Free Courting Mrs. McCarthy by Ian Thomas Malone Page A

minutes after midnight. This was a bit late for someone to be out on a school night, but Nathan was not tired or annoyed by her late arrival. Jackie, on the other hand, felt awful.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late, Nathan. I kept trying to leave but people kept handing me drinks. Ugh, that’s no excuse.” Her tone matched the teenage girl Nathan pictured who would say such a thing. He picked up two distinct scents from across the room. One was her perfume, which could only be described as “expensive smelling.” The other scent was of tequila. His crush was drunk.
    Mrs. McCarthy also picked up on something. “It smells good in here. What did you guys order?” she asked, ignoring any reply Nathan could provide for her apology in favor of the lingering carbonara smell. He had grown used to the smell and had opened no windows.
    “Oh, I made pasta. Spaghetti carbonara, taking a few liberties with what was available.”
    Jackie had the same puzzled yet intrigued look he had seen on her daughter earlier in the night. “You cooked an Italian dinner?”
    Nathan smiled. “It wasn’t that hard. Pasta is easy and the sauce wasn’t too difficult,” he replied, trying to sound modest but also avoiding selling himself short on this minor yet noteworthy achievement.
    “Is there any left? I’m starving.”
    Nathan recognized this as the drunken hunger that often plagued kids his age. He was not surprised to see that adults suffered the same ailments when intoxicated.
    “I’m so sorry. We finished it all. If I knew you’d be hungry, I would have saved some,” he said. He laughed at how he had taken on the role of the adult in the conversation. Jackie appeared to be thinking to herself, but Nathan wasn’t so sure, and he added, “I could make something another time.”
    This snapped her out of her dazed and confused state. “I’d really like that. It’s a date.”
    Jesus Christ , Nathan thought to himself. Things had just gotten a little interesting and potentially a lot more awkward. A blind person would be able to tell how drunk this woman was just based of the smell of her, but that didn’t affect the way Nathan felt about what she had just said to him.
    “That sounds nice,” he said, wishing to tread lightly after the bombshell that had just exploded. He could probably make a move on her if he was bold, but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. “I think I should get going. Goodnight,” he said, as he made a break for the door. He didn’t worry about asking for money. He’d see her soon enough, and she wasn’t in the best position to hand out money anyway.
    As he was leaving the McCarthy residence, a voice across the street called out to him. “Nathan, is that you?” The voice belonged to Mrs. Corinne Kalford, a member of Seers Point and a noted gossip. She was about as close to an informant as one could find in his town and she frequently reported on Nathan’s whereabouts to his aunt, who didn’t exactly enjoy the information. She knew anything worth knowing in the town of Roxburgh.
    “Yes,” Nathan replied, who did not wish to engage her in conversation.
    “It’s late. Are you babysitting?”
    “I was, yes. I have school tomorrow and I must be going. Good night,” he said in a similar abrupt manner to his departure. It was too late and he was too hazy minded to deal with her. He also wasn’t sure she hadn’t been spying on him for a while. He wouldn’t put it past her.
    Nathan thought of nothing but those three words, “It’s a date,” for the whole ride home and a good portion of the night. Thankfully no one was awake when he got home. The shell shock had not worn off.
    Sleep was elusive that night. He was afraid to go to sleep for fear of having another dream about Jackie, which was hardly a ridiculous notion. He had written the first dream off as merely chance before, but the way things were unfolding left him in a very uncomfortable position.
    The dream on its own meant nothing