“Hi, Rachel,” he said. “Hi, Tammy,” he said in a different tone. He stepped over to the kitchen table and kissed her. At first I thought this was going to be a McGillicuddy-style peck. Historically he was not good with girls. But this turned into something more. They kissed quite deeply in the middle of the kitchen.
Rachel and I looked at each other. She removed her arm from around my waist. I walked to the table, picked up a fork, and dinged it on a glass. “Hello, no PDA in the business meeting. We are here to rescue my love life, not to advance yours.”
They broke apart, glaring at me. McGillicuddy was as pink as the sliced ham on the table.
We all sat down, and I passed around ingredients for them to make their own sandwiches. All three of them shot me strange looks every time I passed something new.
Perhaps other girls actually made lunch when they invited people over? en I followed their gazes to the jars on the table. I hadn’t been handing around condiments you’d usually put on a sandwich. I’d just cleared out the door of the refrigerator and plunked the contents on the table, thinking this stuff must be good for something, though I’d never seen anyone use it.
I picked up a Mason jar with green oozing down the sides and showed it to my brother. “Look, this is from five years ago when Frances was our nanny, not our dad’s squeeze. Remember the organic muscadine chutney? Ah, memories.” I hugged it to my cheek. Shocked by the cold (and the sticky), I plunked it onto the table again.
“Sometimes it’s good to let go.”
With her finger wrapped safely in a napkin, Rachel eased the jar a few inches farther from her plate. “Could I have a knife?”
“I’m not sure even a knife will help you hack into that Mason jar,” I said. “It’s pretty ol—”
“For the mayo,” Rachel said.
Realizing I had supplied no utensils for the grand repast, I jumped up, crossed the kitchen, and opened what I thought was the knife drawer. Clearly I had not prepared food in a while. is was a drawer full of kitchen tools we had no use for when Frances was not around, such as the avocado slicer, the garlic press, and the melon baller. I’d had a lot of fun cooking with Frances back in the day. She thought she was teaching me to cook, which made her happy. I mashed food like it was Play-Doh and learned nothing, which made me equally happy.
I grabbed a few implements in case someone needed them, sat back down, and handed Rachel a butter knife. en I asked my brother, “What’d you find out about Adam?”
“Well,” he said between bites, “there’s some talk of military school.”
“What!” I shouted. “Adam would be the worst person in the world to go to military school.”
“I think that’s the idea,” my brother said. “You go into military school because you’re undisciplined and unmilitary. They make you toe the line.” I felt like my insides had been scooped out with the melon baller in front of me. Adam did not toe the line. at was why he was in so much trouble. But that was also one of the things I loved about him. A disciplined and military Adam would not be a new and improved Adam. It would not be Adam at all.
“But they’re not sending him yet,” McGillicuddy went on. “ey’ve talked about it before, and this latest problem”—he glanced at me, like I was the problem—“has brought up the discussion again. They won’t send him if he stays away from you.”
“They’re saying, ‘Stay away from your girlfriend or we’ll send you to military school’?” I asked. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s more like they’re saying, ‘We gave you simple instructions and you couldn’t follow them.’” I threw a potato chip at my brother. Rachel and Tammy ducked, as if people did not throw food at their tables. “You don’t have to act so smug about it,” I said. “You helped him polish the marks out of the boat faster. You sent him in my direction.”
“Isn’t the issue really that your parents are watching you all the time?” Tammy asked. “You could both quit the marina and get jobs at the same place somewhere else.” I frowned at her. I hadn’t thought of this. If I got a job on land, I might dry up. I couldn’t imagine a summer away from the lake. But to save Adam from military school, it would be more than worth it. I asked, “Like where?”
“You both have your lifeguard certification,” Tammy said. “You could work at the city pool or the country club.”
“Yeah!” I exclaimed. Work and water!
Rachel shook her head. “Adam wouldn’t be able to stay still in that lifeguard chair for more than five minutes.”
“Yeah,” I said. She knew this because she’d dated Adam. However, I did not want to be reminded of this at the present time. Waving away Tammy’s amateurish idea, I said, “I already wanted to talk to y’all about this, but military school makes it even more important. Adam won’t follow this order from his parents. ere’s my irresistible beauty and allure—”
Tammy laughed.
“—shut up, and then there’s the very idea of his parents telling him he can’t do something. It’s a perfect storm for Adam to self-destruct. I need to get us out of this mess before that happens. And I have a plan.” I explained my ingenious mission with Kevin Ye, ignoring Rachel when she choked on her lemonade at several points. I finished,
“Isn’t that a good plan?”
“No,” McGillicuddy spoke up, “but it’s consistent.”
I went on. “The problem with this plan—”
“The problem?” Tammy asked. “Like there’s only one?”
“—is that I ran it by Adam, and he does not like it.”
“You have got to be kidding,” McGillicuddy said flatly.
“It’s the Kevin Ye aspect. Adam doesn’t want me dating a felon.” Or his brother, or his other brother. “It could still work if I thought of someone who passed muster with Adam and horrified my dad at the same time.”
“What about Parker Buchanan?” Rachel asked. “Your dad must know him by reputation. Everybody in town’s heard that he made out with three different girls in the food court at the Birmingham mall and all their boyfriends tried to jump him in the parking lot.”
“That’s perfect!” I pounded my fist on the table. Rachel’s lemonade sloshed over the side of her glass. “Sorry.” I stood up to snag a towel.
“I was joking,” Rachel said.
My brother warned her, “Do not make jokes to Lori that you don’t want to be misunderstood and taken seriously.”
“Why is Parker perfect?” Tammy asked. “He’s a playboy who lives on the edge. Why would that be so scary to your dad? He sounds like a combination of Adam and Sean.”
“Yes, but he’s from Birmingham,” I pointed out as I wiped up the lemonade at Rachel’s place—or tried to, and ended up scooting the puddle into her lap. “Sorry. Maybe you should do this.” I handed her the towel and sat back down in my place. “You know how people around here feel about Birmingham. You don’t even have to explain that anything from Birmingham is more intense. If you wreck your car and people want to know how badly you were hurt, all you have to say is, ‘e ambulance took me straight to Birmingham,’ and everybody knows you went to the university hospital because you were at death’s door. If you’re going on a date and you say, ‘We went to Birmingham,’ people know your boyfriend took you to the fanciest restaurant in the state because he’s trying to get in your pants.” McGillicuddy cleared his throat. Next to him, Tammy took a huge bite of her sandwich. He must be taking her on a date to Birmingham sometime soon.
To cover his own embarrassment—or just to make sure he understood my plan, but I doubted this—my brother reached behind him and snagged the pad and pen on the counter beside the phone. He drew a little diagram. “So an ADHD boyfriend is bad, and a playboy ADHD boyfriend would be worse, but a playboy ADHD boyfriend from Birmingham is the top of this hierarchy.”