Where the Kissing Never Stops Read Online Free

Would everybody at school know by first period?
    What I wanted was to go down to breakfast next morning and find her standing at the stove, wearing two or three aprons, cooking up stacks of pancakes, and apologizing all over the place.
    Instead we got to the kitchen at just about the same time. I could see a sequin or some sparkly stuff right near the corner of one eye. Man, it looked out of place, especially since she was wearing the robe Dad had given her for Christmas last year.
    She nodded at me coolly.
    “So, how was it?” I asked.
    Disgusting. Stupid. A real mistake. Only a passing fancy. I must have been out of my mind. Harmless but silly. I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars. Once was enough, believe me.
    “Fine.” She moved her shoulders under the salmon-colored chenille and shook her dark curly hair. “Hard, though. It’ll take me a while to get in shape.”
    “So you’re going back?”
    She looked at me evenly. “Sure.” It was a little like a cowboy movie. She might have said “Yup,” or “It’s your move, stranger.” And God knows I felt like one.
    “I’m hungry. What sounds good, Walker?”
    “You don’t have to fix anything for me. You’re so tired. I ate dinner alone; I can eat breakfast alone.”
    She let it slide by. The Teflon effect on sarcasm. “You should eat; you know all those studies about a good breakfast and success in the classroom.”
    “I’ll get some doughnuts.”
    “It’s your body; you’re grown-up enough to pollute it if you want to.”
    “How much money do we have?”
    “Enough.”
    “How much is that? If I’m so grown-up, why don’t I know?”
    Deliberately she broke two eggs into a skillet, then she held up two more. “Are you sure you don’t…”
    “Quit treating me like a kid — I mean it.”
    “Stop acting like one, then.”
    I could feel the tears, but they were a long way off, down at my knees or maybe even in my shoes. I hadn’t cried since the funeral.
    “I hate that job of yours.”
    “Good. You get to hate it and I get to do it.”
    I sat down at the table, then got up. “But I don’t want you to do it.”
    “I know, and I respect that. You get to feel that way and I get to dance.”
    “What, is dancing your whole stupid life or something?”
    “I know this is hard on you,” she said softly.
    “Then why do it?” My heart was really going.
    “Honey, I liked it. I liked dancing again.”
    “You liked taking off your clothes?”
    “Some of the people in the audience — and if you want the truth, some of the ones I work with — would’ve made your dad pass out; but some of them are really nice. And anyway, even if they’d all been drooling in their beer and counting on their toes to get to eleven, I’d still like it.” She smiled kind of crooked and goofy. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Your father used to say that when he got mad. Maybe he was right.”
    “Why would he have passed out?”
    “Walker, you know your dad. He went to church every Sunday.”
    “I went with him.”
    “Unless I’d lie for you and say I needed you around the house. And then you’d go off with Sully, and I’d lie again when he came home and say you’d just left.”
    “Did you lie to him about other stuff?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Do you lie to me?”
    “Just so you won’t worry.”
    “Tell me how much money we have,” I demanded. “Tell me the truth.”
    She stared at her eggs, which, sunny-side up, were sort of staring back. Then she sighed heavily and tipped them into the garbage.
    She began softly. “If your dad had lived a few more years, I’m pretty sure everything would have turned out all right.”
    “Don’t you know?” I sounded like the relentless interrogator in a World War II movie.
    “We had an arrangement. I took care of you and the house; he took care of everything else.” I could see the barest smile. “Like the future.”
    “But he didn’t, did he? Not really.”
    “It wasn’t his fault.