by Shana Norris
Rory just stared at me with this wide grin on his face. I immediately shut down my rambling about Mona’s. My stomach gurgled in the silence. Rory laughed.
“What?” I snapped.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re clearly excited about those burgers. It was cute.”
Cute? Great. Leave it to me to embarrass myself in front of a guy I barely knew.
“You play guitar?” I asked, nodding at the case on his shoulder.
“Yeah, a little,” he said. “Maybe I’ll let you listen to me play sometime. You’ll love it.”
There he was—the stuck up jerk I’d encountered at my DJ booth the night before. Rolling my eyes, I dug in my purse for my car keys. “It was, you know,” I made air quotes with my hands, “‘nice’ chatting with you, but I should get home.”
Rory reached out and grabbed my arm as I started to brush past him. His touch sent shivers across my skin.
“Wait,” he said quickly. “Those burgers really do sound good. Maybe we could go get one?”
Heat crept across my cheeks. Was he asking me out? Right now, while I was in my Mountain Dairy uniform, with an ice cream stain on the front of my shirt?
I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, noise erupted from Rory’s pocket. “Run Around” by Blues Traveler. Not a bad choice in ringtone. He pulled his phone out and swiped at the screen. His carefree grin turned into a dark scowl. He punched at the screen, then shoved the phone back into his pocket.
“Um …” I started, swimming in confusion. This guy went through emotions like he probably went through guitar strings. “Everything okay?”
“It’s fine, family stuff,” he barked, barely looking at me. “I have to go. I’ll see you around.”
Without another word, he spun around and charged away, hopping off the sidewalk and into the parking lot. He dipped between cars, putting distance between us until his figure was just another shape on the ridiculously green horizon.
Chapter 5
Andrea’s little gray Toyota was already parked in the driveway when I pulled up to my house. I groaned, softly banging my head on the steering wheel after I pulled in and parked behind her.
Awesome.
Part of me wanted to back out of the driveway and drive somewhere—anywhere—else. But I was tired and hot and really wanted a shower, plus I wanted to work on some music I was remixing for Ashton’s art installation at the gallery. She had given me a bunch of sounds to sample that were supposed to complement her structures. Maybe I could sneak inside the house without anyone seeing me.
One of the white curtains in the front windows slid aside. Mimi waved at me, beckoning me to come in. So much for not getting noticed.
When I opened the front door, Mimi, Pop, and Andrea were seated in the living room, all eyes turned toward me. Someone else was sitting in Pop’s recliner. A jolt of surprise shot through me as I recognized the tightly curled hair of my cousin Paisley.
“I didn’t know Aunt Jill and Uncle Blake were coming to visit,” I said in surprise.
Andrea cleared her throat before answering, “They’re not. It’s just Paisley.”
“Surpriiiiise!” Paisley said, waving her hands around her head like we were still little kids.
I felt a little wave of relief—Andrea had just wanted to tell me that my relatives were in town. Paisley was a year younger than I was, but she had grown up in Atlanta, where my Uncle Blake had settled after college. The last time I’d seen Paisley was seven years ago, at Thanksgiving. We’d created a little play to perform in front of the family and had spent all morning practicing our lines. When we started to perform, Paisley went off track and came up with all new lines right there on the spot, completely ignoring the story I’d created for us. Since then, we hadn’t really spoken to each other, other than the occasional awkward Facebook chat. Last time I checked, she had been posting constantly about how in love she was with this guy named Jeremy, even though just a week before she’d been in love with some other guy and then a different guy before that. I talked to Paisley’s older brother, Billy, much more—he was quiet, studious, and really focused on his future. The exact opposite of Paisley.
“Well, come in, Katie,” Mimi greeted me, smiling wide. “Have a good day at work?”
“Sure,” I said cautiously, dropping my messenger bag on the floor next to the couch as I leaned down to kiss Mimi and then Pop. “Gave my biceps a good workout scooping out all that ice cream.” I eyed Paisley and then Andrea. The wave of relief I’d felt began to fade. The fact that they were both there must have meant something was up. Paisley had never visited without her parents before.
I noticed a bright pink polka-dotted suitcase at Paisley’s feet.
“You remember your cousin Paisley, right?” Pop asked me.
I nodded curtly. “Hey.”
“Hey, Kate,” Paisley said. Her wide grin showed off a row of perfectly straight, gleaming white teeth. She looked the same as she had in the selfies she was constantly posting to Facebook, except for the fact that she wasn’t making a duck face. Her long auburn hair cascaded down her back in wild waves and her bright blue eyes were ringed with their usual smudgy charcoal eyeliner. She looked like the same carefree girl I saw writing about her adventures all over Atlanta.
“This is what I wanted to talk to you about earlier this afternoon,” Andrea told me, her voice tinged with annoyance that I hadn’t made time in my day for her. “Paisley will be spending the rest of the summer here, staying with you and Mimi and Pop.”
“Just flew in!” Paisley told me, patting her suitcase. She grinned so wide again that I was certain her cheeks would burst at any moment.
“When did this happen?” I asked. I hadn’t heard a word about the possibility of Paisley coming to stay with us this summer. She hadn’t even been to Asheville in years. Hell, I thought, the sight of her now souring my stomach, she hadn’t even called Mimi on her birthday this year. What was she doing suddenly popping up in our living room?
“Just now,” Pop said, his bushy eyebrows raised high. It was clear that he was just as surprised by Paisley’s appearance as I was.
“Well, my dad talked to Aunt Andrea yesterday,” Paisley explained. Her knees bounced as she spoke and her hands twisted her curls around her fingers. She was never able to keep still. Even as a kid she was constantly on the move, jumping from one thought to another so fast it was hard to keep up. “They thought I should come spend some time with Mimi and Pop. We hadn’t planned for it to be so soon, but I was able to find a flight this afternoon that still had some seats left on it, so I took it.”
So in other words, Paisley had taken control of the situation and arrived before anyone had been able to prepare for her. Of course. Typical Paisley behavior.
“So you felt like just hopping on a plane and flying wherever you wanted,” I said.
“She’s family, she’s always welcome here anytime,” Andrea said quickly.
I gritted my teeth at Andrea’s snappy response and my jaw began to ache. “I didn’t mean that she wasn’t welcome. I just meant it must be nice to have the freedom to fly off at a moment’s notice.”
Paisley flinched a bit, her smile faltering. But then she grinned wide again and shrugged. “Well, I spent my birthday money. And Aunt Andrea helped me out.”
She and Andrea laughed, like they were longtime best friends giggling at a sleepover. I clutched the bottom of my Mountain Dairy shirt until my knuckles turned white, thinking about how long I had to save up my money to buy a laptop for school because Andrea was “stretched thin.”
“Since we didn’t have time to get a room ready, Paisley will have to share your room tonight,” Mimi told me.
Uh-uh. No way.
I bit my tongue hard to keep from letting angry words fly out of my mouth. I never talked back to Mimi and Pop. With Andrea, yes, I could probably let things fly if given the chance. But not Mimi and Pop.
“Can’t she stay at Andrea’s apartment?” I asked.
“Fine,” I said. “But we have Andrea’s old room. Paisley could sleep in that.”
“That room hasn’t been cleaned in years,” Mimi told me. “I can’t put Paisley in there until I’ve had a chance to clear out the boxes and dust and vacuum.”
If it would keep Paisley out of my room, I’d stay up all night cleaning Andrea’s old room myself. But I could see from the look in Mimi’s soft brown eyes that the matter was settled: Paisley would be bunking with me.
I sighed. “I’ll have to move my DJ equipment out of the room to make space for a sleeping bag or something.”
“I can help you move it,” Paisley offered.
“It’s expensive equipment,” I said. “I’d rather no one else touch it so it doesn’t get messed up.”
“Kate’s quite the perfectionist,” Andrea quipped.
“Yeah, some things don’t run in the family,” I quipped back. Pop looked over his glasses at me.
“Just let me know what I need to do and I’ll be careful,” Paisley said.
I crossed my arms and shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I’ll take care of it.”
“Remember the last time I spent the night with you?” Paisley asked, her blue eyes wide and shining. Andrea seemed smaller now. Quiet. Feckless as always, Paisley chirped away. “How old were we? I was, like, six, I think, and you were seven.”
Of course I remembered it. Paisley chattered nonstop all night long. I didn’t get any sleep. Not that I was really trying to sleep much back then. I was too busy making s’mores in the microwave and watching cartoons. Having Paisley spend the week with us back then was an excuse to stay up and eat junk food.
I pushed the memory out of my mind. “Not really,” I said.
“I remember that,” Andrea said, turning toward Paisley with an excited smile on her face. “You wore your hair in braided pigtails all the time back then. You were so cute.”
Paisley’s hands flew to her face and she let out a high-pitched screech. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you remember that. I looked like I was trying to audition for Little House on the Prairie or something. I made my mom hide all of the pictures of me from back then. They’re so embarrassing.”
Pop laughed, reaching over to pat Paisley’s hand. “You were adorable. Still are.” He coughed a bit, taking a moment to thump his chest to clear up his congestion. After taking a sip of water, Pop smiled at me, too. “So are you, Katie.”
Of course Pop would make sure I wasn’t left out, even from being called childishly cute. I returned his smile and said, “I’m really tired from work. I’m going to take a shower and then a nap before supper.”
I picked up my messenger bag and then headed into the kitchen. The soft tap, tap of Mimi’s house slippers on the tile floor pattered behind me, so I knew she was there before I even turned around.
“Katie,” Mimi said, her voice low and her face lined with concern, “I hope you’re not upset about Paisley showing up so suddenly. Or that she has to room with you tonight. It won’t be too much of an inconvenience for you, will it?”
She sounded so worried about how I felt. Her brown eyes were darkened with concern as she looked up at me.
There was no way I could be angry with Mimi and Pop. My whole body relaxed as I leaned down to hug her. Even though she was so tiny, I always felt protected in her arms.
“No, it’s fine,” I said, wrapping my arms around her tighter. “It’s just one night.”
“We’ll clean up the other room tomorrow,” Mimi promised, patting my arm and squeezing me back in that gentle way she had.
I nodded as I started toward the hall, but then Mimi asked, “What’s this?”
She pulled the brochure Mr. G had given me earlier about the scholarship from the front pocket of my messenger bag. Her eyes lit up as she read over the words on the front.
“A full four years of tuition to Greensboro!” she read, her voice heavy with surprise and excitement. All traces of worry were gone from her face. “Katie, is this what Mr. Gonzales was talking about on the answering machine? He called earlier while we were out and left a message, something about a scholarship.”
I could see the thoughts racing through her head as she clutched the brochure in her thin fingers. I bit my lip. This scholarship would solve a lot of problems for Mimi and Pop. They wouldn’t have to worry about tuition payments or stretch their finances too thin.
It would help them out so much.
Four years of math and help for Mimi and Pop, or four years of music production and a huge burden on them.
I knew what I had to do. My face cracked into a forced smile. “Yes, I’m going to interview,” I answered, sealing my fate. “It’s basically in the bag.”
Chapter 6
A giggle interrupted the dream I was having about accepting a Grammy for best musical composition in a movie. Cracking one eye open, I saw that the clock read 7:12 a.m. I groaned and rolled over. Another giggle and then not-so-hushed voices. Right in the hallway outside my bedroom door.
Who would be giggling at this insane hour? Besides Mimi and Pop, but they never stood in the hall and giggled. They knew I liked to sleep in whenever I could.
“He was so flirting with you,” Andrea’s voice drifted toward me through the closed door.
“He wasn’t,” Paisley said. “I promise you, he wasn’t flirting.”
“Uh-huh,” Andrea said in a doubtful voice. “I’ve been around long enough to know flirting when I see it, and he was definitely flirting. He was pretty cute, too.”
I pulled the covers off and pushed myself up into a sitting position. In all of my seventeen years, Andrea had never stopped over so early. There was no way I’d get to sleep in this morning, not with the gossip crew standing right outside my door.
Rubbing my eyes with my palms, I stumbled toward the door and snatched it open, finding Andrea and Paisley huddled right outside my room. Paisley still wore her pajamas, but she looked gorgeous, her hair just the right kind of messy and rumpled. I always looked like the next Bride of Frankenstein when I first got up, my blonde hair sticking out at crazy angles.
“Who was cute?” I croaked, my voice thick with sleep.
“Just some guy we ran into yesterday,” Paisley said, waving a hand as if it wasn’t important. It probably happened all the time. After supper, Paisley and Andrea had gone out shopping to get Paisley some shampoo and soap and things. Apparently, she’d left in too much of a hurry to bother packing much other than a few changes of clothes. Mimi had suggested I go with them, but I decided to take advantage of the Paisley-free hour to work on my music.
“Thanks for waking me up,” I said, yawning wide as I pushed past them toward the bathroom.
“You’re welcome!” Paisley said earnestly.
“Oops,” Andrea said with a giggle. “Sorry. We were trying to be quiet.”
I closed the bathroom door behind me without responding to her. I was too grumpy from being woken up so early to have a conversation without letting my irritation show. I took my time in the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face to wake me up and then attempting to run a brush through my tangled mess of hair.
When I finally emerged, I padded into the kitchen, where Andrea and Paisley were seated at the table with Pop. Mimi was at the stove, carefully flipping some of her famous buttermilk pancakes in her old cast iron skillet. The sweet scent filled the air and I breathed it deep into my lungs, sighing as my stomach growled with hunger.
“I’ll get you some pancakes in just a minute, Katie,” Mimi told me, waving her pink spatula at me.
“You always make the best pancakes, Mimi,” I said.
Mimi laughed. “You always say that just so I’ll make you extras.”
“And it always works.”
I gave Pop a kiss on
the top of his head and sat down next to him. He swirled the last bite of his fluffy pancake goodness around in the maple syrup left on his plate. “Your Mimi is easy to sweet talk,” he said, winking at me before he popped the last bite of pancake into his mouth.
“She’s always been that way,” Andrea said. “Even when I was a little girl. I could get her to agree to anything by just sweet talking her a little bit.”
“Yes,” Mimi said as she expertly flipped the pancakes to check their other sides one more time before sliding them onto a plate. “And that’s why you constantly stayed in trouble.”
Paisley laughed. “I must have taken after you then, Aunt Andrea. Mom and Dad are always getting on me about something I’ve done.” Sadness flickered across her features, but quickly vanished. “So, Kate,” she said, turning to me with her eyes shining bright. “Who are all the cute guys around here?”
“Sounded like you didn’t need my help finding cute guys,” I said with a yawn.
“I’m sure you know the sweetest ones,” Paisley said. “You have a boyfriend, right? That guy on Facebook? He can introduce me to his friends.”
“Kate doesn’t have a boyfriend right now,” Pop said. “She’s very independent and doesn’t need some boy to make her feel good about herself.” He smiled proudly at me.
“You haven’t had a boyfriend since last summer, have you?” Andrea asked me. “What was his name?” She tapped her chin for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Miguel!”
“Yeah, it’s been a while.” With everything that happened since I got home from work, I had forgotten that Miguel was in town. And that he hadn’t let me know himself.
Mimi finished up the pancakes and slid a plate in front of me before she joined us at the table, thankfully giving me something else to focus on. She set her cup of coffee on the table between her hands. I reached over and stole it from her, taking a small sip.
“There’s more in the pot on the counter,” Mimi told me, swatting at my hands and taking her cup back. “Go get your own.”