Page 88 of The Friendship Study

“It was nice to meet you, Jack.” Lulu holds his hand. He watches the television.

As we leave, Lulu dropping her visitor badge off at the desk, I take her hand in mine.

“Did you end up telling him?” she asks. The glass doors open with a loud swoosh, the humidity covering us in a heavy blanket. “About you?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he heard you?”

“Honestly, no.”

She stops, pulling me back to her when I keep walking. “How does that feel?” She links her hands behind my back.

When I take deep breaths standing with her like this, my chest touches hers. I take a lot of deep breaths. “I feel...like Pop would love me no matter what. And not everyone gets to say that.”

Lulu traces my jaw with her fingers. She trails her thumbs over my cheekbones and her index fingers over my brows. “I think he would, too. He loves you, Jesse. To the moon.”

“Yeah? How do you know?” I ask, blatantly fishing.

“The way he looks at you. He might not know you, but he knows who you are. I know that doesn’t make any sense—” She shakes her head.

“No. I... I get it.”

“He knows you’re safe, he knows you love him. And he loves you back.”

I kiss her palm.

“Ready to go?” I ask. “George expects both of us to be stretched and warm for the first pitch at five o’clock.”

She pounds her fist into her open palm, like she’s working in a leather mitt. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Lulu

Two Months Later

With the windows down and the road poured out before us, the sun warm on my cheeks, today is evergreen. It’s every end-of-summer day I’ve ever had, complete with my hand out the window, flying along beside us. I think Jesse might even be going a bit over the speed limit.

“You excited?”

I turn to him. “About what?”

It’s a trick question. There’s too much to be excited—and scared—about.

“The barbecue.”

“My father is more British than the Queen and my mother is a vegetarian,” I say, deadpan. “But I’m excited for when Trey takes over grilling from my dad so he can go back to pretending it’s a garden party.”

“They’re going to miss you,” he says, his voice a soft rumble.

I stare out the window at the farmers’ fields around us. If I focus on the trees or the farmhouses beyond them it feels more like the fields race past us than the other way around.

“Yeah.” My tummy hurts at how much I’ll miss them. And him. It didn’t feel this way when I left years ago to finish my graduate degree. And I’m only going to be gone for a month. Not years.

His hand slides across the leather, warm from the sun; his palm on my thigh reminds me that he belongs to me as much as I belong to him. The only thing I am tethered to is his pulse at the base of his wrist, and it will go with me wherever I need. Down this stretch of road flanked by golden fields or up the green foothills of Lancashire and everywhere in between.

He blinks away from the road to smile back at me. His forearm lies against the open window frame, golden skin and wisps of light hair traveling from elbow to wrist, his red Coca-Cola T-shirt, softer and older than Betty, that I’ve tried to steal more times than I can count. The sun shines like it’s only for him. He’s sunshine, his hair starting to curl on the top, the summer sun turning it the color of wheat.

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