Overlooked(1)(46)

“Are we all just about done with the third course? I’ll gather up the plates,” Dad chimes in, and I’m relieved and worried at the same time. There are three more courses to go.

Dad gets up and collects our plates, and I have to sit there, waiting to see if Mom is going to needle one of us again. I feel absolutely on edge, and I can’t really do anything about it. I try to keep going, try to keep myself civil while either her or Zane or anyone end up saying something on accident that makes me even more frustrated or irritable.

I barely enjoy the duck, but Bev loves it, which I guess is mostly the point. But by the time the dinner is over and we’re all sitting in the living room drinking coffee, even the mild buzz from the wine isn’t enough to make me feel even remotely at ease. You’ll be home again tomorrow evening, I tell myself. Zane is leaving tomorrow morning. Just get through tonight. But I know that even if I manage to get through the dinner without causing some kind of upset, I am not going to get any sleep.

I just want to be miles away from where I am right now.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE





ZANE LEWIS



I look around my room, at my suitcase, out the window, anywhere and everywhere. I’m leaving in the morning, super early. Early enough that I told Mom not to even bother getting up to say goodbye to me, even though I know she’ll do it. I just can’t seem to get comfortable, can’t seem to settle my nerves, after the fancy dinner with Harper’s parents.

We’d agreed to put everything to the side, to put off talking about it, but that obviously wasn’t an answer to what was going on. It wasn’t helping a damn thing, and that dinner had been the most hellish meal I’ve ever attended in my entire life. I have to think Harper feels the same way.

I look around again and see my phone, plugged into the charger cable. Only one thing to do, or at least try to do, and hope there’s something that can come out of this. I send Harper a message.

Hey. Feel like hitting up the lake again?

She responds almost instantly.

I need to get out of this house, that much I know.

I know the feeling. Anywhere else I can think of meeting Harper at seems too close to her mom or my dad. Besides, two of the most important things about this week happened there. It was a good place.

I slip my phone into my pocket, grab the keys to my rental, and before I know it, I’m sneaking downstairs the same way I used to do when I was a teenager. I have to smile to myself at that, even as I reach the bottom of the stairs and hear my mom, asleep on the couch, stop mid-snore.

I manage to make it through the front door, get in my rental car, and pull out, with the lights off, before turning onto the street, headed for the lake. I’m not even looking to see if Harper has gone. I can only hope that she has managed to leave. Might be the first time she’s ever pulled the sneak-out routine in her life, I think with a smirk.

Technically, it’s against the law to be at the lake after dark, there are signs posted outside of the parking lot saying that trespassers will be fined. I turn in anyway, and look around to make sure there aren’t any cops hanging out. Of course, it’s not the most popular night of the week for people to go skinny dipping, and anyway the teenagers who would be the most likely to go to the lake late at night are in school still.

I shut off the engine and get out of the car, and all I can do is wait. I have less than twelve hours before I have to be at the airport, and I can’t let things stay up in the air with her.

We both need to figure out what’s going on between us.

Just when I’m starting to think that I’m out of my mind, that she decided not to come, I see headlights. Harper’s car appears under the safety lamps scattered around the little parking area next to the lake. I walk over to her car and stand there. She gets out but doesn’t say anything. For a few minutes neither of us speaks. We’re just sort of staring at each other.

“So, what are we going to do, Harper?”

Harper isn’t in the black dress anymore, instead, she’s in a pair of cotton pants and a T-shirt, but I can’t shake the image of her in it from earlier in the night.

“Obviously we have to do something,” Harper says, and she makes a face.

“What do you want to do?” I ask her.

Harper raises an eyebrow. “It’s going to sound absolutely insane, but I keep thinking about you, and about us being interrupted by Mom, and how much of a jerk she was about things… and how much I wish we’d done more. Maybe we’d have a better idea about whether this could go anywhere.”

It’s like lighting a match and dropping it into dry tinder. Just the fact that Harper is thinking about me, about wanting me, is enough to bring every thought I’ve been trying to push out of my mind since we last had sex right up to the fore once again.