Out of Nowhere (17 page)

“Rude?” I finished for him. “Presumptuous? Overbearing?”

“I was going to say intense. I understand why she was like that, though. You guys seem really close.”

“We are, I guess. When we’re not at each other’s throats. ” I caught a whiff of garlic from a nearby Italian restaurant and my stomach growled, even though I was still full from dinner. “Oh well, at least it’s over with now. She finally met you and saw with her own eyes that you’re not a thug.”

He smiled at this, and as we walked under an awning he leaped up, tagging it with his palm and making it wobble. I shook my head at his exuberance. He was like a puppy that had recently been freed from its crate. He could never just
be
.

“So now that I’ve met your mom and your…Jeff,” he said, making me giggle, “I suppose I should bring you home to meet
my
parents.”

The laughter died in my throat. “Oh. Um, okay.”

“Don’t look so worried. I know I made them sound bad before, but they’re not, really. They’re actually pretty cool, for parents.” He threw an arm across my shoulders. “When I told them about being invited to your house for dinner, they insisted on meeting you. Can’t get out of it, sorry.”

“No, I…I want to meet them,” I said, feeling the stirrings of a preemptive anxiety attack. “Are they usually hard on the girls you bring home?”

“I don’t know. I don’t usually bring girls home. You’re special.” I elbowed him in the ribs and he dropped his arm. “Seriously,” he said, hooking his fingers through the belt loop on my shorts, “you’re exactly the type of girl you want to bring home to your parents. They’ll love you.”

I stopped walking and tilted my head to the side. “And what type is that?” I asked wryly.

He tugged on my belt loop, drawing me closer until his lips were right next to my ear. “The type who doesn’t usually look twice at a thug like me,” he whispered.

For a second I was distracted by his breath on my neck, but I quickly came to and jerked away. “You make me sound like an elitist bitch.”

He responded by kissing me, right there on the sidewalk next to an overflowing garbage can with some creepy old guy watching us from across the street. Not that I was paying much attention to my surroundings, or the time for that matter. Which was why, for the first time in my life, I missed curfew and came home twenty minutes late. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t care about being the dutiful daughter. My mother obviously had no qualms about breaking even the smallest promises, so why should I keep any of mine?

Chapter Thirteen

On Wednesday, after my weekly therapy session with Dr. Maser, I met up with Sydney and Eva for lunch at Blue Pudding, our go-to restaurant when we wanted peace and quiet and good, cheap food. Because the clientele mostly consisted of college students, the place was usually dead on summer afternoons. Plus, the manager didn’t care if you lingered after eating, as long as you kept getting drink refills. Sydney took care of this easily with coffee consumption alone. She was already halfway into her first cup when I joined them in a booth at the back of the restaurant.

“I thought we said twelve o’clock?” Eva said, frowning. She was a stickler for punctuality, except when it came to school.

“Sorry.” I was out of breath from jogging from the bus stop. “I got held up. Missed the bus and had to wait for the next one.”

Sydney downed a gulp of coffee. “Where are you coming from?”

“Oh, I had a doctor’s appointment.”

Eva’s annoyance over my delay was replaced with a look of alarm. My frequent doctor visits always worried her. “What’s wrong this time? Are you sick?”

Just in the head
, I thought. Out loud I said, “No, just a check-up.”

I hated lying to my friends, but I wasn’t ready to tell them about Dr. Maser. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if this shrink thing was going to work out. Last week’s session had been all about getting comfortable with each other, but today we got down to business. I’d expected to feel refreshed and unburdened after telling her about my father and what had happened the night he died. Instead, I left her office feeling wrung out and spacey and wondering if maybe it was a mistake to bring all these memories to the surface again.

“Oh, now I get it,” Sydney said, plunking her cup down on the blue table top. The whole place was blue—floors, walls, tables, menus—apparently to give customers the illusion of being inside a giant bowl of blue pudding.

“Get what?” Eva and I asked in unison.

“Just a check-up…” She gave me a sly grin. “You went to get birth control, didn’t you? Didn’t you? I knew it.”

Just then the waitress came by—dressed in blue, of course—to give me a menu and take my drink order. I asked for a root beer and she wandered off again. “No,” I said to Sydney when the waitress was a safe distance away. “I did not go to get birth control. Jeez.”

“Oh,” she said, deflating a little.

Eva took a sip of her bottled water and shot Sydney an exasperated look. “What’s this obsession you have with getting Riley laid?”

Finally, someone else had noticed. I looked at Syd too, waiting for her answer. She raised her mug like she was about to make a toast. “No one,” she said with utmost gravity, “should go to college a virgin.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” I said as the waitress came back with my root beer. She smiled and asked chirpily if we were ready to order. And for the time being, the subject was dropped.

Later, as the three of us shared a slice of chocolate cheesecake for dessert, Eva dropped a bombshell on us. Her ex-boyfriend Sebastian had called her, asking if she wanted to get back together. Sydney and I were appropriately horrified.

“But he
dumped
you,” I reminded her. “And then hooked up with Bailey Strickland.”

“I know,” she said, slouching against the table with a sigh. “It was a one time thing, apparently. Something he really regrets.”

Sydney finished the last bite of cheesecake and pushed the plate away. “He’s just gonna do it again,” she said in her usual cynical way. According to her, all boys were out to screw you, in more ways than one. Which was why, she claimed, she never got emotionally involved with them. Dr. Maser would have a field day with Sydney’s daddy issues.

“I don’t know,” Eva said, shrugging one shoulder. “He sounded really sincere. He says he really misses me.”

Sydney snorted into her coffee. “No wonder. Bailey Strickland is crazy. It wouldn’t surprise me if she robbed him by knifepoint after she was through with him.”

Eva looked apprehensive, like a mom who’d just been told by the school principal that her kid had gotten bullied at recess. Like me, she was a maternal-type girlfriend. Some guys liked that in a girl, while other guys—Adam, for instance—hated it. One time, a couple of months before we broke up, he told me, “No one wants a girlfriend who feels your forehead every time you cough or sneeze.” I saw his point, even though it hurt my feelings at the time.

As for Cole, I was still trying to figure out how he felt about my mothering tendencies. He was an adrenaline junkie
and
accident prone—a frightening combination—so he’d been subjected to many of my fretful inspections and warnings to be careful. Sometimes he’d brush me off in his good-natured way, but most of the time he’d just gaze at me fondly as I examined whatever cut/bruise/scrape he’d incurred that day, like he enjoyed giving me reasons to fuss over him.

“I’m kidding,” Sydney said when she saw Eva’s expression. “I’m sure it wasn’t his money she was after when she reached into his pants.”

Eva ignored this and turned to me, saying, “I forgot to ask…how’s it going on the home front? Your mom thaw out yet?”

“Partially,” I replied. “At least she changed her mind about grounding me for a week.”

Sydney added more sugar to her third refill of coffee. “A week? For talking back and coming home a little late? I do that
daily
.”

“Yeah, well, Riley’s a model daughter,” Eva said, nudging me and smiling.

“And I’m not?” Sydney looked insulted for a moment, and then shrugged as if to say
Okay, I get your point
. “Your mom needs to chill,” she told me. “My mother would, like, die of happiness if I was anything like either one of you. That’s why she likes the idea of me hanging around you guys…she’s hoping some of your wonderfulness will rub off on me.”

“Wonderfulness?” I said, finishing my root beer.

“Come on. You and Lucas are total brains and you”—she nodded at Eva—“are the most well-adjusted person on the planet. She thinks you all are a good influence on me.”

“I’m nothing special,” I said, repeating the same words I’d uttered to Cole a few days ago. It was the truth. I did well in school because I worked hard and studied my ass off, not because I was particularly smart. I was a “good girl” because I wanted so badly to show my mother I was different from her, that I could succeed where she hadn’t. Nothing about me required any special talent…it was all about determination and discipline, sprinkled with a healthy dose of pigheadedness.

We each had one more refill and then I had to leave to get ready for work. Eva drove us home, dropping Sydney off first. The car always seemed inordinately quiet without her in it. When Eva and I were together, just the two of us, there was no need to fill the silent spaces with chatter.

“Call me later,” I told her when she pulled up to my house, the car’s front wheel scraping against the curb. “Let me know how it goes with Sebastian. And whatever you decide to do, I’ll be there to support you, okay? ”

She gave me a grateful look. “Thanks, Riley. I knew you’d understand.”

I leaned over to give her a quick hug, breathing in her usual scent of watermelon and dryer sheets. I almost told her then, about Dr. Maser and the fact that behind all my honor roll certificates and big ambitions, I was a bigger mess than anyone realized. I knew Eva wouldn’t judge me for that, just like I wouldn’t judge her for forgiving Sebastian. Still, I bit back the words. I’d made enough confessions for one day.

* * *

The next evening I was at Crawford Park with Cole, getting my ass kicked in a friendly game of Frisbee, when Lucas called my cell. He had another medical journal for me, he said, and was on his way to my house to drop it off. I explained where I was and he agreed to meet me at the park instead, offering to bring along an ambulance in the event of sudden heart failure due to severe over-activity.
My
heart, not Cole’s. He didn’t even break a sweat as he caught every single one of my throws, even the ones I purposely aimed several feet away from him. It was pissing me off, so when Lucas arrived I casually brought up the fact that he’d played center for our school’s basketball team for the past two years. And that he was
really
good.

Just as I expected, that was all it took for Cole. The challenge was on. He got that competitive gleam in his eye, and five minutes later the two of them were killing each other on the basketball court while I lounged on the grass nearby with my medical journal. Usually Lucas gave me material that focused specifically on cerebral aneurysms and stroke, but this one was about neurological disorders in general. I rolled over on my stomach and began to read, glancing up every once in a while at the boys. Lucas was several inches taller than Cole, but Cole was faster, so they seemed pretty evenly matched. I smiled as they argued over violations and fouls. I liked hanging out with both of them at the same time. My two favorite guys.

They were still going strong an hour later, so I walked across the park to the hotdog stand to buy a couple of waters for them. By the time I got back, the game was over and they both looked like they were about to puke all over the asphalt.

“Who won?” I asked. I passed out the waters, which they immediately started downing.

“I did,” Lucas said between gulps.

Cole wiped the sweat off his face with the bottom of his shirt and mumbled something that sounded like “Barely.” I’d never seen him so winded.

“I guess you finally met your match,” I told him. Seeing him on the losing end for once was even more enjoyable than I imagined it would be.

“It was close,” Lucas said magnanimously. “I got a second wind at the end there.”

Cole smiled, still trying to catch his breath. “No shit. You’re ruthless, man.”

Lucas shrugged, all modest, but I could tell he was pleased. “Well,” he said, massaging his knee, “I’m gonna go home and…die or something.”

“Drink lots of water,” I told him, going back over to my comfy spot on the grass. “And take a couple of Advil before bed.”

He said good-bye and shuffled off in the direction of the street, half limping like someone who’d just been jumped.

“You were a little hard on him,” I told Cole as he sat down beside me.

“
I
was hard on
him
? Are you kidding? He buried me.” He flopped back on the grass and closed his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me he could play like that?”

“Sorry,” I said, turning to a new page in my journal. “I should have mentioned it the first time I introduced you to him. ‘This is my friend Lucas. He kicks ass at basketball.’”

He reached over to tickle my side, making me yelp. “What are we going to do,” he said as he moved closer to me, “about that mouth of yours? I, for one, have a few ideas I’d like to run by you.”

I rolled out of the way before he could make contact. “Ew, Cole, you’re all sweaty.”

“Some girls think sweat is sexy.” He grabbed the medical journal, which had fallen to the grass when he tickled me, and flipped through the pages. “What is this?”

“Lucas’s mom is a physiology professor and has access to medical research stuff,” I explained, taking it from him before he dripped all over it. I turned to the section I’d been reading about spinal cord injuries and tapped it with my finger. “This is what I worry about for you.”

He leaned over to scan the page. “You worry about me getting…paraplegia? What the hell is paraplegia?”

“Impairment in motor function of the lower extremities,” I said, making him squirm a little. “And I don’t mean just that. I mean spinal cord injuries in general.”