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If I Fix You
Abigail Johnson
Some things are easy to fix…but are some meant to stay broken?When sixteen-year-old Jill Whitaker's mom walks out—with a sticky note as a goodbye – only Jill knows the real reason she's gone. But how can she tell her father? Jill can hardly believe the truth herself. Suddenly, the girl who likes to fix things – cars, relationships, romances, people – is all broken up. It used to be that her best friend/secret crush, Sean Addison, could make her smile in seconds. But not anymore. They don't even talk.With nothing making sense, Jill tries to pick up the pieces of her life. When a new guy moves in next door – intense, seriously cute, but with scars that he thinks don't show – Jill finds herself trying to make things better for Daniel. But over one long, hot Arizona summer, she realises she can't fix anyone's life until she fixes her own. And she knows just where to start…


Some things are easy to fix...but are some meant to stay broken?
When sixteen-year-old Jill Whitaker’s mom walks out—with a sticky note as a goodbye—only Jill knows the real reason she’s gone. But how can she tell her father? Jill can hardly believe the truth herself.
Suddenly, the girl who likes to fix things—cars, relationships, romances, people—is all broken up. It used to be, her best friend, tall, blond and hot flirt Sean Addison, could make her smile in seconds. But not anymore. They don’t even talk.
With nothing making sense, Jill tries to pick up the pieces of her life. But when a new guy moves in next door, intense, seriously cute, but with scars—on the inside and out—that he thinks don’t show, Jill finds herself trying to make things better for Daniel. But over one long, hot Arizona summer, she realizes she can’t fix anyone’s life until she fixes her own. And she knows just where to start...
ABIGAIL JOHNSON was born in Pennsylvania. When she was twelve, her family traded in snowstorms for year-round summers and moved to Arizona. Abigail chronicled the entire cross-country road trip in a purple spiral-bound notebook that she still has, and has been writing ever since. She became a tetraplegic after breaking her neck in a car accident when she was seventeen, but hasn’t let that stop her from bodysurfing in Mexico, writing and directing a high-school production of Cinderella, and publishing her first novel. Visit Abigail online at abigailjohnsonbooks.com (http://www.abigailjohnsonbooks.com) and follow her on Twitter, @AbigailsWriting (https://twitter.com/abigailswriting).
If I Fix You
Abigail Johnson


For my parents
Dad, I finally get to return the honor and dedicate a book to you.
Mom, you taught me to love reading and gave me the world.
Contents
Cover (#u311bbcaa-6963-5778-af9c-7a322a5b36d8)
Back Cover Text (#u4dfabe19-c24a-5da0-896a-4e1d4c49a8dd)
About the Author (#u962d18d4-d656-5d8b-bd6b-18d3eda869df)
Title Page (#u07eaed77-90c9-59f8-9988-6ee7c3d5e4bc)
Dedication (#ufda3d1a4-324c-5459-9456-0d028f6b3070)
Prologue (#uff11cb8f-a818-501c-9964-1004a569e08b)
CHAPTER 1 (#u2dbe8e4e-164d-5659-8f98-51fb24cb3c59)
CHAPTER 2 (#u2491c512-32bd-5cbe-a583-e946846e947c)
CHAPTER 3 (#uf1feff16-2599-59d6-93cd-2ec84a9c8134)
CHAPTER 4 (#u8ce8f8f8-6ddc-5a19-9af7-dc188eb4358a)
CHAPTER 5 (#ufc8b8676-2897-5544-9d11-74fda28bf5e3)
CHAPTER 6 (#uf9a32f45-d150-5e07-964c-9e3d61b56ea8)
CHAPTER 7 (#u878f97bb-5b17-580c-9005-06d55ad65c4a)
CHAPTER 8 (#u3acfccab-4dad-5007-85a9-b655576c005d)
CHAPTER 9 (#u846ce461-716c-52ef-ad50-150c07739859)
CHAPTER 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
February
Mom left on a Tuesday. I remember because Tuesdays were taco night and Dad and I to this day don’t eat tacos. Also because that was the night I fell out of love with Sean Addison.
Winter was old and wheezing by late February. The lingering chill in the air still bit at my skin after sunset, making it hard to remember that in a few months it’d be hot enough for the soles of my sneakers to stick to the asphalt.
Tourists from back East flocked to Arizona during the winter months, so the snowbirds, as we called them, were still thick on the roads and in Dad’s auto shop. I’d personally changed enough oil that winter to fill a swimming pool, and that particular Tuesday was no different. I was drowning in motor oil. The plastic smell of it clung to my hair and coated my lungs when I inhaled. My red coveralls were smeared with the same greasy stains that turned my hands that ineffable shade of zombie gray.
But all of that was okay, because I could change oil in my sleep, which left me free to dream about the only thing I’d ever truly wanted: a 1967 Triumph Spitfire Mark III convertible with Sean Addison riding shotgun.
The sports car I’d wanted ever since I had helped my dad rebuild one when I was eight. It was creamy white with tan leather seats and the original chrome bumpers (which federal safety regulations didn’t allow on later models). The budding mechanic in me had swooned over the one-piece front end that tilted forward for unparalleled engine access, and the exhaust that sang like a siren to my ears. I’d been saving to buy my own for the past eight years.
The boy I’d wanted from the first day of kindergarten. He took in my coveralls—which I insisted on wearing everywhere back then—and instead of teasing me like the other kids, asked me if I could fix the tire on his fire engine. As we got older, I started liking him for more than his good taste in mechanics. Beyond the fact that his eyes were the exact shade of my favorite blue jeans, he could always tell when I needed to laugh after a night spent listening to my parents fighting. Sure, Sean was more likely to high-five me than kiss me these days, but I planned on fixing that.
“Jill?” Dad’s voice echoed around the garage bay and stalled my car-and-boy-fueled daydream.
“Under the white Civic.” I rolled out on my creeper, sat up and spun to face him in a way that still made me grin like a four-year-old. I didn’t even mind that the momentum made my dark blond braid slap me in the face.
Dad and I had been nearly the same height for the past year, but what he lacked in height he made up for in girth—and not an ounce of it fat. He could lift a midsize car with his bare hands. He used to joke that that was how he’d gotten Mom to marry him.
Dad was already pointing over his shoulder, but I cut him off, a premonition making me narrow my eyes. “If it’s another oil change, I’m calling Child Protective Services.”
Dad considered me. I was half serious, which made him smile. “How about a clogged fuel intake—”
“Deal.” I’d reek of gasoline by the time I was done, but it’d be a welcome change from motor oil. Plus I happened to like the smell of gasoline. I scrambled to my feet.
“—and an oil change.”
I sank back down and cocked my head at him. “I can’t tell if you’re kidding or if you just hate me.”
Dad tossed me a screwdriver.
“So the latter, then.”
Dad was halfway across the bay when he turned back in a much-too-casual-to-be-casual way. “Oh, did I mention it’s a ’69 Plymouth Road Runner?”
That caught my attention. Big-time. Dad knew I had a weakness for muscle cars. “Seriously? Does it have the beep-beep horn?”
Dad shrugged. “Are you willing to get your hands dirty to find out?”
I held up my hands. “Dad.” I needed to say only that one word. The telltale line of grease was visible underneath all ten of my fingernails. It would take a solid twenty minutes of scrubbing to get it out, and weariness beat vanity most nights. Dad didn’t even bother anymore. Drove Mom nuts. At dinner she’d stare at the pair of us over the table and make little comments about dirty hands. Never mind that it wasn’t dirt, just a little clean grease to show how hard we worked.
I’d spent my days at Dad’s auto shop every summer, and even some school nights, since I’d learned how to hold a wrench. Seriously, I knew how to change a tire before I could tie my shoes. Dad still had my first tiny pair of coveralls hanging in the main garage.
I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty, especially if it meant working on a true classic.
“Ragtop or hardtop?” I asked, hurrying to join Dad by the door.
He dropped a kiss on my head and ushered me ahead of him. “If it was a ragtop, I’d have sent you home early and kept her all to myself.”
“Sure you would.” Dad once took me out of school in the middle of chemistry class when we got a 1964 Shelby GT in the shop. Because he couldn’t wait two hours to show it to me.
“Should we order pizza, make it a night?”
As awesome as that sounded, Dad had obviously forgotten one important detail. “Last night you told Mom we’d be home early for dinner.”
Dad’s smile died. “You heard that?”
I curled my fist tighter around the screwdriver, hating the way his shoulders hunched when he felt like he’d let me down. Lately, they’d been fighting more. Sometimes Mom would be waiting for Dad at the door and would lay into him before he could get inside. The only semisolace I’d been able to find night after night was climbing out my window up to the roof, but even there I could hear them. Sometimes I’d swear she was trying to make him hate her.
Sometimes, I wondered why he didn’t.
Acting as a buffer between my parents was not high on my wish list, but I’d rather she snipe at me than yell at Dad again. “Do you want me...to call her?”
Dad shook his head, strong shoulders still hunched. I vowed silently not to give him any more grief about oil changes for at least the rest of the week. Hopefully, the inevitable blowup with Mom would have cooled in a few days.
Dad’s tight-lipped expression told me he wasn’t nearly as optimistic as I was.
“I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you finish up the Civic. We’ll start the Road Runner tomorrow.”
“As in Wile E. Coyote?”
Dad and I turned to see Sean come strolling into the garage. My mood skyrocketed at the sight of him. Yes, he was blue-eyed, blond-haired and all kinds of pretty, but he actually looked even better on the inside. It was the combination that brought that euphoric Christmas morning smile to my face.
“Little late for a walk-in, Sean.”
Sean was used to Dad’s less than warm demeanor—which I was going to optimistically attribute to fallout from having to call Mom—so he answered with a smile. “Hey, Mr. Whitaker. I was in the neighborhood, and Jill keeps offering to change my oil.”
My eyes closed slowly and I could feel Dad’s stare. It wasn’t like this particular cat was still in the bag, but Dad getting so much concrete proof of my crush felt like I’d gotten caught driving a Prius.
Fortunately for me, Sean didn’t notice the awkwardness and kept up an easy conversation with Dad. He even attempted to tell a car joke, which admittedly, did not go over well, but he still tried. That was the kind of friend he was.
I nearly dropped my screwdriver gazing at him.
Dad clapped his hands together, making me jump. “I tell you what, Sean, why don’t you show me your little Nazi buggy and I’ll check your oil.”
Sean cocked his head. “You know, I’m pretty sure the fine folks at Volkswagen decided the name ‘Nazi buggy’ was too regional when they released the Jetta.”
Dad shrugged. “It’s still not a real car. It’s like...”
“A neutered, asthmatic poodle?” I said.
“Whoa.” Sean slid a step back from me like I’d insulted his manhood.
Dad grinned as if proud that I still had my priorities in order when it came to boys and cars. “Then I’ll leave it to Jill.” Catching my eye as he left, Dad added, “Don’t let him distract you.”
My cheeks flushed. “I’ll get everything done.”
Sean watched Dad leave the garage and I headed to the slop sink to wash up. Well, that, and so Sean wouldn’t see the blush still heating my face.
Sean leaned against the wall to my left. “You like my Jetta.” It was half question, half statement.
“I like your Jetta—”
“Right? Right.”
“—I’d like it better if it went from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds.”
“Does that mean you’re too cool to ride in it when you get off?”
I splashed water at him. “No.”
“Good, ’cause I’m starving.”
“Me too, but I’ve still got cars to finish, then I have to sweep and use the auto scrubber on the floor, and replace the ceiling light in the corner. On top of that, I need to grab a quick shower and change before we go anywhere.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Sean held up his hands. “I can help with most of that, and I think you’re seriously underestimating how hot you look in a one-size-fits-all jumpsuit.”
I laughed. No one looked good in a one-size-fits-all jumpsuit, except maybe Mom. “Really, you want to help?”
Sean picked up a reciprocating saw and raised an eyebrow. I turned the handheld saw right side up in his hands. “I was testing you.”
“Sure you were.”
Sean eyed the rest of the equipment around him. “Maybe I’ll start with replacing the light.”
“Good call.” I pulled out a new bulb from a cabinet and offered it to him. “There’s a ladder in the closet.”
Sean looked toward the closet then back to me. “Too far.” He bent, wrapping his arms around my legs, and lifted me up, way up, considering I was already pretty tall and Sean made me look short. “I’m better than a ladder, right?” He gave me a bounce that had me clutching his hair.
“I swear, Sean, if you drop me...”
He grinned and bounced me again. “That’s your problem. You lack follow-through. If you’re going to threaten me, be specific.”
I switched out the bulb, shot the broken one into a nearby trash can and made a swish sound. “How’s that for follow-through?”
“Not bad.” Sean pulled his arm to one side and caught me around my back with the other, carrying me like the fireman he planned to be. The way he was smiling at me... I started to feel like Christmas morning. My arms tightened around his neck.
“Time to leave, Sean.”
Sean and I whipped our heads toward Dad. I hadn’t even noticed him come back. “He was helping me change the lightbulb.” I elbowed Sean, and he grunted before putting me down, then pointed to the light overhead.
“Yeah, but since I’m not paying either one of you to do that...”
“Are you offering me a job, Mr. Whitaker?” Then Sean elbowed me back, tickling me right between the ribs. “Jill, tell him what a mean ladder I make.”
I couldn’t tell Dad anything while I was laughing. Dad thought Sean was a reckless flirt. I thought Sean was reckless perfection. Dad didn’t appreciate the distinction the way I did. That was another thing I needed to fix.
“He’s leaving.”
“I am? Aren’t we hanging out?”
“Yes,” I said, making it more of a question than I wanted as I met Dad’s eye. He gave a slight but reluctant nod and I turned fully to Sean. “My house in an hour?”
Sean paused, and a tiny frown appeared between his brows, but then it was gone. “Don’t be late.” He lightly knocked my shoulder with his fist, waved at Dad and left. He might as well have said, See you later, my totally platonic pal.
I drew a finger across my throat and let my tongue drop out to one side, then I zombie shuffled toward the cars that would probably keep me busy way past closing.
And what do you know, they did.
On the upside, I didn’t have to wait for Dad. Whatever conversation he’d had with Mom, it was bad enough that he “decided to work late” and sent me home alone. If I were going to see anyone but Sean, I’d have let that knowledge affect my mood.
When I got home and spotted his Jetta, I was practically giddy to the point that I ignored the ajar front door, which made the contrast all the more devastating when I walked into the living room and found...my mom and my... Sean.
It was like one of those optical illusion pictures where all the lines cross and intersect but don’t seem to originate from anywhere. A trick. There was no other explanation for seeing Mom curved on the armrest of Dad’s favorite chair, legs crossed, leaning over Sean so that her blouse gaped open and skin and lace spilled free.
I watched her toy with the button on his shirt, trace the edge with her fingernail. My vision shrank to a pinprick when I saw her lips moving toward his ear.
When her free hand slid to touch his thigh, it was like the world exploded. All at once there was a rushing sound in my head and my bag slipped through my fingers, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
I’ll never forget Sean’s eyes when he jerked his head up and his gaze met mine, wide and utterly devoid of the warmth it usually held for me.
Ice and fire burned inside my chest in the split second before he shot out of the chair and bolted to the door, leaving Mom holding his jacket in her hands. He said something to me, words that ricocheted off the dead thing inside me and fell to the floor between us. I couldn’t hear anything until the door shut behind him.
He’d just been sitting there, not leaning in or touching her back. Later I wanted that to mean something, but there was no killing the insidious and relentless thought that slithered around in my head, refusing to die no matter how many times I stabbed it:
Sean didn’t leave until I showed up.
And Mom. My mother.
I didn’t know that betrayal was a thing. I didn’t know that it could paralyze while it quietly devoured light and sound and the air itself.
She was still holding his jacket. She was still sitting in Dad’s chair.
Dad.
And it started again. Only it was his pain on top of mine, crushing and constricting, and I made a noise that wasn’t a word.
I stood there with my fingers twitching, longing for the feel of my bag and the ability to move backward in time. Not just before this night, this moment, but months and years. Back to a time when she loved us enough not to annihilate everything, only my memories dissolved before I found it.
I had no defense against her words, nothing to shield myself with. She could have pierced my heart with a single syllable. But she didn’t, and that was worse.
She didn’t even try.
Mom slunk silently into her room. Her final words to me were scribbled on a Post-it note I found on my pillow the next morning. My eyes blurred so much while reading it that the only thing I noticed was, she spelled the word suffocating wrong.
CHAPTER 1 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
JULY
Falling was such an elastic word. It was basically horrible. People got hurt and died, falling. There was force and pain and fear, if the height was great enough. Even sometimes when it wasn’t. The terror of not finding something solid underfoot was just as real for half a second as it was for twenty.
Yet fall was the word most often coupled with love, falling in and falling out of. How was that even possible? They couldn’t be the same. One fall ushered in delirious, stupid happiness; the other fall expelled those euphoric emotions with blood and tears and scars. Bliss and agony. Fall and fall. It wasn’t the same. There should be a better word.
Above me, a falling star shot across the sky. Except it wasn’t a star. It was a piece of rock burning up as it entered Earth’s atmosphere. It was beautiful as it flared bright against the night and died.
But it was too hot to be thinking about anything burning up, even beautiful things.
And it was too quiet.
Five months should have been long enough to acclimate to the silence, to embrace the thing I’d sought for years. It was mine now. Silence so stark that it wriggled under my skin.
Stretched out on my roof, I was searching the sky for more stars when all-too-familiar sounds punctured the silence. For a moment I thought the fighting was coming from below me. I shot up like the shingles had shocked me, but the voices weren’t coming from my house.
It was so messed up that that realization disappointed me.
I drew my knees up and rested one heat-flushed cheek on them. A prickle of perspiration needled across my skin as I studied the nearly identical house beside mine. All the houses on our street looked the same. Ranch house after ranch house, with drab beige walls, barely pitched roofs and graveled yards. I hadn’t given much thought to the moving truck parked next door yesterday, but it was hard not to pay attention to the rising voices.
I’d gotten good at eavesdropping on fights. Not a skill I’d ever wanted to master, but I hadn’t wanted to still be an A-cup at almost seventeen either. The new neighbors were amateurs. They’d left their window open. A few more minutes and Mrs. Holcomb across the street would be calling the police. She’d probably still be up watching her “stories” from the previous day.
A tiny part of me died inside because I knew that. The highlight of my evening was watching an old woman watch TV.
We didn’t get nearly enough stars over my particular patch of Arizona, and I needed to watch something.
A tiny breeze puffed warm air over me, causing the loose strands from my bun to tickle my cheeks. I pushed them back, focusing on the open window next door. The blinds were lowered so I couldn’t see much, but I heard enough, and it was nothing I hadn’t heard before. She was miserable and angry. He was frustrated and angry. It was his fault; it was her fault. Rinse and repeat. It wasn’t an even fight. He got quieter as she got louder.
Things got more interesting when they moved and I saw their silhouettes through the window. She was much smaller than he was, and shaking with rage.
“Explain it to me then,” he said. “I don’t understand how you can blame—”
His head snapped to the side as she slapped him. He took his time turning back to her and when he did, I was almost positive she spit in his face.
“They should have arrested you.”
Whoa. And yep, spit. He wiped his face. “You don’t mean that. Mom, look at you!”
Mom? That was...interesting, except that wasn’t the right word. There wasn’t anything interesting about someone getting slapped and spit on. Still, if he was some kind of criminal and she was scared of him...but so far, she was the violent one. He hadn’t so much as lifted a hand to defend himself. Not that I had tons of experience, but that seemed decidedly uncriminal to me.
She screamed incoherently at him after that. They moved back out of view and I heard a crash, like a lamp breaking against a wall, followed by him grunting. And all the while she was shrieking, until more crashes drowned her out.
I was up on my knees at that point, eyes wide, ears straining. This was so much worse than anything I’d heard from my parents. They’d yelled, sure, but that was it—words. The fighting next door was bad, like someone-getting-hurt bad, and from the sound of it, not the petite woman with the wicked arm. Where the hell was nosy Mrs. Holcomb?
More silence, then another crash. “Throw anything you want,” he said. “I’m not leaving you—”
“You stay away from me.” Her voice quivered.
Surprise colored his words. “When have I ever hurt you?”
“You arrogant little...” Her voice lowered into a hiss I couldn’t make out. “If I had any choice, you think I’d be here?”
“You’d be dead if you had any choice. Just stop. It’s over. I’m not the one in jail.”
Which meant somebody was in jail—the wrong somebody, according to the mom. But she was the one hurting him, while he thought he was saving her life...? Either way, I couldn’t just sit there and hope her arm got tired before she hit something vital.
Half turning on my roof, I squinted in the darkness, looking for the unopened can of pop I’d brought up with me. I heard yet another crash seconds before my fingers brushed against the cool aluminum.
I crouched down as close to the edge of the roof as possible and hurled the can across the ten feet or so that separated our houses.
I figured the sound might distract them.
I hadn’t figured on how badly my aim might suck in the dark.
I’d been trying to hit the side of their house. Instead, the sound of shattering glass filled the night as the can broke right through the kitchen window.
I clapped a hand over my mouth and flattened myself to the roof just as the back door banged open and a guy who really didn’t look all that much older than me shot into the yard.
His hair was black in the faint light, and long enough that it fell over his eyes when he moved. Gravel crunched as he stalked around. It didn’t take him long to realize his postage-stamp-sized backyard was empty.
Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Don’t look up.
Leaving seemed like the best idea I’d ever had. I could turn away, slide off the edge of my roof and through my bedroom window. I could do it without a sound too. But I didn’t. Instead I stared. I watched.
It was totally stupid on my part. He could be dangerous, or at the very least angry that I’d broken his window—a fact he was sure to realize if he spotted me. But for some reason I wasn’t scared. Not really. I’d done what I wanted. I’d stopped the fight. His mom hadn’t followed him outside, and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go back in—not that I blamed him.
That was one seriously enraged woman. I was half-surprised he wasn’t limping, based on all the stuff it had sounded like she threw at him. Why hadn’t he left? And if he belonged behind bars like his mom said, why hadn’t he...stopped her? He was easily twice her size, and I could practically see the anger steaming off him. He was physically capable of stopping her, yet I’d heard him grunt with each impact and ask her to stop instead of making her.
He dropped his head and stretched out his hands to lean against the small wooden shed in the far corner of the yard beside mine. He bounced a palm off it once, twice, then straightened and slammed his fist into the door over and over again until the wood split with an audible crack.
I sat up, shivering in the hot air, and watched him back away. It was unnerving, but still—better a piece of wood than a person. My new neighbor had enough self-control to take hit after hit—and spit—and walk away. I doubted I could say as much.
When the clouds parted, I saw something dark drip down his knuckles a second before he bent down. The shard of glass he’d picked up glinted in his hand as his head tilted up.
The newly revealed moonlight cast a perfect spotlight on me.
CHAPTER 2 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
My eyes went wide as they met his, and all I could do was stare. At him, his bloody hand, the broken glass from my stupid, stupid pop can.
“What the hell? Did you break my window?”
I flinched like I’d been hit. My stomach teemed with slimy snakes as I stared into a pair of royally pissed-off eyes.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hit your window.”
“No?” He stood, turning the glass over in his hand. “What were you trying to hit?” Glancing toward his house then mine, he tracked the distance between them, between the fighting and me. When he hunched his shoulders in realization, the stance was so much like Dad’s that any trace of fear I’d had vanished completely.
“I was trying to distract you, or really, just your mom. I thought something banging against the wall might bring you outside, or her, and things could cool down.” I said that last part as I was literally sweating from every pore on my body. I exhaled. “I didn’t think it through. I just didn’t want...anyone to get hurt. I’m sorry. It’s not any of my business. And I will pay for the window.”
“Forget it.”
Maybe all the years spent listening to my parents fighting had anesthetized me to clipped and angry speech, but the slimy slithery feeling in my gut was dissipating.
“At least let me—”
“I said forget it.” His anger was fading as quickly as my unease, but I preferred his initial hostility to the defeat that hung heavily from his limbs as he started walking back to his door. “Don’t bust any more of my windows, yeah?”
“Wait.”
He paused and looked at me over his shoulder.
It hadn’t been long enough yet. I knew from experience that if he went back inside, she’d more than likely be waiting for him. Whenever Dad had tried to walk back too soon after a fight, Mom got her second wind. With Neighbor Guy’s mom, I didn’t want him to find out what her second wind might entail.
I was betting it would hurt a lot more than a thrown lamp.
“Don’t go back in yet.” I swallowed. “I mean, I’ll go inside. You can stay.” I swung my legs off the edge of the roof and was preparing to roll onto my stomach when he stopped me.
“Hey, don’t.” He held up his hands as he approached the wall dividing our yards and tripped the motion lights on the side of my house. “Just stop, okay?”
I stopped. The shifting clouds had kept most of his features in shadow, but in the harsh, unforgiving floodlight, I got my first good look.
The cement block wall was close to six feet high, and he could have rested his chin on it. He was also older than I’d initially thought, though his age was hard to pinpoint since he looked several days overdue for a shave. But more than anything, I noticed the reddened outline of an open palm on his cheek.
Seeing the mark on his face made the fighting more real than the moving shadows and sounds had earlier. His mom had hit him...a lot. I didn’t care how old he was; that wasn’t okay. Especially since it was obvious to me within a minute of talking to him that he wasn’t going to hurt anyone. He was visibly distressed by the thought of me, a complete stranger and admitted vandal, jumping off a one-story roof.
It’s not okay.
I mentally shook that thought away when I realized that the shadows that had abandoned him were no longer surrounding me either. And his eyes were trailing just as freely over me, my too-small old gym shorts and faded Jim’s Auto Shop tee, up to the tangled mass of dark blond hair piled on my head.
I tried to imagine the view from his perspective and hit the brakes when the picture of a vagrant twelve-year-old formed in my mind. A feeling of inadequacy wrapped around me like a sweaty hug and I almost jumped down just to get away from it. And him.
“What are you doing up there anyway?”
I doubted he could see the dark sleeping bag I kept up there, so he couldn’t guess that I slept on my roof more nights than I slept under it. More important, he didn’t need to. “I like to look at the stars sometimes.”
He looked at the sky and then back at me. “Stars? Seriously?”
I didn’t bother looking up. There weren’t any stars that night. The sky would have looked blank if not for the moon, although even that was in the process of being swallowed up by clouds.
“I said sometimes.”
“And the other times?”
“I just like to get out of my house. It’s quiet up here.”
He smiled. “You mean usually.” It wasn’t a big smile. More of a quirk of his lips on one side, a brief flash of teeth. It was the weak smile more than his words that brought me right back to feeling awful for him.
I bit the inside of my cheek and tugged at the hem of my shorts, trying to cover more of my legs. Then I sat on my hands to keep from pulling my stupid bun down.
His eyes flicked down to track the movement of my legs. He took a step back, then half turned before facing me again. “You can’t go around jumping off roofs, okay? You’ll break your leg or something.”
I bristled at his words and let them fuel an equally flippant response. “As opposed to my hand?”
I couldn’t actually see his injured hand with him standing that close to the wall, but I saw his shoulder lift and assumed he was flexing it. The muscle in his cheek—the one that was still red from being slapped—twitched. I immediately felt responsible. Not just for a thoughtless comment, but for reminding him of what I’d witnessed.
As easily as if I’d called them, the snakes slithered back inside.
Neighbor Guy nodded, to himself or to me, I didn’t know, and left without another word. He didn’t go back inside, which relieved me to no end. Instead I stood and watched as he walked around the side of his house and got into a navy Jeep parked in his driveway. With an urgency that rocked his vehicle, he backed out and hit the brakes hard before he turned and drove off, a grinding noise echoing behind him.
The solace my roof usually provided abandoned me after that. I no longer felt like I’d helped him, not in any substantial way. Uselessness gnawed at me for hours before I moved to the flat part of my roof, which covered the patio, and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
The grinding noise roused me sometime before dawn. I didn’t function well at that hour, but as I watched him park and enter his house, something occurred to me that was so obvious, I wondered how I’d slept at all.
I slipped silently off my roof—without breaking either of my legs—and through my window. In my room, I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and found a stack of coupons wrapped in a rubber band. Mom had designed them back when she’d decided all the shop needed to thrive was a little advertising. She said people still had to drive, even in a bad economy. Coupons, flyers, we’d even done a commercial...it was pretty awful, but she’d been so happy the day we shot it. The advertising did help, but her enthusiasm had waned when the business didn’t boom the way she’d anticipated. We hadn’t seen a coupon all year.
I thumbed through the stack and pulled one free. Before I lost my nerve, I scribbled a few words on the back and hurried out the window so Dad wouldn’t hear the door.
I knew what that grinding noise meant. He needed new brake pads like, yesterday. Probably not the most important problem in his life, but it was the one I could fix.
I walked up to the Jeep and clamped the coupon underneath his windshield wiper.
I did owe him for the window, after all.
CHAPTER 3 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
The sky was beginning to lighten as I climbed back through the window. My T-shirt snagged on the latch, jerking me back, and I kicked my desk lamp trying to regain my balance.
The lamp didn’t break, but the accompanying crash as it hit the floor was loud enough that I wasn’t surprised when my bedroom door swung open and Dad burst in brandishing a baseball bat.
“Jill, what...?”
Under different circumstances, a father catching his daughter sneaking into her bedroom in the wee hours of the morning would be followed by a lot of yelling. Dad took one look at me crouched on my desk and sighed. “Still with the roof?”
I could hear the weariness in his voice. He didn’t get enough sleep as it was without me waking him up early. He worked all the time, partly for the money—stupid Pep Boys had opened a shop two blocks from us and we were starting to feel the pinch—but also so he wouldn’t have to think about Mom leaving him. Leaving us.
“Sorry, Dad.” I closed the window behind me and hopped off my desk.
He raked a hand over his wild mess of dark, bent tangles. It was getting long in the back. Mom always had him keep it neat and short, but it was starting to brush past his collar. “You can’t keep doing this. Not at five o’clock in the morning. Only serial killers get up this early.”
I didn’t try to follow that line of logic. “Or cross-country runners. You remember which one I am, right?”
Dad yawned wide enough that I could count the fillings in his teeth. He shuffled farther into my room and set the lamp back on my desk. “Didn’t Dahmer run track in high school?”
“Ha-ha. You’re funny at five o’clock in the morning.”
“I should be catatonic at five o’clock in the morning. You should be catatonic at five o’clock in the morning.”
“I’ll be quieter next time,” I said. “Promise.”
Dad made an odd growling noise as he yawned again and arched his back until it cracked. “Mmm...would it kill you to sleep in the house again? It’s gotta be ninety-five degrees and the sun isn’t even up.”
I didn’t care how hot it was. I wasn’t ready to come back yet. I watched him, waiting for him to say it, to bring up Mom.
But he didn’t.
He never had. Not in the five months since she’d left. Not a word, like it was totally normal for us to wake up one day and find her gone. Had he known she was leaving? Did he know why? Did he want to? I didn’t know the answers, and I really didn’t know how to ask the questions. So we lived like that. We pretended and ignored the little and not-so-little reminders of her that we inevitably encountered every day.
Slowly but surely she was disappearing from our house just as she had from our lives. Sometimes I’d notice a picture missing, or a pillow. We were both doing it. Purging her. Last month I took her favorite coffee mug up on the roof with me and dropped it on the driveway to watch it break apart. If Dad saw the pieces, he never said anything. I was going to break her reading glasses next. Maybe back over them with Dad’s truck.
But she wasn’t gone yet. There were the things I couldn’t get rid of as easily as dropping them from the roof.
The things I saw in the mirror.
Sean.
“It’s not that hot,” I said. Which was comparatively true when we considered how hot it would get, but not really the point, and we both knew it. I could tell by the pinched frown on Dad’s face that he wasn’t happy with my response. Neither was I, but sleeping inside wasn’t going to change that. The utter silence in the house at night crawled under my skin like tiny fire ants biting and stinging whenever I tried. And sometimes I’d hear Dad pacing at all hours. Maybe he wasn’t able to sleep in their bed alone. Maybe the quiet ate at him too. Either way, I couldn’t stand to hear it. Or not hear it.
I pulled a smile onto my face. I didn’t want Dad to have to worry about me any more than he already did. “And I promise not to ritualistically murder and eat anyone this morning, no matter how great the temptation is.”
Dad’s own smile took longer than I would have liked to match mine, but it got there. Better. I needed to find a way to keep it there.
“You want me to make you something—” he yawned “—for breakfast?”
I raised an eyebrow. Mom was the cook, which maybe explained why I’d never wanted to learn. Dad’s culinary skills were only slightly less hazardous than mine, which meant we were on a first-name basis with all of the take-out restaurants within a fifteen-mile radius of our house. Still, he tried. Or at least, he offered.
In response to my undisguised skepticism, Dad half smiled, half yawned and then stared again at my still-made bed. He let out a soft sigh and looked at me.
I held my breath.
So did he.
But all he did was sigh again. “I’ll leave the cereal box on the counter for you.” Then his face scrunched up. “I forgot to get your Froot Loops. Sorry, honey. We’ve got some chocolate-sugar-cinnamon things though. You like those, right?” He kissed the top of my head and disappeared down the hall.
I shut my bedroom door and leaned my palms against it.
We were never going to talk about it.
Why she left.
CHAPTER 4 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
My dark red Schwinn was parked in the garage next to Dad’s current project. I eyed one with disdain and the other with enough desire to make my mouth water. The truck was a big, beautiful beast. Large enough that I had to hop up when I got into it. Driving it was like trying not to get bucked off a wild animal. No power steering and the brakes were a tad temperamental. Little by little it was becoming street safe, but not, according to Dad, daughter safe yet.
Details.
The bike was the same one I’d had since junior high and I took it as a deep, personal insult that I still had to ride it most mornings even though I had a driver’s license and a revolving supply of vehicles in varying stages of drivability at my disposal.
Dad had yet to agree. I’d keep working on him.
The wheels clicked softly as I rolled my bike out of the garage. At least the temperature hadn’t reached lethal limits yet. The wind that whipped my ponytail around didn’t feel like a hair dryer in my face. That fun would come on the bike ride home.
I turned into my high school parking lot ten minutes later and saw a lone figure jogging around the track by the canals. Her hair was pulled back in a French braid with a few wispy curls escaping around her face. She looked like she’d stepped out of a toothpaste commercial with her big blue eyes, white-blond hair and matching smile.
She’d been my best friend since the day her family moved in down the street from my old house. She’d knocked on my door with her mom in tow and introduced herself to my mother. “Hi, I’m Claire Vanderhoff. Do you have any kids I can play with?”
She’d been six at the time and was still every bit as forthright at sixteen.
She waved and hurried to meet me.
“Hey! Look at you almost being on time.” Claire bounced in front of me, her body in perpetual movement. “Be careful, waking up this early is addictive. I alphabetized my entire pantry already this morning, and tried out a new juicing recipe. Here.”
My hands were balancing my bike as I walked it to the rack, so I had no choice but to tip my head back when she lifted the thermos to my lips. The blackish-green liquid that hit my tongue tasted like super bitter—and chunky—grass. I mostly concealed a gag.
Claire rolled her eyes and took her thermos back. “That’s your body crying out for more than milk shakes.”
“Do I look like I pedaled through a drive-through on my way here?”
“No, but that’s probably your plan for the ride home.”
She had me there. “What did I just drink anyway?” I nodded toward her metal thermos.
“Wheatgrass, kale and gingerroot.”
I grimaced. “Seriously, Claire?”
“What? It’s supposed to help detox and give you all this energy.” Claire took a whiff. “I found the recipe on this diabetes website that’s pretty good.”
I noticed she was quick to put the lid back. “You need to start your own site. You could make something a million times better and it wouldn’t have to taste like grass and dog piss.”
Claire widened her eyes, uncomfortable with anything that even hinted at crude language. She did brighten at my compliment though, which was completely true. In the two years since her type 2 diabetes diagnosis, Claire had transformed from an overweight spectator to a rather impressive athlete with an ever-expanding nutritional knowledge base.
“I’ve been thinking about starting something...maybe.” She smiled at me. “I could definitely make a better juice.”
“And I will definitely watch you drink it.”
“So,” Claire said after I chained my bike, suddenly very interested in a rock by her foot. She nodded toward the end of the parking lot where a forest green Jetta was idling, its driver fast asleep behind the wheel.
Sean.
Unlike Claire and me, this was the end of his day, not the beginning. He came to the track straight from his summer job—the night shift working security at his dad’s construction site—so someone usually had to wake him. I kept waiting for the morning when the simple question “Do you want to get him today, or should I?” wouldn’t swirl misery through my gut.
We’d been running together for five straight weeks, and I still didn’t know why Sean had agreed to run with us when Claire told him she wanted to go out for cross-country. There were days when I barely knew why I did.
Actually, that wasn’t true. I knew exactly why.
Sean had been sitting on my front porch the morning after my mother left, eyes as bloodshot as mine, waiting for me before I left for school. I hadn’t been surprised to find him there. He’d been calling and texting all night until I shut off my phone. He wasn’t the kind of person to give up easily. Growing up with four older siblings, he couldn’t afford to.
But it had hurt, the sight of someone I used to love mired in a memory too fresh and painful to bear.
He’d been wearing the same clothes from the night before, wrinkled and slept in; he hadn’t even fixed the button Mom had undone.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I’d said, in a voice that sounded stronger than I’d felt. I’d shut the front door behind me and kept a death grip on the knob.
Sean had jumped up, never taking his gaze off me. “You don’t have to talk but I need you to listen.”
I’d shook my head, feeling tears pricking my eyes as he drew closer.
“I’m sorry.”
And they’d spilled over, streams running down my cheeks. I’d wanted him to deny what I’d seen the night before. I’d needed him to make me believe my own eyes had lied. To tell me something, anything, that meant I could keep him, keep us. I’m sorry was a confession disguised in an apology.
I’m sorry I was with your mom.
I’m sorry you found out that way.
I’m sorry I couldn’t love you back.
I’m sorry you can’t tell your dad why his wife left him.
I’m sorry your family was destroyed.
I’m sorry.
“I shouldn’t have left you last night,” he’d continued. “I panicked and I ran.” He’d taken a middling step forward. “I need to tell you what’s been going on. Your mom—”
“Is gone.” My chin quivered. He was so close I’d had to look up. “And she’s not coming back.”
His brows drew together then smoothed, and that easy acceptance had galled me. When he opened his mouth, I’d cut him off. My lips curled back. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry again.”
He hadn’t. He’d shook his head and reached out a hand, brushing the back of his fingertips against mine. “I didn’t know. She said some things last night, but I didn’t know.”
I’d pulled my hand back, breaking the contact with his skin. “I’m not talking to you about this.” I’d lowered my voice. “My dad is a mess and he doesn’t even know—” bile rose in my throat “—what I saw. That is the only reason I’m out here and not inside.”
The muscle had tensed along Sean’s jaw. “That’s the only reason?”
I hadn’t answered him; I didn’t have to. My cheeks were wet and my chin kept twitching.
“I am sorry. It shouldn’t have happened. I should never have let it happen. But you have to believe that I—”
“No!” I pushed his chest, but he’d caught my hand and kept it there, eyes unblinkingly focused on mine. His heartbeat had been wild beneath my palm. Guilt would do that. I’d pushed again and yanked free. “I don’t have to do anything.”
I hadn’t push him hard, I hadn’t had the energy, but he’d staggered back a step. His eyes wet and welling up by the second.
“How long have you known me? How long have we been—” he’d swallowed “—us? You won’t let me explain?”
I’m sorry.
He’d already said it. Nausea rose fast and high, forcing me to press a fist into my stomach. “My mom is gone and my family...isn’t anymore.” That bald admission had scraped at my throat and fresh tears needled my eyes. I’d dashed them away and blinked hard to keep any more from falling. “She was practically on your lap the moment it happened and there is not a single thing you can say to change that.”
He’d bit both lips, nodding first at the ground and then at me. “Nothing I can say now or ever?”
I couldn’t imagine a time when his words would change what had happened or the way I felt, but the anger and the sadness had burned through me and in their wake I was numb and done. “If I say I don’t know, will you leave?”
He hadn’t, not right away. I’d watched the internal conflict flit back and forth across his features and expected him to rally for round two. But for once, Sean had done exactly what I asked, and like a masochist, I’d watched him leave.
I wish I could say I hadn’t cried over Sean after that day, but I had. Like, Alice in Wonderland–level tears. I’d flooded my entire house and street and every place I’d ever stepped. I knew all the so-called stages of grief, so between pathetic bouts of sobbing, I’d waited for anger. I’d begged for its cleansing rage to overtake me and break me free from the fetal ball I reverted to whenever I was alone. I’d wanted to get to the stage where I burned things and cut his face out of photos.
Where I dropped his things from my rooftop.
But it never happened. My stage of grief over Sean was singular. I’d cried a lot until I didn’t.
And it was all his fault.
If Sean had been like Mom, he’d have switched his schedule at school so that we wouldn’t have any classes together. He’d have moved lockers so his wouldn’t be next to mine anymore. He’d have found a new lunch period, let alone a new table.
He’d have completely blotted himself from my life, left those shattered, splintered shards of my heart to fester whenever I thought of him.
Unlike Mom, Sean didn’t do any of that.
He kept up his attempts to talk to me, to explain something that was unexplainable. I shot him down again and again and again. How could I do anything else when at home Dad still started every time the phone rang or someone came to the door, thinking it might be Mom?
Claire didn’t help either, not the way I wanted. She’d always been Team Sean where I was concerned. She knew something had happened between me and Sean the night my mother left, but she had restrained herself—barely—from prying too much. It wasn’t a story I was eager to remember, much less tell, and even though it killed her not to know, Claire could see I wasn’t ready to talk about it. For about three weeks she left well enough alone, which was about two weeks and six days longer than I’d expected.
“I need to tell you something,” she’d said, linking her arm through mine after school one day. “You’re probably not going to like it, so I’m holding on.” She drew in a deep breath, the kind that almost always precipitated a speech of some sort, and I braced for impact.
“I don’t know all the facts, and that’s okay,” she’d added when I tensed. “I understand that you don’t want to talk about it. What I do know is that three weeks ago your mom walked out and you’ve barely been able to look at Sean since.” She let out a gust of breath and dropped her bomb. “I know there’s a connection.”
The blood drained from my face. I actually felt the sensation, and it left me light-headed, unable to protest when Claire led us to the field before tugging me down to the grass beside her. I’d been fending off Claire’s increasingly probing questions, dreading and yet somehow feeling like this moment—the moment when Claire would connect the dots—was inevitable. It was almost a relief to get it over with. Until Claire started talking again.
“I’m not going to speculate wildly here, I know who’s involved and that’s enough. On one hand, there’s your mom. I don’t want to say anything bad about her, but I’m struggling to find anything good to say. She’s made you cry a lot, I’ll leave it at that.”
My eyes were dry at that moment, but only because I’d already cried that morning.
“Then there’s Sean. He’s been the guy to pick you up when you’re hurting over her—sometimes literally—and get you past it. So if something bad happened with both of them on the same night, I’m not going to look at Sean afterward, I’m going to look at your mom. And if you can’t tell me why I should do otherwise—” she held up her hands when my head jerked to face her “—and I understand that you can’t right now—then I have to believe it was her and not him.”
Her and not him. As if it were that simple. As if I hadn’t replayed that night over and over again, looking for ways to exonerate him. Because I missed Sean, I did. Seeing him had always been one of the best parts of my day, and now that was gone.
Claire shifted onto her knees. “Think about it. Your mom has been gone all this time without a word. Whatever she did and whatever damage she caused, she doesn’t care enough to wade back in and try and fix things. Whereas Sean has done nothing but try to fix things, and I don’t see him stopping anytime soon. You of all people should see that for what it is. Something is broken between you two, I’m not denying that, but if there’s a chance that it can be fixed—and he really seems to want to—how can you of all people not try?”
To fix me and Sean.
She didn’t have all the facts, but I couldn’t argue with the ones she did. Everything she’d said about Sean and my mom was true. Historically, Mom was the one who hurt me and Sean was the one who helped me heal. But that one night had changed everything. Sean was there. He’d stayed. He’d said he was sorry.
Maybe Sean and I could be fixed. Maybe the damage could be buffed out, repainted, polished until it hid something only the two of us would ever know about. But that wasn’t the question. The question was...did I want to? Did I want to forgive him for the role he’d played in Mom’s leaving? Could I look at him and not see the ghost of her wrapped around him?
There was no going back. Despite the often-conflicting signals I got from my heart and my head, I couldn’t love Sean anymore, but I didn’t want to hate him either. I didn’t know where that left me, and I wouldn’t know until I tried.
So I did.
Sssslllloooowwwlllyyyy. And trying was predicated on one very clear but unspoken rule: Sean and I would never talk about that night.
At first he was just there, a presence floating around in my peripheral vision, a nod when we passed in the hall. When I stopped flinching every time I saw him, he moved to short conversations and even an awkward high five when I aced a test. After that, I didn’t freeze when he smiled at me—though there was a tension around his mouth that had never been there before. I didn’t move away when he sat next to me or hesitantly bumped my shoulder with his. Slowly but steadily, I was acclimating to something I never thought I’d be able to accept again, much less enjoy: him.
And when summer came and we started running with Claire, shoulder to shoulder, mile after mile, I stopped torturing myself with flashbacks. Because I decided that Sean and I could be fixed. We weren’t an us anymore; we became something else. And we did that because he was right there next to me, not giving up—never giving up. Cautious but determined to fix us.
That was the thing about me and Sean Addison: I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but if I was, it would be entirely his fault.
CHAPTER 5 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
I kept my steps slow and even as I closed in on Sean’s car. Each time it was a little easier. I hadn’t felt completely at ease around Sean since puberty anyway, so I told myself this was just about exchanging one kind of discomfort for another.
I no longer got flustered or felt that overwhelming sense of euphoria when he was around. The one that made me say stupid things and get caught staring at his eyes. None of that happened for more than a heartbeat or two before I was thrown back to that night in my living room.
I halted several feet away and bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to make my face throb. I wasn’t doing this again. I focused on that pain and pushed all thought of that night into the dark recesses of my mind, and vowed for the hundredth time to finally let it die there.
I was fixing us; we were fixing us.
I chanted that with each step and was relieved when I didn’t have to force a smile as I reached the Jetta.
I approached the driver’s side door of Sean’s Jetta and saw his head tilted back and his mouth open, exhausted but there because he wanted to fix us too. Like a balloon releasing, that knowledge eased the pressure in my chest.
It was getting easier. As long as Claire was close enough to keep between us.
I slapped the window and bit back a laugh when he jumped awake, his hands flying up to the steering wheel.
Sean grunted as he got out of his car. He wasn’t smiling, so the dimple that used to spike my blood pressure was noticeably absent, but I caught a hint of it when he turned to me. “That’s low, Whitaker. I was having this awesome dream where I got to sleep without a small blonde girl yelling at me to—”
“Hurry up, you guys! Those miles aren’t going to run themselves.”
Sean scrubbed his face with his hands. “That. Exactly that.” He eyed me sideways. “Tell me you don’t find her energy level offensive?”
“I can hear you, you know,” Claire called out, already warmed up and bouncing from foot to foot. “So, I’ve been doing some thinking.”
I gratefully turned my attention to Claire, almost not caring that her ideas usually ended with me sweating a lot.
We joined her on the track and I casually moved to place her between me and Sean before sitting on the grass to stretch. “Spill it.”
“I think we’re ready for phase two. What would you say to adding a half hour of bleacher sprints each morning and a ten-mile bike ride on Saturdays?”
Sean’s answer was a colorful decline.
“I can lend you one of my brother’s bikes, Sean,” Claire said.
I choked on the water I’d just sipped and tried not to laugh.
Sean focused a slightly deranged look at Claire. “You think I said no because I don’t have a bike?”
Claire’s eyebrows drew together, as if she couldn’t imagine another reason for him to object.
I reached out to tap Claire’s calf. “Offer to loan him a bike again.”
Sean half bent to rest his hands on his knees and started laughing. It still caught me off guard when he let go so completely like that. I both envied and resented him for it.
“I’m just trying to make you a better athlete,” Claire said. “Trust me, the other guys are training like this.”
“Other guys?” Sean straightened up and gestured his arms around the track. It was empty apart from a pair of silver-haired ladies power-walking in matching purple sweat suits. One of them appeared to be listening to a Walkman. “Who are you talking about?”
Just then the duo walked past and we all stopped to wave.
“Look, I know this doesn’t mean as much to you—either of you—as it does to me.” Claire glanced in my direction. “But I know we can be better. I can be better.”
Sean’s irritation slipped away as he moved to stand in front of her. “In case you haven’t noticed, Claire, you’re already awesome. I mean, look at you. You’ve worked really hard to get healthy and you’re doing great—”
She was. It was more than all the weight she’d lost. Claire thrived on working out.
“Jill and I look like The Walking Dead after running—”
“Thanks,” I said.
“—but you, you barely get winded. Maybe you can do more, bleachers and biking and all that, but this is my limit. Neither the flesh nor the spirit are willing.” That earned him a small smile. “Hey, you need to do more? Go for it. But, Claire, and hear me when I say this...” Sean lightly gripped her shoulders and widened his stance so she wouldn’t have to look up to meet his eyes. “I will never, never, run those bleachers with you.”
Another smile, slightly bigger than the one before it, crossed Claire’s face. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I didn’t really expect you guys to agree.”
“This is just me talking. Jill is probably totally up for it.”
They both looked at me and I froze, a water bottle halfway to my mouth. Sean winked.
“What? No, my flesh is way weaker than his.”
Claire spent our first mile once we moved on to the canals trying to convince me, but fortunately I had the perfect thing to distract her.
Sprinting ahead, I turned to jog backward so I could face them both. “I committed an act of vandalism last night that heroically ended a fight between my new neighbors.” I relayed what happened, omitting the mom’s more violent outbursts. I wouldn’t have wanted those details shared if they were about me.
“Were you scared?” Claire asked.
“Well, yeah, that’s why I threw the can.”
Claire matched her pace to mine, letting me face forward again while Sean hung a few strides behind us. “I mean when he caught you. A potential criminal goes psycho on a...a...”
“Shed.”
“—and then turns on you? I’d be scared.”
Sean came up along my other side, close enough that our arms brushed a few times. “Claire, you get scared watching animated kid movies with your brothers,” he said.
I shot him a tentative smile while pressing closer to Claire. “Besides, he wasn’t the scary one. He was...normal, nice. He wouldn’t even let me pay for the window.”
Claire had tried and failed to defend herself on the movie front several times, and wisely chose not to renew her case. Instead she said something equally asinine. “Are you sure you’re not maybe overidentifying with him because of your mom?”
I came to a sudden halt. So did Sean. I bent forward, resting my hands on my knees and panting while sweat dripped into my eyes, making them sting. All my physical responses were eerily similar to that last night I saw Mom. I looked at Sean, and that immediately made it worse.
Claire stopped several feet away and turned back to us with wide eyes. “That came out wrong. I just meant maybe—”
“Seriously, Claire?” Sean shook his head, and then placed a hand on my back.
“Don’t.” My voice came out harsher than I’d intended, but it wiped the sympathetic look off Sean’s face, so I didn’t regret it. How could he, of all people, look at me like that?
Claire walked back to us, slowly, hesitantly. Unlike me, she was barely out of breath. “I’m sorry. I completely turned off my friend brain.”
“Yeah, you did.”
Claire’s stepdad was a psychiatrist and she used to spout analytical stuff like that constantly. It got so bad that we came up with our own way of identifying it, “turning off her friend brain.” She’d gotten a lot better about it but still sometimes slipped. Her psychoanalyzing me was usually only mildly irritating or something I could tease her about, but when it involved my mom...it was a lot harder to shrug off.
“For the record, I’m not identifying with him because of my mom. I saw something I could fix, so I did, okay?”
Claire was quick to nod. “Okay.”
“Is your friend brain back on?”
“Yes, super on.”
“Then let’s go.”
The last mile was awkward, but by the time I collapsed on the grass back at the school, I was too tired to care.
Claire cared. She made me promise we’d hang out that night.
“I want to run again after dinner, but I’m free after.” She picked up her water bottle and started jogging backward toward her mom’s minivan. “Call me when you get off work.”
I shot up, hoping she’d see the panic in my eyes at the thought of being left alone with Sean, but her back was already toward me. I could call out, but that would only draw more attention to the situation.
From the corner of my eye I could see Sean lying in the grass a couple feet away with an arm thrown over his eyes. I felt a strong urge to slink away, and also the urge to reach out. The conflicting impulses were not mixing well with the remains of Claire’s energy drink, and there was a good long minute where I could have thrown up.
I decided it was because of the running.
Just as I became moderately sure I wasn’t going to vomit, Sean sat up and tugged me to my feet.
“Come on, I won’t be able to sleep until Claire’s energy drink wears off. Let me give you a ride.”
And because my father didn’t raise a coward, I said, “Okay.”
CHAPTER 6 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
The walk to Sean’s Jetta felt like my own green mile. The idea of being alone with him in a car with barely two feet between us brought my nausea trickling back. We hadn’t done that yet—been alone.
I cast Sean a furtive look while unlocking my bike, trying to ascertain if he was as uneasy about the prospect as I was. But after one fleeting expression, he took my freed bike and started walking it to his car, defaulting to an easy tirade on the evils of running while we wrangled my Schwinn into the backseat of his Jetta. We knew from previous experience, even if the Jetta occasionally forgot, that it would fit, but only if you got the angle perfect.
“I think it needs to go to the right. I can’t see, am I hitting something?”
Sean squatted down. “Tilt it left.”
I tilted, and the bike slid in.
Sean straightened, a grin on his face. “And you doubted me.”
Yeah, I kind of had. But his smile was light and I found myself matching it, releasing the breath I’d been holding since Claire left.
Until his smile changed as his eyes moved past me. I turned and saw Cami Gutiérrez waving at us from across the parking lot.
I should have been relieved at the sight of another person to put between me and Sean, but that wasn’t my first thought, seeing Cami. Or my second. Or my third.
Not because there was anything off-putting about Cami—the opposite, actually. Just looking at her, you could tell Cami was the kind of girl who dotted her i’s with hearts and rescued kittens from trees. She’d transferred to our school at the end of last year and already had more friends than I did.
Not that I was bitter.
And I was used to noticing girls noticing Sean, both before and after I stopped loving him. Sometimes he noticed them back, which unfairly sucked just as much now as it had before.
With her soft brown hair and matching skin, and the dimple that was nearly as legendary as Sean’s, Cami got a lot of notice. I almost felt like I needed to duck when I got caught in the cross fire of their combined dimples. I gave the edge to Sean though. I still had a hard time not getting a little dizzy when he smiled at me, and I’d had years of practice. Cami had only recently moved to Mesa and was therefore totally defenseless.
“Cami G,” he called when she reached us.
“Sean A.” She let the sounds run together so it sounded like Seany.
My stomach prepared to sour at the hug I knew he was about to give her, but he surprised me by high-fiving her instead. Cami didn’t register the omission like I did; she beamed at Sean, then wisely broke eye contact before she did something stupid like fling herself at him. Smart girl. She turned to include me in the conversation.
“So how’s cross-country? Did Claire convince you guys to go out for the team yet?”
Sean launched into the many reasons why hell would be hosting the Winter Olympics before that happened. Cami hung on every word, laughing. She had a great laugh.
I looked back and forth between them, noticing the way she touched his arm, and the way he fed off her laughter. It wasn’t nearly as hard to watch as it used to be. Good on me.
“I don’t understand why you don’t just quit then?” she asked.
Sean’s gaze slid to me, but I didn’t meet it. He never explicitly said it, but I knew why he worked an eight-hour night shift and then ran five miles with Claire hounding his every step. On bad days, I told myself it was penance.
“Because then he wouldn’t have anything to complain about,” I said. “Plus he gets to verbally torture Claire every morning and she has to take it.”
“Poor Claire,” Cami said.
I felt Sean’s gaze linger on me a second before renewing the role of Claire’s long-suffering friend. He waved a hand in front of Cami’s face. “Poor Claire? Did you just say poor Claire? Try running with us sometime and see how sorry you feel for her.”
Cami’s eyes lit up. “I would if I didn’t need to practice.” She hoisted her duffel bag higher and pushed her still-damp hair over one shoulder. “You could maybe try swimming with me.” She flushed and rushed on before Sean could answer. “Speaking of, I have this awesome pool at my house. You guys should come over sometime.” She looked at me. “Claire too.”
I nodded, knowing Claire and I were an afterthought, a genuine one, but an afterthought all the same. She wanted Sean, and from where she was standing, I couldn’t blame her. I also couldn’t watch their love connection unfold two feet from my face. I’d rather brave the car alone with Sean.
I moved to the Jetta’s passenger door. “Guys, I need to get going. My dad keeps threatening to fire me if I’m late again.”
With effort, Cami pulled her gaze away from Sean. “Do you need a ride? I’m going past your shop so it’s no prob—”
“No way.” Sean cut her off a second before the opposite response rushed to my mouth. “I’m not loading that—” he tapped a knuckle on the back window toward my bike “—into another car.”
Cami shifted her feet. “Oh, sure. I’ll catch you later.” She took a few steps backward and the distance between herself and Sean did wonders for her confidence. She pointed at both of us. “I’m serious about coming over. I’ll text you guys next weekend, okay?”
We said goodbye and I opened the passenger door, watching Cami walk away and hating that I checked to see if Sean was watching too. He wasn’t. “Did she convince you to go out for swim team?”
Sean shrugged. “I’m not looking for a new sport.”
I gave him a look. “You know that’s not why she asked you.”
“Well, I’m not looking for that either.”
Once upon a time I’d have lived off a comment like that for weeks, trying to read more into it than was there. I didn’t do that this time. There was no point.
Inside the car, Sean reached across me to grab his sunglasses from the glove compartment. I inhaled before I could stop myself, and let my gaze stray to the stubble lining his jaw. It’d be rough and scratchy if I touched it. I curled my hands into fists and gazed out the window. He was saying something, and I felt his words drift over me like he was running the back of his fingers along my arm.
And then he was running the back of his fingers along my arm.
I jerked away. “What?”
“I said you can pick the music.”
I hit the first preset and didn’t change it when a commercial for life insurance came on. While he drove, I focused on the view out the window like it was my job to catch every detail. I berated myself for caring if Cami’s crush on Sean went both ways, for reacting in the wrong way to his closeness, for wanting to bring him nearer instead of pushing him away, for forgetting—however briefly—that we were broken.
I slammed the door a little harder than necessary when I got out at my house.
“Watch it!” Sean killed the engine and followed me.
“The door’s fine. Besides, I’d just fix it if it wasn’t.” I didn’t add that it was just a Jetta, but I thought it.
“The thought of you in coveralls does good things for me, but that’s not the point. And, hey.” He darted in front of me when I turned to get my bike. “What did I miss? We were okay like two minutes ago.”
No we weren’t, but I didn’t say that. Every day was a struggle not to swing wildly from one emotion to the other, a pendulum that he controlled whether he knew it or not. I couldn’t slip back into the way we used to be as effortlessly as he could. It was like trying to put on an old coat that no longer fit. I felt sweaty and constricted whenever I tried. And then I’d get angry, because he didn’t seem to have the same problem.
“I’m just exhausted from not sleeping great and all the running. Sorry for slamming the door. I’ll be nicer to the Jetta, promise.” I petted his car.
Sean exhaled, and it ended in a laugh. “That’s funny, you talking to me about being tired. Check out my eyes.” He caught my hand and tugged me close—real close—and it was all I could do not to step back. “I look like the biggest pothead on the planet. I’m pretty sure my mom is secretly drug testing me even though she knows I work nights.”
I should have been able to dismiss a casual touch from Sean as easily as he did from me. Not that I was able to casually touch him yet, but that was the goal.
The casual part, not the touching.
I freed my hand without effort. “They are pretty red.” But still that same achingly perfect blue.
Through the windows of the garage, Sean noticed my dad’s truck was gone. “I thought you were kidding about your dad firing you for being late.” Sean gestured with his chin toward the garage. “That a bad sign?”
“No, I woke him up climbing through my window this morning, so he was going to go in early. It’s cool, I’ll just ride my bike.”
“I didn’t know you were still doing the roof thing.”
I saw my own discomfort mirrored in his eyes and realized his comment had reminded us both that we hadn’t talked much in months, and never about anything of consequence.
“I don’t mind dropping you off at the shop,” Sean added.
“You’re forgetting I just saw up close how exhausted you are.” I tried for a smile. “Really, it’s fine. I need to take a shower and everything. Go home. Get some sleep.”
Staring straight ahead, Sean said, “You hate that bike.”
So I did, vehemently. And he knew I was choosing it over him.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Claire makes it better, doesn’t she?”
My smile came easier that time. It wasn’t wide, but it was honest. “Yeah.”
“So we have to be sweating at the butt crack of dawn, just to be around each other? Awesome.”
“We’re around each other now.” And it was only half as hard as I’d feared.
He glanced at the still-lightening sky and fingered the edge of my damp T-shirt. “Kinda my point.”
He meant it to be a joke, based on the way he cocked his head at me, but laughing was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be able to hang out with him sans buffer. Claire did make things easier, but she also kept things stagnant, and we wouldn’t fix anything if we stayed like that.
I looked through his window and saw my bike crowded into the Jetta’s backseat. I did hate it. “Help me with it?” I meant the bike, but more than that too. I envied him and his godlike power of pretending things were okay. He made it look so easy. Smile, tease, flirt, repeat. I was still struggling.
My head was always clearer when my hands were busy, and I needed clearer. Things with Sean could get murky if I let them. I moved to the back door to pull my bike out. Without comment, Sean stepped around me, and between the two of us, we got it out without undue bloodshed. A triumph on any other day, but that day it wasn’t enough.
I entered the code to open the garage and rolled my bike in, pausing with my back to him. “Maybe I will take that ride.”
“You sure?”
I was. I hoped I was. “Yes.”
In the blink of an eye, Sean changed. The stiffness in his posture relaxed, the shape of his mouth lifted, even his eyes seemed to change. It wasn’t until that change washed over him that I realized how much he’d been holding back, how I’d been missing him even when I saw him almost every day. He flashed a dimple and held his arms open.
If I still loved him, in that moment, I’d have known exactly why.
“Sweaty hug on it?”
My eyes darted from his arms to his eyes and back again. He was asking me to accept more than a ride. A lot more. It was starting to feel like too much, but I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.
I stepped into him, my cheek pressing against his damp T-shirt.
“Wow, you sweat a lot for a girl.”
My heart was steady as I smiled into Sean’s chest, silently thanking him for saying the exact right thing to keep the moment light and easy. When he seemed reluctant to let go, I stayed in his arms a second longer, relieved that hugging him didn’t hurt. Not much anyway.
CHAPTER 7 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
After taking the world’s fastest shower, and Sean taking the whole yellow-lights-mean-slow-down law as merely a suggestion, I made it to work on time.
Sean waited until I pulled the door open and waved him on before driving away. I watched him go, lowering my hand slowly. We’d done that a million times, and I remembered the rides that had ended with me dancing through the door when he was out of sight. Today my feet stayed firmly on the ground, but I did watch for longer than I should have. He had to have been nearly home by the time I walked into Jim’s Auto Shop and let a blast of frigid air and the dark, dank scent of motor oil embrace me.
I inhaled deeply and smiled, relieved to leave Sean and the past outside. For some people it was fresh-baked cookies or apple pie hot out of the oven, but for me, the shop smelled like home. Unfortunately it sounded like home too.
Dad had a thing for Hall & Oates, and since I was like two seconds late, he already had the band blaring. Once the music was set, nobody else in the garage could touch it. Shop rules.
When I entered the main garage bay, Dad was in full-on awkward dance mode half-hidden behind the crumpled hood of a Land Cruiser. He spotted me and grinned while lip-synching to the chorus of “Private Eyes” and he pointed to the dry-erase board on the wall.
The work board. I always approached it with an addictive mix of fear and excitement, like Jigsaw or Santa Claus might be waiting for me. Sometimes Dad would banish me to the office for a morning spent chained to the desk, or assign me to endless oil changes. My favorite jobs were the unknowns; the vehicles that came in with serious emotional problems that hid behind odd growls or unexplained shakes.
And of course the shinies, the head turners that we humble mechanics never otherwise got to drive.
My feet began to drag the closer I got to the board. “Come on, really?”
Dad shimmied my way and told Hall & Oates to take five by turning down the volume. “You got something against Acuras?”
“I do when they aren’t Mustangs, which we also have in the shop today.” I tapped it on the board. “You haven’t even assigned it to anyone, unless you hired...” I squinted at the tiny figure Dad had drawn. “The devil in a golf cart without telling me?”
Dad straightened. “That’s a speed demon.” He was always drawing little figures, leftovers from when he wanted to be a cartoonist.
I leaned closer. “That’s actually pretty good, but seriously, where are we on the Mustang?”
“The Mustang isn’t a rush, but I tell you what. The toilet is backed up, so if you’d rather I start on bleeding the cooling system on the Acura, we can swap.”
I slumped forward on the counter and rested my chin on my hands. “Do you ever worry about spoiling me with such a glamorous life?”
Dad laughed long and hard and reached out to rub my cheek with his thumb to show me a smear of grease that I’d somehow managed to get on my face already. He had the most contagious laugh.
“You want the Mustang?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
“And what do I get?”
“I’ll close tonight so you can catch the game.”
“What game?”
“I don’t know. Some team somewhere is playing a game on TV. That one.”
Dad made a big show of caving. “All right. You can drive the new flip home.”
“The truck?” Oh, sweetness. The Mustang and he was going to let me drive the truck! I was doing a decent moonwalk over to grab the keys when Dad nodded his chin toward the back of the garage.
“Try again.”
We always had a car or two in the shop that Dad got cheap at auction or online. The newest flip was an ugly-as-sin Mazda that had decent guts but needed serious cosmetic work. It was the kind of car that turned heads—just not in a good way.
Dad cued up more Hall & Oates, forcing me to yell over the music.
“How about I stay late dutifully clearing out the storage closet, while you take the Mazda and leave me the truck?”
Dad’s answer was to smile and turn up the stereo as “I Can’t Go for That” started playing.
* * *
After Dad left, I reclaimed the stereo and spent way too much time trying to decide if I was cheating on my imaginary Spitfire when I called the Mustang baby. I was fairly certain I was in the clear when I heard something worse than the din of “Rich Girl” blaring through the garage: the unmistakable grinding screech of Neighbor Guy’s Jeep.
I shot out on my creeper so fast I nearly took out a tool chest. I spared a glare at the Mustang for completely eclipsing last night’s nocturnal activities from my mind, then grabbed a rag to clean my hands before hurrying to the front office.
My steps slowed when Claire’s comments from that morning reemerged alongside the knowledge that I was alone in the shop. I hadn’t been scared last night, but Dad had been a shout away and there’d been a wall between us. What if I had glossed over Neighbor Guy’s potential danger because of my messed-up relationship with my mom?
Stupid Claire. Stupid Mustang.
Stupid me?
My sneakers squeaked loudly on the checkered linoleum as I crossed to the counter, but when the door chimed, admitting him, any lingering trepidation flitted away.
My first thought when I saw him was that it was actually possible for some people to look good in fluorescent light. Not Sean I-descended-from-Olympus good, more I’m-definitely-not-going-to-strangle-you-and-look-how-well-I-fill-out-this-T-shirt good.
I smiled; Neighbor Guy did not.
“What are you, like, the only girl in this city?” His dark eyebrows drew together. “Do you actually work here, or is this some kind of stalking game you’re playing?”
Blood rushed to my face and my jaw jutted forward. A litany of profane words in the most offensive combinations my short-circuiting brain could think of slammed into the back of my teeth. It was only respect for Dad and his shop that kept me from freeing them.
“Nice seeing you again too. I’m Jill, and this is my dad’s shop. I’m the one who left the coupon on your Jeep so you wouldn’t end up wrapped around a streetlamp when your brakes went out, but yeah, it was mostly so I could stalk you.” I might have let one totally non-customer-sensitive word slip after that.
He didn’t respond. At. All. I shook my head and leaned over the counter to grab the coupon he was holding, but he jerked it back. I placed both hands on the counter. “Look, I’ve got other people to stalk today.”
He rotated his jaw and looked fractionally less like a condescending jerk when he said, “Can I take back the stalking comment? I didn’t expect to run into you. Again. You’re kind of everywhere.”
“Yeah, my house, my work—that is everywhere.”
His hands mirrored mine on the other side of the counter, flattening the coupon between us. “How was I supposed to know you were the one who left this?”
I unzipped the top of my coveralls. Underneath I was wearing one of the many Jim’s Auto Shop T-shirts that I owned. It was identical, if in slightly better condition, to the one I’d worn on my roof. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you.” I pulled the coupon from under his hand, brushing his skin in the process, flipped it over and read aloud what I’d written. “‘Free brake pad replacement. Welcome to the neighborhood.’” I looked up in time to see a ghost of a smile on his face.
“Yeah, I, ah, didn’t notice what the shirt said before.”
I could feel myself turning the same shade of red as my T-shirt. I vividly remembered his eyes passing over me last night. Not for reading purposes, apparently. I gave in to the impulse to zip my coveralls back up.
“Look, I’m sorry. You caught me off guard...Jill.” He focused on my name stitched onto my coveralls. “I’m Daniel. Or did you overhear that from your roof?”
I could tell he was trying for a less hostile tone, and I decided I could do the same, since I was more embarrassed than offended at that point. “No.” My eyes dropped to the bandage on his left hand. He’d wrapped his knuckles, but there were still raw-looking abrasions visible below the gauze. I forgot about him checking me out. “Is it broken?”
The smallest shrug. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” I stepped out from behind the counter. “Did you get an X-ray? It might be—”
“I know what broken bones feel like. It’s fine.”
I was about a foot away from him, my hand still outstretched toward his injured one. I was totally in his personal space, close enough to see a sliver of a scar in his right eyebrow and catch something lemony/minty coming off him. It made me want to lean in. Instead, I looked away, but not before noticing another scar disappearing under the collar of his T-shirt.
The lemony/minty scent grew stronger when he leaned closer, causing me to step back, but all he did was slide the coupon from my hand and hold it up between two fingers. “Why’d you leave this?”
I blinked and felt stupid for practically leaping away from him. He wasn’t staring at me like I’d done anything wrong though. He seemed genuinely curious. Daniel. I could stop mentally referring to him as Neighbor Guy.
“I meant it when I said you could forget about the window.”
Yeah, he had. But I couldn’t. And it went deeper than just owing him because I broke it.
Dad had tried to explain to Mom once why he was happy “just being a mechanic.” It wasn’t that he lacked ambition or aptitude or anything like that. It certainly wasn’t because he was content with “mediocrity.” He loved to fix things. To take something broken and neglected and make it new again. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and he’d never be rich enough to own half the cars he worked on, but he made things better. He said there was more satisfaction in that than anything else he might do. And whether Mom liked it or not, I was exactly like my dad.
I just liked to extend the practice beyond the garage when I could.
It was why I’d thrown the pop can. And why I’d left the coupon.
But that answer was way more than I was willing to give someone I just met, no matter how nice he smelled.
“It’s the mechanic in me. I might have exaggerated with the streetlight comment, but that grinding noise your Jeep makes when you stop? That’s not a happy sound. You really shouldn’t be driving it. You’ll end up having to get the brake rotors machined or even replaced. That’s a lot more expensive than new pads. And I’d have to break more than your window to give out coupons for that.”
He might have smiled. Maybe. His mouth definitely twitched.
“I don’t have time to replace them before we close today, but unless we’re crazy busy...” I glanced down the street at the three grinning idiots on the Pep Boys sign. “I can get to you tomorrow before lunch.”
“Tomorrow’s fine.” Daniel fished his keys out of his jeans, pulled one off and gave it to me.
“Hey, if you don’t mind hanging out for a bit, I can give you a ride home.”
Daniel turned back to me just as his hand touched the door. “I’m good, but thanks. And for the Jeep.”
With a last nod, he was out the door and gone.
CHAPTER 8 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
I expected to find Dad scrounging for dinner when I got home, but the kitchen was empty. I was starting to wonder if he was sick and had gone to bed early when I heard his voice.
Dad was a big guy and he had the voice to match. I could hear him clear across the shop even when all the machinery was running. But at home he’d learned to tone it down. Not quiet, exactly—I don’t think he knew how to be quiet—but not his normal thundering volume either.
But this, this went beyond loud, beyond booming. I remembered this voice like it had been carved into my bones. I knew who he was talking to before I heard him say her name.
“What do you want, Katheryn?”
I backed up until I hit a wall, not that Dad could see me through his bedroom door, but it was an instinct I couldn’t control. It was only a small comfort to realize she was on the phone and not actually in the house.
It was like being doused with ice water, knowing she was talking to him. He was so big and strong, whereas Mom was such a small thing, and yet she destroyed him, destroyed us, as if she were a giant.
After months of nothing, what could she possibly want? She was never what I’d consider maternal, so I doubted custody was an issue at this point. I’d be eighteen in just over a year, and it wasn’t like she’d tried to take me with her before.
And yet, what else could it be? What else could she want? The house? The shop? She’d hated both of them. Whatever it was, Dad was more upset than I’d heard him since the day she left.
“You are unbelievable,” Dad said. “No, you don’t. You haven’t been here, watching her walk through the house like a ghost, and that’s when she can stand to be in it!”
I backed down the hall into the kitchen as Dad’s half of the conversation still thundered through the house. The words I couldn’t hear were chipping away at my bones like an ice pick. I lifted the kitchen phone from its base and pressed it to my ear.
Dial tone. He was on his cell phone, then.
Something about this one-sided conversation was so much worse than the months of fighting before she left, and it took me only seconds to figure out why.
They didn’t know I was there.
Dad didn’t know.
As horrible as their fights had been, there must have been some part in each of them, whether by unspoken agreement or not, that they’d held back for my sake.
They weren’t holding back now. Not Dad, and certainly not Mom.
It had always been me and Dad. From the very beginning. But the last few months of fighting would have made me choose Dad even if the lifetime before hadn’t.
Mom was petty. Calculating. Cruel to the point that shredded any love I held for her.
But not Dad. Oh, he got mad. He yelled. But he never sought to inflict the same kind of personal damage that she did. No matter what she said to him, no matter how vile her insults, he never spoke to her the way she deserved, the way I would have. The way I wanted to so badly in that moment that I was striding down the hall before I could stop myself.
“Kate,” Dad said, and I hated his calling her that. She didn’t deserve it anymore. “Don’t do this. Please.” And then I jumped and froze outside his door when I heard him slam something—his hand probably—against the wall. “You selfish— Don’t tell me you’re sorry. You haven’t been sorry for anything your entire life.” More silence followed by a harsh laugh. “Right, except that.”
There was a lot of yelling after that. It was all things I’d heard before, except reenergized somehow. It was as if all the fights they would have had if she’d stayed were all converging and breaking through at once.
“Please, Kate. Just wait a second. Think. You haven’t been here, you haven’t seen her.”
My stomach soured the way it always did when they started talking about me. Dad’s voice lowered after that. He was speaking so softly that I missed most of the next few things he said until:
“Don’t you ever say that to me again.”
I shrank into myself at the unspoken threat in his voice. I wasn’t used to being scared of him. I’d made him mad plenty of times, but even at his angriest, I’d never been afraid of him.
I was afraid now, and I wasn’t even the one he was threatening.
“Kate—Kate—Kate!” He threw the phone so hard, I heard it break.
My hands fisted at my sides. Things had just started to get better. Dad and I were figuring out life again—just the two of us. I was beginning to remember what being happy felt like.
With one phone call, she took it all away.
Dad would come out of his room any second. If I didn’t want to have a conversation, I needed to hurry back outside and pretend that I was only just getting home.
Avoiding had kind of been the default all summer when Dad and I came even remotely close to talking about Mom. And maybe it would have worked. Maybe we could have kept dodging the subject, pretending that we weren’t a family with an amputated member, ignore the phantom pains that we both still felt.
Maybe Dad and I could have.
But Mom wasn’t going to let us.
Instead of backing away, instead of hiding, I stood directly outside his door so there’d be no way for him to wonder if I’d overheard him. I wanted him to know.
I met his eyes dead-on when he opened the door. “What did Mom want?”
CHAPTER 9 (#uca7d5d2e-0d22-5107-98c3-09c161cbdf4e)
Dad’s face was flushed red, the anger his conversation with Mom had stirred up still visible under his skin. But the moment he saw me, the moment I asked that one question, all the blood drained from his face.
I shouldn’t do this to him. I shouldn’t make things harder. Dad looked ill, and he hadn’t even said her name to me yet. I didn’t want him to have to relive the conversation. And yet, I asked him again. “Dad.” I’m sorry. “What did Mom want?”
His eyes were wide as he stared at me—frightened, I would almost say, except nothing frightened Dad. And that seemed to be all he could do. Just stare.
But I couldn’t let it go.
“She wants to know you’re okay—”
I had never in my life sworn in front of Dad, but I did then. He didn’t even look that shocked.
“She doesn’t get to pretend she cares. Not anymore. She left us—”
“No!”
I shrank back at Dad’s sudden outburst.
“Me. Not you.” He rested his hand on my head. “She didn’t leave you.”
The weight of Dad’s hand was familiar and comforting in a way that always made me feel safe and loved. But his words simmered under my skin so I shook him off. “Then where is she? Where has she been all these months? Why isn’t she here yelling at you? Why did she try to—” I bit my tongue.
In a vertigo-inducing rush, I was back in my living room watching silhouettes moving along the wall in patterns that made no sense to me. And hearing her laughter, her murmuring.
The morning after she left, I’d carried my Post-it note into the hallway. My legs had moved without any direction from my brain. I had stopped when I saw Dad hunched over in one of the beautiful but uncomfortable dining room chairs that Mom had picked out.
He’d had his own note, a scrap of paper even smaller than mine. I had watched him stand, crush it into a tiny ball, and hurl it against the wall. It had bounced off and rolled under the china cabinet. Then his bones had seemed to dissolve before he fell to his knees, hung his head in his hands and wept.
I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t done much of anything besides back up and slip quietly into the bathroom. I’d flattened her note on the counter, but the sticky part was covered with lint from my pillow and refused to stick. I’d held it down and stared at her words until they lost all meaning. Then I’d torn it into tinier and tinier pieces, until all I had left was a palm full of yellow confetti fluttering into the toilet and swirling away.
The words themselves had been harder to flush. I could still close my eyes and see even the one she’d misspelled.
I can’t do this anymore and I’m tired of trying. This isn’t the life I was meant to have and it’s suffacating me. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I can’t stay without hurting myself more. I hope we can find a way to forgive each other.
And she’d signed it Katheryn. Not Mom.
* * *
I wiped tears with my palms, hating that she could make either of us cry after all these months, and felt my voice strengthen. “She left us.” Dad didn’t try to correct me that time. “I don’t understand how you can defend her.”
Dad raised his hand again, but I stepped back, tears pooling in my eyes. He lowered it with a resignation that infuriated me almost as much as what he said next.
“I wasn’t a perfect husband. I know it’s easy to look at what she’s done and think it was all her, but it wasn’t.”
“You,” I said, “didn’t leave. You would never do what she did.” I shook, struggling not to scream. “Never.”
Why did he look as if I was the one making things harder? As if I was the one who didn’t get it?
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple.” I pointed toward the front door. “She’s the one who quit. She’s the one who didn’t want us.”
“You can’t think that way.” Dad’s eyes were glassy and I knew I would die if he started crying. “I didn’t love her the way I should have. That’s on me. But your mom—”
“She didn’t love you at all! If you only knew—” I clenched my jaw so tight I thought I heard the bone crack. “Stop making excuses for her!”
“I’m not justifying what she did.” And then he gave me a look that would haunt me. It was like he was trying to tell me something and not tell me something at the same time. “Not then and not now.” And just as quickly the moment was gone. He swallowed. “I’m talking about your mom, here, not my wife. I don’t want you to write her off because she doesn’t want to be married to me anymore.”
Love for one parent and hate for the other fought a vicious battle inside me. How could she not love him when even now he was trying to salvage any affection I still had for her? The outcome cloaked my voice in bitterness. “Wife. Mother. It’s the same person. I can’t separate the two. I can’t.”
“Okay, okay.” Dad saw fresh tears fill my eyes. “I’m not telling you that you have to. Not right now. But I am saying that it’s okay for you to still love your mom. I’m okay with you loving her.”
I wasn’t. Through her words and actions, she’d shown that she despised the most important person in my life. There was no fixing that. Had I ever thought there was?
I was getting what I wanted. A conversation. Something. Anything. Only, looking at Dad made me want to stitch my mouth shut. “She’s not going away, is she?”
Dad wouldn’t look at me, but eventually he shook his head.
My hands were empty, otherwise I would have thrown something just to hear it break. Hate was such an ugly, infectious thing. It burrowed deep inside and consumed. My hate hadn’t begun that way, not even after Sean. It had started out as an ice cube lodged in my throat, an obstruction I couldn’t move no matter how many times I swallowed. Then it melted, and the cold had trickled through my insides, numbing me.

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