Just One Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

eyes. “Ignore him. What do you talk about? What do you do together? What dreams do you share?”
    I stared at her as I realized I’d just done the same thing that Brad had done in his proposal.
    “We—” What did we do? “He—hates breakfast,” I said on a whisper, almost to myself.
    May sat back and regarded me with a studied look. “You know, there’s a lake about an hour from here,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s a hotel nearby, but I remember it being so nice.”
    Yeah, I remembered it being nice, too. For different reasons.
    “Oh, here we go,” Jarvis said, shaking his head at his coffee cup. May elbowed him in the ribs and he groaned as he winked at me. “Careful, woman, you might break me.”
    “I’ll break you, all right,” she said, her voice soft even when she was playing. “I just don’t see why we can’t still go see the place. I used to love going there.”
    “Feel free,” Jarvis countered. She gave him a look and he laughed. “Nothing to do there now. We have stuff here.”
    “You used to love going out there, too.”
    He nodded big. “Yes, I did. When I had my boat. After I sold it to Jesse there wasn’t a point.”
    “We don’t need a boat, you old fool,” she countered.
    “We live in the woods, May,” he said, turning his whole body to look at her like elderly people sometimes do when their joints don’t work right. “Without a boat, it’s just going to see more woods.”
    “Oh, you and that boat,” she said, smiling at me. “It was old, like you. It needed to be retired, not sold.”
    “Nah,” Jarvis said, his mouth set as he toyed with a spoon. “That old boat was something else.” He looked up at me. “Been through another owner before me, and still has life left in it.”
    “Oh, I get it,” I said, holding up a hand. “My dad had a boat like that. My mom sold it when he died, but Lord he loved that thing.”
    “See,” Jarvis said, nudging her in return.
    “Yep,” I said. “Loved it so much, the boat and I had the same nickname.”
    May laughed. “Oh my goodness, what was that?”
    “ Beauty ,” I said. I dabbed bacon in the egg juices and savored the union. When I looked back up, May was smiling at me, and Jarvis took hold of her hand. I was hit with the repeated thought that I so wanted to be them one day.
    “Say what?” Jarvis said, leaning forward.
    “ Beauty ,” I repeated, and he sat back, regarding me.
    “How’d that come about?” he asked, more focus in his eyes than before.
    “Not sure which was first, really,” I said, smiling at the memory. “It was stenciled in italics on the back of his boat since I can remember, so I don’t know who was named for whom.” I laughed and took a sip of coffee. “Knowing my dad, the boat was probably first.”
    “That’s pretty special,” May said.
    “Told you,” he said to her, almost privately. “I knew there was something special today.”
    She smiled tolerantly and patted his hand. “I meant having that with her dad.”
    I nodded. “He’d always say that we both had a natural beauty that any man should appreciate. That anyone could paint up a boat or a person with sparkle and make them shine, but a real man would love us just as we were, buck naked.” At May’s singsongy laugh, I looked up and blushed. “Yeah, my dad had a way with words.”
    Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I felt it in my toes as even the windows rattled.
    “Oh dear, Andie, you’d better go get you someplace to stay before this storm hits,” May said, looking out the window. “This is going to be a bad one.”
    “Electricity in this one, I told her,” Jarvis said. “Ever since she got here, the air’s been crackling.”
    I smiled, and wiped my mouth. “Well, crackling or not, I was thinking of sitting here till it passes.” One glance out the window at the heavy darkness bearing down cemented that theory. “That doesn’t look like something I want to be driving through.”
    A look passed