Annabelle seemed to be blushing now. “Well, thank you. That’s very nice of you to say.”
“You’re welcome.” He kicked his feet up. “Amber tells me you have two kids?”
She looked over at me, seeming really impressed that Channing remembered that. “Yes. Jenna and Alex, eleven and seven.”
“They must keep you busy.”
“They do. But I love it. Between work and them, I don’t have much time to unwind. Needless to say, I live vicariously through Amber’s single life quite a bit. Tonight is a rare night out. My husband is manning the house.”
He looked between us. “Have you ladies eaten?”
“No, actually. We were going to order takeout,” I said.
“I was gonna cook something up for myself. How about I make it for all of us?”
Annabelle looked like he’d just offered her a new car. “That would be gr—”
“That’s okay,” I interrupted. “We can just do our own thing.”
The two of them sitting down together made me nervous for some reason, and I was doing my best to avoid that scenario.
Channing looked a little disappointed. “I get it. I didn’t mean to interrupt ladies’ night.”
“Nonsense,” Annabelle said. “We would love to have dinner with you, Channing, and thank you for the offer. It’s not every day I have a handsome man cooking dinner for me.”
“Well, I don’t know about handsome, but I can definitely cook my ass off.”
She mouthed over to me, “Freaking adorable.”
He is.
And there was no way I was getting out of this dinner now.
Channing ended up cooking us a meal of tapas that included smoked salmon, deep fried bacon-wrapped dates with goat cheese, and Sriracha meatballs.
After we ate, we lingered around the table.
“So, Amber tells me, you two have quite the history,” Annabelle said.
“Yeah, Walnut and I go way back.” He looked over at me and smiled. Chills ran through me because his every expression, every smile now had an underlying “fuck me” look to it.
“Tell me about young Amber.”
Channing’s smile widened as he thought about the answer. “Young Amber was awesome. She was like one of the boys, always down for anything, not preoccupied with girly shit, not obsessed with how she looked or anything like that. She was the voice of reason, but she could always somehow be swayed to the dark side. Not much has changed, really. Well, except she’s a little more girly now.” He winked at me. “But that’s perfectly fine with me.”
Annabelle’s eyeballs were moving and back and forth as she observed us. She seemed to be getting off on his flirting with me.
I turned the topic of conversation back to our childhood. “We never did anything that bad in those days. We might have broken into a couple of abandoned houses, stuff like that. In the couple of years that we were inseparable, you can bet if I did do something bad, that Channing was probably behind it.”
“That’s true.” He grinned. “Anyway, it was just my mother, sister, and me growing up. Amber was always at the house. She was like another family member.”
Annabelle played with the last of her food and asked, “You didn’t have a father around?”
Channing’s expression darkened. “My father left us when we were small. He moved to Nevada and remarried. I’m not in touch with him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The only time I’d ever seen Channing’s dad was at Lainey’s funeral. He showed up with his new wife and didn’t really talk to anyone. I knew right away who he was, because he looked just like an older version of his son. The situation with their father walking out on them always made me so sad for Channing and Lainey. But it made me downright angry to see him at her service when he hadn’t been there for her otherwise.
“It’s okay,” Channing said. “I never knew what it was like to have him around after like the age of six, so there was never a huge feeling of loss. Emptiness, maybe, but I’ve gotten by just fine without him.”
I wasn’t sure that I believed he really felt that way.
I chimed in, feeling sad that he had to think about his father and wanting to change the subject. “I’m an only child, as you know. I had two happily married parents, the perfect upbringing. But I was bored a lot. I much preferred the chaos of Lainey and Channing’s house.”
“Anarchy.” Channing chuckled. “And all the candy you could eat.”
“That’s true.” I laughed.
I prayed that Annabelle didn’t bring up Lainey’s death. Thankfully, she seemed to remember me telling her that it was difficult for Channing to talk about.
We stayed talking at the table for about an hour. It made me really happy that Annabelle and Channing got along so well. He ended up calling an Uber for her and insisted on paying for it.
After she left, he and I were by ourselves in the kitchen cleaning up. For some reason, I had a hard time looking at him when we were alone. Without the buffer of another person, I was afraid he would be able to sense the want in my eyes, afraid it would make me look weak.