by Chris Cannon
“I think he just likes giving me crap. If this were a novel, the love of a good woman would save West and turn him into a happier person”
“I’m pretty sure that only happens in books,” Lisa said. “In real life, if you’re unhappy, you need to work to change yourself. Having someone who cares about you helps, but it’s not a magic anti-jerk pill.”
“That sounded profound until the anti-jerk-pill part.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw West and his friends approaching. They joined us at our table. West sat next to me.
“I’m sorry. Are you lost?” I asked. He’d given me trouble, so I felt the need to return the favor.
“Clarissa gets off work in half an hour, and she wants to watch the movie with Charlie, which apparently means Matt and I are also watching Harry Potter.”
I leaned over and whispered. “Have you figured out what you’re wearing to the Valentine’s Dance?”
“No. Because we’re not going,” he said.
I elbowed him in the ribs. “Yes we are.”
“I’m trying to watch the movie,” West said. “Please keep your delusional thoughts to yourself.”
I inched my chair closer so my arm was touching his. He looked at me, like he was wondering what I was up to. I batted my eyelashes at him and grinned. He rolled his eyes, but then he put his arm around my shoulders.
Score one for the bookworms of the world. I leaned into him, enjoying the warmth. I ignored reality and watched the movie. It wasn’t long until Clarissa came and joined Charlie at the table. They made a cute couple. The setup could have been awkward for Matt and Lisa, but neither of them seemed bothered by the situation. I envied Lisa’s laid-back attitude about life. Where I liked to argue and wear people down, she tended to flow along with the tide. Nothing really bothered her. Matt seemed fairly relaxed. Maybe they’d make a good couple.
They say opposites attract. West and I were certainly opposites. I liked my life full of dog fur and stacks of books. He just wanted to cut down on things that could collect dust. I still couldn’t believe his attitude toward the Hilmer Library. Maybe I could do something to change his mind.
We watched the movie in silence, but I was hyperaware of his arm around my shoulders and the warmth of his touch. I wanted to turn my face to his to see if he would kiss me.
It had been a few days since he’d done anything but make small talk. The rational part of my brain reminded me that even though West may be a hottie and he might smell good, that didn’t mean he was the guy for me. Somewhere out there, there was probably a guy who owned a massive library, just waiting for me to show up so we could talk books. If I was smart, I’d play it cool with West and be on the lookout for a guy who dreamed of building a house with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
Rather than think big thoughts, I let myself get lost in the magic of Hogwarts. When the movie wrapped up, West moved his arm from around my shoulders. Now what? Why did that seem to be the daily question around him?
He moved his chair away from mine and took a drink of his soda. “Nothing like a wild and crazy Saturday night of watching Harry Potter.”
“Charlie and Clarissa seem to be hitting it off,” I said.
Lisa scooted closer. “Matt asked if I’d give him a ride home so he doesn’t have to butt in on his brother’s date. I figured since West was here, he could give you a ride.”
“What do you think?” I asked him, not wanting to presume anything and jinx the situation.
“It’s not far,” he said. “You could walk.”
Chapter Twenty
West
“I could,” Nina said. “But then I might trip over my own feet walking up the driveway, bump into your driver’s-side mirror, and knock it off. Accidentally, of course.”
“Not funny,” I said. Even though it was a little funny. “I guess I can give you a ride home.”
“Thank you.”
Once everyone had his or her ride situation taken care of, Nina followed me out to my car.
She examined the repaired passenger door mirror. “Good as new.”
“Let’s keep it that way.” I climbed into the car and hit the automatic unlock so she could get in.
“Your cousins seem nice,” she said.
Was she trying to make conversation, or was she saying she was interested in them? Charlie appeared to be off the market, but Matt was still single. The idea of Nina with either of them made the chili cheese fries I’d eaten shift around in my gut. “Yeah. They’re good guys.”
“Maybe Lisa and Matt will hit it off,” she said.
“Doubtful. Matt isn’t really interested in dating one girl.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He seems to date around.”
Nina’s phone buzzed with a text. She sucked in a breath like she was excited about something. Had some guy texted her?
“I don’t suppose I could talk you into swinging by the bookstore?” she said with a hopeful look on her face. “A book I ordered came in.”
She was that excited about a book? That was nerdily cute, and it’s not like I had anything better to do. “Sure. What’s the book?”
“It’s the third book in a dystopian romance, and I’ve been waiting on it for a year.”
“A romance?”
“Oh, please. All books have romance in them. You can’t tell me you weren’t waiting for Ron to kiss Hermione.”
“Nope. I wasn’t.”
“Sure you weren’t. I think guys and book snobs are afraid to admit romance is part of every book and everyone’s life. Too bad it works out so much better in books than in real marriages.”
She sounded more cynical about the whole romance thing than most females I knew. “I thought all girls believed in love and happily ever after.”
“I used to believe in that, and then I found out my dad had another wife and family.”
Well, hell. What did I say to that? We’d reached the bookstore, so I pulled in and parked. “Your dad had another family?”
She nodded. “Yep. A wife and two kids while he was still married to my mom.”
“Okay. You can be as cynical as you want.”
“The real kicker is the other kids were so much younger than us. Like we weren’t the family he wanted, so he decided to start over.”
“Did the second family know about you and your mom?” I asked.
“No. He’d lied to her, too, though she stayed with him for a while and tried to make it work. After she kicked him out, he called my mom to complain.”
“That’s ballsy,” I said. “Or really stupid.”
She nodded. “My mom never told me, but I think he asked if he could come back.”
“But your mom was too smart for that.”
“Thank goodness. I don’t know how she could trust him or how any of us could after he’d lied…literally, for years.”
“Which is why you insist on always telling the truth.” It all made sense now.
“Yes.” She glanced over at me. “Lisa is the only other person who knows about this, so I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”
“I can do that.”
The fierce expression Nina normally wore was gone. She looked sort of sad and deflated.
“The reason your dad started another family is not because there was anything wrong with any of you. It’s because there was something wrong with him.”
“I wish I could believe that,” she said.
I couldn’t believe I was about to say this, but it felt like the right thing to do. “You need a hug, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and moved toward her. She met me halfway. Putting my arms around her and pulling her close felt natural. We fit together easily. The apple-mint scent of her hair invaded my senses, reminding me of the last time we’d been this close in a parking lot, where I’d planned on kissing her until that car honked and messed things up.
Right now, I wanted to comfort her, but there was more
to it than that. I wanted to touch her. Sitting at Bixby’s with my arm around her shoulders had felt right. And now, I wanted to kiss her. Before I could put my plan into motion, Nina released me.
“Thanks, I needed that.” She turned and opened the car door, so I followed her across the parking lot, trying to think of something to say that might make her feel better about her family. In a weird way, her confession made me feel better about my own situation. My mom might be mental, but my dad had stayed by her side. He could have left her, could have left me to deal with the craziness by myself while he found someone else to marry. I’d never thought of it like that before. My respect for him went up a few notches.
We entered the store, which smelled like coffee and cookies. It had been forever since I’d been in a real bookstore. There were rows upon rows of books and a large clearance section. Surprisingly, there was a line at the front desk.
“I think they’re texting everyone to come pick up their books. You can look around while I wait in line.”
I didn’t need any books. I could buy anything I wanted on my Kindle. But I was here, so I might as well look. “I’ll check out the clearance section.” There were several aisles of discounted books. Some new and some used. A science fiction book I’d been meaning to read caught my eye. Nina’s comment about losing all digital content if there was an EMP blast came to mind. Maybe having a few paperbacks on hand wasn’t a terrible idea.
Then again, bringing anything into my house was a bad idea. I regularly had nightmares where my house sank into the ground from all the excess weight of my mother’s hoard. I put the book back and headed toward the checkout line to join Nina.
“You didn’t find anything?” She seemed surprised. “How is that possible?”
“I found a few things but nothing I couldn’t live without,” I said.
She shook her head. “You either have way too much will power, or you’re a tiny bit crazy.”
“Probably both,” I said.
“Normal is overrated.” She grinned at me and then moved forward to the next open cashier.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nina
After I paid for my book, I followed West back out to his car. Telling him the truth about my family had felt freeing. Once we were on the road again, I said, “It’s kind of nice that you know the truth about my family. It’s cool that I can share things with you and you understand.”
“I’m the last person to judge anyone’s messed-up family,” he said.
“Do you ever think that everyone is just pretending and those perfect families you see on television don’t actually exist.”
“I think every family has issues,” he said. “Some are bigger or stranger or sadder than others.”
Which one of those categories did he place his own home life in? It’s not like I could ask, but I suspected he classified his situation as sad. Not that I could blame him.
Unable to resist, I cracked my book and started reading. I didn’t realize we were in the driveway until West put the car in park and said, “Earth to Nina.”
“Sorry.” I slid the receipt between the pages to mark my place. “Thanks for giving me a ride.” And suddenly it seemed awkward. Was this a date? Would he ever try to kiss me again? Should I just go?
His phone buzzed and he checked it, which gave me an easy out. “See you later.”
“See ya,” He continued reading his text, and I climbed out of the car, intent on hiding away in my room for a marathon reading session.
Sunday was a glorious day. I read my book on the couch, between doing loads of laundry. My mom hated laundry, and my brother was banned from touching the washer and dryer since he shrank a load of my mom’s good blouses by drying them on high. I found laundry cathartic, and I loved the smell of dryer sheets.
The only part I didn’t like was schlepping the clean clothes upstairs to our bedrooms. We used to live in a ranch house where everything was on one floor.
I was folding a load of towels, which were still warm from the dryer, when my cell buzzed. Lisa’s mom had told her there was a rally to raise money to keep the Hilmer Library open. It was scheduled for later today. I bet West and his social studies teacher didn’t know about that. Lisa planned to pick me up in a few hours.
The meeting was at a donut shop near the library. On the plus side, the owner gave us free bear claws. On the negative side, Lisa and I were the youngest people in the room by about twenty years. Where were all the other high-school-aged bookworms?
“We are racing against the clock, ladies,” the speaker said. “A rehab date has been set. They plan to pretty much gut the place and turn it into a recycling center. We still might have a chance to keep the library open until the new one is completed, but we need to get the word out. We’ve handed out fliers, but we need another approach. Any ideas?”
I raised my hand. “There’s a social studies teacher who is giving students extra credit for helping with projects that help the community. One of the projects is volunteering to help salvage things from the library before the building is rehabbed. Why can’t we start a group for extra credit to help keep the library open?”
“It can’t hurt,” the speaker said. “My daughter-in-law, Mrs. Stone, is an English teacher at the high school.” She pulled out her cell. “Give me a moment.”
After a quick conversation, the speaker said, “My daughter-in-law is going to talk to the social studies department about asking students to help maintain the library as one of their extra credit projects.”
If the social studies teacher agreed, this could be awesome. West could get extra credit for keeping the library open, instead of working to turn it into a recycling center.
“Any other ideas?” the woman asked.
Several women offered to pass out more fliers, and a few offered to do an informational picket line. Lisa and I volunteered to pass out fliers at school. Who knew? Maybe we could make a difference.
…
When I went home, Gidget met me at the door, transmitting joy and happiness. “I’m happy to see you, too.”
No one else seemed to be home, so I curled up on the couch with Gidget and my book. An hour later, my mom came in the front door, and she wasn’t alone. She was with the one person I never wanted to see again. I stared at the man who’d thrown us away.
“Hi, Nina.”
“Hello, Dad.” He looked a little worse for wear. His shirt was wrinkled, like he’d slept in it, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “What a surprise.” And not a pleasant one. I looked at my mom for some sort of explanation.
“He needed my signature to sell his car,” Mom said.
I laughed. “Of course. Because it’s not like he’d come to visit, since he doesn’t give a crap about any of us.”
“Nina.” My dad came toward me but stopped short of touching me. “You know I still care about you.”
Anger surged inside of me like a geyser. “How? How would I know that? When was the last time you made an effort to speak to Jason or me?”
He blinked and looked down at the carpet. “There’s no excuse for what I did, but it wasn’t about you and your brother, or even your mom. It was my issue.”
“Yeah, well your issue screwed up our lives. And saying you’re a shitty person doesn’t make up for the damage you did.”
“Nina.” My mom’s voice was gentle. “He’ll be gone in five minutes. I promise. Believe me, I don’t want him here either.”
I couldn’t deal with this, so I headed out the back door. How could my mom even be in the same room with him? I stalked past the patio furniture and kept walking.
I hated the way he made me feel—angry and worthless. And his it’s-not-you-it’s-me excuse was total crap. Nervous energy buzzed through my veins like electricity, so I kept walking past the shed and past West’s barbecue court. I wove through some evergreen trees and came to a halt at the fence that marked the end of our property. No, not our property…West’s family’s property. My anger circled
around again. My dad was the reason we were stuck renting. Who knew if we’d ever have our own house again?
I grabbed the top metal bar of the chain-link fence and stared past it. A field separated us from the houses in the next subdivision. Nothing to see out here. Now what? And why hadn’t I thought to grab a coat? Goose bumps broke out on my arms. I released the cold metal fence and hugged myself for warmth.
“Nina?”
I turned around. “West? What are you doing out here?”
“You stole my line.” He came closer. “Are you okay?”
“No.” And I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d managed not to cry up to this point, but if I talked about it, the angry tears might make a break for it.
“I was about to start a fire, if you want to come sit with me.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.” I followed him back to the overgrown basketball court. The barbecue pit was full of paper covered with charcoal. I sat in one of the lawn chairs and pulled my knees up to my chest.
West sat and scooted his lawn chair close to mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I studied his face. Concern shone from his bright blue eyes. He really did care. But talking about it wouldn’t change anything. “Can I have a hug instead?”
“Sure.” He wrapped his arms around me. I closed my eyes and sighed, trying to let my cares slide away. It wasn’t working. I needed a distraction. And there happened to be a handsome, masculine-smelling hottie-of-a-distraction right in front of me. I repositioned myself so my mouth lined up with his and waited to see if he’d play along.
A cold wet splat landed on the top of my head. I jerked backward. “What the hell?”
Big, fat raindrops splattered all around us. “Seriously?” Like I needed to be rained on right now.
“Come on.” West grabbed my hand and we ran through the rain until we reached the overhang of the shed.
And now we had a problem. “I’m not ready to go back in my house yet, and we can’t go in yours. I mean you could go in yours…” I hoped he wouldn’t leave me.
“If I show you something, you can’t make fun of me,” West said.