Page 28 of Came the Closest
Cheyenne: Where?
Justin: Beau’s obviously. Do you want to text him to tell him we’re invading?
Cheyenne: Your idea, your responsibility.
Chapter Nine
Bedtime Stories
Hazel
Collectively, I’ve known Samuel Del Ray for twelve years. It doesn’t sound like long next to my age of sixty, but those first eleven years were some of our most formative ones. The years between seven and eighteen, the ones where we developed our unique nervous tics and decided which ice cream flavor would always be our favorite.
This familiarity is how I know something is off tonight. I can’t tell what—he’s been his mostly normal self during supper with his kids and their partners, listening and occasionally offering a few words—but I can feel it. That same nervous energy is vibrating in him like when we were sixteen and he held my hand in a decidedly non-platonic way for the first time.
It could deal with learning about his former wife’s death or the young son she left behind. Sam is an overthinker. He didn’t choose his favorite ice cream flavor—vanilla, at that—until he was ten, and he could never play pool with me on stormy nights without overanalyzing every shot he made. I don’t expect him to feel normal in the face of losing Kathleen.
The thing is, that wouldn’t make him nervous. More serious and more contemplative, yes. Nervous, no.
It distracts me enough that I nearly drop a scoop of freshly churned vanilla ice cream in the pan of simmering blackberries instead of the small dessert bowl. I correct myself, but not before Sam’s mother has noticed. Once a journalist’s eye, always a journalist’s eye is Elizabeth Del Ray’s slogan.
“Everything all right, dear?” she asks, bumping her shoulder into mine. Cool evening air sifts into Sam’s kitchen, the doors between the house and deck pushed open, and birds twitter cheerfully in the backyard. “You seem distant.”
I drag the metal scoop through the ice cream. “I’m fine. Just thinking is all.”
“Don’t think too hard. I used to tell Sammy his head might explode if he did that, you know.” A hint of wistfulness softens her age-lined face. “Even when he was about the same age as Milo, he was always thinking. You could tell, too, because he’d sort of wrinkle his nose and squint.” She laughs outright. “A lot like the expression he made as a baby when he needed to poo.”
A smile curves my lips. “He still sometimes makes that face, doesn’t he?” Realizing how that sounds, I hurry to add, “When he’s thinking, I mean. Not, well, you know.”
“His Poo Face?” Lizzie asks, mercifully leaving my solecism alone. I nod. “Oh, certainly. Look.” She lifts her soapy hands from the sink to point a wooden spoon, dripping wet, in Sam’s direction. “He’s wearing it now. But honestly, hon, it could very well be that he needs to use the restroom. Men aren’t always the most forthcoming creatures.”
I laugh. I can’t help it—I’ll never be able to think of Sam’s thinking face the same way. Dark brows knit, mouth contemplative, eyes not quite focused.
It’s Saturday, and Past Sam would’ve been in the office. Present Sam spent the day taking Indi and Milo to the Omaha Zoo and brought me fresh blueberry lemonade as I was closing up the flower shop. He wears navy linen shorts with a white short sleeve button up and boat shoes. Sunglasses are perched on his collar, and his dark, graying hair ruffles in the tepid breeze.
Love swells in my chest like a wave.
“I’ve been asked to see why it’s taking so long…” Colton trails off when he steps over the threshold. He looks at us, over his shoulder at the table he just came from, and then back to us. “What, exactly, are we looking at?”
Lizzie speaks up before I can, and with significantly more candor. “Your father. He has his Poo Face on.”
“His Poo Face?” Colton glances at his father again, then shrugs and continues into the house. “I think you’re talking about his Stern Brunch Daddy face. Graham has the same one.”
“Graham has the same one what?” Preceded by Ember, Graham walks into the kitchen with an empty pitcher in his hand.
“What is a stern brunch daddy?” Lizzie asks incredulously.
“The exact definition is unknown to me, but in romance novels, it relates to a guy who is insanely protective behind closed doors but outwardly kind.” Colton glances at Ember. “Right, Em?”
Ember’s cheeks are pink, whether because Graham murmured something to her or from Colton’s question, I don’t know. “Um…sure?”
Graham frowns. “I’m not a stern brunch daddy.”
Colton points at him. “You’re being one right now.”
“Technically,” Ember says, “he’s not.”
“But other times,” Colton presses, “he is.”