by Lena Maye
“Are we still on for Friday night?” Landry’s got this slight drawl, his words elongated like the rest of him.
“Friday?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. But my hips shift, and my eyes flit around his face. My body locks into sweet, college-girl mode as if on autopilot, and Landry takes the bait—his gaze sliding down my legs and back up.
There are two types of students at Rock Falls: the townies, like Cassie and me. And everyone else, like Landry with his blue Jeep and pre-paid tuition. Rich, preppy kids in shiny SUVs who wanted to go to college in a mountain town where we ditch class on Tuesdays to go snowboarding. And where marijuana is legal, which might as well be printed on the college brochure.
Us and them. Them and us. With a Continental-Divide-sized line between the two.
The guys I date, each and every one, come from them. It keeps my worlds separate. That way, they move out of town, and I don’t have to run into them at the laundromat.
“Mackie’s party,” Landry drawls. “Don’t tell me you forgot.” He licks his lips and glances between Cassie and me. “The party of the century?” He laughs uneasily. It’s an ongoing joke around here since that’s the exact opposite of every party in Rock Falls. Ever.
There are about a thousand reasons I don’t want to go to Mackie Jones’s party. First, Mackie isn’t my favorite person. Second, Mackie and Kepler are friends—if one can actually be friends with Kepler Quinn. Meaning Kepler will be there. Third… I don’t know. Kepler’s hypothesis put a weight on me. Like maybe going to parties isn’t the best choice.
“Yeah.” I give him a forced smile. “Friday slipped my mind.”
Landry looms closer. “Good thing I ran into you, then.”
I blink up at him. “It’s actually a terrible, horrible thing.”
He grins like he’s not sure if I’m joking. I’m not sure if I’m joking either. Why the hell did I make a date with him?
His lingering slowness makes it feel like his brain is three steps behind me. I don’t know what we’d talk about. No sparkling personality, and I don’t give a shit about his awesome ride. I’m certainly not thinking about fucking him. Not only that, but I agreed to the party while I was still dating Ty.
I hate that I glance towards that gray hoodie again. When my eyes meet his, Kepler snaps his textbook shut with so much force the sound carries across the stretch of grass between us.
Cassie snickers, probably at my long silence, which makes the whole situation more awkward. She steps next to me. “Sure we’ll be there.”
What? I shake my head and give Cassie the no-way-in-hell look. But she doesn’t see it because she’s grinning up at Landry. She’s such a sucker for guys. There’s no containing it.
“Cool.” Landry reaches out an arm as if he intends to give me a hug.
I jump back like he’ll catch me on fire. “Late for stats.” I grab Cassie and my feet tumble over each other in my effort to get to the sidewalk.
“Why did you do that?” I hiss in her ear.
She shrugs. “He’s kinda cute. And Mackie’s got those dimples.”
Oh, fuck. “Not Mackie. He’s…” But I don’t even have time to sort out what to say before I realize we’re walking in the wrong damn direction. Instead of walking away from Kepler’s steady gaze, I’m walking towards it. The breeze musses his hair. His legs cross at the ankles. Those gray eyes follow me until we disappear into the building.
And I still haven’t uttered a single sentence in his direction.
Five days until Mackie’s party. Then if Kepler even glances in my direction, he’s going to get a ripping. If I can manage to untie my tongue before then. And my “date” doesn’t get in the way.
Four
The house I grew up in is a red brick box with dead vines latched to the side. I don’t remember when the vines died. About the time my father left, I guess. Now the front lawn is studded with prickly weeds and my mom’s attempt at decor—a pink flamingo with red lipstick kisses all over it. Faded paint and a missing doorbell. Oh, and there’s the lingering unwanted memories too. Can’t forget those.
I park across the street because a semi-truck cab takes up my parking space in the driveway. My mom has a visitor, which isn’t uncommon for a Tuesday morning. Or any morning, really.
The midnight-blue truck takes up the entire freaking driveway, making me walk across the yard. Greg’s Haulage painted over dents and rust say the truck is probably older than me.
I visit her every week—just to make sure she hasn’t managed to forget to take out the trash for three weeks or forgotten to pay the electricity bill. I take a breath at the front door. I never know what I’m walking into at my mom’s, but I always feel this need to suit up for battle. So I strap on my armor and turn the handle.
Locked. My mom never bothers with locks.
I glare at the truck and circle to the side of the house where the fence lists inwards, threatening to fall on the dirt pathway. I have to push it up to pass through. That same fence tipped over on Kepler when he was helping my father all those years ago. My father was barking words in Korean about Kepler being too scrawny to hold up his end. Kepler was always so skinny in high school. I don’t know when he… well, became physically capable of holding up a fence.
The listing fence isn’t the only work that needs to be done. There’s a patch of missing shingles. A furnace that doesn’t always click on. And there isn’t enough money or lanky teenage boys to get the work done. The house keeps breaking down around us. At some point, it will crumble into uselessness, and we’re all just waiting for it to happen.
The sliding door bumps open. The living room is a square of dirty beige with one bookcase stacked full of my mom’s collectible bird figurines. Nothing is out of place, but nothing has a place either.
I cross the living room, avoiding the space that creaks and the coffee table that reaches out to snag ankles, and glance in the kitchen doorway, expecting to see my mom with her cup of coffee.
Instead I find a man.
A naked man. With his hand in my mom’s purse.
“Fucking seriously?” My voice bounces off sea-blue walls. The rest of the house might look like hell, but my mom always keeps the kitchen spotless. Which doesn’t make any sense since it was my father who cooked the meals. He was also the one who painted the walls blue.
Shit, Kepler helped with that too. Didn’t he have an everything-always-breaking home of his own?
The naked guy jumps and whips his hand out of my mom’s purse. He tries to deposit a wad of bills into a shirt pocket but hits only pasty skin and scraggly chest hair. His forehead wrinkles. Guess he didn’t realize he was half-naked. At least I hope he’s only half-naked. The kitchen island blocks my view of the terrifying possibilities.
Fucking Tuesdays. I hate coming here.
I step into the kitchen and rise to my full five-foot-zero potential. “Why are you snaking money out of my mom’s purse?”
He clutches the wad of twenties. “Who the hell are you?”
Ugh. So not putting up with this.
“Mom!” My voice echoes down the hallway.
He shakes his head. “Be quiet.” He looks from the money to me. His lone brain cell must be working overtime. “I’ll share it with you.”
“Hmm, let me think. How about no?” What bar was my mom crawling through to pick this treasure up? He’s even more smarmy than the ones she brings home from The Cork. I could ask, since my mom’s not a woman of secrets, but I don’t actually want to learn the answer to the question. It scares me that she lets strange guys drive her home. That she stays alone with them in this house. I don’t want to know more than that.
“Jean.” My mom steps into the kitchen with her hair pulled up and turquoise jewelry on and everything polished to a dull shine. She’s probably been trying to get rid of creepwad for a while. She has no problem picking them up, but unloading them is too uncomfortable for her. I’ve got the opposite problem, I guess.
I point an a
ccusing finger at the thief. “Creepwad here—”
“Greg,” she offers as if either of us cares.
“Creepwad Greg is stealing money from your purse.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s not doing that.” She shakes her head like I must be the crazy one.
“It’s in his hand, Mom,” I grumble. Before I realize it, my foot is pounding a rhythm on the floor. Tension crawls across my shoulders.
She fiddles with her bangs. “I guess.”
The guy—Greg or whatever—gives me a crooked-tooth grin. His eyes swivel between her and me. I already know what he’s thinking. It’s the same thing people always wonder when they glance between me and my very blond, very blue-eyed mother.
I brace myself for the inevitable question.
“Why is your daughter an Oriental?” he asks.
And there it is. I might punch him.
“I’m not a fucking rug.” I grab one of my mom’s empty coffee mugs out of the sink. A faded cardinal is printed across the front. The cup is smooth and cold in my palm. Like a bullet. “Put the money on the counter.”
The muscles in his forearm tighten as he clenches his fist harder around the stack of twenties. With a credit score like my mom’s, she handles everything with cash. The money in Greg’s hand is probably for food and the mortgage.
He shakes his head. “It’s not hers.”
Heat crawls through my bones and ligaments and tendons. It presses out into my fingers clenched around the mug. I hate him. Not Kepler hate. Deep, bitter, seething hate that lays thick on the air—like the sharp scent of Kepler’s weed.
“Get out.” My voice is low, forced. We’re way past fuck off.
Greg shakes his head like this is a discussion. “What are—”
The mug leaves my hand. Ceramic launches across the kitchen.
Greg ducks, those pasty arms flying up.
“Goddamn, Lilah!” he yells as if it was my mom who threw the thing at him.
The coffee cup’s mate sits in the sink. This one’s a parrot. My fingers twitch.
Greg clutches the money so hard his knuckles whiten. “You’re a little bitch.”
“You’re a little dick,” I snap back. He doesn’t know how much of a bitch I am capable of being.
I pick up the second mug. “Parrots fly too.”
Greg looks between my mom and me. I wait for him to drop the money. The fluorescent light buzzes. My mom’s perfume tickles my nose. She laughs a nervous titter.
Greg finally sighs and places the sweaty wad of money on the counter. “Fine, whatever.”
I set the mug carefully in the sink. My mom fiddles with her bangs and dips her face when Greg rushes past. It’s like she’s never gotten older than sixteen.
Greg mumbles more insults at me as he grabs his clothes from the back room and hurries to the front door. He stops and gives my mom a kiss on the cheek before leaving. The doting boyfriend.
I clench my trembling hands together and stare at the beige tile of the kitchen floor while he whispers something in her ear. She always chooses them.
She picked them over my father. Over me and Sloane. Outside the little box kitchen window, lilac bushes scratch against the glass. Leaves flutter in the light breeze. My heart slows to a dull thud.
Meaningless. All of this is so meaningless. And I’m the useless center fighting against what I can’t control.
Fuck. Why does this feeling remind me of breaking up with Ty? Or any of them. Like I keep supplying an answer, but to the wrong questions.
I don’t remember when she started bringing these assholes home. My father worked the evening shift over at Hal’s Grocery, and she would pick them up while he was gone. They’d trail behind her while Sloane and I ate frozen pizza and Doritos for dinner. Their feet would cross over scratches in the wooden floor from where my father and I hit hockey pucks back and forth. Over stains on the rug from when Sloane and I dropped a bottle of nail polish. They still step over them, and they don’t care.
They took my father from me.
I wish I could chase them all away.
“You broke my mug,” she says as soon as the door closes behind Greg. She crosses the kitchen and sets the pieces of ceramic on the counter. She turns on the water and waits for it to heat up. The steam rises as Greg’s truck rattles to life.
“I’m sorry. I…” When it’s just my mom and me, I never know what to say. Like this pressure builds up in my chest and stops me from speaking. We’ve been playing this game ever since my father left. It’s like that moment was so big that now there’s nothing else left to say except How are you? and Crappy weather we’re having.
She dumps detergent into the hot water. “Tell your sister the dishwasher’s leaking.”
I let out the breath that was caught in my throat. “Sure, Mom.” And I get a towel to help dry because there’s nothing else to do for her.
Five
The rest of my week consists of classes and studying punctuated with Kepler sightings. All of which piss me off because they make my feet come to a stop on the sidewalk.
Even worse, there’s yellow Kepler Post-its stuck on my door. Twice. Kepler’s name in sharp, certain strokes in the middle of both. Are they supposed to be an apology? A to-do list? A who’s-the-biggest-asshole-in-the-world reminder?
It’s really just evidence that he freaking exists. And of the whole “he saw through me” situation. Nothing seems to get that out of my mind. Not four miles of jogging along the narrow edge of road where cars have to swerve to avoid me. Not the thirty-minute conversation with The Bistro about how they are not going to serve pancakes for Cassie’s fundraiser. And not the three hours I spent online debating the reason for the railroad strike in 1877. I mean, seriously? Like I even fucking care about that. And to make matters even worse, I saw Creepwad Greg’s truck in my mom’s driveway on Thursday.
By the end of the week, my legs ache from too much jogging, I’m a balloon about to pop, and I want to spend Friday night curled up on the couch with Cassie, watching silly romantic movies where the girl smiles and says the right things and everything is neatly boxed and tied with a big, red bow.
Instead, I’ve got a fucking party to attend.
I take long, centering breaths on the two-mile walk over, trying to focus my thoughts on all the things I’m going to calmly tell Kepler this time. How he’s wrong. How he was an asshole to play with Irene. Who turned out to be rather nice, actually. She’s even in stats with me. We traded class notes yesterday.
Cassie bubbles about her new boots, somehow sliding gracefully in high-heeled ankle boots that would make me fall on my ass. Although they would do wonders for my pathetic shortness. I imagine shoving an accusing finger in Kepler’s face with the help of those boots. I should get a pair.
“Are they too much?” Cassie asks for the tenth time when we stop in front of an apartment complex not too far from campus. She kicks up a heel and winces.
“They are absolutely too much.” I pull out my phone to discover the battery has slipped out again. It needs a new layer of duct tape. “They’re over the top. Limit breaking. Especially the leopard print.”
She breaks into a full-face grin. Most everyone else gives me that I-don’t-know-if-you’re-joking look, but Cassie can tunnel past it to what I’m really saying. That she can’t be contained. A shock of red and leopard print that I’m lucky to have in my life.
When I get my phone started up again, I sigh at a text from Landry: Looking forward to tonight.
Oh, God. Guys only write shit like that when they think it’ll get them something. I need to stop this thing now. Landry deserves more. Someone who can at least say his name right.
When we get to the house, I stop on the sidewalk. My feet shuffle, but Cassie hustles me forward. Red Solo cups litter the front lawn. It’s hard to get past the clog of smokers and drunkards and into the square little house that must be one of the first built in Rock Falls. It looks like a two-in-the-morning party, but it’s only nine. It�
�s going to be an interesting evening.
Inside, music plays in thumps and laughter. Sweaty bodies press together, half of them in beat with the music. A group of guys is wall-flowering off to the side, and Cassie’s eyes widen, but she follows me to the kitchen on a hunt for the keg, which we find displayed in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Mackie Jones stares down at the keg with a wrinkled forehead. Curly brown hair and a t-shirt stretched a little too tight over his shoulders. Fuck, Cassie’s going to be into that.
But I’ve only got my eyes set on one thing as I cross the kitchen.
I stop an inch from the keg. “There’s beer in that thing, right?”
“Three bucks.” Mackie holds up a stack of Solo cups.
I dig a bill out of my pocket. “Two for five?” I gesture towards Cassie.
“Cassie can drink for free.” He grins at her, and that fucking dimple pops out. Okay, I have to grudgingly admit that Mackie’s got these schoolboy good looks. Smooth, tanned skin and the whole aw shucks deal. It’s annoying.
“You’re going to charge me and not Cassie?”
Mackie snatches my five. “That’s what you get for dumping me.”
Okay, another admission. Mackie was boyfriend number, um—twenty-two? Twenty-three? I blink at him and try to remember. It’s not that I dislike Mackie exactly. It’s that I don’t trust him. I don’t expect—or want—full disclosure from a boyfriend, but Mackie’s secrets have secrets. He makes Kepler look like an open book with an index and glossary and charts to facilitate understanding.
Mackie tucks the five into the back pocket of his perfectly distressed jeans.
“My change?” I hold out my hand.
“Don’t have any.” He pulls a cup off the top, fills it, and passes it to Cassie.
“How is that not two for five?” But I can’t stop the smile that flits to my lips. That was clever of him.