But before I had time to figure out what I was going to do – close my eyes and let him do it, or invoke rule number three: absolutely no touching — my mother's voice drifted up from downstairs. "Susannah?" she called. "Suzie, it's Mom. I'm home."
I looked at Jesse. He jerked his hands away from me. A second later, my mom opened my bedroom door, and Jesse disappeared.
"Suzie," she said. She walked over and put her arms around me. "How are you? I hope you're not upset that we let you sleep in. You just seemed so tired."
"No," I said. I was still sort of dazed by what had happened with Jesse. "I don't mind."
"I guess it all finally caught up with you. I thought it might. Were you all right here with Andy? He said he made you lunch."
"He made me a fine lunch," I said automatically.
"And David brought you your homework, I hear." She let go of me and walked toward the window seat. "We were thinking about spaghetti for dinner. What do you think?"
"Sounds good." I came around long enough to notice that she was staring out of the windows. Then I noticed that I couldn't remember my mother ever looking so ... well, serene.
Maybe it was the fact that since we'd moved out west, she'd given up coffee.
More likely, though, it was love.
"What are you looking at, Mom?" I asked her.
"Oh, nothing, honey," she said with a little smile. "Just the sunset. If's so beautiful." She turned to put her arm around me, and together we stood there and watched the sun sinking into the Pacific in a blaze of violent reds and purples and golds. "You sure wouldn't see a sunset like that back in New York," my mother said. "Now would you?"
"No," I said. "You wouldn't."
"So," she said, giving me a squeeze. "What do you think? You think we should stick around here awhile?"
She was joking, of course. But in a way, she wasn't.
"Sure," I said. "We should stick around."
She smiled at me, then turned back toward the sunset. The last of the bright orange ball was disappearing beneath the horizon. "There goes the sun," she said.
"And," I said, "it's all right."