Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand Page B

drove off. Then she took a deep breath. The air smelled like steak on a charcoal grill, and miraculously, she felt hungry.
    As she rolled her suitcase down the flagstone walk, she met Blaine. His hair had been wetted and combed and he wore a fresh blue polo shirt.
    “Where were you?” he demanded. The inquisition starts, Melanie thought. But then Blaine’s face broke open into genuine curiosity and, if Melanie wasn’t mistaken, a little bit of conspiracy. “Were you lost?” he whispered.
    “Yes,” she said. “I was lost.”
    That night, after dinner (cheeseburgers, Ore-Ida onion rings, iceberg salad), Josh drove to Didi’s apartment. She had called during dinner and asked him to come over. He said no. When he sat back down to his father’s silence, Josh felt he had to explain. “That was Didi. She wants me to come over. I said no.”
    Tom Flynn cleared his throat. “Dennis told me he saw you giving a girl a ride home tonight.”
    “Huh?” Josh said, then he remembered Melanie. “Oh, right.” How to explain the “girl” Dennis was referring to was an airline passenger who was much older than Josh, and pregnant to boot? How to explain that he had driven her home in an attempt to catch another glimpse of Scowling Sister, who was another woman out of his league in every respect? “That was nothing.”
    Tom Flynn cut his iceberg salad, took a bite, wiped ranch dressing from his chin. Drank his beer. The phone rang again. Again, Josh rose to answer it. Melanie had told him she was pregnant, but she hadn’t seemed happy about it. In fact, she had seemed gloomy. But she was too old to have gotten knocked up. Josh hadn’t thought to check if she was wearing a wedding ring. He wasn’t doing a very good job observing or absorbing.
    “Hello?”
    “Josh?”
    “What?” Josh said in an aggravated whisper.
    “I really want you to come over. Really. It’s important.”
    “You’ve been drinking,” he said.
    “Just wine,” Didi said. “Please? Come over. I have something to tell you.”
    She had something to tell him. This was how it always went, since the end of sophomore year in high school when they’d started dating. Didi took everyday truths and twisted them like a kid with taffy until they were soap-opera dramas. Her doctor told her she was anemic, her brother threatened her with a carving knife because she borrowed his favorite sweater and got makeup on it, her father’s friend Ed Grubb pinched her ass—all these became reasons why Didi needed consoling, protecting, and extra heaps of attention from Josh.
    “What is it, Didi?” he said.
    “Just come,” she said, and she hung up.
    Josh sat back down at the table. He stared at his onion rings, which had grown cold, limp, and soggy. “Sounds like I’d better go,” he said.
    At nine o’clock, when Josh pulled into Didi’s driveway, the sun was just setting. Summer, he thought. Drag-ass summer .
    He could hear the music from fifty yards away: Led Zeppelin. This was not a promising sign. He approached the stairs down to Didi’s basement apartment in what might be considered a stealthy way and peered into the living room window, which was at ankle level. Didi was dancing on her coffee table wearing only a red negligee, waving around a glass of white wine so that it sloshed everywhere. During their senior year in high school, Josh’s friend Zach had referred to Didi as Most Likely to Become a Pole Dancer, and although at the time Josh had been obligated to punch Zach in the gut, watching her now, he had to agree. Didi had been a better-quality person when Josh was dating her, or so it had seemed. She was a cheerleader, she was on student council, she’d had lots of girlfriends with whom she was constantly conferring—by passed notes, in the bathroom, at sleepovers on the weekends. She had been fun—not as smart as Josh, maybe, not “academically oriented,” not exactly the kind of girl Josh’s mother would have wanted for him in the long run,