What's Life Without the Sprinkles - By Misty Simon Page 0,41
pepper shakers to the window sill. “Something wrong?”
“Ah, no. Why?”
Claudia pulled the paper towels out of the refrigerator, put the salt and pepper on the table, and placed the butter back on the counter. “You seem distracted all of a sudden. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
May shook her head and laughed. “I’m positive. I’m just a little out of sorts.” She dusted her hands off on a kitchen towel, then grabbed the tray of relish again. “Let’s get everything out on the table. I’m sure the guys are hungry.”
“Don’t we want to wait for everyone else to get here? I haven’t seen Mom and Dad yet, and they’re bringing Justin.” Which would be a set of fireworks all on its own. “They’ll be here soon. I’m sure Brad’s fine with entertaining Zoe for a bit. No one else needs anything.”
“Zoe doesn’t need entertaining,” Zoe said, appearing in the kitchen doorway to the living room. “She does, however, want to finally corner Claudia to talk about what happened with Nate yesterday afternoon. Since you’ve avoided me for the last twenty-four hours, I thought I’d wrangle May into helping me get you to spill what happened.”
Claudia opened her mouth to respond and nothing came out but a squeak. “I don’t know what happened.” Claudia felt her cheeks grow bright red and knew she was doomed. Here came the interrogation. With Peter most likely on his way here, she did not want to have this conversation right here and right now.
“Interesting. Very interesting,” Zoe said. “What’s the blush for?”
“Nothing.” Claudia washed her hands at the sink, then turned around to ask May what else there was to do, completely ignoring Zoe’s question.
“It’s all finished,” May said with a smug smile. “But you’re not doing anything but explaining that flush to your face.” May threw a dish towel over her shoulder, then leaned back against the counter.
“Nothing’s going on.” Claudia washed her hands again and kept her back to them.
May’s hand landed on Claudia’s left shoulder just as Zoe’s landed on her right.
“You can’t hide from us.” And Zoe wasn’t going to let her.
May must have had the same idea. “We’re not leaving this kitchen until you tell us what’s happening.”
This ought to be interesting and could definitely be tough. Claudia had spent a lot of time building up walls, and sometimes she could outlast the most avid askers. That didn’t always hold true when dealing with her two best girl friends, though.
“I was just talking to Nate to see how his day was going.” That was certainly true to some extent.
“And that made you blush—why? You’ve talked to Nate about the very same thing every day for years.” May seemed to be enjoying herself way too much with this. Claudia wracked her brain to come up with a way to get them onto a different topic, but nothing was coming to her.
“But maybe she finally screwed up her courage to do more than bat her eyelashes at him.” Zoe squinted at Claudia, then laughed. “Oh, yeah, looks like I may have hit the nail on the head.”
“What is this? Where was I?” May looked back and forth between Claudia and Zoe.
“It was nothing,” Claudia said.
“Nothing?” Zoe said loudly enough for Claudia to hush her. “That’s not what you said after Nate left without going over the plans with you.” She turned to May. “You should have seen her face and the way her lips were all rosy when Justin and I came back from picking up some hoagies. She said she’d explain to me what happened but then magically was not available after that. She even took an hour-long shower last night to avoid me.”
“I was not exactly avoiding you.”
“Oh, yes, you were! And you’re trying to get out of talking about it now.”
Claudia blew out an exasperated sigh. Apparently, they would be doing this here and now instead of waiting. If Peter walked in, she’d just do what damage control she could. Or she would just not care, since he had nothing to do with her anymore. That was the better option.
Zoe shuffled around the kitchen, rearranging all the other things May had put into the wrong places, while Claudia explained the kiss in the kitchen and May squealed.
“Well, the only problem is that he’s acting like nothing happened. I’m confused, but I’m still going for it. He’s not going to ignore me this time.” Her resolve was firm, just as long as his wasn’t as firmly set to keep his distance