Jack opened the passenger door for her, then hurried to the driver’s seat. Kelly’s parents stood on the top step, watching them. Mr. Dawson didn’t look pleased.
Jack struggled to get the keys out of his pocket, while Kelly glanced back toward her parents. When her father started to walk down the steps, she whispered, “We’d better go…”
Jack finally ripped the keys free of his pocket and slammed them into the ignition. The Impala’s engine roared to life.
In Jack’s haste to get going, his foot jammed the gas pedal down to the floor. A mistake, as the Impala’s gas pedal was so sensitive that the difference between going ten miles per hour and a hundred and ten miles per hour was about a quarter of an inch. The car shot forward, whipping Kelly back into her seat. Jack quickly tapped the brakes, and she jerked forward like a cowboy on a mad bull.
Mortified, Jack muttered an apology. “Sorry.” He managed a more normal speed, then, once clear of the driveway, he sped back up.
Kelly laughed. “Don’t be. That sucked all around.”
“I take it your parents don’t bowl?”
“How’d you know?”
“You don’t need reservations.” Jack chuckled.
Kelly wrinkled her nose. “You don’t?”
Jack wanted to ask whether she’d ever been in a bowling alley, but he bit his tongue.
“I apologize about my father. He wasn’t happy when I told him you didn’t go to Westmore Academy.”
“I take it he’s not a fan of public schools?”
“That would be an understatement.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to tell him that I went to Fairfield High?”
She sat up straight. “I’m not my father.”
There seemed to be seventeen years of frustration crammed into that one sentence.
“That’s good.” Jack gave her a little wink. “It’d be kinda weird if I was taking him bowling.”
His joke broke through the awkward moment. She gave him a half smile and leaned back in the seat. “Are we meeting your friends at the bowling alley?”
“No.” Jack looked at her as much as he could while driving. “We’re picking them up at my Aunt Haddie’s.”
Kelly pulled down the passenger-side visor and frowned when she saw it had no mirror. Jack made a mental note to buy one of those clip-on mirrors when he got a chance.
Instead, Kelly checked her reflection in the window beside her. After fanning out her hair and straightening her blouse, she turned back to Jack. “How do I look?” Her eyes moved rapidly as she searched his face.
Jack casually stretched his arm across the seat back. “I’m glad the seats are fireproof.” He patted the fabric. “You look so hot my car would have burst into flames.”
“That line is so over the top.” She lifted her chin in a wide arc, but Jack could tell she liked it.
Kelly sat back, and her body relaxed. At first, she’d carried herself as if she were a model on display, but the more they talked, the more her stiffness eased.
As they rode through town to Aunt Haddie’s, the posh homes with sizable lots gave way to modest suburbia, and then to duplexes and tenements. The yards grew smaller and smaller until most had nothing but a sliver of grass. As Jack’s old, rundown neighborhood finally approached, Kelly shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Your aunt lives here?”
“Aunt Haddie? She’s more than my aunt. She was my foster mother for four years. Now she’s my second mom, for life.”
Jack pulled down the little road and parked in front of the big two-story house. Aunt Haddie tried her best to keep the place fixed up, but that cost money she didn’t have. Jack looked at the mismatched windows and the door he and Chandler had picked up for free from the side of the road. He grinned. The house always made him smile. It may have been worn and patched together, but it was home.
He hopped out of the car and went to get Kelly’s door, but she was already getting out.
“Sorry.” She shrugged as she stood up. “I didn’t think you were going to do that.”
“My dad drilled it into me.” Jack closed her door and offered her his hand.
“You don’t have to get my door.”
“I know.” Jack walked toward the house. “But I want to.”
“I have an English teacher who’d flip out if you got the door for her.”
Jack shrugged. “She doesn’t have to walk through it.”
“She’d consider it chauvinistic,” Kelly continued.
“If it really bothered her, she could close it and open it herself. Look, I know you know how to open a door.”