Page 73 of The Art of Almost Losing It
The other girl shrugs. “We have to give her something if Graham’s not coming to dinner. Hopefully a photo will put her off for a couple days.”
“Your parents want to meet me?” I ask.
Aaron’s raised eyebrow says,Over my dead body.
Dani draws back. “No! I mean yes, but no—of course I wouldn’t make you do that.”
“I don’t think you can make him do anything.” Her grandmother cackles.
“You’d be surprised.” I tug a piece of Dani’s hair.
“Ooh, your mom’s going to be so jelly.” The old lady cackles.
“Gran, please don’t rub this in Mom’s face,” Dani begs. “She’s already on the edge with all the wedding stuff.”
“Damn right I’m rubbing it in her face.”
“Your mom is texting me,” Piper says, looking down at her phone.
“You should have waited to send the photo.”
“She wants you to bring him for dinner Friday.”
“He’s your boyfriend—he has to come meet the parents sometime,” the man with all the tattoos says.
“And you met his parents,” the other hipster says. “Fair is fair.”
You can’t go to the home of people whose daughter you kidnapped.
But my dad did that. Or something similar. He went to one of the vigils. It’s the thrill of almost getting caught.
Aaron knows all of this, and he does not approve.
But better that it’s the thrill of getting away with it than the desire to know more about Dani—learn where she came from, see where she lives, meet the people who made her.
Because Aaron’s right. You can’t fall in love with the girl you kidnapped.
“I’ll go,” I tell Piper. “Text your aunt that I’ll be there tomorrow evening.”
“No, no, no.” Dani glugs too much wine into her glass. “This is terrible. Are you sure you don’t have a very long, important work trip that you forgot about?” Dani asks me.
“Yeah, Graham, are you sure?” Aaron says pointedly.
I shrug helplessly.
“He can’t bail out now,” Gran says. “Your mom will pitch a fit.”
“Why doyou insist on inviting yourself over?” I hand Dani a glass of the wine she likes so I don’t have to watch her make that face and poke her tongue at the glass.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go back home to the rug in the dining room and let my mom wake me up at four a.m. because she wants to plan the dinner menu for tomorrow.”
She sets a canister on the desk, the bright-orange ceramic cat jar out of place in the muted tones of the room.
“You’re not allergic to nuts, are you?”
I pull off the cat’s head, thunk it back down, and make a disgusted noise.
“They’re from Costco.”
