer to New York, and we could keep seeing each other, that was one thing, but that didn’t necessitate a conversation with Daddy. I wanted to live first. And Freddy wanted a wife who was going to have dinner on the table for him.

But the only thing I could see in my future if I went that route was me sitting at a Formica-topped kitchen table trying to focus on the typewriter in front of me while a brisket dried out in the oven, a baby crying in the background.

It was the same future I didn’t want with Daniel. And I didn’t understand how these men could claim to be attracted to the fact that I was free, then try to cage me.

“Let’s just see what happens.”

“Marilyn, we’re going to be a two-hour train ride apart in another month and a half if we don’t make some decisions.”

I looked up at him in the moonlight. “Is a two-hour train ride the end of the world?”

“I don’t want a two-minute walk separating us.”

The lights of another car startled us. It parked behind us, high beams on.

“What—?”

“Cop,” Freddy said. My eyes widened. “Let me do the talking.”

The police officer came around to the car. “Evening,” he said. “What are we doing out here in the backseat like this?”

“Trying to figure out which boardwalk we want to go to tonight.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing that from the front seat?” I kept my face down, not wanting to be recognized. “Everything all right, miss?”

I nodded and he peered down to get a look at me. Freddy laughed. “I promise she’s fine. I’m trying to convince her to let me talk to her father and she’s putting me off.”

The officer laughed as well. “Might as well let him make an honest woman of you.”

I felt my cheeks coloring, but I said nothing. If I opened my mouth, I was going to tell that police officer exactly what he could do with his opinion of my virtue. And that didn’t end well for anyone.

“Let’s move along. The Wildwood boardwalk is nice and close and then I don’t have to cite you for necking in the car.”

“An excellent idea,” Freddy said, climbing out and coming around to open the door for me. I ignored him and climbed through into the front seat. He got into the driver’s seat and began to pull away. “Wildwood, then?”

“Take me home,” I said, arms crossed.

Freddy looked over at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Why did you tell him that? About talking to my father?”

He moved his mouth in confusion before he answered. “Because it’s true?”

“You haven’t asked me Freddy. And I’m not ready to say yes. You can ask my father until you’re blue in the face, but even if he says yes, I matter. What I want matters.”

“And you don’t want to marry me?”

“I don’t want to marry anyone yet. That’s why they sent me here.”

For a moment, Freddy said nothing. “So it’s not a no, it’s a not yet?”

“Yes.”

He put an arm around me and pulled me in close on the seat. “That’s all you need to say, then. I won’t keep pushing it.”

I finally nestled into him. “Thank you.”

“Now how about that boardwalk?”

Once I no longer felt like my future was spinning like a carnival ride, I was willing to agree to that.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


The following afternoon, Shirley and I had plans to meet up and go to the library in the basement of the elementary school, followed by a trip to Hoy’s and the new little boutique in town that had bikinis in the window.

Shirley was late though. Very late. Eventually, I walked down the street and got myself a milkshake from Avalon Freeze. If she wanted one, she could get one when we were done. I sat on a bench with it, waiting and people watching. The story I was writing would be set in New York, but I could still pick up mannerisms from the pedestrians here.

A woman a few years older than me walked by, holding the hand of a young girl, her husband on the other side of the daughter, an even younger daughter on the husband’s shoulders.