her arms on the table and leaned a little closer, waiting.
“When she died it was…well, it pretty much wrecked my folks.”
“I’m sure.”
“No, it was bad; it was too much for them to watch the rest of the world keep spinning, like they thought they were betraying her if they let themselves be happy again without her here.” He spun his mug idly, first one way, then the other. “They still functioned, went to work, kept the house running, but that was it. They were just…wrecked. There’s no other way to describe it. I was fourteen; I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do to help, except this.”
“How would not smiling help your parents? They must’ve wanted you to be happy still.”
Brett shrugged. “Obviously Rosie and I weren’t identical, but everyone always said we had the exact same smile, so it was just better for them if I didn’t do it anymore. One less reminder of what they lost.”
“Oh my…But it’s not just them. You hardly ever smile around anyone.”
“Old habits die hard.” He lifted his hands in a short surrender and looked everywhere except at her; at the coffee-bean-shaped clock hanging above the door, at the fly buzzing around the banana loaf in the display case, at the mother and son tossing bags into the charity bin outside, at the…whoa…at Ellie’s hands, which were now wrapped around his.
Her touch was soft, but it packed a hell of a punch, and made him sit stock-still in case any movement from him might break their contact.
“I’m sorry,” she said. And she looked sorry, too.
“Not your fault.” Damn, his throat was dry. “How were you supposed to know that’s what I was going to tell you?”
“I’m not sorry I asked,” she said softly. “I’m sorry about your sister. And I’m really sorry about your parents; I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been.”
“They’re better now, but—”
“No.” Her laugh was quiet, gentle as she patted his hands one more time, then sat back. “Not hard for them. For you! I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been on you.”
“Oh. I, uh…” Water! Was it too much to ask for a glass to magically appear in front of him?
“I’m not minimizing your parents’ loss, because no parent should outlive their child—it’s just that when Rosie died, you lost your sister and your parents.”
He cleared his throat, then did it again, harder, when she looked at him like that, her eyes full of compassion instead of the mocking he was so used to.
“Yeah,” he finally muttered. “Okay, so how ’bout them Yankees?”
“Fine, change the subject,” she said, smiling slowly. “But you really should smile more. Don’t get me wrong—the whole ‘I’m gonna go all Jason Bourne on your ass’ look works, too, but that smile of yours…just sayin’. Not a bad thing, Ponch. Even if you are a cop.”
“Okay, moving on to something else. Anything else. The Pythagorean theorem, the number of times that fly’s landed on the banana bread since we got here…” How he’d give his right arm to have her touch him again.
“You don’t like talking about yourself?”
“Uh, no.” Hudak’s patrol car pulled into the parking lot, drove slowly down the row behind the Civic, then up the other side. “Not really.”
Kurt backed the black car out of its spot and headed to the far end of the lot, where he idled over two empty stalls.
“What’s going on?”
Brett blinked her back into focus. “Sorry?”
“You went ‘cop’ on me there for a second, but I know you’ll just wig out if I dare look out the window, so what is it?”
“What the hell does that mean, I went ‘cop’? I didn’t even move.”
“You didn’t have to.” Laughing, she made two air circles with her finger like she was outlining his eyes. “Normally your eyes are like…like tropical-water blue. When you go cop, it’s like you’ve got some kind of storm brewing in there.”
“Gimme a break,” he scoffed, struggling to stop the burning sensation over his face. “They’re the exact same as about a billion other people’s on the planet.”
“No, they’re—well, look at that, I made you blush. I could agree with you and say, yeah, they’re just like everyone else’s, except that would be a lie, because they’re not.”
“Seriously?” He almost liked it better when she didn’t talk to him so much. “Literally thousands of other things we could be talking about right now.”
Hudak’s car came back into view, heading toward where Kurt was still idling. Before she got close,