I’d been sitting there about fifteen minutes when the minivan pulled into the driveway. The side door slid open and Jamie jumped out. “Xbox!” he yelled, and raced toward the house, grabbing the keys from his sister’s outstretched hand on the way. Leanne got out of the driver’s seat and circled toward the back, where she proceeded to unload about a dozen bags of groceries. I went over to help her.
“Mom left me a hundred dollars for food,” she said as I fell in beside her. “So I stocked up on munchies. Oh, and some milk and bread and stuff too.”
I held up a bag stuffed full with three two-liter bottles of Coke. “Sure you got enough sugar and trans fats?”
“Don’t forget salt.” She showed me the jumbo bag of Cheetos she’d bought.
Together, we hauled the groceries into the house. Once everything was put away, we started preparation on tonight’s dinner—tacos. Jamie’s choice.
“Did your mom have any problem with you being over here without your dad around?” Leanne asked me as she dug out the big frying pan.
“She let me go with just a warning to behave. Luckily Emma has that art show this weekend,” I said, hunting through the fridge for a tomato. “Are you sure Jamie won’t tell? About Michael being here, I mean?”
She dumped a pound of ground beef into the pan and shook her head. “Jamie’s no tattletale. Besides, I promised him he could play his new video game until nine if he kept quiet about it.”
For the next few minutes we worked together on dinner. With a common goal to bond over, it became easier to relax around each other. After a while, I even felt comfortable enough to go beyond small talk and ask her some questions. Even though we’d been periodically living under the same roof for the past three years, we still barely knew each other.
“Did you have fun skiing a few weeks ago?” I asked as we stood side-by-side at the counter, chopping veggies. “I had no idea you skied. You’re a lot braver than me.”
“Skiing?” She handed me the cheese grater, her face scrunched in confusion. “Oh, skiing. Right. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip. This therapy group I go to? Every once in a while they make us do something totally out of our comfort zone. Last fall it was camping out in the wilderness. I’d take skiing over that any day.”
Again, I had to contain my shock. Therapy group?
“It was the camping trip that really got to me,” she said, her eyes on the lettuce she was shredding. “When you’re out there with nothing, no comforts, no family, you sort of have to learn to trust the people around you. And yourself too. You know?”
My mind flashed on that day last fall when she had come into my room, all cleaned up and surprisingly friendly. Right after she’d been gone for a few days, supposedly with “friends”. I guess I’d never thought enough about my stepsister to recognize what was really going on. But I got it now. She’d had to deal with the fallout of Dad and Lynn’s affair too. She’d been hurt and betrayed too. And her childhood had been far more dysfunctional than mine.
“When you came back,” I said, a rush of boldness coming over me, “you were different.”
Her lips turned up in a faint smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I was. Perspective is a funny thing.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I nodded anyway. “It sure is.”
She gave me a long look, as if something about me had surprised her. It must have been a welcome surprise, because she smiled at me full-on. It totally transformed her face. “We should probably get these shells in the oven. Want to go get Jamie?”
After dinner, Leanne helped me clean up and then left for her concert. While I waited for Michael to arrive I took Leo out for a run around the backyard. Ten minutes later, when he was satisfied he had peed on every tree and every shrub in the yard, we went back inside for a drink.
I was standing at sink, filling his water bowl, when a pair of arms suddenly grabbed my waist from behind. I jumped in surprise, causing the water to slosh onto the counter and floor. I whirled around to see Michael’s smiling face. “Sorry I’m late,” he said after kissing me hello.
My heart raced in my chest. “What are you trying to do, send me into cardiac arrest?”
“Jamie let me in,” he said, ripping off some paper towel to help me clean up the puddles. “I couldn’t resist sneaking up on you.”
Leo started whining from the laundry room. Obviously he’d caught sight of Michael, who he had grown to adore. The feeling was mutual; Michael could never resist Leo’s plaintive squeaks and grunts for attention. As I disposed of the wet towels, Michael leaned over the gate to give the dog a scratch under his ears, a move guaranteed to invoke a drooly doggy grin.
“Why are you late?” I asked, glancing at the clock. It was twenty minutes past when he said he’d be here.
“Had some stuff to do at home.”
Now that I had slowed down enough to focus, I noticed he looked tired, distracted. “Everything okay?”
He forced a smile. “Fine.”
“Let’s go in my room and talk for a while. Jamie’s probably back to blowing up aliens or robots or whatever those things are.”
“Later,” he said, steering me out of the kitchen. “Don’t worry about me.”
We watched a movie in the living room and then popped some popcorn for Jamie, but it was evident the whole time that Michael’s heart wasn’t really in it. At ten, Jamie went to bed and Michael and I shut ourselves up in my room, alone at last. I locked the door behind us and settled in beside him on the bed, my head on his shoulder. As he slid his arms around me, the tension in his body was palpable.
“What’s going on at home?” I asked, running my fingers over the collar of his shirt.
“Fight with my dad.”
When he said that, I knew immediately what was wrong. This past Wednesday, Michael had gotten acceptance letters from both Kinsley and Avery. As of last night he’d been planning on talking to his father about going to Kinsley, at least for this year, and maybe getting a job too. He wanted to be near me, sure, but that wasn’t all. Kinsley was what he wanted. I tried to be noncommittal about it, although the possibility of his staying here thrilled me. But Michael had predicted his father’s reaction, and it looked like he was right.
“What happened?”
“The usual,” he said with a hopelessness that made my heart ache. “I’m so tired of fighting with him. Tired of trying to be everything Josh isn’t. Tired of all of it.”
I shifted closer to him, pressing my forehead into the space between his shoulder and neck. “So it didn’t go well,” I said, my tone giving away my disappointment.
For what felt like forever, Michael just stared up at the ceiling, one hand resting on his chest as the other hand traced patterns on my upper back. “I’m going to Avery in the fall,” he finally said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” He seemed desperate for me to understand this. “But I have to get out of my house.”
I silenced him with my eyes. “I know. You don’t have to explain.”
He held my gaze for a moment, memorizing my features as if he had to leave me in five minutes instead of in five months. “Nothing’s going to change,” he said, his dark eyes almost black in the muted light. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure. How could things not change with him at Avery for months at a time and me stuck back here?
My breath caught as he touched my cheek and then lowered his face to mine. Our kissing felt tinged with urgency, as if someone had pushed a button somewhere, starting a countdown of what little time we had left. We both knew the next five months would fly by even quicker than the first.
Later, as we lay nestled in my bed, Michael’s chest flush against my back, it got so quiet that I was sure he’d fallen asleep. But then, out of nowhere: “There something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“What?” I said, yawning.
“Will you go to my prom with me?”
I smiled. “Of course.”<
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His arm grew heavier on my waist and within five minutes, he really did fall asleep. But I stayed wide awake, my mind racing like a movie on fast-forward as I contemplated the future. Our future. In an attempt to calm myself, I brought my hand to my mouth to give my thumbnail a nibble, like old times. But it didn’t help this time. Nothing did, until I started concentrating on the feel of Michael’s breath on the back of my neck. I closed my eyes, letting the soft rhythm of it, along with the familiar cinnamon scent, lull me into nothingness.
Chapter 21
The next night I was in my room, doing math homework and biting my nails down to the quick.
Well, I wasn’t actually doing my math homework. I was looking at my math homework, but not concentrating. My mind was fully focused on the sound of my mother nagging at Emma to brush her teeth and go to bed. Then, I knew, she would make herself a chamomile tea and plant her behind on the couch. Relaxed and unsuspecting.
I listened as my sister flushed the toilet, ran the water in the sink, and shut herself up in her room. Then I listened some more as my mother opened and shut cupboards, boiled some water, and hummed along to the theme song of the sitcom playing on the TV, which blared from the living room. Humming meant she was in a good mood.
Not for long, I thought as I threw down my pencil and left the safety of my room. Here goes nothing.
At first I just stood in the doorway to the living room and watched her as she curled up on the couch with her mug. She sipped her tea and pressed buttons on the remote, unaware of my spying. When she did notice me, I hastily rearranged my facial features to look less stricken.
“How’s the math coming along, honey?” she asked, placing the remote on the coffee table.
“Fine,” I replied automatically. The gutless side of me yearned to back up, back into my room, far away from the living room and my mother and the truth. But I refused to chicken out. If Michael could fight with his big scary father, then surely I could do this.
“Mom?” I said, sinking into the chair beside her. “I need to talk to you.”
Something in my voice must have signaled her to panic because her face drained completely of color. She set the cup of tea down next to the remote as her other hand fluttered to her chest. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. She looked terrified, as if she was waiting for me to tell her I was on drugs or pregnant or something else equally as appalling.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I mean, it’s not…I’m okay. I swear.”
She let out a breath and her face pinked up again. “What is it then?”
“First you have to promise me you won’t freak out.”
She pulled the hem of her shirt down over her stomach and then folded her arms across her chest. “I can’t promise anything. Just spit it out and then we’ll deal with it as best we can.”
As best we can. Her idea of “best” and mine were undoubtedly two very different things. Regardless, I did as she suggested and just spit it out.
“Michael asked me to his prom.”
I expected screaming. I expected drama, threats, and maybe even some more broken dishes. But none of those things happened. My mother simply tilted her head at me and said, “Huh.”
“Huh? That’s all you have to say?”
She let out a little laugh. “No, that is not all I have to say, Taylor. You can count on that.”
“I never did stop seeing him,” I said, launching headfirst into my carefully orchestrated speech. “I love him, Mom. I won’t break up with him even if you tell me to.”
She leaned forward to retrieve her tea, a tiny smile on her lips. “Teenage self-absorption never ceases to amaze me,” she said, shaking her head into her cup. “Taylor, honey…I know you’re still seeing Michael. I’ve known it all along.”
My jaw went slack. I couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d just told me George Clooney had called and asked her for a date. “What do you mean, you knew? Why didn’t you say anything?”
My mother calmly blew on her tea before answering, dragging it out as if savoring my shock. “Taylor, not much gets past me. I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind. And unlike your father, I pay close attention. When you lied to me that day in the mall, when we were at Cinnabon, I knew I was dealing with something far more serious than I thought.”
My mouth fell open again. And here I thought I’d had her snowed. She was an even better liar than I was. Who knew?
“You’re just as stubborn as I am,” she went on. “You were going to do what you wanted no matter what I said. So I waited…and I watched. I imagined it would fizzle out on its own, or you would break down and tell me. When a few weeks passed and neither of those things happened, I called your father.” She paused again to slurp her tea. “He told me all about him…the boy. Michael. Said he’s a nice kid, comes from a good family, and he treats you well. ‘The way she deserves to be treated’, your father said.”
My eyes watered at that. Sometimes Dad could be sweet.
“He told me not to worry, that he was keeping his eye on the two of you. Steven promised me he would talk to you and lay down some ground rules about supervision. I heard all about your little chat last month in the den. He let you off the hook that night, I guess you could say. That was our plan.”
Flabbergasted, I again asked, “Why didn’t you say anything?” All that time I had been (allegedly) sneaking around, hiding Michael from her, hiding my life from her, and it was all for nothing? She knew?
“Because,” she said, her lips thinning, “I was waiting for you to dig your own hole, which you most certainly did. The way I saw it, the longer you lied to me and kept this from me, the longer I would ground you when you finally told me the truth. Now that you have, it’s time to face the consequences.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “So you’re saying I can’t go to Michael’s prom?”
“Oh you can go,” she told me. “But you’re grounded for a month.”
“A month? I can’t do that.”
“You will do that. A month apart from the boy is nothing, Taylor, compared to forever.” She pointed at me. “It could have been forever, you know. Keep that in mind.”
I shook my head, exasperated. “So you tell me I can see Michael and then ban me from seeing him?”
“It’s a month, Taylor.” She put down her cup with a clunk. “If you still want to see him after your month is up, then fine, I’ll allow it. With rules and conditions, of course.”
If I still wanted to see him? That pissed me off even more than the grounding. “It’s not some silly infatuation or crush with him, you know, Mom. Of course I’ll still want to see him after my month is up. I’d still want to see him if it were six months. Or a year. Or however long it happens to be.”
“Fair enough.” She yawned, obviously unmoved by my passionate declaration.
Annoyed, I jerked my head toward the TV, which showed one of those home renovation shows with people in hard hats working together to tear down an old house and make it new again, providing a needy family with a new lease on life. One of Mom’s favorite shows, though she’d never admit it.
“You can thank your aunt Gina for this,” Mom said suddenly, her eyes joining mine on the TV screen. “She was the one who suggested I might be projecting my own issues with men onto you. She said I’ve been giving you the wrong idea.”
Now it was my turn to say “Huh?”
“Regardless of what Gina thinks, I still think you’re far too young for a serious relationship. The deeper you get into this, the more it’s going to hurt later.”
“Like later when he leaves for college? Or later when we break up? Or both? You want it to end, is that it? Are you looking forward to some big, dramatic breakup so you can say you knew it all along? That you’d been there once too?”
“Of course not,” she said, hurt creasing her brow. “How can you even say that, Taylor? That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to protect you from. The last thing I want is for you to get hurt. I know how intense
these feelings can be at your age. Break-ups can shatter you, and it feels like end of the world.”
“At any age,” I said, remembering the day I found her at the table, balls of napkins at her feet. “You can’t protect me from everything, Mom. I’m not six anymore. And if I do get hurt, you won’t be able to make it all better.”
She rubbed her forehead. “That’s exactly what keeps me up at night.”
“Some girls my age are flunking out of school or doing drugs or burning their houses down. Would you rather I burn the house down?” When she failed to answer right away, I turned to glare at her. “Mom.”
“What? Houses can be replaced. Look.” She nodded toward the TV. The new house was complete, and unrecognizable when compared to how it used to be. The family was thrilled, jumping around and crying and hugging each other.
“These shows are so corny,” I said, getting up. My math homework was waiting, not to mention a month of solitary confinement.
“Yeah,” Mom agreed, but when I turned back to tell her good night, she was hastily wiping tears from her eyes.
Chapter 22
“Try this,” Robin said, unearthing a small, wine-colored tube of lipstick from the pocket of her denim shorts. “I wear it whenever I wear black.”
“But Robin,” I said, “you and I have totally different coloring.”
“Coloring, shmoloring. Lips are lips.”
“Really. I already have my lipstick. Ashley lent me the perfect one.”
She slipped the lipstick back into her pocket. “So you have something borrowed and something new. You just need something old and something blue.”
I turned away from the mirror to stare at her. “This isn’t my wedding day, Rob. It’s the prom.”
She grinned. “It’s all about luck.”
Just You Page 17