One More Time (23 page)

He wasn’t really my cousin. My mom just worked at the same diner, and had been working there for the past twenty years, that Trent’s mom had owned. We were cousins because our moms had been best friends before his mom had passed. “Say hi back for me, please.” I liked Trent. He was a cop but he didn’t pull us over unless we were being stupid. I hadn’t had a car when I’d left town for Miami so my record was thankfully clean. But a lot of my friends had had to take summer jobs to pay off their tickets for being reckless.

I hoped that she couldn’t tell I’d been drinking, or that I was probably pretty drunk. I’d only been really drunk a few times before but I was pretty sure this was one of them. I didn’t feel sick, yet, but I knew I needed to take some pain killers tonight to hold off what was certainly coming for me in the morning. Whatever, it would be completely worth it for the night I’d had.

“Are you staying out of trouble?”

I laughed. “Yeah. More or less.”

She laughed with me and I was glad we had the kind of relationship that, if I’d wanted to, I could have told her about my night and she would have only worried about me using protection. She was really cool like that. “Your dad made you a mixed tape, CD, mp3 thing… anyway. It’s all the songs about Miami that he could find. He’s going to send it to you in the mail. Some of them though…. Thomas, honey, there are days I’m glad you are only interested in boys.”

I shook my head as I laughed. “Men mom. I’m eighteen. I like men now. Not boys.” I put my forehead over my eyes and stared up at the ceiling.

“Oh excuse me. Look who’s all grown up now just because they got to move out. Well, I’m glad you like men then, because some of these songs about women and their thongs and booties. I may not be on top of all of what you kids do or know but even I know that when that song said booty it wasn’t talking about those cute little socks I knitted for Elijah.”

“Yeah. Probably not. How’s the baby anyway?” He was almost a year now, my little foster brother. I called him a baby, because he was so tiny, but really he was getting up there and growing a bit more everyday.

I heard the sadness in my mom’s voice and could picture her frown as if I was sitting right there next to her. “Oh, you know. He’s a handful. Those damn drugs….”

I nodded. I’d taken my first sip of alcohol with my friends in one of their dad’s man caves while we were in middle school, but I’d been really careful never to get involved with any kinds of drugs because I saw what they did to the babies my mom fostered. It wasn’t that I planned to ever have kids, biologically anyway, but I just didn’t want to be a part of something that hurt babies so much.

“Yeah. I know. I’m sure it’s tough. Are you still thinking about taking in those brothers too?” I asked her. My mom was always fostering more kids. There were a few that she’d adopted over the years, like me, but most of them were only with her during their court cases or before they got placed with a family member.

“Oh you know, with you out of the house, it seems like someone should be using your room. I can’t very well make Saturday morning pancake shapes for just your dad and I.”

God I missed Saturday morning pancakes already. My mom put cinnamon in the pancakes then dusted them with sugar. She used real butter too, the kind she made from shaking heavy whipping cream in a mason jar until it got all hard. My stomach growled, even though I’d had a cheeseburger, and I rubbed it. I’d only been gone a few days but I was already missing home.

“I can’t wait to come have them again. Missing you and dad already.” I frowned, wondering if I’d really been ready to move across the country. I’d considered any of the colleges in Denver, but I’d wanted to be by the ocean and see something more than the mountains for once.

“Oh honey, we miss you too. Don’t you worry, I’ll still be making pancakes when you come back for fall break. Or winter break, or whenever really. Don’t feel like you need to rush back home. Go, have an adventure. Fall in love, break some hearts, taste the ocean for me.”

I wiped at my eyes, because they were blurry, and realized I was crying without even meaning to or realizing I was doing it. “Love you, Mama.”

“Love you too, Thomas. Now, it’s after eleven there, if this world clock we set to Miami time is correct, so I’m going to let you go get some rest so that you can move in bright and early tomorrow. Take pictures for me and make sure to lift with your legs, not your back. You don’t need to be rushed to the emergency room before school even starts. Blow up something in the chemistry lab first.”

I grinned and sighed. “You’d be so worried.”

“But I would also have the first son in Thornwood to blow up a chemistry lab. Think of that now. All the ladies at the diner asked about you today. They think you’ll come back all tanned and ready for their daughters. Come back with some handsome man instead. That’ll show them.”

“I’ll try,” I promised her. Still smiling, I thought about the guy from the party. Of course I’d never see him again, but it had been fun. If she told her diner friends about what I’d done that would certainly give them something to talk about, or more like gossip about, in the tiny town I’d lived in all my life before coming here. “Talk to you later.” I yawned, really feeling the time now.

“Night, baby. You take care of yourself and remember to send me pictures.”

“I will. I will. Promise.” We blew each other kisses through the phone and I hung up. A couple of pain pills later, and an old movie on the TV to help me go to sleep, and I was out less than an hour later.

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