“Joe,” she sighed. “Am I ever going to meet him?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? He’s your best friend, Ox. I’m your girlfriend. I introduced you to my friends.” And she had. Some girls at our school she’d met in class. Cassie and Felicia and something something something. I didn’t do well with new people. They seemed nice, but I could see their eyes flitting back and forth between Jessie and me and thinking really?
“You know Carter and Kelly.”
“Ox.”
“He’s… Joe.”
“I know.”
“He’s not in a good place all the time.”
“I know that too. That thing that no one will tell me about.”
I swallowed to keep my anger in check. At her. “You don’t need to know.”
She winced. “I’ll pretend you didn’t sound like an asshole right then. Why doesn’t he ever come over here? Why don’t any of them come to your house?”
“It’s easier to go over there.”
“That’s weird, Ox.”
I put down the stone wolf and sighed.
“SHE WANTS to meet you.”
Joe said, “Oh.”
“She knows how much you mean to me.”
Joe said, “Really?”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Joe said, “I know.”
“You can say no.”
He looked up at me. The sunlight hit his face through the trees as we walked down the dirt road. His hand was warm in mine. “Do you care about her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you care about me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
SHE CAME to Sunday dinner at the beginning of July. She was nervous. I told her she didn’t need to be. She looked pretty in her summer dress. It was yellow and she was golden. I touched her hair. She looked so small next to my hand.
“But they’re your family,” she said as we walked toward the house at the end of the lane, and that filled me with so much warmth that I could hardly breathe.