This was good. I could let her have this night. Let him have this night. Whatever, right? I’d had all the other nights with her. The important ones. Maybe I could just slip out the way I’d come, go to Jackson’s for a drink, and pick up Cait when this was all over. Maybe—
A hand seized my upper arm, pinching it. “Ow!” I jerked my arm out of Emily’s grip and glared at her.
My sister pinned me with her gaze, her eyes looking like fire. “What the hell is going on here? Who’s that guy walking around with Caitlin?”
“Who do you think?” I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrows. Emily squinted at them, then back to me again.
“Tell me that’s not . . .”
“Yep.”
“Caitlin’s father?”
“Well, he’s a little old to be her date.”
Emily snorted at that, but when she looked out into the room again she heaved a big sigh. “Shit.”
“Yep.”
“Are you okay?”
“Nope.” My breath shuddered in my lungs. “Don’t ask me that again.” I was barely holding it together here, telling myself it was only one evening. Admitting out loud that I was not okay with any of this made it worse. It made the tears come. I didn’t want the tears to come.
“Okay. Come on, let me get you something to drink.” She took my arm, more gently this time, and steered me back toward the refreshment table. “And when I say ‘drink,’ I don’t mean the good stuff, sadly. The punch is that sherbet and ginger ale bullshit, but it’s better than nothing. Here.” She pushed a paper cup into my hands, and I took a sip of the overly sugary confection. She was right: it was better than nothing, but just barely.
“You look nice,” I said.
“Thanks.” Emily smoothed her hands down her skirt. She wore a yellow sundress with a halter neck, a white lacy cardigan over it, and her hair was bundled up in a riot of curls on top of her head. She looked like springtime. Like a teacher’s wife in a small town.
I took another sip of the sherbet punch; the sugar was helping. A sugar rush was better than adrenaline any day. “I’m okay, Em. Honestly.”
“Are you sure?” She looked skeptical, and I didn’t blame her. But she had a job to do. She wasn’t here to babysit me. She was here to be Mrs. English Teacher, to charm parents and students alike.
“I’m sure. Go. Simon’s probably lost without you.” While he was most likely in his element here, he was as social as I was.
“I don’t know about that.” But her gaze went across the hall, and it was easy to spot her husband. He was in a light green shirt with a dark brown tie that matched his vest, in conversation with a handful of parents. He looked perfectly at ease, but he spotted us with a casual turn of his head, and his eyes turned desperate. He didn’t exactly mouth, Help me, but Emily got the message anyway.
“Go.” I nudged her, and she sighed.
“Yeah, I probably should go rescue him. But . . .” She turned back to me. “I know you said not to ask, but are you sure . . . ?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” I lifted my punch cup. “I’m pretending this is vodka.”
She nodded, but before she left she threw her arms around me in an unexpected hug. “I love you, you know,” she murmured. “And I’ve got your back if you need it. We’ve got your back.”
“I know.” I blinked away those threatening tears again and patted her arm. I was terrible at this whole PDA thing. “Now, get out of here. Go be Mrs. Graham. He needs you.”
She sketched a little salute before darting back into the crowd to rescue her husband, and I finished off my punch. As I refilled my paper cup, I took another look around the hall, needing to have eyes on the man I was doing my best to avoid. Oh shit. They weren’t far away. And they were coming closer to the refreshment table. But Robert hadn’t seen me yet.
My courage failed me, not that there had been much to begin with. But all my senses said, Nope, in unison, and before I could process it I’d taken a big step backwards, then a second. Then I turned tail and ran out of there like the giant chickenshit I was. Past Ms. Howe and her tables of name tags and out the double doors into the night. I stopped on the landing and tried to remember how to breathe.
Tears mingled with my heaving breaths, and I turned back toward the entrance, ready to take one last look at my failure. But my view was obscured entirely by a brick wall. A brick wall wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, who’d followed me outside.
“Whatcha doing hiding out here?” Mitch asked.
Twelve
Um . . .” I stared up at him and tried to formulate an answer. It was next to impossible, as Mitch appearing in front of me out of nowhere had scrambled what was left of my brain cells.
I hadn’t seen Mitch since he’d dropped me off in my driveway on Sunday, and somehow I’d managed to forget how blue his eyes were. We both had blue eyes, sure, but mine were dark, almost inky, while his were bright. Alive. And set off now to great effect by the royal-blue tie he wore with his button-down shirt and jeans. He had one of those little pin-back name tags too. This was the most dressed up I’d ever seen him, and so instead of saying something snarky I just gaped up at him.
“Oh, God, are you drinking that shit? All that sugar will kill you.” He took the cup out of my hand—because in my panic I’d apparently brought my sherbet punch with me—and tossed back the rest of it before pitching the cup into a trash can about ten feet away.
“Show-off,” I said weakly.
“You know it.” He leaned an arm on the wall over my head, caging me in, cutting me off from the rest of the world. With anyone else this would be a threatening move, but when he looked down at me I didn’t feel threatened. I felt protected. I wanted to throw my arms around him in gratitude. I wanted to climb him like a tree.
But I did neither one of those things, because we were in public. Anyone could walk by.
“So what are you doing out here?” He nodded his head back toward the door we’d both just come through. “You know the party’s in there, right?”
“Yeah, but I . . . I can’t . . .” There was too much happening in my head right now and I couldn’t articulate any of it. I shook my head hard and dug in my purse for my keys. “I have to go.” But I fumbled my keys and they jangled to the ground.
“Okay.” Mitch scooped them up. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“No . . .” But he’d already taken my hand, leading me into the parking lot to my SUV. “You don’t need to . . . aren’t you supposed to be working this thing?”
He shook his head. “The only people who want to talk to me are the sports parents, and they grabbed me early. I’m just scenery at this point.” He clicked my key fob, and my SUV chirped in response. I wanted to protest, but instead I chose the path of least resistance and let Mitch bundle me into the passenger seat of my own vehicle.
“Was that him?” Mitch’s voice was casual and he didn’t look at me as he navigated into the Friday evening traffic. “The one who sent the card. Caitlin’s dad?”