by Trish Doller
She kisses Nick’s cheek, then uses her thumb to rub away the shine of her lip gloss on his skin. “Let’s go.”
Greg comes out of the house and his eyebrows pull together when he sees what I’m wearing. The skirt is shorter than anything I’ve ever worn. “Do you have your phone?” he asks.
I hold it up so he can see it. I’m not sure I remember how to use it, but I have it.
“Don’t be late,” he says, and I’m sure he’s already figured out we’re not going to watch Star Wars movies. “Call if you need me.”
“So what do you think of Connor?” Kat asks, as we stand at the kitchen island in the largest house I’ve ever seen. It belongs to a classmate of Kat’s whose parents are out of town. Except for the Ruskins’ house, every place I’ve lived in could fit into this house, all at the same time. And nearly every window has a view of the Gulf of Mexico. She pours a generous shot of coconut rum into a blue plastic cup and tops it off with a splash of pineapple juice. The countertop is littered with half-empty liquor bottles, a variety of sodas and juices, and blue cups like hers. And mine. Except mine contains the same beer I’ve been nursing since we got here.
“He’s—” Connor opened the car door for me when the four of us left Greg’s house and stammered that I looked pretty. Not enough information to form an opinion. “He seems nice.”
“He totally is.” Kat nods. “He’s super shy, but he really likes you.”
I glance up and he’s staring at me again. It’s not predatory, the way he looks at me. Nor is it the same as the other night with Alex Kosta, when the air between us felt alive. Kat is wrong. Connor doesn’t know me so he can’t really like me. He likes looking at my face. He likes the shape of my body. There is a difference.
“You should go talk to him,” she says, as Nick comes up with a fish-shaped tray filled with tiny plastic cups.
“Ladies, have a shot.”
Kat picks one up and sniffs it. “What is it?”
“I call it a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster,” he says. The Hitchhiker’s Guide reference makes me laugh. “But basically, it’s vodka, lemon juice, and sugar.”
She hands one to me and raises hers in a toast. “To Callie”—she leans in close to me and lowers her voice—“and Connor.”
I roll my eyes.
“To life, the universe, and everything,” Nick says.
The vodka makes my eyes sting, but the shot makes me feel warm inside. It makes me want to have another. A million. As many as it takes to feel this way all the time.
Nick places the fish tray of shots on the countertop and slides his arm around Kat’s waist. “Wanna go in the hot tub with me, kitty cat?”
“I didn’t bring a suit.”
He waggles his eyebrows and pretends to leer at her. “Exactly.”
She shoulder-bumps him. “Let’s go stick our feet in the pool.”
“That works.” Nick takes her hand. “And much easier to do now that I’m not wearing socks.”
They don’t ask me if I want to join them, and I don’t follow. I stand at the kitchen island like a stone in the middle of a stream. Party noise swirls around me. Shouts and splashes from the pool in the backyard. The bone-jarring thump of the bass from the stereo. The chattering of girls, clustered like flocks of colorful birds. Explosions from the zombie-killing video game rage on the large-screen television.
Connor breaks his gaze from the video carnage to look at me. When he notices Kat and Nick are gone, he hands the game controller to the guy sitting beside him on the couch and stands. His puppy-dog eyes ask permission to approach. I pull my lower lip between my teeth, debating whether I’m ready for this. Except Connor mistakes it for coy approval and a shy grin spreads across his face. I take a gulp of warm beer as he makes his way through the crowded living room. Ready or not, here he comes.
“Hey.” He stands beside me. “Doing okay?”
“It’s kind of loud.”
Connor nods. “It always is.”
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask. “Maybe go for a walk?”
Again with the grin, his teeth so white against his tanned skin. “Sure.”
He tops off my cup with fresh beer and pours one for himself. I hook my index finger around his pinkie as he leads me through the tight crowd, passing a group of girls who whisper-wonder who I am, and an older guy—one who doesn’t look as if he belongs at a party full of teenagers—tells me my ass looks fine, his cigarette breath fanning my face. It’s so noisy that I’m not even sure I heard him correctly, but when I glance back, he winks at me. My insides trembling, I press closer to Connor until we’re out of the house. The air is cooler, and it creeps beneath my hair, unsticking it from the back of my neck. Connor shifts his grip so all of his hand is holding all of mine. His palm is damp. “Is, um—is this okay?”
He doesn’t have Danny’s gift for sweet talk, or the bad-boy charm Matt possessed—he was the one before Danny—but Connor’s bashfulness is appealing. It’s non-aggressive. Safe.
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
My brain rummages through my mental filing cabinet for small talk, selecting and discarding topics, as we walk down the sidewalk. Connor doesn’t say anything either, and the silence stretches unbearably long. I fill the space with sips of beer and, judging by the view from the corner of my eye, he does the same.
Three houses down, we reach a vacant lot.
“Here,” he says. “You can see the water a lot better from here.”
At the end of the grassy lot, Connor removes his blue plaid shirt and spreads it on the ground. Beneath it, he wears a plain white T-shirt.
“You can sit on it,” he says. “Kat will kill you if you ruin her skirt.”
He lowers himself beside me, his legs stretched out alongside mine. The white sliver moon is reflected in fractured pieces across the surface of the water. It’s so beautiful it makes my eyes glaze with tears. I don’t want to cry in front of Connor.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I wipe my face on my sleeve. It isn’t that I wish my mom was here to see this, because somewhere along the way she lost her wonder for the world. But it’s wrong—so wrong—that I’ve never seen this before. I mean, the moon and stars are everywhere, but I don’t remember being here. And it’s all her fault.
“So, I was thinking—”
I press my lips against his, cutting off whatever it is he’s going to say. I’m too angry to talk. And I don’t want to think.
Connor’s brain eventually realizes what his lips are doing and his arms come around me. When he kisses back, his tongue tastes of beer and orange Tic Tacs, which is more pleasant than it sounds. His hands are warm and big on the back of my shirt as he holds them there. He doesn’t try to take off my clothes. Danny would have had me out of my underwear by now. Of course, Danny would have never given me his shirt to sit on and I’d have gone home with bits of grass and sand on my ass.
“Wow,” Connor says as he exhales in the space between kisses. “That was—”
“Don’t talk.” Kissing him again, I straddle his hips. His faded jeans are soft against my thighs.
His hands hang in midair for a moment, as if he’s uncertain where to put them. He decides on my lower back, right above where my T-shirt rides up, but I can feel some of his fingers against my bare skin. Again, he doesn’t move his hands, doesn’t reach under my shirt to unhook my bra. It’s like all but his lips are frozen.
Connor baffles me. He doesn’t act like any boy I’ve ever met. I pull my mouth away from his and reach for the hem of my shirt.
“I was thinking maybe we could—” Connor’s words die an instant death as my shirt slides up over my head. His eyes flicker to my half-naked chest before he looks away. “What, um—” His gaze is fixed on something over my shoulder. Almost as if he’s talking to someone else, as if I’m not even here. “Are we—?”
My face goes hot as it hits me. I’ve read this wrong. “I thought—” How could he not want me? He’s
a boy. This makes no sense at all. “Forget it.”
I can’t get off his lap fast enough.
“Callie, wait.”
I don’t wait. I shove myself into my shirt and run. It takes me a couple of tries, but I locate the GREG speed-dial icon on my cell phone. As it rings, I hear Connor calling my name. Not wanting to face him, I duck behind a thick shock of sea grass that decorates a neighbor’s front yard.
“Can you come get me?” I keep my voice low when Greg answers. “Please?”
“Is everything all right?”
“I just—I want to come home.”
“Okay.” I hear his keys jingle through the phone. The immediacy of his response is reassuring. “You’re at Nick’s house, right?”
“No, um, I’m at a place called Pointe Alexis.”
“I’m not even going to ask right now,” he says. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
After giving him the address of my sea grass hiding spot, I work out a text message to Kat, telling her I went home. I don’t want her to worry. She texts a reply, but I don’t look or answer. I slide the phone in my pocket and wait for Greg.
“Callie?” Connor’s voice is closer now. I hug my knees against my chest and make myself as small as possible so he won’t see me. It reminds me of the way I’d curl myself up, hoping Frank would mistake me for a pillow—even though nothing about this night is the same as back then—and I press the heels of my hands hard against my eyes to keep from crying. Connor’s phone chimes, and I imagine him looking at the screen—probably at a message from Kat, calling off the search. He swears softly, and his footsteps fade away as he returns to the party.
The scene between us plays on a continuous loop in my head, the humiliation catching flame on my face over and over until I’m scorched. I don’t understand what happened, why Connor didn’t want me. And I don’t understand why I still feel every bit as worthless as I felt after Danny, after Matt. After Frank.
I stay hidden until I see a pair of headlights coming up the street and Greg’s SUV pulls into the driveway beside me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and the concern in his voice undoes me.
I shake my head, tears creeping down my cheeks. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Callie—” Greg blows out a frustrated breath. “At least tell me if there’s some idiot up at that party I need to kill.”
“There isn’t.” The only idiot at the party was me, but I don’t tell him that. “Am I in trouble?”
“The short answer is yes.” Greg puts the SUV in reverse and backs down the driveway. “But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
Chapter 6
“Relax,” Greg says the next afternoon, as we cross the front porch of an old house with faded gray shingles. It belongs to his mother, Georgia, and my stomach is wound yarn-tight at the prospect of meeting her—and apparently every member of Greg’s extended family. My homecoming and Thanksgiving combined in one belated feast. “As soon as they start eating and drinking, they’ll forget all about you.”
I smooth my palms down the skirt of the green sundress Phoebe let me borrow. I’m not used to wearing dresses and it exposes more of my legs than makes me comfortable, but it has flowers embroidered around the hem that remind me of the shirt Ancilla bought me. Phoebe also gave me a pair of sandals embellished with wooden bits and said I could keep them.
“We should go shopping tomorrow,” she said. “Living with three guys, it would be a fun change to go with another girl.”
Even though Phoebe has always known I exist, it can’t be easy to have a new person who doesn’t belong to her in her household, so I said I’d think about it. I didn’t tell her Kat has already appointed herself my personal stylist.
The age-scarred wooden front door opens and a woman with wiry dark-gray hair pushes Greg aside to get to me, enveloping me in a hug so tight I feel as if my ribs might crack. Her hair tickles my nose, but her scent—the rose soap smell—reminds me of making oatmeal raisin cookies and singing a song about the moon.
“Oh, my little Callista,” she croons softly in my ear and rocks me from side to side in a way that feels familiar. I recognize her voice. She’s my yiayoúla, my grandma. And while I don’t exactly remember her, bits and pieces of memories are sprinkled through my mind. Even more than Greg. “We’ve missed you so much.”
Georgia stands back to look at me—her hands clutching my shoulders—and I see my face in her wrinkles, my eyes behind her red-rimmed glasses. It’s strange to go your whole life thinking your DNA is all your own, and then see yourself in someone else.
“Come.” She drags me inside, into a living room overstuffed with people—on couches, perched on the arms of chairs, standing in every available space—and shoves me into a circle of eyes. More people than I’ve met in my whole life are packed in this house. A baby whimpers from some other room, and a little girl about Tucker’s age says, “But I don’t want to meet her, Mommy.”
“Everyone,” Georgia says. “Here is our Callista, home at last.”
They all start clapping, except for the little girl, who puts her hands over her ears and sticks her tongue out at me. I try to feel as if I’m part of this, but they’re all strangers. Some of the elderly women begin to converge, but my grandmother fends them off as if she’s my personal bodyguard.
“Let the poor girl breathe,” she scolds, as if she didn’t just squeeze the wind out of me herself. Behind me Greg snickers and she shoots him a stern look, which makes me smile.
Georgia keeps her arm wrapped firmly around my waist as she introduces me to more aunts, uncles, and cousins than I’ll ever be able to remember. Some of the old ones have accents so thick they sound as if they arrived from Greece this morning. They touch my face with papery fingers. Verifying I’m really me, maybe? I’m not sure. It creeps me out, but I don’t say anything. I smile and nod and say “thank you” a lot.
“Ma.” Greg comes up with Kat at his side. I’m glad to see both of them. “Maybe it’s time to give Callie a break.”
“You’re right,” Georgia says. “And I should check on the dolmades. Ekaterina, you have such a pretty face. Why do you cover it up with so much makeup?”
Kat rolls her eyes, but before she can say anything, my grandmother is pushing her way through the crowd to the kitchen. My cousin links her arm through mine, and I let her lead me out the front door to sit on the porch.
“I am so hungover.” She drops onto the wooden swing, making the chain shake. “Did you get in trouble?”
“I’m grounded for a week.”
“Ouch.” She winces. “I’m sorry. My mom didn’t say anything so I assume Greg didn’t tell her.”
“He was thinking about it,” I say. “But I talked him out of it.”
“You are the best. I owe you.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “So what happened with Connor? He came back to the party looking kind of freaked out.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Her eyes narrow. “He told Nick the same thing. Did you—?”
“No.”
She pushes off with her foot, making the porch swing sway. “Then it can’t be that bad, can it?”
Fresh embarrassment blooms on my face. “I thought we were, so, um—I took off my shirt.”
“Seriously?” She stops the swing with both feet. “Wow. No wonder he freaked. I mean, I’m a little surprised he didn’t rally in the face of”—Kat gestures toward my chest—“those, but I think he wanted to ask you out on a date first, not go straight to hooking up.”
It never occurred to me. Not once. “Oh.”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
“Wait. You’ve never had a boyfriend? You?”
“No.” When you don’t stay in any one place very long, there’s not much opportunity to be someone’s girlfriend. Also, not much opportunity to meet the kind of guy who wants you for anything more than sex. “I’ve only …” I trail off, but Kat picks up
on what I don’t say.
“Whoa.” She sounds surprised, and I envy having the kind of naïveté that assumes if you’ve never really dated, you might still be a virgin. If I had grown up here, I might be. Or at least I wouldn’t have lost my innocence when I was eight years old. “Well.” She starts the swing again. “I think you should try again with Connor. We could double-date.”
“Maybe.” Connor will be a great catch for someone, but I’m pretty sure it’s not me. I don’t know how to be that kind of girl. He’s sweet, though. Cute.
We sit a minute and Kat starts giggling. “I wish I could have seen Connor’s face when you took off your shirt. I don’t think he’s met real live boobs before.”
“Well, he has now.”
She’s cracking up laughing when Georgia comes out onto the porch. “There you are, girls. Callista, the dolmades are ready. Come in. Try them.”
She hustles me away from Kat to the dining room, where the table is laden with a variety of Greek foods, as well as ordinary holiday fare, like turkey, cornbread stuffing, and mashed potatoes.
“Dolmades”—Georgia says, scooping an enormous portion of little green bundles onto a plate—are rice and meat wrapped in grape leaves. When you were a baby, I would feed you this and you would open your mouth the way a new bird does, wanting always more, more, more.”
As if I’m still that baby, she severs off a piece with a fork and brings it to my mouth for a bite. The rice tastes like rice, but the flavor of the leaves is minty and sour at the same time. It’s unpleasant, and I chew quickly to rid myself of the taste. I try not to let her see that I don’t care for her dolmades, but disappointment settles in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, and I feel as if I’ve failed some secret granddaughter test.
Grandchild, daughter, friend, a girl a normal boy would date—a growing list of people I don’t know how to be.