“I need time, Leighton,” she says. “I need to think about it.”
It isn’t much, but it’s all she’s offering.
“Then I need time, too. I’m not coming to Nana’s. I’ll stay with Sofia this weekend. I’ll see you Sunday.”
“We could use the time as a family this weekend.”
Family.
“My art show is this weekend. We are required to attend. For credit.”
Checkmate.
There is a long moment of silence strung between us. We’ve run out of any semi-decent words to say to each other. All that’s left is yelling, and it’s like we both know it.
“I’ll see you at home Sunday night, Leighton.”
She goes upstairs, and I hear her moving around, waking the girls. Getting them packed. Like it’s for fun. Like we aren’t running in fear. I slip into my room to pack a weekend bag, too.
Campbell sneaks in as I’m finishing up.
“What happened?”
“We argued.”
“She’s not leaving him.” It’s not a question. Campbell seems to have already known what the outcome of last night would be: nothing.
“I need a break from her. Will you two be all right?”
“Sure,” Cam says. “We like it at Nana’s, and we get to miss school.”
“Okay,” I sigh. “I’m gonna figure this out.”
Campbell turns and looks up at me.
“I know, Leighton,” she says. I know the tone of her voice when she tells half-truths.
She doesn’t believe me.
I’m not sure I do, either.
Mom and the girls leave for Nana’s place, but Liam still hasn’t arrived to drive me to school. I take my bags and leave the house. I don’t want to be here whenever he decides to come back. I walk in the general direction of Liam’s house. There are snow-covered fields on either side of the road, stretching for acres. Dotted with crows. Hundreds and hundreds of crows. Within five minutes, I spy a car coming down the road, and the thing in my chest stirs at the sight. Not a muscle car. An old Ford. Liam. He pulls off to the side and leans over, pushing open the passenger door.
“What the hell, Leighton?”
“Bad night,” I say.
“Are you guys—” His hands are tight on the steering wheel.
“Fine. It’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it later, promise. You’re late today.”
“Yeah, I told you I would be—airport, remember? I had to drive my parents and Fiona over. It’s her dance competition.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, I completely spaced.”
“It’s fine.”
We drive to school, and I let the old car warm me up. After a few minutes, Liam reaches over and takes my hand. He doesn’t say anything else on the ride, just keeps it there, my hand tucked into his. When we park, he looks up. “Wanna tell me now?”
“I want to, but I have to find Sofia. My mom took the girls to my grandmother’s place and I didn’t want to go, so I need to crash at her house this weekend.”
“Or not.”
“What?”
“My parents and Fiona are gone until Sunday for her dance competition. There’s plenty of space—guest room is all yours, so don’t worry about that, and . . .”
“What?”
“It’d be really nice to just know for sure that you are safe for a few nights.”
“Oh. Um.”
“Or not. It’s totally up to you. We can go find Sofia instead.”
“No, I’d like that, Liam. I’ll stay with you.”
We skip half of first period right there in the school parking lot while I tell Liam an abbreviated version of last night’s events. He swears softly a few times, but doesn’t interject otherwise. Until I tell him she isn’t getting a protection order.
“She isn’t even gonna try?”
“Nope. She said she has a lot to think about.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“That we are going back there. Sunday.”
“I don’t understand how you are so calm about this, Leighton.”
This song and dance might be age-old to me now, but he hasn’t dealt with this. The terror, the relief, and the realization that nothing has changed. Again. It’s a turning record for me, but Liam has never even heard the song before.
“I’m sorry, I suck.”
“You don’t, Leighton. Just don’t shut me out now, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll stop. I’m sorry. Defense mechanism.”
He leans over. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure something out.”
“Yeah, okay. Let’s just get through the school day.”
“Okay,” he says, and releases my hand. I want to reach for his again, but stop myself. We won’t figure something out. This isn’t his mess. I will figure something out.
Later I skip lunch and slip into the newsroom. I need a few minutes of quiet—and privacy—to do some research. I type “protection orders Pennsylvania” into the search bar and hit enter. For thirty minutes, I scroll. I read sample protection orders. Words like hospitalized and lacerations filter across the screen. The images are horrifying. Bodies that are more bruised than not. And I feel it creep in, like it always does when I get this far: doubt.
Whenever these things come up on the news, the almost immediate reaction is to downplay the situation. To find the inconsistencies. To wonder how men will be impacted if we just all start believing women when they say they’ve been hurt or afraid. And I’m terrified that if I say anything, they’ll do the same thing to me. They’ll ask how I could dare to ruin his reputation over just a few minor infractions. They might say it isn’t that bad. I’m overreacting.
Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe they just expect me to accept that this is how things are.
Maybe fear is the toll women pay to exist in this world at all.
Chapter Forty-Seven
OUR FRIDAY EVENING IS MUNDANE, AND I’m grateful for it.
Liam shows me how to use his shower. I forgot to pack a shirt to sleep in, so he leaves me one of his. An old football shirt that falls midway down my thighs. When I pass through the upstairs hallway, I run my fingers over the picture frames. I marvel at how the walls in this house hold on to things.
Liam offers to make dinner, and while he does, I slip down to their basement to choose from his collection of superhero movies again.
We meet back upstairs in their family room. On the coffee table is a huge tray filled with peanut butter sandwiches.
“We’ve got our classic pb and j here.” He gestures. “Some Nutella options over here. And for dessert, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.”
I laugh at the elaborate display.
“It’s perfect. Thank you. Here, I grabbed all the superhero movies with women on the front.”
“So . . . two.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Well, what we lack in quantity for women-led superhero movies, we make up for in badassery. Pick whichever one you want.”
“Okay. Wonder Woman. She looks like she could kill me with her pinkie finger.”
We curl up on the sofa and eat from the tray of sandwiches.
“I feel like such a rebel,” Liam says as he bites into a sandwich.
“Why? Because I’m staying here?” I ask.
“No, eating on the couch. My mom would flip out if she knew I was doing this.”
“Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you think she might also object to the whole sleepover thing?”
“Nah, they’d understand. Mitigating circumstances.”
When we finish eating, Liam puts the plate down and then pulls my legs over his lap. We sit, entangled and content, as we watch the movie. At one point, I think he’s leaning in to kiss me, but he just reaches for a blanket that he throws over our legs, and continues watching the movie. Finally, he must feel my stare, because he turns.
“You okay, Leighton?”
“Yep,” I say. “
Just wondering if we were ever gonna fool around again.”
Liam laughs and pulls me farther onto his lap. I have to turn a bit to kiss him, and it would take just the slightest shift for my legs to be on either side of his hips. We’ve been here before, but it was in the cramped front seat of a car.
Not an empty house.
Liam’s hand moves under the edge of my shirt. Or rather, his shirt that I’m wearing. His hand drifts up slowly across my belly and ribs. His movements are as unrushed as ever. I never bothered to put my bra back on, so when his cool hand brushes my breast, we both gasp. He pulls away immediately, hand out of my shirt, and lifts me off him.
“Liam, what’s wrong?” I ask, a little disoriented by the sudden departure from our unspoken plan to make out for the rest of the evening.
Liam pulls up his legs and faces me on the couch. He looks dead serious, and I feel my stomach sink a bit. Something is wrong.
“Look, Leighton, I’m enjoying the hell out of this, but I’m afraid of what it is gonna lead to.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely very interested in that, with you, but I really don’t think we can do anything tonight without me feeling like I’m taking advantage of you somehow.”
I feel a wave of anger. Because my dad doesn’t get to have a part in this. He doesn’t get to make me feel like a stranger in my home and terrify the girls and hurt Mom and have any kind of influence on what happens with me and Liam. That’s not fair. It’s too much. This is mine. Mine and Liam’s.
“Liam. Stop. You can’t associate this good thing with that bad thing, or I’ll never forgive you. I swear you’ve never pressured me. And if we do anything, ever, it will be because we both want to.”
He looks unconvinced.
I get up and find my purse, digging around it in ruthlessly. Dammit. I’m fighting angry tears and can’t see into the dark bag, so I dump its contents on the floor instead. There. I grab a small plastic case and hand it to Liam.
“What is this?” he asks.
“Open it,” I say.
He opens it and examines it for several seconds.
“We did take the exact same health classes, didn’t we?” I ask.
“Shit, yes. Sorry. So . . . you’re on the pill?”
“Yeah. Have been for a little while now. See? No rushed, emotional decisions on my part. I’ve been thinking about it, and planning for it, and that doesn’t mean I’m ready tonight or anything, but if we did, it wouldn’t be because I’m stressed or scared or anything. It’s because I like you, and because I want to.”
“Okay, I hear you. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“I honestly had no idea you were seriously considering it. We really can take all the time in the world.”
“We still can. My original time line has us waiting until July, but after the car incident on our very first date, I wasn’t sure we’d make it that long.”
Liam laughs. “Of course you have a time line. Why July?”
“Nine months since we started dating. It seemed logical to me that we shouldn’t be having sex if we can’t even make a relationship work as long as a pregnancy would last.”
“Wow. That is logical.”
“Too logical?”
“Just a bit,” Liam says, but he softens it with a kiss. “But it’s cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Honestly, it’s totally fine. That stuff is fun, but so is everything we’ve been doing together. I like you a lot, Barnes.”
“Yeah, yeah. I bet you say that to all the girls, Liam McNamara.”
Liam turns on the couch, pulls his leg up under him, faces me.
“I don’t. Listen, I know I’ve dated a lot, but that’s because it’s what we do—don’t roll your eyes, just let me finish. The girls I dated were my friends, and it was all about social status. We never really liked each other. It was . . . superficial. But that’s not how I feel with you.”
“Oh,” I say. It’s all I’ve got, because I have no idea where he’s going with this.
“Yeah. Pretty sure I’m in love with you, Barnes.”
“Oh.”
Of all the things I expected could happen this weekend, Liam McNamara saying he loved me might have been number 167 on the list. It’s not something I was looking for. And considering everything, I don’t know how I feel about it. Love is complicated.
But then I think of a different definition of love. Like the kind between friends, or sisters. I think of how much I love Junie and Cam, and I realize that it isn’t all about expectations or promises. There’s just loving someone without reason or time frames or endings in mind. Maybe it’s okay to love in the moment, and it doesn’t have to be with intentions and goals. We don’t have to want to grow up and marry each other to enjoy this now.
But I’m not ready.
“Liam, listen—”
“No, wait. Listen, this is totally the same as me moving too fast with the physical stuff after a stressful week. So, don’t say anything back now.”
“Are you sure? I just—it’s a lot to process.”
“Say no more. Should I say it again? I have this theory that if something is awkward, you should just go with it. Awkward to the tenth degree. It can’t sustain itself. Here, watch: I love you, Leighton.”
“That was weird. You didn’t call me Barnes.”
Liam laughs, and the tension snaps like a broken spell. He was right. Exponent-level awkward works. I lean in and kiss him. He turns and catches my head, my neck. His thumb brushes the side of my face when I pull back.
“I think I do, too,” I say when we break free. It’s the closest I can come to saying it. For now. “But no promises, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, let’s not pretend we are going to be together forever, and then break each other into pieces when we aren’t, and have all of those unrealistic expectations to live happily ever after.”
“Oh, agreed. I’m only in it for the sex.”
“Liam!” I swat at his arm.
“I really like being with you, though,” I add, to soften my non-love declaration.
“Also agreed.”
“Even if you are an arrogant jock,” I say.
“Even if you are a nerd,” he counters.
“So . . .”
“No promises.”
“No promises,” I repeat.
We finish watching our movie, but my mind is anywhere else. It makes twenty-four hours of complete emotional upheaval a little better, though. To end on such a high note.
Chapter Forty-Eight
I WAKE UP LONG BEFORE DAWN to the sound of soft rain hitting the window. For a moment, my mind is a perfectly blank slate, awake, but not yet aware. I am nothing but a breathing thing in the pitch-black. Nameless and floating. A lone bird in the night sky, weightless and free. But a few moments pass, and I feel my weight in the mattress, pulling me back to earth. I realize that the window I’m looking at isn’t my own, and gravity—reality—finds me again, grounds me. I’m aware of the bare arm wrapped around my ribs. A larger hand wrapped around my own. Liam’s warm breath is on the back of my neck. Oh, right. We’re sleeping together. Nothing happened, we just wanted to be near each other.
I haven’t slept this soundly in ages. No nightmares. No creaks or noises to wake me up, to make me wonder if this is the night something really bad happens. I lie in Liam’s bed, studying the shadows of his room, trying to remember what they were in the light. Now sleep is the winged thing, just out of reach.
We aren’t alone.
I slip out of Liam’s hold and step to the window, barefoot on the cool hardwood floor. Joe sits in the tree outside Liam’s window. He is facing the street and looks almost like a statue of a bird instead of the real thing. I wonder if he has been there all night. I wonder if he’s been there for a hundred years, watching. He looks frozen in time. But just as I think it, his head tilts, and I can see his black eye, his g
ray feathers, his scissor-sharp beak highlighted by the street lamp’s light.
“Good night, Joe,” I whisper, and let the shade fall into place.
Chapter Forty-Nine
PEOPLE THINK CROWS ARE HARBINGERS OF war and death.
But my research has taught me that this is untrue.
Crows more fundamentally symbolize change. New beginnings. Sometimes that could mean a death, but usually in literature and history, the bird’s arrival just signifies some great awakening. An upheaval of the status quo.
Liam is already out of bed when I wake up. I rouse quickly, hypersensitive to the idea that I just slept in a guy’s bed. I check Liam’s bedroom window. No Joe this morning, but there is a collection of little oddities on the windowsill outside. I slide the window open and pull the gifts inside: a screw and a book of matches. I look over them carefully, remembering that some of Joe’s earlier gifts were our own things returned to us, but these seem random. I drop them into my pocket so that Juniper can add them to the collection she’s laid out carefully on her dresser at home. Before I go downstairs, I grab Mr. Jelly from Liam’s desk and put him back in his place of honor on the center of the bed.
I find Liam in the kitchen. He’s already showered and is dressed for the cold weather.
“Oh.” I’m surprised. “Do you have plans?”
“We have plans,” he says. “We’re going for a hike.”
“But . . . it’s cold.”
“Yes. It will feel good. Invigorating.”
I frown. He is clearly a morning person. And he likes hiking.
“Liam, this might not actually work out between us.”
He laughs and hands me a scarf. “Here, I have extra cozy things you can borrow. You’ll be warm once we start moving.”
Liam opens the pantry.
“Cinnamon apple? Maple and brown sugar?”
“Maple.”
He pulls out instant oatmeal and prepares it for us. It’s not until it’s done and cooling that he tries a different tactic.
“Hiking is not like running. It’s leisurely. We can bird-watch. Call it crow research.”
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