by Piper Lennox
I stop and look at her. The red and purple neon of the shop’s sign paints this addictive nightlife wreath around her head.
“Who?” I ask, my voice way quieter than I expected it to be.
She sits back with her shoes against the dash. “Anyone. A friend, a stranger...even just yourself.”
I get quiet, then start driving. The scent of dough and apples and cinnamon gets rinsed from our clothes in the dry air of the heater.
“Not yet,” she says, when I put on the signal to turn into my neighborhood. She points ahead. “I still have some ideas. And your birthday still has four hours left.”
15
I direct Theo the same way I did on our first date, sans coin-flipping: silently nudging or pointing at each intersection until, at last, we reach our destination.
“An ice rink?” He laughs under his breath. “Does it stay open this late, when tourist season’s over?”
“It does when you know the owner.” I give him a smug smile when, upon entering the lobby, I get an effusive greeting from Marcus at the rental counter.
He gives us our skates and waves off my money. “You wanna pay me back,” he says, “you tell your aunt to message me on Facebook.”
“Give it up,” I laugh over my shoulder, as Theo and I lace up on a wobbly bench by the rink entrance. “There are plenty of fish in the sea, Marc. Why are you still trying to land Thalia? She’s not interested.”
“You can land any fish you want, with two things. The right bait, and patience.”
“You’re halfway there, then.”
My joke earns me a smile, a middle finger, and a loud slam of the rental counter window.
Theo laughs again. “So when you said you know the owner, you meant you really know him.”
“He and my family go way back,” I explain. “His sister used to work with my mom.”
“And he’s got a crush on your aunt,” Theo clarifies.
“Yes, a completely hopeless and relentless one. We all just humor him, by this point.”
“Why?”
“I mean, he’s a nice guy. No need to break his spirit.”
“But why let him keep his hopes up like that?” Theo stomps his foot down into his skate, then shoves his pant leg inside. “Especially if he’s nice and you all really like him. Your aunt should tell him point-blank she doesn’t like him and never will.”
“You don’t think she’s tried?” I laugh, but it comes out twisted and strange as I realize something: my aunt never has told Marcus those things outright. Even the rest of us, always telling him to give up and move on, say it like we’re kidding. Maybe it’s the same as lying.
Maybe, in its own way, it’s worse.
“Sorry,” Theo adds, when he notices how silent I’ve gotten. “Just saying, from the outside, it looks like everyone’s letting him hope for someone he’s never going to have. But you know the situation better than I do.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. I sure do.
We fumble to the rink’s edge and step up. Theo offers me his arm, but it quickly becomes obvious he’s the one in need of help.
“Leave me alone,” he blushes, when I can’t stop laughing because he’s clinging to the wall like an oxygen tank. “I’ve never done this.”
He gets himself standing upright, looking proud...until I veer off and perform a spin. A spray of ice arcs from my skates and covers him.
“Show-off.”
“If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
“Oh, is that the rule? Because fair warning, I’m really good at shoving. Offensive tackle in high school. Fanciest footwork on the team, too.”
“That’s a lot of shit-talking from someone who’s shaking like Bambi, right now.”
Theo bites his grin and gives me this look like, The second we’re off the ice, you’re in for it.
Twenty minutes pass before I offer him an ice walker, which he refuses despite desperately needing one. His distances are short, and his falls are frequent.
“That one,” he groans, after a particularly heavy wipeout, “might have actually fractured my ass bone.”
I laugh and help him stand. “You’re fine, you big baby. I’d think a former football player would be used to this kind of impact.”
“Thick skull,” he says, rapping his knuckles on his head, “but a very delicate backside.”
“Ah.”
“No, seriously: I bruised my tailbone once. A hammock I was in tore and dumped me out onto concrete. I had to sit on this weird donut thing for weeks.”
“Must have made you irresistible to the ladies.”
“I was four, smartass.” Theo grabs my waist before I can skate away, pulling me against him like he really will tackle me.
His breath melts down my neck, feeling sinfully hot around all this ice.
Suddenly, the lights dim. When John Legend starts playing through the buzzing speakers around the rink, I can’t decide if I want to murder Marcus or thank him.
Theo’s hands travel down my hips until he has my fingers wrapped in his. He skates behind me, slow and drifting, while I help him balance.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said, with the whole ‘finding purpose’ thing.” He hooks his chin onto my shoulder as we glide along. “What’s yours?”
“I don’t know.” Part of it’s because having him pressed so close, with dim lights and lilting music, has crushed every thought in my head to dust. The rest is because I really don’t have an answer.
“My job gives me a sense of purpose, I guess, but it’s not like that’s my dream job.”
“What is your dream job?”
“Still figuring that one out.” I glance at him, only able to see his mouth. “What’s yours?”
“If I knew, I’d just go out and do it.”
I almost roll my eyes at myself. “Oh. Right.” When supporting yourself or others isn’t an issue, you can go out and do whatever you want. It’d be easy to discover your dream job, in a situation like that.
Then again, look at Theo. He’s not the first person I’ve met who was like this. Lost in options, drowning in good luck...but without anything, or anyone, to really fight for.
“Professional organizer,” I say, after we glide a few more yards and stop.
My response feels less like something I just blurted out, and more like an answer I’ve known for years. I just didn’t know what question it belonged to.
I turn in his arms. He keeps his fingers locked at the small of my back, staring down at me.
“I could see you doing that. It’d definitely suit you.”
I blush. Frequently during our clean-ups of his house, I’d get distracted picking through junk drawers, rearranging shelves, and reordering books, until Theo would prompt me back to the larger task. It’s a bad habit of mine at work, too. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Theo rests his chin on the top of my head, pulling me into his chest. I shut my eyes. I like this, and I wish I didn’t.
“But what I meant was,” he goes on, “is I could see you doing that because it takes what you enjoy—cleaning—and makes it even more meaningful. Maybe that’s your purpose: making life easier for people. Making sense of the chaos.”
In the tiny, muffled cave of his biceps and chest, I open my eyes and stare at his buttons until they blur.
He’s right. I do like unraveling chaotic things, putting them into an order that makes sense.
But here I am, wrapped up in the arms of a boy whose neat-as-a-pin life is, thread by thread, getting tangled and knotted into a mess he won’t even recognize, by the time I’m finished.
“Maybe music is your purpose,” I whisper. I can’t bring myself to look at him. “Making people feel things when you play.”
Theo lifts his chin off my head. I feel his lips replace it. It’s almost a kiss, but more of a pause. Just resting his mouth there while he thinks, and the music buzzes all around us.
After a while, we pull apart and start skating again.
“Maybe I’m scared,” he says suddenly.
I motion to his rock-steady legs, and his arms swinging freely by his sides instead of death-gripping the wall. “Nah, I’d say you’re doing fine, now.”
“Not about skating.” He rubs his neck. “I was talking about being a musician. Or any job, really.”
I spin and glide backwards in front of him. “What’s there to be scared of? Failure?”
“Well, that,” he says, “and.... What if I end up like my dad, you know? Doing something I absolutely love, but then the world convinces me it’s not enough...so I give it up?”
“You already have.” Part of me winces at telling him this harsh truth, but I know it needs to be said. Not really fair to humor him. “By not even trying in the first place, you’ve basically given it up.”
Theo looks at me from under his brow, then back to his skates. “Yeah. You’re right.”
“But you can get it back,” I point out. “It’s never too late.”
“Maybe you should write inspirational posters,” he quips, then smirks when I spray him with some more ice. “So: now I know the ‘why’ of you cleaning houses—tell me about the how.”
“The how?”
“You know, how you got this job. Why you moved from Jersey to clean in the Hamptons. Was it specifically Bayside that brought you out here?”
Nope, I think bitterly. Just a fully-baked revenge scheme and half-baked intentions, combined with a very limited résumé.
“I kind of fell into it. And it’s pretty much the only thing I have experience in. I started when I was little.” My answer comes out before I can actually think about it. “My mom cleaned houses, too.”
“Back in Jersey?”
I nod. It’s not really a lie. My mother did clean houses in Jersey in the off seasons, along with one or two other jobs to keep us afloat.
And why does it matter whether it’s a lie or not? It wouldn’t be the first one I’ve told him. And it certainly shouldn’t be the first time I actually care.
“What’s she do now?”
“Retired,” I say quickly. Another half-truth.
I decide a change of subject is in order. This one’s unlocking some Moral Objection folder in my head that shouldn’t even be there.
“What about your mom?” I ask, glancing back at him. “What did she do?”
What I really want to ask is how she died, but holy shit, what a horrible segue. And it’s hardly the day to be stirring up painful memories for him.
But, judging from the way he stops in his tracks, I’ve still managed to do just that.
“Blogger.” He pushes his hair off his forehead and sighs heavily through his nose. He leans on the wall with both elbows. I glide up beside him and do the same.
“It, uh...it was back before the whole ‘mommy blog’ trend was really a thing. She was one of the first ones. Started it when she got pregnant with me.”
“Oh.” Given his pained expression, I braced myself for serial killer or drug dealer. But “mommy blogger” sounds about as harmful as “grocery cashier.”
Theo must hear this in my voice, because he sighs again and scratches his jaw, trying to explain. “My entire life was online before I even had a name. I’m not talking about how most blogs are, with some photos and anecdotes, maybe even the kids’ real first names. I mean my whole. Damn. Life. Everything short of my Social Security number.” He glides one of his blades back and forth, forming a groove in the ice. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Oh,” I say again, but longer this time. “That makes more sense. So she was the over-sharer type.”
“God, the most textbook case you can imagine.”
I laugh, but keep it quiet. Theo doesn’t seem to find any of this amusing. “What kind of stuff would she post?”
“Everything. Constant updates on what I did and said, a million photos and videos...but the worst part was that she’d outright fake shit just for views and traffic.”
He pushes his hair back again. He’s so tense, it hurts my scalp just to watch.
“Staging photos, scripting me, editing shit so it looked exactly how she wanted—it was this weird compulsion for her, I think. She didn’t blog about our lives; she structured our lives for the blog.”
“That sounds awful.” At least most over-sharers are only invading their own privacy. There’s something supremely shitty about sharing every last detail of someone else’s life.
And damn...do I know how it feels to get your life, even one infamous moment, plastered everywhere without your permission.
Anger flashes in my stomach. It feels less like the ember it usually is, and more like a spark fluttering through the air. Dead before it can touch anything else.
I try to think of more questions that aren’t too personal, but that’s the irony of this topic. I’m dying to know how invasive she got, which is pretty invasive to ask.
And Theo keeps giving me a side-eye that suggests he knows precisely what I want to ask, anyway. “Think of literally any detail, no matter how personal or insignificant,” he says, “that a parent could possibly know about her child. That’s what she’d post.”
“Well...I mean, not every—”
“Yes, Ruby.” His jaw tightens. He stares out at the empty ice ahead of us. “Everything.”
I don’t know why I feel the need to argue this. Surely Theo knew his mother, and her blog, better than I could, having only just learned about either one.
Maybe it’s because it completely clashes with what I’ve always taken as gospel: that Theo Durham had a perfect, problem-free life.
“Poop schedule,” I venture.
“Not a schedule, per se, but yeah. Potty training videos were all over that fucking site.” He pushes off from the wall and slides in front of me, arms folded. “Go on, name another one.”
“Girlfriends?”
“Every last crush I ever mentioned got slapped into a blog post.”
“Nude photos?”
“More bathtub shots than even my grandmothers cared to see.”
“That time you sprained your ass?”
“Caught a photo of me sobbing underneath that busted hammock,” he says, “before she even bothered to ask if I was okay.”
I draw a sharp breath. “Oof. All right, I believe you. Sounds like she was a real piece of work.”
“That she is.”
I was about to start for the gate—Marcus flashed a light overhead, signaling that he’ll need to leave soon—but now I skid to a stop and wait for Theo to catch up. “Is?”
“Oh, yeah,” he laughs darkly, “I guarantee she hasn’t changed one bit.”
I shake my head, trying to fit this new info where it belongs. “You said she’s not around anymore, so I just assumed—”
“Poor phrasing on my part, sorry.” He stumbles, then uses my shoulders to catch himself as we clunk our way through the gate. “I meant it literally. She’s not around.”
His voice drops off, suddenly. I stare at him while he turns away on the bench, unlacing his skates with too much concentration.
There are so many more questions I want to ask. Like how deep that wound went, the day his mother left for good.
But I don’t. First: I already know the answer, because the guy who was supposed to step up and be my father did the same to me.
And second...I can’t do it.
I can’t let this connect us. I refuse. Theo Durham may have more pain than I ever predicted, and a life far less enviable than it seems, but I won’t allow those things to change everything else I know about him.
He’s still that boy who destroyed my life with a few clicks of some buttons. He still deserves heartache.
But the longer I watch him, memorizing all the shadows that betray that mask of a smile, the more I think, Maybe he’s had enough. Even if none of it came from me.
“You okay?”
I blink and tear my eyes back to my skates. He’s already in his shoes, while I’ve yet to undo a
single knot.
“Yeah,” I say quickly, digging my nails into the laces. “Just tied them too tight.”
“Here, I’ll get it.”
Theo kneels in front of me. While he undoes the mess I’ve made, I stare at his hair. I want to run my fingers through it. To pull his head against my chest and hold him, and tell him I’m sorry we’ve got so many of the same scars.
And when he looks up at me with that smile, slipping my skates off and my shoes on like some Cinderella fantasy I probably used to have, I feel my heart flutter at the thought of actually telling him that.
Then I feel my stomach turn, because I know my heart shouldn’t flutter for him.
“Please tell me,” he says, tying my shoes for me, “my birthday celebration isn’t over just yet.”
In the hurricane of all these fluttering, turning organs, I find my voice. “It’s not.”
“Good. I don’t want to go home.” Theo kisses me as he rises, effortlessly drawing me up with him and pulling me close. “Unless, of course, you’re coming with me.”
16
“That’s it: I’m calling in sick tomorrow.”
Grinning, I watch Ruby throw back another shot, then do the same. “I think we crossed that bridge the second you picked this place.”
The dive she chose is swarming with people and noise. It’s got the kind of atmosphere you just know will linger in your head all night and make sleeping tough. Or, in my case, not even worth attempting.
She sets her shot glass upside-down on the runner without so much as a wince. We’ve been drinking straight Swedish Fish-flavored vodka the last few rounds, her choice. It’s so fucking weird and leaves my mouth feeling fuzzy, like eating the skin of a peach but none of the actual fruit.
“Please tell me this isn’t your favorite drink,” I shout.
“Oh, God, no.” Ruby swats me when I melt against the bar with fake relief. “Tequila’s my poison of choice, no question.”
I motion to our empty glasses as the bartender sweeps them away, most likely praying to the powers that be we’ll request something normal, next time. “Then why are we drinking these?”