Page 41 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing underwear. We hadn’t been able to find it. It was under a seat probably, where we couldn’t reach it.

I cleared my throat. “It was great, yes.”

“I can tell. You have that dumb smile again.”

I laughed. I pitched my voice higher in imitation of Jessica’s teenage tone. “I’m glad you had fun, Mom. And thanks for ordering me pizza. It was delicious.”

For a moment, Jessica looked suitably chastened, which was quickly quashed by an eye roll. “I am glad you had fun, Mom.”

“Good.” I dropped a kiss on her head. “I’m going to change into my pajamas.” And underwear.

“Okay. Oh hey, Mom. Gram called.”

I stopped on the first step and turned around. Slowly. With a feeling of trepidation. “She did?”

“Yeah. When I told her you weren’t home yet, she said you must be extraordinarily passionate about axe throwing since it was keeping you out so late on a school night.” Jessica sniffed in a spot-on imitation of Grace—whom we both loved dearly but could drive a person to rebellion with those judgmental sniffs.

We grinned at each other in mutinous solidarity. It was barely eight o’clock! Jessica wouldn’t go to bed for another hour.

“Axe throwing?” Jessica asked.

“Max took me to Kiss Our Axes.” I hadn’t known where we were going when we’d left for our date. Which meant Jessica also couldn’t have known—or shared with anyone else.

Someone had tattled to my mother—more about the public kiss, I figured, than the venue—and I was pretty sure I knew who had made the call. I had lived in Hart’s Ridge my whole life and knew how the gossip chain worked. It was Six Degrees of Grace Locklear, but I could probably do it in three. Steven told his wife, who told her mother, who probably tripped all over herself in her haste to dial Grace’s number.

“That dirty rat,” I muttered, plopping myself down on the stair right where I was and digging through my purse for my phone. Not wanting Jessica to overhear the setdown I planned on delivering, I glanced up. “Want to play Boggle? You can set it up while I make this call. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Jessica gave me a knowing look but nodded. “Sure, Mom.”

As soon as she was safely out of earshot, I hit the call button. He answered on the first ring, as if he had been expecting my call.

“Kate Gonzales,” he said, not bothering with hello first, which told me that my number was still programmed into his phone, just as his was in mine, despite the fact that we hadn’t talked in years. George had been our one bridge, and without him, our quasi-friendship had faded to brief chats in the supermarket checkout line or the library.

There was a tinge of irony in the way he said Gonzales that I didn’t like.

“Hi, Steven.” Just because he was rude didn’t mean I had to be. I was Grace Locklear’s daughter, which meant I had been raised to believe politeness was next to godliness. “How have you been doing?”

There was a pause. “I know you aren’t calling just to catch up, Kate.”

“I am, actually,” I lied. Because I suddenly wished, with my whole heart, that it were true. That moving on after George’s death didn’t hurt people the way it did. “I saw you at Kiss Our Axes. I wanted to say hello, but you left before I had the chance.”

“Or maybe you were too busy shoving your tongue down some guy’s throat.”

The air left my lungs like someone had punched me in the chest. I couldn’t breathe around it.

A loud sound, like rocks thrown on hardwood floor, made me jump. “Dang it!” Jessica yelled. She must have dropped the Boggle letters, spilling them.

But the sound brought me back to my senses.

Back to my righteous indignation.

Back to my anger.

Ten years was long enough.

“I’m sorry you saw that,” I said quietly. Which was true. Angry as I was, I hated the thought of causing him pain. “But I did nothing wrong.”

“Do you think George would agree?” Steven asked.

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