Page 14 of Peaches

“Oh, uh, I don’t know. As many as it takes for you to feel more confident, I guess.”

She nods again, and I exhale my relief. I feel like I’m in school again, trying to pass some obscure pop quiz. “When?”

“I work the bar most nights,” I say, “but I’m off Thursday.”

She props her hands on her hips. “I work at the café Thursday, but I’ll be off around seven?”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at eight.”

A smile spreads wide on her face, and it feels like a beam of sunlight shot straight to my gut.

Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.

I motion for her to get back on the bike. “It’s late. I should get you home.”

She lurches forward. “Right, okay.”

I start the engine as Olivia takes her spot behind me and try not to think about her legs spread wide against my hips or the way she pulls herself close to me. For some reason, being around her these last two nights has sent me into a tailspin, and I know it’s time to regain control before I do something stupid.

But then she presses her chest against my back and my mind spins like a top. “By the way,” she yells over my shoulder, and I tilt my ear toward her. “I love this bike!”

My chest puffs and I smile like an idiot. I carefully navigate through the back roads of town, lit only by the full moon above and bright stars that feel like prying eyes to what I know might be about to become a treacherous secret, and I bring Olivia home.

CHAPTERSIX

OLIVIA

Ifinish refilling the last of the salt and pepper shakers just as I hear my mom cry out from the kitchen. “Oh my word . . .Olivia!” It’s not a happy tone, and it punches right through me.

Dropping the industrial-sized box of salt on the table—and spilling plenty of it in the process—I run through the narrow doorway that leads to the back and immediately find her cause for concern: when I set the coffee to brew a half hour ago, it appears I forgot to set the pot beneath the machine. Dark liquid flows off the long counter, down the doors of the cabinets below, and all over the floor.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“Yeah, shit.” Mom nods, her fiery red curls swept up in her usual loose topknot. Even at six in the morning, she’s a burst of color. “What happened?”

I sigh, looking at her. “I’m sorry . . . I guess I was distracted.”

Her eyes soften as they fill with concern. “You okay, honey?”

I plant a reassuring smile on my face. “Ofcourse,” I practically shout. “I just . . . I didn’t sleep well. Feeling a little tired this morning. You know—” I wave a hand, as if I’ve explained enough.

Her concern only grows. “Would this have anything to do with the letter I found in the office?”

My heart sinks. I’d meant to hide that before I left yesterday—and by hide it, I mean toss it in the kitchen trash where it could be buried beneath all our stinking food waste—but I must have forgotten. “You saw that?” I force out.

“I saw it,” she confirms. “But I didn’t read it. Honestly, I was just surprised. I didn’t realize you’d been communicating with?—”

“I’m not!” I interrupt. “I’m not communicating with him. It just . . . it was delivered with the rest of the café’s mail yesterday. Total surprise. Like always.”

“Oh,” she says lightly. “Everything okay?”

I shrug, wondering how a surprise letter from my long-lost father inviting me to his daughter’s—my sister’s?—wedding can be brushed over as simplyokay. “Céline is getting married,” I explain, “and it seems that my presence would be welcomed at her nuptials.”

“Oh,” she says again. Her hand moves up to rest on her chest, and regret spears into me. This is exactly why I wanted to bury that letter beneath the mounds of uneaten potatoes and discarded pork chop bones—it kills me to seethatlook in my mother’s eyes.

“I’m not going,” I rush out. “Obviously I’m not going.” As if I’d ever choose to subject myself to the man who’d crushed my mother and causedthatlook in the first place, or any of the other members of his bright and shiny family. Mom had no idea during their year-long love affair that my father had a fiancée waiting for him at home in Charleston, or that, when it came down to it, he was always going to go back.

Unfortunately for him, proof of their relationship was born seven months after he left. When my mom called him the day I was born—what she says was only an attempt to “do the right thing”—I think she’d been holding on to hope that he’d see the light and come running back to finish what they’d started, tochooseher. But all he’d done was promise to send her some money and explain that, for obvious reasons, he couldn’t be a part of our lives.

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