Heart Shaped Rock (22 page)

“You don’t want Jared, trust me,” Tiffany says. “He’s a tool.”

“Come on, Tiff,” Kellan admonishes, the ever-loyal friend. He turns to Delaney. “He’s a good guy. But he’s pretty stuck on Shaynee, from what I hear. Apparently, she’s ‘freakishly beautiful.’”

“That’s too bad for him, seeing as how he’s on the losing side of a love triangle and all.”

“It’s not a love triangle,” I say forcefully. “There’s absolutely nothing going on with Jared. Please, you guys, just drop it.”

“So who’s Jacket Boy, then?” Delaney asks. “Whoever he is, he has excellent taste in outerwear.”

“Jacket Boy is
Dean,
” Tiffany answers. “Also known as Motorcycle Boy.”

“Oh, wow,” Delaney exclaims. “Jacket Boy rides a motorcycle? Well, that figures, doesn’t it? The hottest boys always ride motorcycles.”

I groan. “Please, you guys, just stop—”

“The
stupidest
boys always ride motorcycles.” It’s Delaney’s best friend, Juliette. The whole table stops and stares at her. She’s never made a peep in our group before. She looks around, defensive. “What? Motorcycles are shockingly unsafe. The guys who ride them tend to be adrenaline junkies and risk-takers. Stupid idiots.”

Kellan bursts out laughing. “Looks like Shaynee likes the bad boys, then.”

“And how old is this guy, anyway?” Juliette continues. “Really, what kind of parents let their teenage son drive a motorcycle?”

“New topic,” I yell, putting my hands over my face. “Seriously, you guys, I’m gonna be sick.” It’s the truth. I’m turning green.

Tiffany knows me well enough to know this isn’t a figure of speech. “Okay, new topic,” she commands with absolute authority. “Let’s talk about how we’re going to get Chaz Alvarez to ask Delaney out.”

“Oh, I like that topic,” Delaney joins in, clapping her hands.

“Fabulous,” Tiffany says. “Let ‘Operation Snare Chaz Alvarez’ begin.”

Thank God for Tiffany. I catch her eye from behind my hands and shoot her a look of gratitude. She winks. Good ole Tiffany. Or
Typhani
. Whatever the spelling of her name, she’s the best.

After school—finally—my heart pounds out of my chest during my drive to Sheila’s. As I’m driving, my phone buzzes with an incoming text, but I wait until I’m safely parked in Sheila’s lot before reading it, proving that I do, in fact, occasionally heed my Dad’s commandments. The text is from Tiffany, of course.
“Good luck with Dean today. Call me after you see him!”

I shudder with anticipation.

I race through the front door of Sheila’s and instantly start scanning the room.

Sheila’s standing behind the counter, and, as usual, she’s doing four different things at once. I scan the room again. I don’t see Dean. I’m freaking out. I need to see him.
Calm down, spazzoid,
I tell myself
.
I’m already on the verge of acting like a wide-eyed maniac, yet again. Not my best strategy, considering the last time Dean saw me, I was a sprinting, bug-eyed lunatic. Maybe, just maybe, I should chill on flashing Dean my crazy-eyes this time around.

“Hi, Shaynee,” Sheila says, and, unless I’m imagining it, she seems a bit subdued.

“Hi, Sheila. I’ll be right there.” I run past her and into the back room. After stowing my purse and grabbing my apron, I join her behind the counter. Wordlessly, I take on half of Sheila’s duties, and we fall into our usual rhythm together. After about an hour, the rush has died down, so I run to the restroom to refill the paper products and do a quick sweep of the table area, bussing empty mugs and dishes, all the while keeping my eye on the front door.
Still no Dean.

I return to Sheila at the counter. “Hey, is Dean coming by today?” I ask, trying to sound casual. Of course, the truth is that I’m anything but casual.

Sheila looks dumbfounded. Or is that annoyed? “No, Dean isn’t coming today.” Yep, definitely annoyed. “I specifically told him
not
to come down here. Remember? You took Tiffany’s Tuesdays exactly because you
didn’t
want to see Dean? To be honest, he didn’t take that news all that well.” She looks like she’s going to cry. If she starts, I’ll surely join her.

How many times and ways can I stab this poor boy in the heart? I really am heartless. I can’t figure out a single thing to say, so I busy myself wiping down the counter. Sheila follows my lead and begins refilling the beans in the machine.

Suddenly, Sheila whirls around to look at me, as if she’s bursting to say something. “Shaynee, I know I said I’d stay out of the middle of you two, but what’s going on? Dean won’t say a word to me about you, or about anything for that matter. He’s obviously a wreck. I hate to see him like this.”

“Oh, Sheila. I blew it. I made the biggest mistake. It’s all my fault.”

She sighs. “Oh, honey. Everybody makes mistakes.”

“Not this big.”

“Yeah, however big. Especially at sixteen.” Sheila embraces me.

“That’s exactly what my dad said,” I whisper.

She pulls away from me and looks me square in the face. “Well, then, your dad is a wise and kindhearted man.”

Inexplicably, I think of Mom. Sheila kind of reminds me of her, actually, though they don’t look anything alike. Suddenly, my mind starts clicking like it’s connecting this dot over here with that dot over there. I shake my head, immediately blocking whatever train of thought is attempting to leave the station.

I need to focus on the situation at hand. How did I let things get so messed up? Dean must think I hate his guts by now. I’ve got to tell him that, whatever his reasons for keeping quiet when I babbled on and on about my so-called normal teenage life, I know he meant no harm. I trust him completely. I’ve got to let him know Jared is nothing to me, and that Dean is everything. Yes, it’s true. Dean is everything to me. I can only hope he’ll believe me.

I hang my head, and Sheila puts her arms around me again.

“Oh, little one, it will all work out. Just have faith.”

I put my head on Sheila’s shoulder. “Will you just tell Dean I’m sorry?”

“Honey, that’s got to come from you.”

I know she’s right. I pull apart from Sheila’s embrace and look into her face. I see an older, female version of Dean’s eyes staring back at me.

A couple approaches the counter to place their orders.

“What can I do for you?” Sheila asks, and I’m surprised at how light-hearted she manages to sound. When another customer comes in and orders a bran muffin, I study Sheila’s profile as she reaches into the pastry display case. It occurs to me that she suffered a life-altering loss with the death of Dean’s father at such a young age. She must have been in her twenties when he died, right? I’ve never thought about Dean’s dad and his sudden death in relation to Sheila. She must have been devastated. And yet, to look at her now, you’d never know it.

“Sheila,” I tentatively ask after the last customer in line has drifted to a table in the corner, “how did you get over the loss of Dean’s father?”

Sheila looks surprised at my question.

I quickly backtrack. “If you don’t want to talk about it,” I say, “I totally understand.”

“Oh, no, no, honey,” she says, “there’s nothing I want talk about more.”

Chapter 22

“I’ve never gotten over losing James,” Sheila says flatly. “He was the great love of my life. When he died, I wanted to curl up and die, too.”

Her words hit me like a ton of bricks.

“But,” she continues, “dying wasn’t an option for me. Dean was growing inside my belly, and I had to keep living and moving forward for him.”

I find my voice. “His name was James?”

Sheila nods, smiling. “James.” She sighs loudly. “He was the most gorgeous and talented man I’ve ever laid eyes on. Just a work of art, that man. When he sang, his voice was as smooth as silk and so full of soul. He sounded just like Dean Martin, which, trust me, even back then, wasn’t the least bit cool.” She laughs. “Oh, but
he
made it cool. And when he played his guitar,” her voice drops to a whisper, “it was like he was making love to it.”

I want to shout “earmuffs!” at myself and throw my hands over my ears, but I don’t want to risk Sheila clamming up. I can do without the visual image of Sheila that’s popped into my mind.

“Ooooweeee!” Sheila continues, lost in her own thoughts. “He rode around town on his bad-boy motorcycle, wearing his beat-up leather jacket and looking like a movie star. Ha! I always teased him, ‘James, you
sing
like Dean Martin and
look
like James Dean.’  So, of course, when the time came to name my baby boy, the choice was obvious.”

So, Dean
was
named after James Dean, after all, at least in part. I can’t help but smirk.

“Were you and James married, or... ?”

“Oh, yes, honey. We met at nineteen, married at twenty-one, and had Dean on the way a year later. I’d always wanted a big family, and so did James, so we got started right away.” She looks up, apparently lost in a memory. When she glances back at me, her face has darkened. “He was with his band, coming back from a show in San Francisco, and their van just... skidded off the road. Robbie—he was driving the van—must have just fallen asleep.”

A lump rises in my throat.

“How did you... ?” I begin. But I’m not sure what I want to ask.

“Shaynee, I don’t know. Honestly, it was like I died when I found out James was gone. It was so sudden, and I never had a chance to say goodbye. Or tell him I loved him one last time.”

Tears fill my eyes.

“But when Dean finally came into the world, and he looked
exactly
like his father, I felt like I’d gotten back a little piece of James. And that’s when I started to focus on feeling grateful for the short time James and I had had together. I was awfully lucky to love him as totally and passionately and honestly as I did, even if our time was too short. I just decided to think about it like that.”

A customer approaches the counter and interrupts our discussion. Sheila greets her enthusiastically. I don’t know how Sheila’s able to even
speak
at this moment, let alone address the customer with such seemingly genuine warmth and ease. I make the caramel macchiato the woman has asked for, while Sheila chats with the woman about the beautiful weather we’ve been having. “The weather’s even better this time of year than in the summer,” Sheila says. “This time of year, we don’t have to put up with all the fog and June gloom; it’s just sunshine and blue skies as far as the eye can see.” The woman agrees profusely, and both women congratulate themselves and each other on their shared good fortune to live in sunny San Diego.

The woman finally departs with her drink, and Sheila turns back to me. “Honey, I’ve never, ever gotten over the heartbreak of losing James. But I’ve gotten
through
it, and I’ve learned to smile again, and laugh, and love, and look forward to the sun rising each and every day. Because I
know
without a doubt that he’s smiling down on me and our beautiful baby boy, and that he just wants us both to be happy.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “And that’s exactly what your mother wants for you, too.”

I look down.

A woman approaches the counter with her toddler. She orders a latté for herself and milk for her kid. While Sheila fulfills the order, I turn my back, trying to catch my breath. When the counter is quiet again, I turn back around to face Sheila. “But how did
Dean
get through it?” I’m surprised at how clear and coherent my voice sounds. I certainly don’t feel particularly clear or coherent.

“It was tough. Not at first, when he was really young, because he didn’t know any different. Oh my gosh, when he was little, he was just the silliest, happiest thing.” She smiles. “But as he got a bit older, he... struggled. I think he just felt... incomplete, somehow—alone, even though I was always right there. Then, when he was in, oh, I guess, seventh grade, his teacher called me.”

A couple of teenagers approach the counter, laughing. The guy orders an iced coffee, and the girl wants a raspberry-infused-chai tea. Sheila and I divide and conquer, and the teens quickly disperse to a corner table. Sheila and I are about to resume our conversation when a long line forms out of nowhere, keeping us busy for a solid twenty minutes. Finally, when we’re alone again, I prompt, “Dean’s teacher called you... ”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, remembering her train of thought. “She wanted to know if the class might honor Dean’s father when he got back from
deployment in Iraq
the following week—in recognition of his
Medal of Honor.
’” Sheila shakes her head at the memory.

And just like that—ka-boom!—with that one little sentence, Sheila has unwittingly answered the question I’ve been asking myself over and over again: Why, oh why, didn’t Dean speak up during my “I’m just a normal teenager” babblefest at Wang Palace?
Well, duh, Shaynee, because Dean understood what you were doing, and feeling, and needing, better than anyone.
He wasn’t playing with me, or laughing at me, or pitying me. No, he was being kind. Compassionate. Empathetic. He was giving me room to figure things out. He wasn’t judging me. He was...
loving
me.

I close my eyes and shake my head. I am the Supreme Ruler of Planet Idiot.

“Yeah,” Sheila says. “He’d been telling everyone all year long about his brave dad in the Marines who was off fighting for his country in Iraq and winning the Medal of Honor. Finally, after a bunch of kids in his class started asking him over and over again when his superhero dad was finally coming home, he lied, yet again, and told them a day that must have felt like forever away. I guess he didn’t think about what the heck he was gonna do when that date finally arrived.”

I’m riveted. If I were sitting down, I’d be on the edge of my seat.

A small line forms, and Sheila begins ministering to every customer’s request with a huge smile on her face. While she’s doing that, I refill the cream canister, sweep the floor, and double-check the paper products in the bathroom. When I return to the counter, Sheila’s alone and lost in thought. “So, what finally happened?” I ask.