“You could come back for an interview. I have one on Wednesday at five o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.” (Some things in life are just that simple.)
Levi leans against his car next to me, hands in his pockets. He crosses his ankles, the bottom of his Chuck Taylors scuffing the concrete. “So now you know why I wear bright sweaters.”
I hum in agreement, smiling as I wipe my crumby fingers on a napkin.
He continues, “People like you….you ask questions.”
“People like me,” I repeat. Then I ask, “People like me?”
“You have a soft heart, you know? You seemed like the type of person who would care.” He pauses, crossing his arms across his chest. “Tom is the same way. He pretends to be Macho Man but is, in reality, a softie.”
I snort.
“Don’t ever tell him I said that.”
“Oh, never.” I pull out my house keys. “Thanks, Levi. For everything.”
“You’re welcome, B-E-E.” He spells out my name with the funniest look on his face, like he’s trying to figure out what my real name is. He won’t ever guess it. Not in a million years. (I hope.)
I grin at him. “See you Wednesday?”
“See you Wednesday.”
Moments later I watch him drive away, before unlocking the front door and slipping in as quietly as possible. I like to imagine the world is somehow a happier place, because of today.
Chapter 11
It’s chaos in my house.
Mondays aren’t usually so hectic, but here we are: one sister singing musicals at the top of her lungs and the other telling her to shut up, my parents sitting in the living room discussing something important in hushed tones (their attempt at quiet makes them louder than usual), Tom and Andrea yelling at each other on the front porch.
And here I am, minding my own business, waiting for the storm to pass.
We’ve already eaten dinner, but even that was broken up by Andrea showing up to “talk”. What’s happening outside is not exactly what I would call talking, and I don’t think Tom would, either.
After a half hour of texting Gretchen, I decide I can’t take it any longer, so I plug in my phone and head into the kitchen. Astrid doesn’t pause her singing to say hi, but Millicent approaches me and buries her head in my shoulder, moaning in agony.
“Make her stop,” she says, practically weeping.
“I wish I could. Only stabbing her will do the trick.”
“No, that will make her wail louder.” Millie moans again.
“Then there’s nothing left but to bury her in the backyard,” I tease.
This earns a laugh. “Think Mama and Daddy will miss her?”
“Nah. I bet that’s what they’re talking about in there right now.”
We both turn our heads toward the sitting room, where my parents are bent over some paperwork. Looking at them—my mother, stiff and tight-lipped, and my father scratching his head—makes me oddly…dizzy. I glance down at Millie. “Any idea what they’re actually talking about?”
“No. They look so serious. And Mama was crying earlier.”
I shake my head. Millie looks so distraught that I know it won’t do to wonder aloud, What on earth are they so sad about? So I think it instead. “Well, then. Are Andrea and Tom almost done?”
Millicent gives me a look. “I hope so. She’s dropped the F-bomb, like, a million times.”
“Seriously?” I pat Millie’s arm. “Gunna go kick them off the porch.”
Astrid sings over to us, “You do that, Bee.”
I shoot her a glare before heading to the front room. I can see Tom and Andrea through the bay windows in the front room, their mouths open as they yell, their fingers close to each other’s chests, accusing. Their eyes full of nothing but disgust (on Tom’s part) and anger (on Andrea’s part). I’m working up the nerve to go to the door and tell them to take it somewhere else, when Andrea shakes her head, drops her arm, and—walks away.
I’m as startled as Tom; Andrea is never the one to say goodbye first. She’s too aggressive, too intense. She has too much to say. But now she’s straight up leaving, waving her hand over her head as if to tell him not to follow. My heart breaks a little bit for him.
Behind me, Astrid stops singing, and I can hear my parents talking in a normal tone, although I can’t hear the words. When I look outside again, Tom has disappeared, and without a second thought I bolt for the door.
He’s heading toward his car, his stride sad and slow. (Andrea’s car is already gone from our driveway; I can hear her angry tires screeching down the road.) I catch up to Tom, hands in my pockets, watching him from the corner of my eye. His jaw works and clenches. His hands fist and his eyes burn.
“Want to talk?” I whisper.
“No,” he grinds out.
“Can I come with you?” I head toward the passenger side, whether he likes it or not.
He doesn’t answer, so I sit beside him. He pulls out of our driveway and I lean back in the chair, soaking up the last pink rays of the sunset. Tom’s driving is smooth and controlled, despite his mood, so I relax until he’s ready to talk.
This turns out to be an hour later when we park in Ocean Beach right in front of the water. Tom drove around a bit, as though he wasn’t sure where he was going, and by the time we stopped the sun had gone down completely. I spent the drive thinking about a lot of things, lost in my own little world, enjoying the silence. I thought about flowers and promotions. I thought about glitter and shoes and donuts. I thought about my parents sitting close together, their stressed expressions, and Millie hearing my mother cry, and what I will ask them once I work up the courage.
Mostly, however, I thought about Levi. (But isn’t that obvious?)
Tom’s voice interrupts my thoughts of Levi’s swooping hair and bright eyes and infectious joy. “Bee?”
“Yeah?” I whisper. My voice is weirdly hoarse. I clear my throat.
“Sorry. I can take you home if you want.”
“I don’t mind,” I murmur. Goodness, he sounds so broken. I’m tempted to ask all my questions, but he’s a thin pane of glass about to shatter anyway, so I wait.
“I was right,” he says. He pauses, his breathing shallow, then says again, “I was right.”
“About what?”
“She cheated.”
I’m so angry I’m about to bust a hole in the car window. “With who?” I sputter.
“Some asshole her sister dated once.”
God, I hate Andrea. I hate her so much. (I feel a rush of dark pleasure that I was right to hate her all along.)
Tom heaves a breath. “I can’t believe I trusted her so much.” Then he shakes his head, saying, “You know when you see things in hindsight, and you wonder how you didn’t see the details when they were in your face the whole time? I was so blind to so many things. Especially,” he adds, facing me, “how rude she was to you. To everyone. I let her do that, and I’m sorry.”
I take his hand, holding his rough fingers in mine. “She was pretty terrible.”
“Everyone kept telling me, but I wanted to believe that we could go back to normal. To before. That’s stupid, though, because we’ve never wanted the same things. Not even in the beginning.”
I bring my knees to my chest and lean my cheek on them. “You can’t really go back to the beginning, though, Tom.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tom’s quiet a moment, his hand squeezing mine now, too tight for comfort. But I can’t seem to move away. “I’m trying not to regret it, but…” He lets out a sort-of-chuckle, but it’s completely mirthless. “What does that say about us, then, if we’re already so ready to regret each other?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. I feel an ache in my chest stron
g enough to break something.
“I gave her so much, you know? I went into our relationship wholeheartedly, and look where that got me.”
“Don’t,” I warn, leaning my head on his shoulder. “We do things, and we learn from the bad and celebrate the good.”
He huffs out a breathy laugh. “You wizened old goat.”
“Wow, thank you.”
“No, thank you.” He kisses my forehead, like a sweet brother.
I close my eyes. The world around us is quiet except for the crashing of waves and the dim beating of our hearts. And my thoughts. Once again, my thoughts are quite loud. They overtake everything else in a way that I don’t quite understand.
I’m thinking, more than anything, about my first kiss. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but I guess that’s the point. It wasn’t special, and neither was the boy. Karl, in tenth grade, with his long-ish pale hair and his freckles and his cute smile. We weren’t popular kids, both lost in the terror of high school, not sure what the hell was going on—so he kissed me. Somehow, those two facts are always linked in my mind.
We dated. For two weeks.
It wasn’t the kiss that turned me away, or any of the kisses after. It wasn’t even Karl. Instead, it was the way we were around each other—intimate, but not. We were so close, our mouths and our hands and our hips and yet, it was the way I wanted to be with someone…not Karl.
So while the rest of my classmates were attaching themselves to someone the moment they had the chance, I was holding back. I was seeing things I liked and things I didn’t like, making mental lists and compartmentalizing everything.
Thing You Should Know About Me #5: I made the decision, one month after breaking up with Karl, that I wanted to wait until I was married to have sex. It wasn’t out of fear—nothing like that. It was because the memory I had of my time with Karl was incomplete, like I had done something with no meaning. I wanted the next kiss to mean everything to me, and someday I’d marry someone who meant even more than everything.
I still want that. Call me a romantic, call me unrealistic all you like. Of course, now, sitting here in the dark, it has me thinking about Levi and how much I like him, and how one day I’ll like a guy enough that it will turn into love. (I don’t think, What if that guy is Levi? Because at the moment, it would be too unbearable if he wasn’t “that guy”.)
Tom brushes my forehead with another kiss and puts his car into gear. “Let’s go home,” he says quietly.
I nod, saying a silent goodbye to the ocean and the clean line of sand and the pier (and a cluster of Ocean Beach hobos). “Thanks for letting me come with you,” I say.
He glances over at me, his arms resting lightly on the steering wheel. “I take that back. Let’s not go home—let’s go get ice cream.”
“FroYo?”
“Nah, I’m talking real, good ole fashioned Cold Stone.”
“Bravo,” I say, and make sure he knows he’s paying.
We sneak back into the house at midnight, rushed with sugar and trying to laugh quietly. We fail, our laughs coming out as snorts that are nearly as loud as the door that we accidentally slam behind us. (It sounds suspiciously like we’ve consumed copious amounts of alcohol instead of ice cream.)
Tom changed over the last hour, from hurt and angry to soft and laughing. I was beginning to suspect he didn’t miss Andrea at all. Maybe he will tomorrow; maybe he’ll cry over her next week. But for now, I’ve made him happy. (Me, and ice cream.) For now, he could think about everything except Andrea.
Looking at Tom in the dimly lit hall, I realize how much he’s like our father, warm and welcoming, with broad shoulders and strong arms. When we say goodnight, trying to catch our laughter before it escapes again, I force him into an embrace. But then it’s not so much forcing because puts his chin on my head, running his hand up and down over my hair, tangling it in a truly brother-like fashion.
Then he says, “Don’t ever change, Beef.”
I smile and tell him I won’t. He leaves me standing in the hallway, where I lean against the wall, immersed in the sudden quiet.
Then I hear, “Bee?”
“Papa?” I gingerly step into the dining room.
He sits at the table, his hands in his pockets, and he looks up at me like he hadn’t spoken my name in the first place. “Hey. Did you have fun?”
“Yes.” I stand by the opening, still unsure. “What… What are you doing awake?”
He shrugs. “Just couldn’t sleep, is all.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“You work tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Keep up the good work, Baby Bee.”
“Thanks, Papa.”
He stands up, scratching his head like I saw earlier. To me, his head-scratching has always been associated with nerves, which he usually hides tremendously well. But here it is, twice in one day, and he’s up late.
So is my mom, who I hear sniffling in the other room. I look at Papa, and he looks at me, and we both pretend we can’t hear her. He nods, shuffling out of the room. Confused, heart pounding, I turn and head in the opposite direction. I shut my bedroom door behind me and pray it keeps out that sad, quiet noise.
Chapter 12
I drive to The Color Project first thing after work on Wednesday, my fingers tapping against my steering wheel to the beat blasting through my speakers. I feel a strange sense of calm, almost like my brain has shut off due to overwhelming excitement. (And probably a fear of me puking.)
I get to see Levi today. I’ve been counting down the hours.
Even though I park directly in front, four feet away from the door, the sun blasts me so hard when I get out of the car that I’m starting to sweat by the time I’m inside. (It’s the end of June, when dry California briefly turns humid.) Inside the office, the air conditioner is blasting at full force. I stop at the window, where a young girl sits, chewing her nails and texting. She’s got her dark hair in a high ponytail, glitter on her eyelids, and even more on her shoes, which are propped up on the desk between us. Even her arms, chest, and neck shimmer with glitter lotion.
I stare blankly. So this must be the infamous Missy Alvarez.
“Hi! Is Levi here?” I ask, tearing my eyes from her shoes. They’re the kind of footwear you’d expect to see on Beyoncé during a red carpet event—not on a girl wearing jeans and a t-shirt in a charity office in Escondido.
But, here we are.
Missy smacks her gum. She’s about to answer when The Boy sticks his head into the room behind her. He smiles. “You!”
My lips break apart in a wide grin. “Me.”
Levi stands behind Missy’s chair. “Missy, meet Bee. Bee, this is Missy.
“Hi,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”
“Is she a new volunteer?” she asks Levi, and then blows a spectacularly large bubble. It pops perfectly, as if she’s practiced this moment again and again.
He looks at me for a second, then at Missy. “Not unless she wants to be.” His words are loaded with invitation and (I think) hope, but his tone is unassuming, letting me off the hook.
Missy groans. “You should get someone to take over some of my hours. I just don’t have enough time in the day, you know?”
I swear Levi’s eye twitches. He opens his mouth, as if to say something—and then blows out a deep breath. “I’ll open that for you,” he says, nodding to the door on my right. He disappears, and a few seconds later it swings open.
“Bethany?” he asks.
I shut the door behind me, a little too hard. “Bethany who?”
His face falls. “That’s not your name?”
“Oh, um, no?” I laugh out loud. “Of course it’s not. I would be relatively happy if my name were Bethany.”
He harrumphs, but his eyes tease me. “Well, I
was going to say. Bethany is a beautiful name, and you looked like you might be one.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m not.”
I follow him into the interview room, where Levi heads straight for the desk and grabs three pieces of paper, stapled together. Then he ushers me over to the sitting area. “Ready to see what we do up close?”
I’m so awkward; I don’t know what to do with my hands or how to sit (I feel like a stiff board). But for once, I do know what to say. “I’m so ready.”
The corner of his mouth shifts upward. “You’re not a Bonnie, are you?”
I almost choke. “Bonnie? No.”
He looks at me directly in the eyes and says, “Hmm. I guess not.”
I want to tell him to stop trying to guess when there’s a knock at the door and Missy stomps inside on her four-inch pumps. She steps to the side to allow someone in, a woman around twenty-five-years-old. Her hair is light blond, cut to the shoulders, and she has blue eyes that actually sparkle. I’m struck immediately by how happy she looks, shaking Levi’s hand.
Then he’s turning to me, and I snap into focus. “Stacey, this is Bee, one of our volunteers.”
I shake the woman’s hand, smiling at Levi’s words. I’m pretty sure he’s said this for Stacey’s benefit, because explaining my presence would be complicated otherwise, but I like how it sounds anyway. I think Levi knows this, the same way he knew I would care about The Color Project in the first place.
After the introduction, Levi and I sit on the love seat together. (I don’t think about this too hard.) He hands me the paperwork and points to the main paragraph in the middle of the first page. I read over it, barely listening to their conversation so I can catch up on Stacey’s story. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, the paper reads, an early stage the doctors think will be easy to control, but her treatments are going to be harsh.
By the time I’m done reading, it’s only been a few minutes. I look up at them, captured by how they’re laughing and talking. It makes this seem more like a coffee date with a friend than an interview with an applicant.
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