What if what if what if blah blah blah.
But, just after one a.m., my window slid open. We didn’t say much, and we spent most of the first hour or so just touching—fingers idling up and down arms, palms smoothing circles over backs. We didn’t even kiss for a long time, but it was all right. It’s what she needed, and it felt good giving her that.
But then she needed something else. We both needed something else. It felt almost like an instinct, both of our chins tilting up at the same time and our mouths falling together. We kissed until my lips felt numb and our shirts were on the floor, until clouds blew over the moon and Eva’s arms wrapped around my bare waist, her face buried in the slope of my neck as she drifted off to sleep.
“Hey,” Luca says now, holding open the café door for me.
“Hello.”
“Hello? What’s this hello shit?”
“Huh?”
“You usually greet me with a shoulder shove or an inarticulate grunt.”
I relax a little. “Sorry. Things on my mind.”
He tilts his head at me. “Audition things?”
I blink at him. “Oh.”
“You’re still doing it, right?”
“Um—”
“Grace.”
“Luca.”
“You can’t not do it. You know that, right? Please tell me you know that.”
“Of course I’m still doing the audition. Damn. I just spent three and a half hours practicing at a freaking bookstore. Why do you care so much about my piano playing all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden. It’s been years.”
I look down and bite my lip, thinking about the thousand dollars he shelled out for my pre-screening video. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just nervous about it.”
“Why? You’re amazing.”
I shrug. “I don’t know . . . all the other students at the Boston workshop? They’re not like me. They don’t have my baggage.”
“No one’s like you, Gray. Not on the piano. And I mean that in a good way.”
I nod, knotting my aching fingers together.
“Is the New York trip with Maggie still happening?” Luca asks when I don’t say anything else. “You haven’t talked about it much lately.”
“We,” I say, waving my hands between us, “haven’t talked about much of anything lately.”
He scuffs his ratty gray Chuck Taylors against the tabby sidewalk. “Listen, Mom’s making lobster bisque for dinner tonight. Why don’t you come? Kimber’ll be there. Maybe you guys can chat a little more.”
I squint at him, but I can tell he’s trying. He wants me to fit in with her, or her with me, or him with all of us. Something.
“Eva will be there too,” he says when I don’t answer right away. “Maybe you can talk to her, too.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Of course I would talk to Eva.”
“I mean talk to her talk to her.”
He gets my best what the hell look for that one.
“You still haven’t told her everything about you and your mom, have you?”
I flinch. “Are you serious?”
“Are you serious? Yes, Gray. Maggie’s not . . .” He trails off, filling his cheeks with air before letting it out slowly. “I mean, you and Eva . . . you’re kissing or whatever,” he finally says. “I think she needs to know.”
“Do you tell all your sad stories to every girl you make out with?”
“You’re not just making out with her.”
“Exactly, Luca. This isn’t some fling for me.”
I look down, hooking my hands on my elbows, the admission making my heart hurl itself against my ribs. I feel exposed and tender, a butterfly caught in a thunderstorm.
“I know it’s not,” Luca says softly.
I nod, finally daring to glance his way. “Whoopie pie?” I ask.
He grins. “Always whoopie pie.”
“All right. I’ll see you there.”
I’ll do just about anything for Emmy’s whoopie pies, and Luca knows it.
The temperature at dinner is about a hundred degrees of weird. The bisque is thick and creamy, and I could live on Emmy’s homemade brown bread alone for the rest of my life and be totally happy, but the overall vibe? Well, let’s just say I could do without a repeat.
Emmy watches Eva sip at her bisque, flicking her eyes to me, then back to Eva. She smiles and asks about Mom and piano and all that, but I can’t shake the feeling that she’s watching the two of us for signs of . . . what? That we made out? I’m not sure if she even knows Eva’s gay.
“Mom, can we take our whoopie pies downstairs?” Luca asks when Emmy brings a platter brimming with chocolaty-creamy goodness in from the kitchen. “I told Kimber we’d play air hockey.”
“Okay, that sounds fine. Go have fun.” She puts the pies on small white plates and hands them out.
While Luca heads to the kitchen for a glass of milk, something he cannot live without when eating whoopie pies, Eva, Kimber, and I take our desserts and start toward the basement. Halfway down, I stop.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell Eva, handing her my plate. “Just want to ask Emmy something.”
She tilts her head at me but nods. “Okay.”
I tromp back upstairs, not sure what I actually want to say to Emmy. Everything just seems off between us. I’m not used to feeling so disconnected from her or Luca, and I really hate it. Luca knows I’m with Eva, and while I don’t know if Emmy knows about me, I do know she’d be fine with it. When the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, she baked a huge rainbow cake and sold it by the slice at LuMac’s, for god’s sake. Some people on the cape turned up their noses, but a lot of people loved it. So, yeah, I know Emmy will be fine with this, and I just need to hug her. Thank her for dinner. Anything to keep us feeling like us right now.
I’m rounding the corner into the kitchen when I hear Emmy’s voice. It’s low and laced with worry, making me stop in my tracks.
“You’ll talk to Grace?” she says to Luca. “I mean really talk to her?”
“Yeah. I told you I would.”
“I can do it if you need me to.”
“No, I will. But she’s not going to like it.”
The refrigerator opens and something rattles around before it’s closed. “I know, honey. I don’t like it either. I wish I could give Maggie the benefit of the doubt. Everyone deserves fresh starts and second chances, but this thing with Maggie goes way beyond a few too many drinks. Under normal circumstances, I would never ask Grace to talk about her family life if she didn’t want to, but . . . Eva’s been through too much. I can’t take that risk. Not right now.”
“I don’t know why Grace hasn’t told her everything already.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Emmy says, sighing. “Yes, you do.”
“This sucks.”
“You’re her best friend. She knows you love her.”
“It still sucks.”
They fall silent, but I hear another heavy sigh. I can picture Emmy pulling her son into her arms, him towering over her and wrapping his arms around her shoulders, resting his cheek on the top of her head. I blink at the family photos lining the walls in the hallway, all the smiles and hugs and trust and predictability. Even with her lying, cheating husband off to find a new family, Emmy has always been solid. Raising her sons to be decent humans, giving them space to breathe but not so much that they floated away, unnoticed and unguarded. I’ve always been aware of the differences between Maggie and Emmy, between our families. How could I not? But now those differences are bright red on a white background, stark and violent. Cause for alarm. Cause for worry. Cause to protect Eva in a way Emmy wouldn’t protect me. No, couldn’t. Right? Emmy tried. She always tries. Doesn’t she?
I turn and walk down the hall, closing myself into the bathroom as quietly as I can. A sob rises in my chest, blossoming into my throat until it escapes. I press my hand to my mouth to keep it in. Leaning on the tile counter, I meet
my mother’s eyes in the mirror. Messy hair. A little haggard from all the late nights with Eva. My heart feels ripped in two. She’s my mother. The Michaelsons are my family, but she’s my mother. And they’re terrified of her. Of what she’ll do or say, some mistake that she can’t take back and whether or not it’ll affect Eva.
But she’s my mother.
I don’t want to tell all of her sad stories. I only want to tell Eva the good ones, the ones that make me a healthily functioning human with a healthily functioning mother.
But that’s not what Mom and I are.
I splash some water on my face and gulp down several breaths. I just want to go home, but I know Eva will come after me, and I don’t want her around Maggie tonight. Not tonight.
Downstairs Kimber and Luca are already deep into a game of air hockey while Eva watches from the 1970s-era orange-and-brown-striped couch. Her plate is empty and she’s licking her fingers.
“Damn, that’s a good cookie,” she says.
“Pie, Eva,” I say, pasting on a smile and sitting down next to her. “Calling the beloved Maine whoopie pie a cookie will get you excommunicated around here.”
“But it’s like a squishy Oreo.”
“And thank the gods for it, but it’s not a squishy Oreo. It’s a whoopie pie.” I force myself to take a bite and then talk with my mouth full. “Repeat after me. P-I-E.”
She laughs and leans into my shoulder. I want to kiss her right here, pie-stuffed mouth be damned. I need something to erase Luca and Emmy’s conversation, the knowledge of what I’m keeping from Eva and why. Something to remind me that this—Eva and me—is still happening, still okay, still right, no matter who my mother is.
So I pull Eva’s face toward me with two fingers on her chin and press my lips to hers. She smiles against my mouth and kisses me back. It’s sweet and soft and perfect.
And short. Luca clears his throat loudly, jolting us apart.
“Gray!” I turn toward him slowly. He stares at me from the air hockey table, spinning his striker in one hand. “Come play Kimber.”
I stare at him for a few seconds, wondering when he’s going to talk to me about spilling my own mother’s dirty secrets. “You sure she can handle that?” I ask, something like anger bubbling just under my skin.
“Oh, bring it.”
I push myself off the couch, wiping my chocolate-dusted fingers on my jeans. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’m right here, guys,” Kimber says, hands on her hips. “And I just kicked his ass, Grace. I can hold my own.”
She’s smiling, so I laugh. “Fair enough.”
I take the striker from Luca, and Kimber drops the puck. We push it back and forth pretty easily at first. I take the first point, Kimber takes the next two, and then things go a little faster. And by faster, I mean harder. Soon, we’re both throwing our entire bodies into the game, and my right shoulder is sore as hell. The click-clack of the puck echoes through the basement.
“Um,” I hear Luca mumble, but I tune him out.
I slam the puck toward Kimber’s side, and it collides with her fingers right next to the goal. She screams and drops her striker, clutching at her hand and glaring at me.
The nail on her middle finger is broken and bleeding.
“Damn, Gray, what the hell?” Luca says, rushing to Kimber and taking her hand in his.
“Sorry,” I say. “But her finger shouldn’t have been hanging over the side of the table like that. Number one rule of air hockey: Keep your fingers off the field.”
“Still, you pretty much threw the puck at her.”
“She was playing just as hard. I didn’t mean to hit her finger, Luca.”
“I’ll get a Band-Aid,” Eva says, already halfway up the stairs.
“Why are we even playing air hockey?” I ask Luca, tossing my striker onto the hockey table. It rolls over itself a couple times, clattering loudly. “Don’t you want to talk?”
“What?” he asks. Kimber sucks on her finger.
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t.”
“Here we go,” Kimber mumbles.
“And what is your problem?” I ask. A little voice in my head is telling me to shut the hell up, that this isn’t about Kimber at all, but I don’t listen to it. I’m tired. Tired of feeling like a stain. My mother’s just a person. And yeah, I do hate this friendship she has with Eva, but I hate this feeling like my mother is the human equivalent of a wrecking ball even more. I just want it to stop.
“I don’t have a problem,” Kimber says calmly.
“Clearly, you do. You’ve hated me since you and Luca first eye-fucked each other.”
She grimaces. “Nice, Grace. And I don’t hate you.”
“Well, you sure as hell don’t like me.”
“I think you’re reckless and impulsive and dishonest. There’s a difference.”
“Dishonest, what the hell? Why? Because I rearranged some gnomes? So did your boyfriend. So did you.”
“We did that for you. And don’t think Luca doesn’t know that you and Eva sneak around all night doing whatever the hell you want without a thought to how upset that would make Emmy if she knew.”
“Kimber—” Luca says, but I cut him off.
“We’re talking on top of a lighthouse, not tagging every wall on the cape.”
“And riding bikes all over the place,” Kimber says. “And what’s with all the peanut butter?”
“Oh my god, not peanut butter,” I deadpan.
Luca glares at me. “All right. Enough.”
“Yeah, enough, Luca,” I say as Eva tromps back down the stairs. “Just say it.”
“Say what?”
“What’s going on?” Eva asks, handing Kimber a Band-Aid and a tube of Neosporin.
“That you wish I were different,” I say to Luca. “That you wish Maggie weren’t my mother and that I would handle all of her bullshit better so you wouldn’t have to deal with me.”
Silence settles over all of us. My eyes sting and my chest burns. I have no idea where those words came from. They just spilled out, unconsciously rising up and filtering through all of my anger and hurt over Luca’s and Emmy’s worry. Now that the words are out, they feel right. It’s almost a relief to have said them.
“Gray.” Luca takes a step toward me, his eyes wide and a little watery-looking. “That’s not—”
“I need to go,” I say, my voice scraping against my throat. I don’t know what else to do or feel. Escape is my first instinct, so I run with it and start for the stairs. “I’m really sorry about your finger, Kimber.”
She doesn’t respond and Luca doesn’t call me back as I take the stairs two at a time.
But Eva is right behind me.
Our feet dangle over the edge of the lighthouse, our legs pressed against each other, our bodies held in by the wrought-iron railing.
It’s barely ten o’clock, but Eva and I are already up here. We left Luca’s and climbed the winding stairs, no hesitation or verbal agreement. We just knew this was where we needed to be. I’m not sure what Eva’s thinking. My own head is full of about ten different emotions. The jar of Peter Pan we’re sharing helps. Peanut butter has quickly become my number-one comfort food.
Still, a certain thought keeps popping to the surface, like those damn rodents in that Whack-A-Mole game. I smack it on the head and it disappears, only to resurface seconds later.
“What’s going on, Grace?” Eva asks, interrupting my mental game. I’m amazed she’s held off plugging me with questions this long. She digs a spoon into a jar, scooping a huge glob before licking it like a lollipop. It’ll take her ten minutes to eat that one spoonful.
“I’m a mess, Eva,” I say, my eyes fixed on where I know the ocean should be. It’s just a giant swath of dark, ignited every few seconds by the lighthouse beam. “Maggie’s a mess. We’re just . . . we’re a mess.”
She reaches out and tucks a wayward st
rand of hair behind my ear. Her fingers tickle my cheek as they brush over the skin, and I grit my teeth to resist leaning into her touch.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
I take a breath and let it out slowly before I turn to look at her. “My mom isn’t stable. I know you think she is, that she just looks at the world differently and handles things in her way, and maybe she does, but it’s not stable. And she didn’t raise me in a stable environment. Nothing about this”—I wave my hand around my face—“is stable. And it’s only a matter of time before this whole thing with you and her—whatever it is, whatever you get out of it—blows up.”
“Why does it have to blow up?”
“Because it always does.”
She frowns, clearly confused. And she should be. I haven’t told her shit and Luca’s too loyal to me to tell her anything and Emmy clearly wants me to tell her. The worst part is that I didn’t even see it, how screwed up it is to withhold all of it from Eva, not only because I like her and want her to know me, but because she is wrapped up in Maggie. And Maggie’s a fucking hurricane.
So I tell Eva some stories. Stories of Mom’s and my itinerant life, rescues from crowds of beer-soaked men at Ruby’s, vodka at breakfast, and stolen money out of my jewelry box. I try to weave in some good stuff, too. The New York trip. How talented Mom is with jewelry design. The way she haggled that pastor down to a price we could afford for my piano because she knew I needed it. Because she believed in me. Still, the bad stuff is like flypaper. Everything else sticks to it.
Eva listens, her eyes on me and her half-licked spoon forgotten between her fingers.
“God, Grace,” she says when I take a breath.
I shake my head and look down. “It’s not that bad.”
“And Luca knows all of this?”
“He knows most of it.”
“And Emmy?”
I nod. “She and Mom don’t get along. When I was thirteen, Mom disappeared for a few days and Emmy brought me to her house. They had a huge fight when Mom finally came home. It was bad. It’s been weird between them ever since. Emmy’s offered to let me live with them more than once, and she gives me money here and there, but I can’t leave my own mother, can I? And who knows what sort of fucked-up stuff is in my head that I don’t even know is fucked up? It’s just me, the way I am.”
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