“I shouldn’t have.”
“But you did.”
“I had to,” she said quietly. It was impossible to lie to him. How could she? She had loved him from the second she first saw him. She started to smile and thought about her teeth and bit her lip.
“I love your smile,” he said, leaning toward her. She felt the distance between them closing, smelled the peppermint of his breath.
The kiss started slowly, gently. She felt his tongue touch hers, and her heart seemed to take flight. When he took her in his arms, she gave up, gave in. The kiss went on and on, deepening until she thought she couldn’t stand for it to end. Behind them, the waves whooshed along the shore, and it became a song. Their song. Their sound.
Desire came from somewhere deep inside of her, radiating outward, tingling, aching. She started to tremble so hard he drew back, looked at her. “Are you okay?”
No, she wanted to say, no I’m not, but when she saw herself reflected in his eyes, she was ruined. She wanted him with a ferocity that terrified her. It was dangerous to want anything in this life, but his love maybe most of all. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just cold.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Can we come here again tomorrow night?”
They were going down a bad road here; she should hit the brakes now, tell him it was too bad that they loved each other and let it go. Now, while she still could. She should tell him no, say she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her friendship with Mia, but when she looked at him, she had no strength to turn him away. He made everything inside of her stop hurting.
Dangerous, Lexi, she thought, say no. Think of your best friend and what matters. But when he kissed her again, she whispered, “Okay.”
Six
Jude sat in bed with her husband, listening with half an ear to the late-night news. An expensive down comforter, covered by a custom silk duvet, floated like a cloud around them. In the past few days—since the dance, in fact—her mommy radar had been emitting a strong signal. Something was wrong with Zach, and she didn’t know what it was. Nothing bothered her more than being out of the loop in her kids’ lives. “Zach broke up with Amanda,” she said finally.
“Uh-huh,” Miles said.
She looked at him. How was it that no matter what drama unfolded in this house, he never seemed to worry? He accused her of being a helicopter parent, all noise and movement, hovering too close to her children, but if that were true, he was a satellite, positioned so far up in the sky he needed a high-powered telescope to track the goings-on in his own home. Maybe it was the medical school training. He’d learned how to suppress his emotions a little too well. “Is that all you have to say?”
“I could have said less, actually. It’s hardly an event.”
“Molly said Bryson said Zach was acting weird after football practice. I don’t think he’s handling the breakup as well as it appears. You should talk to him.”
“I’m a man. He’s a teenage boy. Talking is hardly our best sport.” Miles smiled at her. “Go ahead.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re dying to ask him what’s going on. You can’t help yourself. So, go. Just listen to the kid and believe him when he says Amanda doesn’t matter. He’s seventeen. When I was seventeen—”
“Your horndog past is not comforting.” She kissed him on the cheek and climbed over him to get out of bed. “I won’t be gone long.”
“Believe me, I know.”
Smiling, Jude left their bedroom.
The second floor was ablaze with light. As usual, neither of her intelligent children had mastered the incredibly complex hand-and-eye coordination necessary to turn off a light switch. She paused outside Mia’s door, listening. She could tell that her daughter was on the phone. No doubt she was talking to either Lexi or Tyler.
Jude made her way to Zach’s room. At his closed door, she paused. She would not batter him with questions or bury him under advice. This time she would just listen.
She knocked and got no answer. Knocking again, she announced herself and opened the door.
He was in his game chair, wielding the black remote as if he were a fighter pilot, which, on-screen, he was.
“Hey you,” she said, coming up beside him. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to beat this level.”
She sat down on the black shag rug beside him. This room had been decorated once by a professional and redone over the years by Zach. Expensive chocolate-colored wallpaper had been covered by movie posters. The bookshelves were an archaeological display of his childhood: a graveyard of action figures, a tangled heap of plastic dinosaurs, stacks of video game cases, a dog-eared copy of Captain Underpants, and the five Harry Potter novels.