“Well, we’re going to have to fix that before the wedding.” She steps back with a businesslike nod before grabbing two napkins from the stack on the kitchen island and pressing them into my hand. “I’ll order you some of the stuff I use from my friend in Miami. It’s waterproof, but not clumpy and it comes off with the tiniest bit of eye makeup remover.”
“Sounds great.” I loop my arm around her waist. “Now let’s go see if I can get Mom to kick that roast up twenty degrees.”
“Sounds good.” Naomi hesitates, her forehead wrinkling again as she leans into me and…sniffs.
“What?” I laugh. “Do I need new deodorant, too? It was hotter in the church than I thought it would be.”
“No, it’s just… You smell like Jamison’s cologne.”
My heart leaps back into my throat. “I do? That’s weird.” I shrug. “Maybe it soaked into my clothes on the ride over.”
Or while I was rubbing all over him behind the bakery with my tongue halfway down his throat...
Naomi nods. “That must be it.” She chuckles as she turns to collect her lemonade. “It’s just so funny. Back in high school you could always tell who Jamison had been making out with at a party by the smell. I don’t know what kind of cologne he wears, but it’s distinctive.”
“I think he smells nice,” I hear myself saying before I think better of it, but thankfully Naomi doesn’t seem to think it’s a strange thing to say.
“Oh, me too,” she agrees. “And he’s been much friendlier lately. I think we’re finally turning the awkwardness corner.”
I nod and hum in agreement, not wanting to think about the awkwardness that might emerge between us once the truth comes out. Surely, she won’t care that I fudged the truth a little in an effort to make sure she remained the focus of all the attention on her special day.
Naomi is understanding about the right to keep private things private, and hopefully she’ll see how good Jamison and I are together and be glad two people she cares about have found happiness.
I follow her back out onto the porch—exerting an impressive amount of willpower to keep from glancing over at Jamison—and in a few minutes we’ve succeeded in coaxing Mom into turning up the heat on the roast.
A half-hour later, dinner is served. The older set claim the table for eight in the dining room, while the twenty-somethings crowd around the stools at the island, and the thirty and forty-somethings take plates out to the patio set on the back porch.
I find myself wedged between my cousin Albert, who started his family early and has two teenaged daughters at the ripe old age of thirty-seven, and my cousin Deidre, who at thirty-eight is preparing to send her sole offspring, Evelyn, off to college in the fall.
I do my best to make small talk, but I don’t have much in common with my cousins and hearing them talk about reaching the end of their child-rearing years while I’ve yet to embark on mine has me feeling a little maudlin by the end of the meal.
Come my birthday in a few days, we’ll all be in our thirties, but I’m at such a different stage of life.
It’s a good stage—I love my tiny apartment and the freedom to take off with Jamison on an adventure pretty much whenever I want—but I can’t help but feel like a window of opportunity is closing…
And that maybe I do need to start thinking about more than having a good time and amazing sex.
Which sucks.
Because amazing sex is…amazing.
Chapter Sixteen
Maddie
Not long after dinner, Jamison and I say our good-byes and head out to his car.
I’m still feeling low, though I can’t quite pin down the reason for it.
After all, I’m closer to moving forward with the whole “love and babies” thing than I have been in a long time—Jamison and I are falling in love and I sense we’re headed for some kind of commitment—but for some reason I can’t shake the feeling that I’m wasting time when I should be seriously plotting my course for the future.
“What do you mean?” Jamison asks when I confess how I’m feeling on the ride home. “You think you and I are a waste of time?”
“No, not at all,” I rush to assure him. “I just, I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do.” He brakes at a red light and glances my way, a no-nonsense look in his eyes. “Tell me what’s bothering you. I want us to be honest with each other, Maddie.”
“I am being honest,” I say, realizing the words are a lie as soon as they’re out of my mouth.
I do know what’s bothering me; I’m just too chicken to say it aloud. If I do, and Jamison says he never wants to have kids, that might be the end of us. Yes, I want romantic love, but I also really want to be a mother. It’s one of my biggest dreams for my life.