by Sonia Hartl
“Next time you’re at work, can you bring home Big Business?” Peg asked me. We were one of a handful of homes in Honeyfield that still had a working VCR. The perks of living with an old lady who refused to throw anything away. “I sure do like that Bette Midler, and it’s been ages since I’ve seen that movie.”
“No problem.” I tried to smile, but it took more effort than it was worth. This might be the last family dinner we had together before I told them what happened. And once I did, everything would certainly go to hell.
Mom kept shooting me worried glances, that line between her eyebrows deepening, like she knew I was wrestling with something, trying to find the right words to voice it. She’d always let me have my space to work things out, and wouldn’t question me within Gram’s sharp hearing range. But she worried.
We cleaned up dinner as Peg and Gram headed into the living room. Once they left the kitchen, Mom turned to me. “Is everything okay?”
I’d probably been acting as twitchy as she had when she had to tell Gram she was pregnant. Which no doubt activated her greatest fear. The fear I’d come home one day and announce the same. Mom didn’t set down a lot of rules, but she’d been very firm on three: No Sex before College (already broke that one), Never Chase a Dream Over a Paycheck (on my way to breaking that fully with my YouTube aspirations), and Never Date Your Coworkers (the only one I hadn’t managed to break yet). She didn’t have a problem with me dating, so long as I followed the rules, which I swore up and down I did.
I’d never tell her I already lost my virginity. She’d probably march out into the streets and try to find it again. It scared her bad. The handful of times Lance and I had had sex, we’d been careful. We broke up months ago and I hadn’t been with anyone since.
“I’m fine.” I gave her a fake grin, which was probably more of a grimace judging by the way my lips stretched tightly over my teeth. “Peg and Donna got into a pretty ugly fight, and I’m still on edge from it.”
Lies. Lies. Lies. I hated lying to Mom. It curled around my heart like poison. I just wanted her to have one good weekend without stress. My drama would still be there tomorrow.
From her pinched brows and ever-present worry line I could tell she didn’t buy it, but whatever she saw in me, it wasn’t a bun in the oven. As far as she was concerned, everything else was manageable. “If you need to talk later, let me know.”
I nodded, and I would. Eventually. When the timing was right.
After loading the dishwasher, we went into the living room, where Peg and Gram already sat on either end of the couch. The only ones who didn’t mind the plastic covering crackling beneath their seats. Mom took the recliner, and I sat on the floor at her feet near Charlie, still in his Royals cap, as the evening news filled the fuzzy TV screen in front of us.
I plugged my phone charger into the wall, opened my texts, and choked on a laugh. Elise had sent me a picture of Paxton putting a hand on Midnight’s shoulder, but underneath his hand was a Post-it note with a tiny tombstone drawn on it. She had five of them sticking to her back. A new record. The last time Paxton and I had played that game, we got to four before she caught us. As retaliation, she’d let all the air out of Elise’s tires, knowing we’d be stuck pushing her truck over to the gas station down the street to refill them. That was how Midnight operated. If you broke her pinkie, she’d cut off your leg.
I focused in on that picture of Paxton, the way his soft hair curled around his ears, which stuck out even from his side profile. The laugh that made his whole face light up. Something in my stomach fluttered, dangerous enough to make me lock my phone. It wouldn’t do me any good to think about Paxton in fluttery ways. We were friends. Coworkers.
Mom had gotten tangled up with a cashier at Wilson’s Grocery, a college guy home for the summer, while she’d been a sixteen-year-old bagger. Their breakup had been ugly. She threw a whole dozen eggs at his head in checkout lane three. It had taken her nearly a year to find another job. He’d long since disappeared and she was left alone with me.
That was why she’d set down the Three Rules before I’d even been born, and I’d grown up in the shadow of them. I understood why. Even if I bent and broke the first two, she hammered the coworkers one home hardest. That year she’d been without a job had left scars that still lingered. The two months she and Gram had gone without electricity, when they’d gone weeks at a time without eating any meat because it cost too much, not having a car or a phone or those everyday conveniences most people took for granted.
Because I was raised on those stories, and because I needed my job in the worst way if I ever planned to get out of Honeyfield, I didn’t think about Paxton like that. Except that one time … Not entirely my fault. We’d been texting before I went to bed, and my dreams took an interesting turn. I took care of myself while I imagined him putting his mouth where I placed my fingers.
My breath caught, and I pushed that memory away, even as my blush lingered.
The news anchor’s monotone voice droned on through the TV. A wrinkled old wisp of a man whose name I couldn’t remember, but Gram had twenty on him being the first to die. “Tonight we bring you a lighter story …,” he began.
My heart stopped as one of my Instagram pictures filled the screen. I couldn’t hear anything outside the roaring in my ears. I dove for the TV, gripping the edge as I reached for the power button to shut it off. I could barely move after that initial surge. My fingers felt as if I’d dragged them through mud, and the news anchor kept going on and on while my picture faded, only to be replaced by Eric’s. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were too tight, my shaking fingers utterly useless. Finally, finally, I got a solid grip on myself and slammed my hand against the power button. Silence cut across the room, closed in on me, as I hunched my shoulders up to my ears and turned around to face my family.
I couldn’t stand to look at Peg or Gram. My gaze shot right to Mom. Her pale complexion squeezed my chest. She raised a hand to her throat. I dropped to the ground, wrapping my arms around my knees, and let myself fall apart.
A shadow dropped over me, but I didn’t want to leave the comfort of my knees. I floated on a scrap of wind. Like I’d left my body, and the shell of me became a sobbing, screaming mess. Mom enfolded me in her arms, and the light scent of her apple shampoo surrounded me. I sobbed harder.
“Baby girl.” She stroked my back, letting the tears shudder through me. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re here. We’ll figure this out.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” My voice cracked over every syllable. “I was going to tomorrow. I didn’t …” I didn’t want to ruin her perfect weekend.
She knew what I was going to say, even if I couldn’t form the words. She pulled back, lifting my face with gentle hands. Hands that worked too hard, never got breaks, never got to have a fancy office with a view or cocktails with interesting men who had artful beards, and all those things she still quietly wished for. She wiped away my tears.
Gram made a sound low in her throat, like a lion about to roar. She crossed her arms as her gaze blazed into me. “What, exactly, happened?”
Gathering the bits of unyielding willpower I’d inherited from her, I pulled myself together and launched into the story. At least what I knew of it. Mom’s face tightened when I mentioned that Jessica Banks had been the lady with the pink bow sitting behind us. I still didn’t know her exact motives. From the way Jessica acted online, I had to assume she was desperate for attention, and I knew the kind of high that sort of attention could generate. The first time one of my reviews had gone over a thousand views, I strutted around the house like the Queen of England for a week. Those likes and thumbs-up were intoxicating.
It excused nothing though. I reviewed movies. Jessica had taken pictures of strangers, created a fantasy that never happened, and rolled it all out on Twitter without asking me or Eric how we’d feel about it. There was a world of difference between me and Jessica Banks.
When I finished, Gram s
tuck out her hand. “Your phone.”
“Mom. This isn’t her fault,” my mom said from beside me.
Gram’s eyes had become molten lava, and even Peg trembled on the other side of the couch. I physically felt Mom shrinking beside me. She might as well have been sixteen again, telling Gram she was pregnant and alone. Gram’s hand stiffened. She wouldn’t ask again. Slowly, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and handed it to her.
Goodbye, YouTube and Twitter. Goodbye, freedom.
Gram’s lips thinned as she looked at my cracked screen. The lecture about taking care of my belongings wouldn’t be far behind. She barely managed to open it with my birth date, and practically hissed at all the apps that came up. “How do you make the Google appear?”
If the situation weren’t so serious, Mom and I would’ve shared a quiet chuckle over “the Google,” but we just looked at each other with confusion.
“Do you, or do you not, have the Google on this contraption?” Gram asked.
“W-why?” I asked, barely daring to breathe.
“Because.” Gram lifted her gaze to mine. “I’m going to find this Jessica Banks, then I’m going to peel her skin off in layers, feed it to a pack of wild dogs, and light the rest on fire.”
All the tension flooded out of the room. Peg sagged a bit on the couch. She hadn’t offered any commentary while I spoke, which was so unusual for her, I knew she’d been genuinely concerned. Peg spent more time online than the other Bees, she had a mean Pinterest addiction, and she understood a lot better than Gram the kind of shit I was in.
“Jesus Christ, Mom. That’s next level. Even for you.” My mom paused. “But if that’s the plan, then I call shotgun.”
I let out a shaky laugh and took my phone back. “As appealing as murder sounds, I’m pretty fond of you both and wouldn’t want to see either of you go to jail.”
I could only imagine Gram in prison. I’d give the inmates a week before they tried to tunnel through the walls, just to escape her.
“I locked most of my social media,” I said. “But I can’t …” I sucked in a deep breath, preparing to battle. “I can’t shut down my YouTube channel. Please don’t ask me to do that.”
Gram lit a cigarette and waved to the Vanna dolls gracing the fireplace. “When that piece of shit Hugh Hefner ran photos of the Queen in Playboy without her consent, do you think she buried her head in the sand? Quit her job?”
I shook my head.
Gram held my gaze through a trail of smoke. “You’re an Evans. We’re forged of fire and steel, and when the world tries to shove us down, we don’t bend. For anyone. Keep your YouTube, do whatever it is you had been doing. This will pass, but until it does, do not bend.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I had a strong urge to give her a salute. The general of our tiny troop.
I should’ve known Gram would be on my side. No one messed with her family. No one. She scared half the town, but I wondered if they were afraid because they could see that fire and steel in her. That refusal to bend. When others left to escape the stifling poverty that had a fist around this entire town, Gram dug in her raptor toe and refused to break.
We survived because anything else would be inexcusable.
CHAPTER
SIX
PEG HAD GONE HOME, giving my shoulder a pat before she left. With Gram tucked into bed, and Mom tucked into the Hamptons with her book (after a million reassurances that I was fine), I waited until the sun began to dip below the tree line, then set out for the lake on foot. We only had one car, and despite Gram’s support, I didn’t want to push my luck by asking for the keys. The lake wasn’t that far anyway.
Cicadas hummed in the distant trees as the air cooled. Fireflies sent off little sparks of light over the long grass bordering the sidewalk. I turned down two streets, the scent of summer-warmed pavement and overgrown wildflowers trailing my every step. The walk helped clear my head. While I still didn’t know what to do, I kept reminding myself not to bend.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I flicked the screen, groaning when I read the text from Elise: Me and Midnight are out. Will explain tomorrow.
I sincerely hoped they weren’t hooking up again. Elise and Midnight had a want/hate relationship. Like they hated how much they wanted each other. It had been months since they’d last been together, all anger and passion that burned bright and fast, but after the last time, Elise swore no more. Not after the anger had burned out of her and she wanted more than tangled limbs in the alley behind the store on breaks. Midnight was not the candlelight-dinners-and-holding-hands-at-the-movies type, and it ended up hurting them both.
I could go back home. And deal with Mom hovering, trying not to ask me how I was doing, while we both danced around my guilt and her worry. My phone buzzed, startling me enough to make me yelp. A text from Paxton: I’m already here.
I thumbed open the group text: Almost there.
Paxton and I had never been alone for movie on the lake. We’d never been alone outside of work at all. Maybe we wouldn’t be alone if Brady showed up though. Three dots appeared on my phone, disappeared, appeared, and finally: See you soon.
I walked over a small hill. The sun had fully set, and the lake waited at the bottom. The public park was on the other side, where I’d spent most of my summers as a toddler while my mom and Momma Gomez formed an unbreakable friendship, and Elise became the closest thing I’d ever have to a sister. The ancient swings swayed in the gentle breeze—the place where I’d kicked Lance Harrington in the shins after he pushed Elise into the wood chips. Who knew he’d be the one to take my virginity ten years later? Not me, that’s for sure. Lance had been nice, a little awkward, but nice. I didn’t have any hard feelings against him, or him against me. We were just … nice. Okay. Fine. And that wasn’t what either of us had wanted in the end.
Paxton came around from the other side of the community storage shed as I approached.
“No Brady?” I looked around like I’d really expected him to show up.
Paxton chuckled. “After dealing with Midnight all day, did you think he’d willingly spend time in her company off the clock?”
“That bad, huh?” Even though I already knew, thanks to Elise’s updates.
“The rewinder ate Interview with the Vampire under his watch.”
Poor Brady.
The silence settled over us, not uncomfortable—we weren’t ever really uncomfortable around each other—but we always had Midnight or Elise around. I tucked my hands into my pockets, mainly because I didn’t know what else to do with them.
Paxton cleared his throat. “Did you still want to watch the movie?”
“Do you even have the movie?” Elise had been the one who rented it.
“No.” He grinned at me. “But I did go to all that trouble breaking into the shed.” He gestured to a boat resting on the sandy shore near the “beach” part of the lake.
I toed at the pebbles lining the path around the park, trying to keep my voice light and casual. “It would be a shame to waste your efforts.”
We left his laptop and our phones on the grass near the shed. Once I settled into my seat, he pushed the boat off the shore, climbing in from behind. Our knees touched as we faced each other. Water lapped at the sides of the boat as he rowed, and I did not notice the way his biceps flexed under his T-shirt from the movement. A firefly skimmed the surface of the lake, then took off into the night. Crickets chirped from the cattails lining the opposite shore. Without the movie to provide the usual distraction, I felt like I’d fallen into a scene from one of my mom’s books. Except this wasn’t a romance. Just a late-night boat ride between friends.
We reached the center of the lake, and Paxton stopped rowing, letting the oars rest in their metal holders. “I’m really glad you came out tonight.”
The full moon offered enough light for me to note the concern. I tried to gather that Evans steel, but something in his expression brought all my fears and insecurities bubbling to the surface. Not ju
st his concern, but it almost looked like he understood. As if he knew exactly how I felt, which was ridiculous. He wasn’t anywhere online. I’d already tried to google him months ago, and other than becoming an inadvertent expert in all things Bill Paxton, it had been a complete waste of my time. Paxton had no idea how I felt. But with all of it reflecting back at me nonetheless, a fresh wave of pain rolled in.
“I don’t want to talk about the game.” I swallowed. “Or anything that happened after.”
“What do you want to talk about, Macy Mae?” He rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward. “Tell me something about you no one knows.”
No one knew I thought about him while I took care of myself one night, but I’d be keeping that particular moment to myself. Forever. “When I was a little kid, I used to think Gram’s Vanna White dolls were going to eat me in my sleep for not playing with them.”
“Morbid.” He thrummed his fingers against his leg. “What’s your favorite color?”
“What is this? Twenty questions?”
“It can be. Depends on how many questions it takes, I suppose.”
“How many questions it takes for what?” I gave him a wary look. If he was trying to work around to asking me about Eric and Jessica, I wasn’t interested.
“For me to get to know you better.” He ran a hand through his hair. In the moonlight, his hazel eyes looked more soft bronze than green. “We never hang out alone outside of work, and we should, because I only like work when you’re there. But I don’t even know what your favorite color is, and that is a very basic thing to know about someone.”
“All right.” What did he mean when he said he only liked work when I was there? Why was I even thinking that? It had to be the moonlight putting weird ideas into my head. Hopefully these ones would stay out of my dreams this time. “My favorite color is blue.”