Perfect Summer (23 page)

His hand moved up her stomach, and the tickling commenced.

“Okay.” Summer giggled and tried to roll away, but keeping herself covered from chin to toes restricted her movements.

“My mother and I don’t have the type of relationship where we hang out.” That was putting it mildly.

“What kind do you have?”

“Most of the time, I want to run over her with my car.” Definitely, her mother would be the world’s best-dressed speed bump.

He nodded like he needed more.

How could she explain it without sounding more pathetic? Again, he was minus the frame of reference. She sighed. “I’m not the child she wanted.”

“I don’t get it.”

How could he? Everyone loved him.

Summer swallowed her mortification. He was right. She shouldn’t be mad at him—he’d never met Lillian Ames. “I’m too tall, and I’ll never be thin enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough for her. You, she’ll love…me, she’ll torment.”

“Is she the reason for your self-image problem?”

Was
LOSER
stamped on her forehead?

“Yes.” She shifted away from him. Admitting her faults in front of the one person who’d chosen not to see them made her vulnerable. “My mother’s a cross between Reese Witherspoon and Audrey Hepburn—all grace and southern charm—while I’m Shrek with two left feet. I’ve always been big and awkward and clumsy. My mother loves nothing more than pointing out all of my faults.”

Summer picked at a stray thread on the comforter. “When I lived at home, she’d do the fat test. She would stick her finger in the waistband of my jeans. If they were loose enough for her finger to move around, I got to eat dinner. If not, I got to sit at the table and watch everyone else eat.”

Her two oldest friends, shame and inadequacy, settled in for a long visit.

How many evenings had she gone downstairs, flying high on hope that tonight would be the night she wasn’t too fat to be loved, only to crash and burn with one dip of a perfectly polished finger? By her eighteenth birthday, she’d outweighed her mother by a good thirty pounds and was a foot taller, but Lillian could still make Summer feel small.

“Jesus, what a bitch. Want me to run over her with my car?”

“No.” Summer swallowed and tried to laugh, but it came out as a gurgle. “I really like your car.”

Clint grabbed the phone. “I’m calling her back.”

“No. It wouldn’t do any good. She’d just drive over here.” Summer took the phone from Clint. “Fair warning, she’s in the market for a husband for me. There’s still time for you to run away. Once she sees you, she’ll start interviewing caterers for the reception.”

“I’m not afraid of her.” Clint puffed out his chest.

“Sure, you talk tough now. Just remember I gave you an out when she starts picking out baby names for our firstborn.”

He propped his chin on his hand. “She’d better pick out two. Twins run in my family.”

Summer rolled her eyes. “Lucky me. I hope they look like you, or I’ll never hear the end of it. An ugly daughter and ugly grandkids—”

“I think you’re beautiful.”

Her humiliation quadrupled. Now, he felt sorry for her. Summer never needed to throw her own pity party because there was always someone with a kind word there to do it for her.

She contracted her facial muscles into a smile showing lots of teeth. “Thanks.”

“You don’t believe me.”

They both knew he was just being nice.

“Don’t worry about my mother. I’ll call her later and come up with an excuse. I don’t know you well enough to expose you to her. But I’d still like to go with you to the ball.” He needed her, and she couldn’t turn her back on him.

And it would be nice to pretend, if only for one evening, that she had a handsome date who’d asked her out because he wanted to spend time with her. Maybe he’d even ask her to dance. All those high school dances her mother had insisted she attend had been lessons in pretending not to care that no one asked her to dance. Until Summer had turned sixteen and gotten a car. After that, she’d skipped the dances but kept up the pretense. Wearing the way-too-tight designer dress and heels her mother thought of as proper dance attire, Summer had spent the evenings alone in the last booth of an all-night coffee shop doing crossword puzzles and eating pie. Pie was nice—it didn’t laugh at her or refuse to make eye contact as it chose the girl next to her to dance, and it didn’t raise her hopes by promising to call and then never doing it.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what’s your angle? I know what I get out of spending time with you, but I can’t figure out what you get.” Summer wanted to believe that he genuinely liked her, but past experience told her otherwise.

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

“No.” She laid a hand over his. “I’m trying to understand. I like being around you because you make me laugh, and you don’t treat me like I’m awkward and clumsy. I get to be myself around you, and you don’t make fun of me.”

“That’s exactly how I feel about you.” With a finger, he snagged the comforter, trying to pull it back, but Summer had a death grip on it. “And I wanted to nail you.”

Giddiness saturated her battered soul. She’d never been a notch on someone’s bedpost.

She felt her smile all the way down to her toes. “I know it’s wrong, but that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Guess what?” He leaned down and kissed her hard on the mouth. “I want to nail you again.”

In her life, happy ever after didn’t happen. The chubby social misfit wouldn’t wake up tomorrow as a supermodel. But that was okay because right now she felt wanted.

An hour later, Lilly grabbed the first thing she saw in her closet, a white Nicole Miller pintuck dress, slipped it over her head, and tried to pull it down. It wouldn’t make it past her breasts. That was odd. While she wasn’t flat chested, she wasn’t enormous either, and this dress was fitted, but she’d never had a problem with it fitting. Women gained weight with menopause, she knew, but not in the chest. Great, she was a withering old crone with giant boobs. When Sun City opened a Hooters, she’d be their star attraction. She struggled out of it and threw it on the floor. The dry cleaners must have shrunk it. Blame others. It had always worked in the past, why change now?

Normally, she took great care with her clothes, but she’d been fighting the stomach flu and didn’t care. It was hard to coordinate shoes with hemlines when nausea had her running to the toilet every time she smelled meat. On the other hand, gummy bears, fresh strawberries, and chocolate ice cream were manna from heaven.

She popped another handful of gummy bears in her mouth. How many bags had she been through? Well…in the past week she’d cleaned out one grocery store, two Walgreens, and was working her way through the closest CVS. It had to stop. She threw one gummy up in the air and caught it in her mouth—it had to stop…tomorrow. Heartache and hormonal imbalance, those were two incredible reasons to cheat on her diet.

After lots of trying on, she finally found clothes that fit: a white, cotton blouse she usually used for a swimsuit cover-up and black, stretchy yoga pants. She slipped her feet into some red, low-heeled strappy sandals, snatched up the bag of gummy bears and her purse.

She’d been lucky enough to snag one of the coveted Saturday appointments with her ob-gyn for a checkup. Obviously, she needed some hormone replacement therapy and something to get rid of the nausea. Hopefully the hormones would balance out her food cravings and boost her energy. Her normal daily hour-long workouts had been replaced by two-hour-long naps.

Estrogen was one mean bitch. It caused zits and weight gain on the way in, weight gain and lethargy on the way out, and in between, there were twenty-one days of normalcy before the week of bitchiness, bloating, and bouts of insanity.

She shrugged. The alternative was testosterone, and that made people stupid. Crazy beat the heck out of stupid any day.

Lilly walked into her sunny, yellow kitchen and made a beeline for the back door.

“What are you wearin’?” Inez’s Spanish accent turned
you
into
jew
.

“Nothing.” Lilly stared at her toenails, which really needed a new pedicure.

"Somethin’s wrong. You don't match. You always match." Inez made a grab for the gummy bears. “You need to stop with those. You’re gettin’ fat."

A low growl rumbled out of Lilly’s mouth. “Back off.”

She turned away so Inez couldn’t reach them. “You’ll be happy to know that I’m taking my fat self to the doctor to find out what’s wrong with me.”

“You don’t need no doctor. Let me save you some time." Inez put one fist on her hip. “You’re crazy.” She held out her other hand. “That will be two hundred bucks.”

Lilly stuck out her tongue. That was getting to be her favorite form of communication.

Inez’s eyes turned the size of fried eggs as she took a step back. “Somethin’s wrong with you. Go to the doctor. Drive fast.”

Her tone was concerned.

“I’m fine, just menopausal.”

“That explains the weight gain.” Inez went from concerned to apologetic. “Getting old sucks.”

“I’m not old…I’m middle-aged.” Lilly popped in another couple of gummy bears.

“Oh, yeah, how many people live to be ninety-six?” Inez leaned in to hug Lilly, but at the last minute, she grabbed the gummies, slammed the back door in Lilly’s face, and locked it.

“It’s for your own good.” Inez sounded smug from the other side of the door.

Lilly grinned and pulled out the bag she had in her purse. “Nice try."

An hour later, Lilly, swathed with a giant paper napkin, waited feet up, butt hanging off the exam table, for Dr. Boone to come back in. They’d chatted about menopause, she’d given Lilly a handful of pamphlets, and then Dr. Boone had stepped out while Lilly changed into the gown-flapping-open-in-the-front number. She pulled it tighter to ward off the chill of the air conditioner and then fingered the crinkly paper covering her from the waist down. Whose idea had it been to make the patient feel like a burrito from a fast-food restaurant?

Lilly rolled her eyes up to the yellow smiley face painted on the ceiling. She moved from side to side. It was like the Mona Lisa leering happiness from every angle. Another fantastic idea. Humor at the gynecologist’s. What was next? Sympathy cards that played show tunes?

Dr. Boone knocked lightly. “Ready?”

Was anyone ever ready for a pelvic exam?

“Yes.” Lilly smiled because it was expected.

Screw expected. She was tired of smiling. She was done with smiles unless there was an actual reason to smile.

Dr. Boone plopped down on a rolling stool at the end of the table and flipped on a small light.

“Sorry, this is a little cold.” She picked up a tube of something and squirted it onto something else. Lilly really didn’t want to think about the specifics. “Apart from the weight gain and your periods stopping, have you had any other symptoms?”

Something cold and metal slid into Lilly, making her feel like a wide-mouthed bass. In went the fingers, palpating. “Oh.”

More palpating.

“Okay.” The word was drawn out.

“What’s wrong?” Maybe her stomach pooch was caused by something else? A tumor? Possibly she needed more than hormone replacement…hysterectomy?

Dr. Boone pulled out the speculum and stood abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”

Lilly caught her arm. “Is anything wrong?”

Dr. Boone smiled and shook her head. “No, but I need to show you something.”

She walked out of the room and closed the door.

Lilly had been coming to Dr. Boone for the last seventeen years, and in all that time, Lilly had appreciated the fact that the woman was all business...until now.

What was wrong? Doctors didn’t up and leave a room unless it was bad. Could it be a lump or a mass? Cancer? Queasiness rolled through her gut. She was dying, and Summer would never know how wonderful and special and loved she was. How come she’d never told her daughter how much she loved her? Now it might be too late. Tonight, at the ball, she’d tell Summer how much she loved her. Lilly put her hand over her heart. With her time left, she’d spend it making up for all the bad she’d caused her daughter. It would be her last gift.

Dr. Boone rolled in a cart containing a small machine, a computer monitor, and a giant tube of K-Y jelly.

Nothing good could come of this. “What’s going on?”

Once she got the bad news out of the way, she would know what she was dealing with.

Dr. Boone grinned. “You’re not menopausal, you’re pregnant.”

Lilly sat bolt upright. “That’s not funny.”

“You’re pregnant.” Dr. Boone rolled the cart to the end of the table next to the stool.

“No, I can’t be…I’m forty-eight…there’s no way.” She and Davis had used protection...at first. After her periods had turned hit or miss, there hadn’t seemed to be a point. After all, they’d both been tested and were clean. “But four months ago, you tested my hormones and said my levels were on the decline, that I was perimenopausal.”

“I also told you to keep using birth control.”

“This is awful.” Lilly chewed on her bottom lip and rolled her eyes to the back wall littered with baby pictures. Floor to ceiling, babies were wrapped in pink or blue blankets, sitting in high chairs blowing out one birthday candle, posed perfectly in the blue bonnets, and—Lilly leaned closer—one was right alongside the family dog eating kibble out of the dish. Babies…cute, chubby, cuddly…babies leered down at her.

Lilly laid back. She was knocked up again. Karma was one mean witch.

Her mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around the idea of a baby. She’d been barely twenty when Summer had been born. A baby having a baby. Lilly glared at the wall. Obviously, wisdom didn’t go hand-in-hand with age or she wouldn’t be staring down the business end of a sonogram wand. Her thoughts played freeze tag with her brain—moving fast one moment and halting the next.

Pregnant?

She could either be happy or sad about this turn of events. She could keep it or not. Practicality was her go-to emotion.