Somehow I had a feeling that she wouldn’t have said that last part to someone who didn’t look “nice and sweet.” Since that part of my brain was currently indisposed, I had a good idea of what I wanted.
“I’ll do it.” Her whole body relaxed. She smiled, and it was gorgeous. Then I added, “In exchange for a date.”
She pulled back, and those full red lips puckered in confusion.
“You want to go on a date with me?”
“Yes. Do we have a deal?”
She looked at the clock on the wall, cursed under her breath, and said, “Fine. Deal. Now give me your scarf.” She didn’t even give me a chance to move before she started tugging it off my neck.
I grinned. “Taking off my clothes already?”
One side of her mouth quirked upward, and she looked at me in surprise. Then she shook her head and wrapped my scarf around her own neck. It covered up her delicate birds and the smooth, porcelain skin of her chest, broken only by the thin black lines of her tattooed tree. She grabbed a napkin off the table and wiped off some of her bright red lipstick.
“All my parents know is we met in the library. You’re nice and sweet and wholesome. My parents are crazy conservative, so no jokes about me taking your clothes off. We’ve been dating for a few weeks. Nothing complicated. I haven’t told them anything else, so it should be pretty easy to sell.”
With practiced hands, she started smudging off some of the dark that lined her eyes. She pulled her hair forward so that it covered the array of piercings in her ears.
“What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m an actor.”
She rolled her eyes. “They’ll hate that as much as they hate me being a musician, but it will have to do.”
She kept fussing with her makeup and smoothing down her hair, looking around like she wished she had a hat or something to cover it.
I placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “You look beautiful. Don’t worry.”
Her expression froze, and she looked up at me like I was speaking Swahili. Then her lips pressed together in something that was almost a smile. I was still touching her shoulder when a woman at the front of the store called out, “Mackenzie! Oh, Mackenzie, honey!”
Mackenzie.
She didn’t look like a Mackenzie.
She took a shuddering breath, and then stood to face the woman I supposed was her mother. I rose with her, and let my arm stretch across her shoulder. She seemed frazzled, which was funny, because up until now confidence was practically running out of her pores like honey.
I mean, she’d asked a complete stranger to pretend to be her boyfriend. She had seemed fearless. Parents were apparently her Kryptonite.
I looked at the middle-aged couple approaching us. The man was balding with wire-rimmed glasses, and the woman’s hair was graying at her temples. The hands between them were intertwined, and their outer arms were reaching forward like they expected their daughter to run up for a group hug. She looked like she’d rather run off a cliff.
I smiled.
This . . . I could do.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze, and said, “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Boo boo bear! Oh, honey, what atrocious thing have you done to your hair? I told you to stop using those dyes out of the box.”
Mackenzie was biting down on her lip so hard as her mother pulled her forward into a hug that I was surprised she didn’t draw blood. Her father took over, and she had to let go of my hand. I stepped to the side, and reached a hand out to her mother.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs.—”
The words were already out of my mouth before I realized I had no idea what Mackenzie’s last name was. Hell, I hadn’t even known her name was Mackenzie.
Her mother took my hand and was looking at me with her head cocked sideways, waiting for me to finish my sentence. I saw Mackenzie wiggle out of her father’s hug next to me, her face full of slowly dawning horror.
Damn it.
I put on my best smile and said, “You know, I’ve heard so much about you from Mackenzie that I feel I should just call you Mom.” Then I moved in for a hug.
4
Max
HE WAS HUGGING MY MOTHER.
A total stranger. I could only handle a few hugs a year from her without feeling smothered, and he was wrapped up in her boa constrictor arms for three, four, five seconds.
It was still going.
And it was a full-on hug, not one of those awkward side ones that I gave my dad.
Jesus Christ, her head was tucked under his chin. His chin!
The seconds seemed to expand into lifetimes, and his wide eyes caught mine over my mother’s head. From the way my mother was latched on, he was never going to get free. It was like one of those sad stories where a little kid smothers a cat because he hugs it too hard.
He laughed and patted her on the back. Unlike my laughs around my parents, he managed to pull it off without sounding like he was being held at gunpoint.
Finally after a nearly TEN-second hug, she released him.
At ten seconds I would have been hyperventilating. Then again, she probably wouldn’t have let go of me after ten seconds. I’m convinced she thinks if she could just hug me long enough, she’d squeeze all the devil’s influence out of me.
He stayed there, still in hugging-range, and said, “It’s so wonderful of you both to make this impromptu trip. Mackenzie won’t say it, but she misses you both terribly.”
I cringed when he called me Mackenzie, and my mother beamed. I didn’t know if her aversion to Max was just because she thought it was a boy’s name or if calling me by a nickname reminded her of Alexandria . . . of Alex.