by Sam Mariano
“No,” I murmur flatly, my face heating with shame I did nothing to earn. “That wasn’t me.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, no longer looking at the application as she lets her arm fall to her side. “Well, we’re not really looking for anyone with your… qualifications right now, but I’ll keep your application on file in case something opens up.”
No, she won’t. I attempt a polite smile, but I’m too disappointed.
I murmur a pointless thank you, anyway, and turn around.
Anderson follows, no longer worried about getting a doughnut.
The bell chimes and I step out onto the sidewalk.
“What was she talking about?”
I look over at Anderson stopped on the sidewalk beside me. “Some dumb rumor that was going around last year,” I say glumly.
“You and a teacher?” he asks skeptically.
His tone makes me frown. It almost sounds like he thinks it’s factual. “Rumor, Anderson. It wasn’t true.”
He frowns. “Why would anyone even think that, though? That’s a crazy thing to make up.”
“Yeah, well, Valerie Johnson is crazy,” I mutter, starting to walk away from the stupid doughnut shop. I can just imagine Mona the doughnut lady watching out the window, gossiping about me with her employee who couldn’t care less.
“What does she have to do with it?” he asks, following behind me.
“She’s the one who started the rumor. One of her friends caught him making out with some girl in his car, and she told everyone it was me.”
“Why would she do that?”
I look over at him, noting his doubtful frown. “I’m not really in the mood to explain mean girls, Anderson. Can we just drop this?”
“I mean… no,” he says reluctantly, casting me an almost apologetic look. “You not wanting to talk about it just makes me wonder about it even more.”
“I don’t want to talk about it because it’s not a nice memory. People were really mean to me—not just kids at school, either. Adult women. My mom had to go to a PTO meeting and rip into them to get it to stop, and it only really stopped because summer finally came and people had a few months away from school to focus on other things.”
“Is that what you were talking about before? You said someone told a lie about you and everyone believed it.”
I sigh, already tired of this conversation. Even more tired of it because I know my answer won’t be reassuring. “No. That was a different lie told by a different person.”
“Is this something that happens to you a lot?” he asks skeptically. “People making up lies about you?”
I stop walking and turn to look at him as he slows to a stop beside me. I could just point out that they’re related—the initial lie facilitated the later lies about me and made them seem believable. But, frankly, I don’t appreciate having to explain myself. I don’t appreciate the subtle implication that it must be my fault people would say bad things about me. That I must have done something to deserve it.
Folding my arms across my chest defensively, I say, “You know what, I think I’m gonna go home.”
His eyebrows rise in wounded surprise. “What? But we were supposed to have dinner together.”
We were, and I am hungry, but my desire to have dinner with him has swiftly evaporated.
It’s a shame, too. I was looking forward to this date when the day began. I thought it was exactly what we needed. These first few days of school have been a trial. I thought today would give us a chance to get away from all the things that have created distance between us this week.
I also really wanted a sandwich.
The local butcher shop makes these specialty sandwiches—a new kind every day, and they serve them until they’re sold out. They sell out nearly every day because they’re so delicious. Last time I checked their Instagram account, they hadn’t sold out yet today. They don’t have seating at the shop, but the plan was we would sit on the benches outside and eat our sandwiches before heading over to the bookstore. Anderson isn’t much of a reader, but he does like Stephen King, so he didn’t completely hate my date idea.
Now I do, though. Not because of the activities, but because I’m rapidly losing interest in my companion.
“Come on, I know you’re hungry. Let’s just drop this for now and go get some food.”
I don’t feel like budging, but I don’t feel like arguing, either.
My tummy rumbles as if to cast its own vote, so even though I’m no longer excited about it, I uncross my arms and start walking with him toward the butcher shop.
We don’t speak, though. We walk in silence.
This isn’t anything like the date I’d been hoping for. I know it’s not for him, either, but considering his reaction to that stupid rumor Valerie and her posse spread about me, I can’t muster much sympathy.
I can’t muster much optimism about this relationship, either. I liked Anderson over the summer so I don’t know how we’re sliding downhill so fast, but we’ve been back to school for less than a week, and I’ve already thought about breaking up with him more than once.
I grab the door and we head inside.
There’s one person ahead of us, but the shop is otherwise empty. I’m not paying much attention at first, but then I take a closer look.
The back of that head looks awfully familiar. My gaze drifts to his heavily inked arms, which I also recognize.
“Ray?”
He turns around, his stoic expression easing into a more pleasant one at the sound of my voice. He flicks a glance at Anderson before his gaze lands back on me. “Hey, Riley.”
Some of my grumpiness dissipates. “Are you here for a sandwich of the day, too?”
Ray shakes his head. “Just picking up a couple of steaks. Thought I’d surprise your mom with dinner when she gets home from work.”
“That sounds nice,” I say, glancing over at Anderson as he steps up beside me. He looks at Ray like he wants an introduction.
He and Ray haven’t met yet, but the mood I’m in right now, I’m not exactly eager to introduce them.
“What’s up?” Anderson asks casually, nodding his head.
Ray eyes him up but doesn’t respond. Instead, he says to me, “This the Scorpio?”
Anderson darts a questioning glance my way. “The Scorpio?”
“Zodiac sign,” I explain, without really explaining.
This doesn’t clear anything up for him. “I’m not a Scorpio. I’m a Libra.”
Ray emits a low, unimpressed-sounding murmur.
Anderson’s gaze snaps to him, then back to me. “I’m lost.”
I don’t loop Anderson in. Instead, I tell Ray, “He’s not the one who sent the flowers. The Scorpio is someone else.”
“You figured out who sent you the flowers?” Anderson asks, understandably curious.
That’s another question I don’t feel like answering, so I make an introduction that turns awkward fast. “This is my… Anderson. This is Anderson.”
The faintest glimmer of amusement passes through Ray’s eyes, but I only notice it because I know him a little better. When he turns his gaze on Anderson, it’s hard and entirely unamused.
“Her boyfriend,” Anderson says flatly, thrusting his hand out.
Ray doesn’t look altogether convinced or interested in shaking hands, but after a couple seconds, he decides not to leave Anderson hanging and gives it a firm shake. “Ray.”
“Ray is my… well, my mom’s—”
“I’m Riley’s father,” Ray supplies, cutting me off.
My eyebrows rise sharply in surprise, but I can’t deny a little burst of happiness I feel hearing him say that. “Ray is my mom’s boyfriend. He’s a little crazy,” I state good-naturedly.
Ray releases Anderson’s hand and shrugs. “We’ll get married eventually, figured I might as well start claiming you now.”
The man behind the counter places Ray’s order on the counter. “Anything else I can get you today?”
Ray reaches into his back pocket and draws out a wallet, but then he looks over at me. “Go ahead and order, I got it.”
“Oh, I’ll pay for her,” Anderson interjects. Then to the guy behind the counter, he says, “We want to get two orders of the sandwich of the day.”
The man shakes his head. “Sold out. Sorry.”
On one hand, I’m disappointed. I really wanted that sandwich.
On the other hand, I’m in a bad mood, and I really want to bail on this date. I think I just found the perfect excuse.
“Aw, that’s a shame. But you know what? Actually, Ray, you probably need me to get into the house, right? You don’t have a key, and Mom’s not home yet, so I’ll have to let you in.”
Ray meets my gaze, catching on quickly. Thankfully, he plays along without hesitation. “That’s right. It’s a good thing I ran into you.”
I nod, so relieved that I forget I’m annoyed at Anderson and shoot him an apologetic smile. “Maybe we can grab a sandwich tomorrow.”
Anderson does not look remotely pleased. “I can’t tomorrow, that’s why we made plans today.”
“Oh. Right. Well, another time.”
The awkwardness is palpable as we all stand here, Anderson put out that I’m ditching him and only barely pretending to be bummed about it. Me, I just want to get the hell out of here, so I ignore the tension and look to Ray for help.
No more interested than I am in sticking around and soaking up the discomfort, Ray looks at the meat packed up on the counter, then asks the butcher, “Can I get one more of those? Turns out my daughter will be home for dinner, after all.”
Chapter Seventeen
Riley
Ray doesn’t say anything as I slide into the passenger seat of his car. He doesn’t ask about the awkward way I just dropped my boyfriend or my clear desperation to get away from him. Ray knows if all he needed was to be let into the house, I could have just given him my house key.
Hell, he was locked up for breaking into someone’s house—I don’t even know if he needs a key to get past a front door.
But he doesn’t ask, and after being grilled by Anderson, I deeply appreciate it.
Instead of interrogating me, he puts the steaks in the backseat, turns on the air conditioning, and fires up the engine. The radio suddenly blares from the speakers, filling the silence. The volume startles me, so he automatically reaches over to turn it down.
“Sorry about that. You want me to turn it off?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s fine. Just a little loud.”
He cracks a smile as he adjusts the volume a tad lower, then puts his hand back on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I’m not used to the quiet yet.”
I look over at him. “What do you mean?”
He glances at me, then checks his rearview mirror before he puts the car in reverse to back out of his parking spot. “Where I lived before. Not very quiet.”
“Oh. Right, I guess it wouldn’t be,” I murmur, looking down at my lap.
A few seconds pass and he doesn’t say anything else, so we fall into a companionable silence. I watch out the window as we drive through town, then when there’s nothing nice to look at anymore, I look back over at him.
“Sorry about crashing your date night with my mom.”
I’m sure he’s not thrilled about it, but you really can’t tell looking at him. He seems sincere when he shakes his head and says, “No worries.”
“I have a lot of homework to do tonight, anyway,” I assure him. “I don’t even have to eat with you guys, I can—”
He cuts me a look, interrupting without words. “I said it’s not a problem, Riley. Date night, family dinner—makes no difference to me. You can help me out if you want to. Throw together a salad or something and we’ll both take credit for the idea.”
Since he really doesn’t seem to mind that I invited myself to their date night, I relax a little… but only until I realize I told Mom I’d be out with Anderson tonight.
She’ll want to know what changed.
Even though it’s been a few days, I haven’t told her Hunter is back yet. I tell myself I’m not deliberately keeping it from her, that it just hasn’t come up between me being busy with school stuff and her being busy with work.
I know it’s not entirely true, though. My mom may be busy, but she’s never too busy for me.
I don’t want to tell her, that’s the real truth. She never liked Hunter, but she did soften toward him when I broke down and told her everything he was going through.
That soft spot hardened right back up when she heard from another mother what was going around the school about me. Only three people knew she’d caught Hunter in bed with me. It hadn’t come from her, and she knew I didn’t spread the rumor about myself.
I wanted to protect him, but I couldn’t lie to my mom. I tailored the truth as much as I could to make it sound less malicious, but she was always given to believing the worst about Hunter. His hasty decision to trash my reputation was all the evidence she needed to solidify her original belief that he was bad.
I sigh, resting my chin on my hand and looking out the window again.
“Everything okay?” Ray asks.
“Yeah.”
He gives me a few seconds to expand on that. When I don’t, he asks, “Fighting with your boyfriend?”
Boyfriend?
Oh, right. He just saw me blow off Anderson. Of course he thinks that’s what’s bothering me.
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. He pissed me off today, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.”
“Well, I’m a good listener if you’d like help working it out.”
I glance over at him. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my dumb boy troubles.”
Ray cracks a smile. “Try me.”
“It’s a long, stupid story,” I insist, shaking my head.
“I’ve got time.”
I think about it for a minute, but I don’t want to go into all of it. For one thing, even though it’s insane and stupid, some part of me doesn’t want to tell him about my history with Hunter. I tell myself I don’t know why, but deep down, I know I don’t want to give Ray a bad impression of him. It’s not like Mom wouldn’t fill him in on the details anyway, but I’d like for Ray to… not hate Hunter.
God, that’s stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It’s still the truth, though, so I omit Hunter’s part in all this and tell a greatly abridged version of the story. “There’s this mean girl at my school who’s been jealous of me since 8th grade because she thinks I hooked up with a guy we both liked.”
Since I pause here to see how he reacts, he gives a little nod of acknowledgment. “All right.”
“And she’s really good at holding a grudge, so she still hates me. I mean, I hate her, too, but that’s not the point.”
“Got it.”
“Last year she told everybody I had an affair with a married teacher—which, of course, wasn’t true.”
“Of course,” he puts in loyally.
“But a lot of people believed it.”
Ray nods his understanding. “Sometimes perception matters more than the truth.”
I nod a bit glumly, feeling the ickiness from the doughnut shop return. “I put in an application at the doughnut shop in town today, and the lady basically told me she didn’t hire whores.”
That gets his attention. He looks over at me, openly surprised. “Jesus Christ. She said that to you?”
“With her tone and the way she looked at me, not precisely with words.”
“Ah. Got it.”
I nod. “Anyway, Anderson was there with me even though I specifically asked him to wait outside, so he heard her accusation about me wrecking my teacher’s marriage. When we left, he started grilling me about it, and… I don’t know, it felt like he believed it or something. He came off very accusatory and like he wanted to know what I had done to make people say things like that about me. It just didn’t fe
el like he was on my side.”
Ray shakes his head, unimpressed. “What a little bitch.”
He startles me and I look over at him, biting back a smile. “Well, I didn’t say that…”
“I know, I did,” he says. “Letting strangers put doubts in his head about you.” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t sound like a catch to me.”
Even though I’m the one who started complaining about him, I find myself rising to his defense. “He’s a nice guy and everything, and I guess he wasn’t here, so maybe I should go easier on him… I don’t know, it just rubbed me the wrong way.”
He doesn’t offer another word about Anderson, instead switching tracks and asking, “And what about the one who sent you the flowers? Is he a nice guy?”
No.
Yes.
Sometimes.
I don’t know how to answer, so I just look at my lap. “He’s… complicated.”
Ray nods like he knows exactly what I mean, but he doesn’t freak out about it like my mom would. Instead, he gives me space to talk about it if I want to or let it go if I don’t.
I need a break from thinking about Hunter, so we let it go.
It’s nice.
It’s nice when we go home, too. I’m so used to it just being me and Mom, it feels a little strange at first, moving wordlessly around the kitchen as we work together to prepare dinner. My mom is pretty chatty so I’m not used to working in silence, but Ray isn’t very talkative when my mom isn’t around. It’s just what I need today. Companionable, peaceful calm. No prying into things I don’t want to talk about.
Then the front door opens and we both know that means Mom’s home. I hang back and get the plates out of the cupboard while he greets her and they bicker about our need for a real grill instead of the little George Foreman Ray is forced to work with.
“This is a grill,” Mom insists, as he locks an arm around her waist and tugs her close.