Page 44 of Second Time Around
“You have a year to build one.” Kyra lowered her glass to look at him. “It’s just a party. Not a wedding or a funeral.”
“For my mother, it’s a command performance.”
Kyra considered whether she should voice her thoughts on this. With a tiny shrug, she went ahead. “In my opinion, your mother gaveup the right to expect your presence when she ambushed you with Petra. Since you specifically asked that Petra not be included and your mother flouted that request, she has expressed her disregard for your wishes. Therefore you are free to disregard hers.”
“You’re the one who should have been the lawyer,” Will said.
She shook her head. “If your parents don’t respect your boundaries, you have to enforce them somehow.”
“Did yours?”
Kyra took a large swallow of the champagne. She didn’t want to discuss her parents, but she owed Will some part of the truth because it might help him. “My father was old-school blue collar. He felt that mothers should guide their daughters because that was woman stuff, so he didn’t intervene much in my life. If he’d had a son, he would have been involved with him. That’s just the way Pop was.”
“And your mother?” Will leaned back in his chair, but pinned her with his gaze.
Just then the maître d’ and two waiters arrived, presenting small plates of oysters in their shells. “Our amuse-bouche is Kiwa oysters with green apple mignonette, green apple foam, radish, and pink peppercorns. Bon appétit!” the maître d’ said in hushed, mellifluous tones.
Relieved by the interruption, Kyra picked up one of the two oyster shells from the bed of salt on her plate. First she inhaled, catching the apple scent. Then she held the shell to her lips and sucked the oyster into her mouth. It had a velvety texture, a fresh burst of brine, and then an almost coppery aftertaste, accented by the burn of pepper. Swallowing, she opened her eyes wide. “Wow! That was intense.”
“They’re from New Zealand,” Will said, his lips closing over the end of the shell before he drew the oyster in.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his mouth, remembering the way he’d licked his fingers after he’d made her come in the Jaguar. Desire slithered through her, flicking at her nipples before coiling between her thighs, and the sailboats on his socks glided through her mind.
“You didn’t like it?” Will asked, gesturing toward the oyster remaining on her plate.
“No, no, I just wanted to give myself time to absorb the flavor.” She scooped up the second oyster, which was covered in a cloud of pale gold foam atop a paper-thin slice of radish. The alternate flavor accents gave the oyster’s intensity a different twist. “Amazing,” she said, placing the empty shell back on the plate.
Once again she watched Will’s mouth touch the shell, imagining his lips on her. She shifted on her chair as the wanting pulsed inside her.
This meal was going to be torture if every time he put food in his mouth, she thought of what else that mouth might be doing. She finished off her champagne and put the empty glass on the table. Before the sommelier could approach, Will twisted the champagne bottle out of its silver bucket and refilled her flute.
Waiters whisked their plates away, leaving the tablecloth clear for a new dish to be served.
“Prawn and avocado roulade,” the maître d’ explained. The waiters set down white plates showcasing a beautifully rich, green cylinder of layered avocado slices with a garnish of leaves and tiny yellow flowers. She cut into it and brought a forkful to her mouth. The flavors were cool, smooth, and subtle. “Mmm, unbelievable,” she murmured, slicing off the next bite.
“So how well did your mother respect your boundaries?” Will asked. Clearly, the fantastic food was old hat to him because he chewed and swallowed without a noticeable reaction.
She grimaced. “Not well at all. She didn’t want me to go to college because it meant I wouldn’t be home to keep her company while Dad worked the late shift. But she did sign the financial aid forms for my application, so I give her credit for that.” As it turned out, her mother was all too willing to sign financial forms that involved Kyra.
Will refilled his own glass and settled back in his chair, waiting.
Kyra gave in. “Once I left, she hated my absence. Every phone call, she did her best to persuade me to come home. Sometimes it was an enticement, like a trip somewhere with her, but more often she wielded guilt. She missed me so much, was so lonely without me. Her friends didn’t understand her.” Kyra felt the pinch of guilt even now. “Those were the phone calls that made me cook gourmet meals. I had to work off the terrible stew of emotions that she stirred up.”
She’d learned how cooking warded off stress in Macungie. The chef at the restaurant where she worked let her chop all his vegetables when she came in fretting about something her mother had done. Slashing a razor-sharp knife through crisp veggies worked wonders.
She took a gulp of champagne before she looked at Will. “I held out for two years, knowing that this was my only chance to become myself.”
“And then your father got sick.” Will’s voice was gentle with understanding.
The familiar sadness and loss welled in her chest. “Lung cancer. He’d smoked all his life. I wanted to be there for him, so I stayed home as long as he lived. My mother couldn’t cope with his illness, and she leaned on me heavily. I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough for either one of them. Now I understand that it was a lot to expect of a nineteen-year-old.”
Will stretched his arm out on the table with his hand palm up. She put hers in it and found a surprising comfort in the warm, strong cage of his fingers.
“That’s a lot to expect of anyone at any age,” he said. “No wonder you’re so strong.”
“I didn’t feel strong. I felt exhausted and wrung out. A failure.” She’d never admitted that to anyone else. “After Pop died, I wanted to go to bed and sleep for about a month. But my mother needed me.”
She took a deep breath. “I wrote the date that Brunell started again the following year on my calendar. Every time I thought I was going to collapse under the weight of her demands, I pulled out the calendarand counted how many months were left. Then it was weeks. I never got down to days because Mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.” She still remembered how guilty she felt, because after she’d cried with her mother at the terror of the news, she’d cried for herself that she would never go back to Brunell.
