“No, I can’t!” Josh is taken aback hearing me. “She doesn’t feel the same way about me. Not one bit. The sex is very casual for her. And the last thing I want is to make her feel guilty for not being able to reciprocate my feelings.”
“I understand, and I do care about Stef, but I care about you too,” I say anxiously. “And what you guys are doing needs to stop.”
“So you want to see her relapse?” Josh shoots back. “You want her to start having sex with married men again? Guess what, I for one don’t want to risk seeing any of that happening again.”
I feel disturbed hearing all that. “You cannot go on being her rebound. I can’t bear to see her indifference hurt you like this…”
“It’s too late now to have this conversation.” He starts to walk away
“Josh!” I call after him, but he doesn’t stop to listen. I don’t remember the last time I had a serious talk with Josh. The goofy guy is lost somewhere, and it doesn’t feel right.
I’m worried about both of them. More than that, I’m worried about their friendship.
***
After English class, Devon and I make our way to the campus for free period. There are white flakes all around. There was a bit of snowfall last night. But the sun is gleaming bright today. We pick a shady spot under a tree and take our books out to study for our tests. I sit down against the trunk of the tree while Devon chooses to lie on his back on the grass with his head on my lap. My heart flutters wildly when he looks up at me. Those sharp, arresting blue eyes lock deep with mine, causing sparks to ricochet through my veins.
Wish I could just drown myself in this moment without having to worry about anything.
“Did you talk to your friends about last night?” he asks, as though sensing the unrest in my mind.
“I did.” I nod slowly, closing the textbook in my hand.
“What did they say?”
I sigh and fill him in with the details about Stef and Josh that have been bothering me a lot.
“This is why I’m always glad that I don’t have any friends,” Devon states matter-of-factly once I finish. “Saves me so much high school drama and complications.”
I narrow my eyes down at him. “You’re not helping, Devon.”
“I know. Have never been good at that,” he says, keeping the book next to him. “Look, what I know is you can’t control human behavior, and you can definitely not control the choices that others make. Josh made a choice. He can still choose to walk away from all of it, but he doesn’t want to. You should be there for him as a friend rather than critiquing his choices.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t have had to make such choice in the first place if I were there for Stef,” I say bleakly. “She was there for me when I hit rock bottom, and what did I do when she needed me? Nothing. I was too wrapped up in my own world to even give her a thought. And Josh is hurting now.”
“Eleanor.” Devon hoisted himself to a sit and looked at me firmly. “Not everything that goes around you is your fault. You were not being selfish. You were dealing with your issues; you were dealing with mine too. There’s only so much one can do at a time. Don’t feel guilty.”
“I just…I don’t know.” I exhale a tensed breath. “The whole idea of my best friends being in a no strings attached affair is not sitting well with me. I just wish things could go back to the way they once were.”
“You mean back to our good old fake dating days when the two of them used to bet a hundred dollars exclusive of two burgers on whether I really liked you or not?” He snorts.
“Devon, please.” I give him a look of disapproval.
“Alright.” He raises his hands in surrender. “I had something to tell you about Jackson, but guess this is not the right time.”
“What about Jackson?” I ask, feeling concerned.
“Well, he told me yesterday that he thinks he has a girlfriend.”
I gape wide-eyed at him. “Come again?”
“Yeah, apparently there is this girl in his class who told him that he looks a lot cuter after he got back from the winter break,” he explains. “She kissed him on the cheek when the teacher wasn’t looking. And now he can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Oh,” I mumble, imagining the whole thing in my mind. “Okay, well, Jackson’s got a baby crush. Isn’t that something cute?” I add with a giggle.
“No, it’s preposterous!” Devon is horrified. “The last thing I want is for him to ask me how I do the kissing things with you.”
“What will you tell him then?” I raise my brow.
I shouldn’t have asked him that because I am left unprepared when he suddenly leans closer to me. His hot breath fans my face. And the darkness of his gaze turns me on in broad daylight. I’d do anything for his touch.
“I’ll tell him that every time I look into Eleanor’s eyes,” his whisper is deep and seductive, “I feel like ripping her clothes off and throwing her in my bed to kiss every inch of her body until it’s my name that runs in her veins instead of blood.”
I feel goose bumps all over my skin, causing my throat to run dry.
“Y-You won’t tell a six-year-old boy that, will you?” I gulp, looking at his gorgeous lips and yearning for them to be on mine.
“No. I will tell him that we were in school, so I couldn’t do it.” Devon backs away at once with a mischievous look on his face.
My mouth parts in an O realizing I just got tricked by him. I roll my eyes when he laughs at me.
But then his words mess so much with my head that I can’t help but dream of his kisses in every class after that.
***
I get back home after school to find Katherine standing at the counter in the kitchen. I didn’t expect her to be home at this hour. I thought she’d probably be away on a fancy lunch with Dad. Honestly, I just want to avoid being seen by her although living under the same roof makes the whole thing a tad bit too difficult. But there’s no harm in trying because I don’t want to deal with what I think about it. I don’t want to think whether her friendliness towards me is forced or genuine.
I walk towards the stairwell to go up to my room.
“Hey, Eleanor!”
I stop short when I hear the cheerful voice call out to me. It’s just my luck; she sees me.
“Would you want to have a hot cappuccino or pineapple smoothie?” She smiles when I look sideways at her.
“Neither.” I decline. “If you, uh, don’t mind, I’d like to go upstairs to my room. Thanks.”
I look away and take to the stairs. But halfway up the stairwell, I stop and sigh. I can’t go on blowing her off like this. It will only make things bad enough. I’d rather try and get to know her maybe. For Dad’s sake at least.
I take a deep breath and swing around to walk down the stairs. Katherine appears gloomy; her gaze is lowered onto the counter.
“You know what? Surprise me,” I say, walking inside the kitchen and dropping my bag off on the counter as I stand across her.
A look of pleasant surprise dawns her face. “O-Okay, so…how about a refreshing glass of pineapple smoothie for Eleanor Sanchez?”
“Sounds like a plan,” I quip.
“Great!” Katherine pours me a glass of the fruit smoothie from the blender and puts a yellow straw in it. “There you go,” she adds, sliding the glass across to me
I reach out for the glass of smoothie on the counter and bring it to my lips. “Mmm…it tastes amazing,” I say, feeling refreshed, as I take a sip. “Thanks a lot, Katherine.” I smile at her. “You should have one too.”
I keep my glass back down and reach out for an empty glass near the sink and pour her the cool beverage from the blender.
“Thank you, Eleanor.” She smiles gratefully as I hand it over to her.
“We should save some for Dad,” I say. “He’ll love it. Gran will too.”
I watch Katherine’s face dim a bit. “Your gran, she left for Rushville this morning, Eleanor.”
“Oh yes. You’r
e right.” I recollect. “She’d told me. I just forgot. I got so used to her being around that it just skipped my mind.”
Gran headed back to her village today. She usually stays back with Dad and me for a few days after he gets back from his business trips. But this time, I think she changed her mind because he didn’t come back solo and Gran doesn’t approve of his girlfriend. I tried to talk her into staying back for a couple more days, but she said she was missing her home.
“Your Gran cooks really well,” says Katherine, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Wish I could learn a thing or two from her,” she adds wistfully, aware of Gran’s prejudice towards her.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Katherine,” I say solemnly. “I was rude to you when you were just being nice.”
“You don’t have to apologize for anything, Eleanor.” She shakes her head. “You weren’t expecting me here in the least. I moved in unannounced. I want to say sorry for the inconvenience I caused you.”
“No, you don’t have to,” I say at once. “Have never seen my father this happy in a long time,” I add. “Everything’s cool.”
“Thanks.” She smiles.
“So where are you from?”
“I live in Nashville,” she responds. “Funny that I ran into your father in Europe instead of here. I’m an interior designer, and I’d gone on a solo vacay to Florence where I met him.”
“What about your kids if…if I may ask?” My heart is beating rather fast.
“I don’t have children, Eleanor.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been divorced for seven years now. I left my husband because of issues that couldn’t be resolved. Been living alone since then, but everything changed the day I met your father.” A small smile makes its way to her lips. “He is so charming that I feel like a teen girl, the way that I’ve never felt before even in my actual teens.” She lets out a chuckle. “He got me to believe in the beauty of love and togetherness all over again.”
Katherine is overwhelmed with emotions. Think she is totally into Dad as much as he is into her.
“I’m happy for you.” I don’t know what else to say.
“Eleanor,” she appears hesitant, “I hope you will not judge me based on my past. I hope you don’t think I will leave your father too.”
She looked so tense and upset that I felt really bad for her.
“I won’t judge you. I know very well how it feels like to be judged.” I shrug matter-of-factly. “It’s easy to form an opinion about others than be in their shoes and go through the exact same things they have been through.”
“Eron is lucky to have a daughter like you,” she says, looking relieved and grateful like my opinion really matters to her. “I’d really wanna know about you if you don’t mind. Like, I know that you’re a senior in Westford High. You have great friends and an amazing boyfriend. But I’d like to know you beyond that.”
“If there’s anything more to know about me, it’s just the fact that my mom chose to give birth to me over her life,” I answer truthfully, taking a deep breath.
Katherine is caught off guard, hearing that. And the smile leaves her face. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do, talking to my dad’s girlfriend about my mom. But I’m just gonna go ahead anyway. I just want to lay out the facts in front of her. I want her to know where I’m coming from.
“I’ve felt her absence every moment of my life, in everything I achieved, and in everything that I lost,” I say. “And then last summer―”
Wait, I’m not gonna tell her that.
“Long story short, it has been one hell of an emotional roller coaster ride with guilt and sadness in the front seat. But I’ve found closure now.” That’s not entirely true though. I’ve still not talked to Dad about his journal. “I will always miss her. But the only difference between now and then is that I’ve learned to move on with life and be happy in spite of that emptiness because Mom would’ve wanted exactly that for me and better.”
I wish all of it were true and not just half of it. But even if it isn’t the whole truth now, it will soon be. All of it.
I notice a lone tear in Katherine’s eye, and she tends to it at once.
“I-I didn’t expect to hear something like that,” she says, her voice sounds heavy. “You are strong and amazing. Eron must be so proud of you, and I’m sure your mom would be too because she is watching over you.”
“Thanks, Katherine.” I half smile. “I only hope I’ve grown up to be the kind of daughter she would want to have.” Guess I can never know that.
My thoughts are cut short when I hear the front door open and then close. Dad must be home. I follow Katherine out into the living room. And indeed, Dad has just walked in through the front door.
“Oh, good that you’re both here,” he says, looking at us. To me, he adds, “Ellie, there’s something that Katherine and I want to tell you about…us.”
My heart misses a beat as I’m gripped with a strange kind of fear. Looking at his face right now, I can say he’s very serious.
“The news can wait, Eron,” Katherine interjects. “Eleanor and I, we just had a little talk about life. I told her about mine, and she told me about hers, about her mom, your…first wife.”
Dad appears grim. I just cannot breathe right now. My chest has turned numb. What is it that he was planning on telling me? Would he have said that he was gonna marry Katherine? I don’t have it in me to ask. I keep silent, looking everywhere but him.
But Katherine doesn’t seem to be perturbed at all by the unease in the air.
“I’m sure Alice must have been a wonderful person, Eleanor.” She turns to me. “I cannot imagine what it’s like to grow up without a mother. It’s gonna sound very crazy, but I’ve told Eron that I feel a sort of a connection with you, right from the moment I saw you. You’re the daughter I wish I had, and as much as I’d want to be your mother, I’m not. I won’t try to be because I can never be Alice. But I’d wanna be your friend if that’s not too much to ask?”
For a moment, I am at a loss for words. She doesn’t sound desperate but honest, like everything about Dad is wholeheartedly important to her.
“No, it’s not, Katherine,” I finally speak, meaning it.
I can tell where she is coming from. Katherine is a very sensitive person who has been alone for a major part of her adult life. She has found love again and is hoping to find a family soon. And I guess I can give it a try too.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Katherine is a wonderful person.
This I come to understand in the days that follow as I get to know her better. She is warm, funny, and very kind. She cares about Dad. She is the answer to everything that was missing in his life. I just know that every time I see them together. She has also brought me closer to him. I clearly didn’t expect that to happen at all. Dad and I bond very well now, something that didn’t happen before. Like we even played soccer at the neighborhood club that weekend, and it doesn’t end like how it did in my nightmares. We laughed all the way back home.
I’ve been telling Gran about Katherine over the phone. Perhaps if she’d been here with us right now, she might be able to get rid of the prejudice she has towards Dad’s girlfriend.
But who am I kidding?
I’m living under the same roof with Katherine, yet I don’t know why I can’t fully accept Dad and her being together. There’s still some amount of restraint within me. I can’t explain it. It’s just present somewhere in my conscience, pricking me every passing day. I don’t know how to make it go away. And it just makes me feel awful about myself.
“It’s been over a week now, Devon, since she got here with Dad,” I tell him that night when we lie on the grass by the tranquil river, gazing up at the starry sky. “And Katherine is nice. I mean, like, even you’ve met her, right?”
“Yeah, she seems to be a very good person.” He agrees. “She was really cool even when I told her that her pasta looked like an octopus’ legs gone horribly wrong.”
“
Exactly my point,” I rue. “Guess I’m so used to having things going wrong for me that finally when everything has started to work out right, I just can’t be at peace with it.”
“Or maybe there’s something wrong in the things that are working out right for you,” he says matter-of-factly. “Did you talk to your father about his eerie journaling habits?”
“No…not yet,” I mumble, feeling a twitch at the bottom of my stomach. “I still don’t know whether I really should.”
“You should,” he says solemnly. “I know you want to be very careful and do the right thing, but life works in mysterious ways. And the least we can do is to do everything we can to make it less uncertain for us. At least that’s what I’ve learned.”
“You’re right.” I exhale deeply. “Guess you’ve got far better than me in the whole closure thing.”
“No, not exactly,” he says dryly. “I’m only good as long as I don’t have to act on my own words.”
Devon then turns to lie on his side so that he is facing me completely. I roll to my side too, and our gazes lock. It’s crazy how I find nothing of mine in me and all of me in his eyes.
“Maybe, but thanks a lot for not looking at me like I’m some prejudiced freak,” I whisper.
“You’re not some prejudiced freak,” he says.
Devon then edges closer and presses his lips on mine. I close my eyes as he pulls my body against his and kisses me harder than I can possibly imagine. I gasp on his lips when he slips a hand under my top and teases the hook of my bra. I hold a side of his face as I give his sweltering tongue complete access to my mouth.
“Eleanor.” He breathes.
“Yes…?” I moan, unable to get enough of him.
But I open my eyes when he pulls his hand out from beneath my skirt and stops kissing me back.
“What happened?” I ask him, feeling alert when I see the distraught look on his face.
Devon averts his eyes. “I swear I never think along those lines, but sometimes, it all just comes on to me,” he says, sounding dispirited. “Eleanor.” He fastens his eyes on me again. “Doesn’t it ever bother you that I-I’m the son of a cold-blooded criminal? Doesn’t it scare you that I have his DNA and his blood running in every cell of my being?”
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