Page 35 of Head Over Heels

I’m perversely glad I’ve knocked her so off balance. And I want to knock her more off balance. I want to sweep her off her feet. I want to make it impossible for her to think straight.

“Let’s find something else for you to do,” I tell Katie, and I take her hand.

As we’re walking out of the room, I turn back.

“Because I wanted to,” I repeat to Liv, because saying it felt so good and because the color high in her face makes her look even more beautiful than usual. “And unless you tell me you don’t want me to, I’m going to do it again.”

Chapter 16

Liv

The doorbell rings—Chase’s parents must be here. I’m up to my elbows in cooking, and that’s probably a good thing. I’d rather let Chase and Katie get the door and hang back. I’ve got a lot to think about. Like how much I want Chase to kiss me again—and how much I shouldn’t.

In the foyer, Katie squeals, and unfamiliar voices fuss and coo over her, telling her how big she is, how old she’s gotten, how pretty the pink dress she and I picked out looks on her.

“It’s apartydress,” I hear Katie tell them.

“Of course it is!” the woman’s voice says.

Chase leads his parents into the kitchen, Katie skipping alongside, and I’m—surprised. In that way you’re surprised when you don’t even know what you were expecting, you know this isn’t it.

“Mom, Dad, this is Liv. Liv, my parents, Frannie and Sidney Crayton.”

“So nice to meet you, Liv,” Mrs. Crayton says, extending her hand. She’s tall and slim and absolutely gorgeous in an expensive way—styled ash-blond hair, diamond-stud earrings, makeup, white capris and a melon-colored flow tank, heels and polished toes, and toned, tanned arms. And Mr. Crayton is her perfect partner—meticulously trimmed silver hair, beard, and mustache, linen shirt, tailored slacks, and shoes that can’t have cost less than $500. He shakes my hand, too, with a restrained nod of greeting.

I guess it’s theexpensiveor maybe thetailoredthat surprises me. Chase is so outdoorsy, sporty, down-to-earth, and, in his own words,low maintenance,I guess I figured his parents would be more like him.

“Liv’s a good friend of mine, and she’s helping Katie and me out while we look for a new nanny. She’ll be here a couple weeks and then she’s leaving for Denver. She got an amazing new job.”

There’s pride in Chase’s voice, and for some reason that warms me to the core.

“Nana and Papa, we’re having sketti with meat sauce and Liv is making the sauce!”

“It’s very kind of you to cook for us,” Mrs. Crayton says. “Chase says it’s not in your job description.”

That makes me smile. “Oh, it’s my pleasure.”

We offer them drinks and stand awkwardly for a moment.

It’s funny. I think if I’d met Chase’s parents before tonight, I might have suggested a different dinner menu. They seem more like the tofu stir-fry set than the spaghetti-with-meat-sauce set. I set out the chips and salsa and guac, wishing I had made lemon hummus and served it with crudité. But what can you do? They’re gracious and obviously grateful for what we have put in front of them.

They ask me a whole bunch of polite questions—what’s the job I’m going to, where I’m from originally (I always say the Boston suburbs, because that’s where all my foster homes were), how I’m planning to get to Denver. I answer as best I can as I finish putting dinner together. In turn, I ask them how their trip is going, and they tell me all about the San Juan Islands and Vancouver and Victoria—all places I’ve never been.

Chase is surprised I’ve never been to the San Juan Islands. He starts quizzing me about other Pacific Northwest destinations—Portland; Cannon Beach, Oregon; the Washington coast; the Olympic Peninsula; the North Cascades. When he discovers I’ve never been to the North Cascades National Park, he says, “That is acrime against humanity.”

“That’s putting it pretty strongly,” I say, amused.

“It’s the best backcountry camping in the country.”

I scrunch my nose, because Chase, of all people, knows how I feel about camping. I’m about to say so when his mother interjects, “Chase, dear, not everyone likes camping. Some of us value civilization.”

Oh. I remember what he told me yesterday, about feeling “real” or “alive” when he was outside and trapped inside. When he talked about hunting and camping and fishing, he said that he did those things with his uncle.

There is more than one way to feel like you don’t belong. Bouncing from foster home to foster home definitely made me feel that way. But clearly Chase felt that way in his own home, growing up.

Whereas under other circumstances I might have jumped in to agree with his mom about the lures of civilization, I say, “Sounds amazing.”

“It is,” Chase says, and there’s little-boy-at-Christmas excitement in his voice.

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