Paul and Autumn walked inside Cameron’s like an explosion of motion and noise. She was already laughing at something he’d said, and as soon as his wet shoe hit the white linoleum, he slipped. She caught his elbow. The door knocked into his back. He said something funny and she burst into laughter all over again.
A teenager stood behind the long counter, staring at them as if they were drunk.
They probably looked that way, stumbling inside with their waterlogged shoes and their big goofy grins.
Autumn let go of Paul’s arm and swallowed her laugh, trying to appear less…inebriated. Even so, the light, giddy feeling remained—so unfamiliar it felt like a foreign object. Something to be examined with squinty-eyed suspicion and ready tweezers. Something as odd and strangely delightful as the squish-squish-squish of her running shoes as she walked up to the long glass display.
Paul joined her.
Cameron’s was a small eatery in Lakeview that served ice cream and Philly cheesesteak. The place had sun-yellow walls and small ceramic tables barely big enough for two. The baby-faced girl behind the counter grabbed a nearby ice cream scooper and held it aloft like a startled gunslinger. One caught napping on the job.
A shiver wrapped its way up Autumn’s spine, but it wasn’t the nervous kind. The sudden clash of cold air against her damp skin left her with a serious case of goose bumps. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “I’ll take a hot fudge sundae, with extra hot fudge, please.”
“And I’ll take two scoops of Blue Moon.” Paul removed his wallet from his back pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Ordering my ice cream.”
“I’m not talking about your strange order.”
“Blue Moon isn’t strange.”
“It’s pastel blue.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
Autumn waved her hand in the air; then she shot a dramatic, pointed look at his wallet. The thing that had elicited her question in the first place. It was as wet as his jeans. “I won, remember?”
“I think it’s permanently scarred into my brain.”
“Then why are you getting out your money?”
“I made that deal assuming I’d win.”
“How very sexist of you.”
“It had much more to do with your height than your gender.” He gave her a cursory look up and down. “Also, what are you planning on paying with?”
Autumn had no comeback.
She’d left her purse at her apartment. She never imagined she would need it. Being here, in Cameron’s, with Paul Elliott seemed surreal. She held up her pointer finger. “Fine, but I’m paying you back.”
“If it helps you sleep at night.” Paul set a wet ten-dollar bill on the counter. And for the first time since their lives intersected, Autumn noticed that the furrow between his brows was gone. Completely smoothed away.
“I used to think the same thing, by the way,” he said.
“About what?”
“Blue Moon ice cream. But Reese and Tate are always ordering it, so one day I tried it and it was so good I didn’t even notice it was pastel.”
Autumn wrinkled her nose.
“It tastes like Froot Loops.”
“Excuse me.” The girl behind the counter had finally found her voice. The poor thing had been standing there, her attention volleying back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum. Currently, it had paused on Autumn. “Aren’t you that woman? The one who survived the explosion?”
And just like that, the foreign object was tweezed away.
“Yeah,” she mumbled.
“Wow. You’re like a superhero or something.”
The statement startled her so decidedly from the moment, the girl might as well have shoved Autumn’s face in the container of cookies and cream. It reminded her of the time her best friend, Paige Stoltz, got her heart broken by Christopher Fry, who was a total jerk but also really cute and flirtatious and horrendous at math. He also happened to live next door. So when he came over two days after the breakup asking for help with algebra, all devil-may-care and charming, Autumn couldn’t say no. She had no way of knowing that Paige would stop by an hour later and catch them laughing together on the couch.
Autumn’s remorse had been instantaneous.
Just like it was now.
What would Reese say? How would she react if she could see Autumn flirting with her father when she was supposed to be helping Reese remember her mother?
The teenage girl, who was obtuse when it came to picking up on social cues, scooped up their order and prattled on about Tragedy on the Tracks. How her uncle worked for the CTA and how for a little while they all worried he’d been on the train because he lost his cell phone and nobody could get through to him.
By the time she handed them their ice cream with a cheery smile and told them to enjoy, Autumn felt like someone had pumped her stomach full of rocks.
“Do you want to go sit?” Paul asked.
“Sure.”
He gestured to a table in the corner by the window, then grabbed a handful of napkins before taking a seat. The weather had mostly cleared, but leftover raindrops ambled down the glass, splitting and joining back together in a variety of paths.
Autumn jabbed her spoon into the fudge.
“So,” Paul tried. “Your sister Claire. Is she younger or older?”
Autumn looked at him rather dryly. “You’re very nice.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She’s five years younger.”
“Really?”
“She’s twenty-six. I’m thirty-one.”
Paul made a noise, this puffy sort of hum, then took a bite of his Blue Moon. “Do you have any other siblings?”
“An older brother named Chad. He’s married to Jane, and they have three adorable children. Calliope is four. Talulah is two. And Isaac is newly arrived.”
Usually, Autumn relished the look on people’s faces when she said her nieces’ names. Tonight, she bulldozed her way through them, careful to keep all traces of flirtation or anything that could be mistaken as flirtation out of her voice.
“Isaac doesn’t really fit, does it?”
“They call him Ike.”
“Ah.” Paul scraped another bite onto his spoon. “Your parents?”
“What about them?”
“I don’t know. Are you close?”
“My mom and I were very close, but she passed away.”
He blushed. “Oh, right. I’m sorry. Reese mentioned that at—” His blush deepened. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
Autumn shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
She hated herself for saying it. She always did, and yet she kept on saying it. To make whoever was offering the condolences feel less awkward, she guessed. Only all it ever did was make her feel worse. Like enough time could erase a person. Rule them insignificant.
“Mother’s Day must be hard for you too, then.”
His acknowledgment touched her. They shared a look that had Autumn quickly dropping her gaze. “What about your parents? You seem close with your mom. What about your dad?”
“He’s not a part of my life.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter.
“He’s still living?”
“Somewhere in Nashville, I think. That’s what was on the return address of the last birthday card he sent, anyway. He walked out when I was ten.”
Autumn frowned. Losing a parent at that age was hard enough. Knowing they left of their own volition? That had to be something else altogether. “Your mom never remarried?”
Paul shook his head. “Your dad?”
“He sure did.” She dug her spoon into thick chocolate fudge and scooped the warmth into her mouth. When she looked up from the mixture of white and dark brown, Paul was studying her. For a split second, she was positive she’d gotten fudge on her chin, and wiped at it hurriedly. “What?”
“I sense a tone.”
His observation had Autumn remembering that he was a certified psychologist—a male version of Jeannie True, which meant he would pick up on certain cues, like voice intonation.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to psychoanalyze you.”
Autumn heaved a sigh. If Claire were here, listening to what she was about to say, she’d give the most exaggerated, long-suffering eye roll. “It’s not so much that my dad remarried. It’s how fast he remarried.”
“How fast did he remarry?”
“Ten months after my mother died.”
Paul let out a low whistle.
See, she wanted to tell her sister. Most normal people understood how incredibly fast and insensitive that was. Yes, Claire would say. And most normal people would have built a bridge and gotten over it by now.
“She died in a car accident when I was eleven.”
The confession popped out without any forethought. It just came, straight out of the blue, like Paul’s ice cream. And with it, a mortifying lump in her throat. She shoved another bite of hot fudge sundae into her mouth, but it was too late. The words were out, and Paul was staring in this strong, steady way that left her feeling balanced and unbalanced, all at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t yours either.”
A therapeutically appropriate response, but not an informed one. She resumed her sundae swirling, her gut churning. The fudge had melted most of the ice cream into a thick, creamy soup. “She was driving to my first gymnastics meet. I didn’t even really like gymnastics that much. But my best friend at the time was obsessed with it, so I kept whining and whining until I got my way and then…”
She closed her mouth, not wanting to continue.
“Autumn?” Paul’s eyes were filled with compassion. “We worship a big God.”
She looked down into her melted ice cream.
“The fate of your mother didn’t rest on the shoulders of an eleven-year-old girl who just wanted to compete in her first gymnastics meet.”
It was a kind sentiment.
But he didn’t know the truth—not the whole of it.
Nobody knew that but Autumn and her father.