Chapter 4: Pickles

Lunch was ham sandwiches on two picnic tables in the shade of the maples.

Twenty people passed potato salad.

My father told the story of the time he rewired this very house with a flashlight in his teeth.

"Your mother's father hated me," he told Judy. "He stood on the ladder and called me Sparky for a year."

"He called everyone Sparky," said Judy.

"He called me Sparky for a year."

Everyone laughed.

Across the table, Jack was eating a sandwich and not looking at me.

His bare foot slid up the inside of my ankle under the planks.

I put down my fork.

"Katie, you're quiet," said my father.

"I'm chewing."

"She does that," said Jack. "Very thoroughly."

One of Judy's nieces at the end of the table snorted into her lemonade.

Marlene had driven into town with the florist, and the whole lawn felt ten degrees looser without her.

"Run in and get the pickles, would you, sweetheart?" said Judy. "Second shelf in the pantry."

"I'll help," said Jack, and stood up.

Nobody looked twice.

The kitchen was empty.

The screen door stood open to the lawn, and I could hear my father still telling the ladder story forty feet away.

I walked into the pantry first.

It was a deep walk-in closet lined with shelves of canned cherries and flour and jam, lit by a single bulb on a pull string.

Jack stepped in behind me and pulled the door shut.

It latched with a click.

I turned around.

He stood against the door with his hands at his sides, tall and quiet, with a bit of mustard on his thumb.

"You can't be serious," I whispered.

"About the pickles?"

"About any of it."

"I'm very serious," said Jack. "You've been kicking my ankle for ten minutes."

"You started it."

"I did."

I put my palm flat on his chest and pushed him back against the door.

His breath caught.

I slid my hand down over his stomach to the front of his shorts.

He was already hard, a thick hot line under the denim.

"Kate."

"You said you wanted to make it better than last night."

"That was before we did it in a boathouse."