He gives me a smile that tugs at my heart. “Are you still angry?”

What’s in his voice floods my heart. “No. I should be, but I’m not.” I make one of my little playacting faces. “And heck, why fight. I’m about to be bounced in a room named after a Disney movie. How great is that?”

He laughs. “Are you hungry?”

I nod. I could eat. I point to the Papa bear statue wearing a plaid beret. “How about there?”

Alan laughs. “Really?”

I shrug. “Why not? I like A&W. I never get fast food. There doesn’t seem to be much choice here.”

He rolls us into the parking lot and turns off the bike. As I study the menu, I look at Alan and I laugh. I wonder when the last time it was he did something like this. Probably never. Somehow I don’t think many girls drag him to fast food.

I listen to him order, then take the plastic number stand and find a table. I settle in an outdoor plastic booth, but he pulls me up from the seat, until he’s eased back against the wall, slightly turned with me between his legs and sitting against him.

His chin is resting on my shoulder and he is holding me. He is quiet, troubled beneath the surface. Something is bothering him. I can feel it.

“Is this your first date-date at fast food? Something tells me you don’t go to this type of place very often.”

He pretends to give it thought. “Actually, yes.”

The food service girl comes to our table, delivering our tray. She gives Alan that look, the I know who you are look, but when I glare she takes off without saying anything. Back at the order window, she is rapidly talking to the others in the fast food box. I can feel their stares.

“It’s a good thing there are no tabloids here,” I say, prepping my food to eat it. “People would really start to wonder what’s happened to you if they could see this.”

He doesn’t even give me a slight laugh for the effort. He just picks at his food. My Alan radar is not askew. Something is bothering him.

I squeeze some ketchup and ranch dressing into neat swirls on my plate. “So, where are we staying? How long are we here?”

“I own a farm, not far from here. It’s on the lake. We use it as rehearsal space. It’s a good place to chill and other things. I want to stay on The Farm a few days.”

I stare at him. A few days? I don’t have anything with me except my purse, which he tucked into his pack, and my birth control pills. God, Alan, I’m a girl! I don’t have anything with me.

“Why are you frowning?” he asks.

“Because you just did this. You didn’t ask and the only things I have are my darn pills and my wallet.”

He smiles, a touch wicked. “Then you have everything you need, Chrissie.”

“Very funny.”

I stare at my food. I take a handful of french fries and onion rings and angrily dip them into the ranch dressing, then the ketchup.

“Why do you mix your food like that?”

Really? He wants to talk about that? That seems important to him.

“When you eat the onion rings with the fries it makes them both taste better.”

He studies my face. I can tell he knows I’m angry. And then, because he’s decided to be irritating it seems, he starts to sing one of my favorite Dylan songs but has changed the verse to “she eats just like a little girl.”

“That was terrible. And it is sacrilege to change the words to a Dylan song.”

He pouts. “I had to. I couldn’t sing that you break. You don’t break, Chrissie. You don’t know that, but you are not the kind of girl that’s ever going to break.”

I stare at him. So, I don’t break? Oh Alan, as much as you understand me, sometimes you don’t get me at all.

* * *

We roll to a stop on the gravel drive. The Farm. It looks like something from a Norman Rockwell painting. Whitewashed wood, with pretty little porches and picket rail fronts. Apple trees. A barn. An old, open framed jeep that is little more than a rust bucket.

I can hear sounds from the two story farmhouse and that’s when I notice that there are cars in the driveway. Lots of fancy cars. Who is here at Alan’s farm?

The front door opens. Linda rushes out in shorts and a tight tank top. She is carrying a margarita glass.

She waves. She smiles. She laughs.

She pounds Alan’s chest with a finger. “You bring everyone up here, and then you don’t show. You were supposed to be here yesterday. Not smart, Manny. Not a good way to start.”

She fixes her laser-focused stare on me. “I’m glad you made up. I’m glad you’re here, Chrissie. I could use a friend.”

The Farm.

The larger dysfunctional family.

This isn’t a date.

I remember the adjective I forgot: mean. Yes, Alan can be mean and this is very mean.

He tricked me. He deliberately dragged me here with him, knowing very well I would never want to see any of them ever again. I watch him ease off the bike, unzip his jacket, and toss it across the seat.

Oh Alan, you make it so easy to hate you at times. Only it’s not. It is not easy to hate Alan.

Chapter Fifteen

We follow Linda into the house to find the entire dysfunctional family downstairs. The room is spacious, comfortably understated in shabby chic country furnishings coordinated in yellow and blue. From the dark wood floors to the open beamed ceilings, it is vintage Americana, windows of colored stained glass, blue check curtains on black iron rods, and heavy wood everywhere. The farmhouse is charming.

It would probably be a wonderful place to stay if the aged wood walls didn’t feel like they were about to burst from the pressure of containing the earsplitting cacophony of a tight knit cult. God they are loud, and they feel like so much more than ten people. I really hate that Alan brought me here.

“At last the band is together again,” Len Rowan announces, and Alan instantly becomes the focal point of the room among a dazzling display of exuberant hugs and vacant pleasantries.

Alan stays at my side, his hand tightening its hold on me, and no one really looks at me except to give a fast greeting or smile in a move-on-quickly sort of way. It’s unnerving. Something has changed. My standing with these people has changed and it has made them less openly rude and more standoffish. Interesting.

I glance at Linda, and she winks as if in reassurance, her eyes bright and wide. Before I can say anything to her, Alan steps deeper into the center of the room, pulling me with him. The rapid voices swirl all around him as I step out of his hold to remove my jacket, and it’s then that I notice he has that expression again, dominant and aloof and tired of them all.

The strange undercurrent in the room isn’t just about me, part of it is about Alan. I get an internal warning that this little adventure could go either way, peacefully or a total shitstorm. What the heck is happening here?

“Oh my god, Chrissie, where did you get those?” Linda says, her piercing voice punching through the loudness of the room. “They are vintage and I absolutely love them.”

I flush. I’d forgotten about the out-of-style 1970s overalls underneath the jacket, and I am in a room of girls dressed in expensive, provocative chic. Good one, Linda. Now all the wives are looking at me.

When I turn to hand Linda my jacket, I realize she is sincere and she really does like the darn thing. She grabs me by the hand and pulls me toward the kitchen. “Do you want a glass of wine or something? Dinner is almost ready. Don’t believe that nonsense about Jewish women not being able to cook. I’m an excellent cook.”

As she pushes through the swinging door, I note that whatever is cooking in the kitchen does smell delicious.

Once the door swings closed behind us the chatter stops, she turns to stare at me, and her lively eyes are alertly searching. “Are you OK?”

The way she says that tells me it’s not a casual question and that she’s been worried about me.