Page 54 of Olivia's Only Pretending
My mom rubbed his shoulder gently. “Angela sounds like a treasure.”
I glanced across the table and saw Lucy mouth to Adam that he was her safe zone. I quickly looked away. The moment felt like an intrusion. The moment wasn’t mine, but it cracked something open in me.
I could feel Victor’s gaze on me heavy as a touch, but I didn’t dare look back at him.
I was trying to handle everything between us delicately, carefully. I didn’t want to risk losing my safe zone.
When you got Lucy and Adam together, a board game always found its way onto the table, or a dart board got hung on the wall, or a deck of cards got pulled out of Adam’s pocket. This time, after dinner was finished, it was a game of charades.
We settled into Lucy’s living room, piling onto her couch and armchair. The sky was dark outside. A few lamps switched on around her house. Some of us had carried our glasses of wine along with us.
Adam’s City of Sweet River hat was filled with tiny pieces of torn paper with phrases written on them.
First, Lucy and Adam went. Lucy was acting, and Adam was guessing. Lucy mimed singing.
Adam said, “Song title?”
She nodded.
First, she shook her head, as if to sayno.
He asked, “No?”
That wasn’t right, so she tried again, this time wagging her finger.
“Don’t?” he guessed correctly this time.
She nodded excitedly.
Then he correctly guessed, “Go,” after she mimed pointing toward the door.
Quickly after that, she made a heart with her hands and then broke them apart.
“Don’t go breaking my heart?” He shouted his guess with his words running together.
The two high-fived at their victory. I chuckled into my big glass of wine.
Next, it was Jeff and my mom’s turn. My mom offered to act and Jeff guess. Jeff correctly guessed it was apersonafter my mom stood with her hands on her hips. Mom set her hands in front of her in the air and twinkled her fingers for mere seconds.
After only a beat, maybe half a beat, Jeff shouted, “Kenny G!”
Mom whooped.
“That was so fast. I didn’t even have time to register what she was doing,” Victor said from his spot on the floor beside my legs, his back resting on the couch I sat on.
“How?” Lucy gaped from the couch.
“I love jazz.” Jeff shrugged bashfully. “I recognized she was miming a saxophone right away.”
“If you think of a saxophone, you’ve got to think of Kenny!” Mom said, thoroughly impressed. She was a huge Kenny G fan. At Christmas, his albums played on a loop.
“He’s the king!” Jeff said, waving his arms emphatically.
“I’ve seen him live several times,” Mom said as the two returned to their seats on the couch. The two of them were lost to their own chit-chat.
“You girls go ahead,” Victor said to me, and I assumed Gracie, since we’d decided to be a team.
As I glanced around the living room, she was nowhere to be seen. “Gracie?” I asked.
