Page 63 of His Best Friend's Baby

“I never really liked San Diego,” she said one morning when they were talking about the city he planned to move to.

“No? Could you pass me the ketchup?”

She slid the ketchup across the table to him and she made sure their fingers brushed in the exchange. There was a spark and a sudden heat and she blushed and he frowned.

“It’s so crowded.” She pulled her hand away and spun her mug of tea, hoping her opinions might change his mind. “And expensive. You’ll be totally shocked by the cost of rent. You’ll be living in some student’s closet for about a million dollars a month.”

“So where would you go?” he asked. “Of all the places you’ve lived, where did you like the best?” He took a big bite of meat loaf and Julia considered the question while he ate. He asked a lot of this sort of question, forcing her to think about her life and her wants in a way she never had. With all of her answers she felt as though she gave away pieces of herself to take with him when he left.

“I liked it in Hawaii.” She smiled and he returned it, his mouth closed. “But you know—” somehow this feeling had snuck up on her the past few days “—I really like it here.”

“New Springs?” He choked and put his fork down. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” She shrugged away his horror at the idea. “I like small towns and I like the heat and desert…well, I like the plants.”

But it was more than that. This was the first town she’d picked on her own. The first place where she’d started to create what she needed out of what she had and it was working.

“Well, I suppose if you never have to talk to anyone—”

“I really like the people,” she interrupted and looked directly at him. She dreamed at night of being able to stop him from moving, of being able to keep him here, but that would never happen if he thought the whole town hated him. “They’re not as bad as you think, Jesse. And I don’t think people even remember all the stuff you did.”

“They remember, trust me.” His expression shut down, his shoulders hunched and Julia dropped the subject.

“Jodi, the redhead—” Julia nodded her head toward the bank of coffee machines, where the girls were spying on them “—has a crush on you.” He lifted his eyebrows and kept chewing. “She has since high school.”

“Get out.” He turned again toward the coffee machines and wiggled his eyebrows like a horny Groucho Marx. Julia laughed and their conversation drifted to the trivial as their favorite foods, movie star crushes and the best driving songs.

He avoided touching her and she went out of her way to make sure their fingers brushed. They never talked about Mitch or how they felt, or the desire that breathed like a dragon whenever they were close to each other.

Julia mourned every second that led them nearer to the time he would leave her. But she couldn’t ask him to stop visiting her at work. She couldn’t turn him away, no matter how hard it was going to be when he left.

“TAKE MY TABLE that just sat down, would you?” Nell asked on Julia’s fourth day at work. “If I have to wait on Virginia Holmes one more time I swear I’m gonna dump that pot of tea in her lap.”

“Virginia Holmes?” Julia asked, peeking over the coffeepots.

“In the flesh. Good luck.” Nell walked off with a tray of oversize sodas for the truckers at the counter.

Julia mustered all of her courage and approached the cantankerous woman who’d inadvertently put her life plan in reverse.

“Good morning, welcome to Petro. Can I get you something to drink?” She tried to look all business with her pen poised over her pad, tried to wipe all recognition from her eyes, but there were Virginia and Sue Holmes staring at her like fish left out of water.

“I thought you’d left town or something.” Virginia’s white bushy eyebrows met over her eyes. She turned to her daughter. “Didn’t you say you called her?”

“I called her three times,” Sue said. “I talked to Agnes Adams each time.”

The world spun and dipped. “You called me?” she asked Virginia. “Julia Adams?”

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