The peacemaker in me wanted to step in and smooth over the cracks. But I wasn’t sure how, and besides, Jenna didn’t give me a chance.
“I need to use the restroom,” Jenna said, standing up and brushing roughly against her mother. “Come with me.” She grabbed Vivian’s arm before she could protest.
“My dad says that family has always been a little unstable,” Steven said once Jenna was gone.
I knew what that felt like.
I glared at Steven and headed to the back of the restaurant. I didn’t want Jenna to have to deal with it alone.
My mother had picked at me until I was frayed and thin, and I knew if I didn’t get away from that table, I’d snap. I grabbed her arm, not caring in the least if I hurt her, and dragged her to the bathroom. She was surprisingly steady on her stiletto death traps.
I pulled the door hard and peeked underneath each stall, grateful that the bathroom was empty. My mom checked her makeup in the mirror. I locked the door so we wouldn’t be interrupted.
Mom looked up when she heard the lock, her lips puckered as she applied more lipstick.
“How could you do that?” I asked. “How could you embarrass me like that in front of my friends?”
Mom waved her hand in my face, dismissing me as always. “Teenagers get embarrassed over everything.” She turned back to the mirror and checked her face.
“Not everything, Mom, just you.” Mom rolled her eyes at me. She wasn’t listening. She never listened.
Mom finished touching up her face and turned around to glare at me. “When I was fifteen years old, my mother showed up to cheerleading practice drunk and in her bathrobe. She dragged me out of the gym and yelled at me for five minutes for not picking up my room before practice. Now
that
was embarrassing.”
“It’s not always about you!” I shouted. “You always have to one-up everyone with your sob stories. You’re always dismissing what I’m going through.” Her story was always worse, her feelings more valid than mine. Just once, I wanted her to actually hear what I was saying and not try to talk over it.
“You’re being overly dramatic. All I did was stop by and say hello to you and your friends. It would have been rude if I hadn’t.” She widened her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she actually thought she was innocent or if she believed playing dumb would help the lie go over better.
“No,” I argued, “what you did was let everyone know I’m not good enough.”
Mom frowned at me as she put her lipstick back in her purse. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Someone banged on the door. “Jenna?”
“Go away, Ian.” Everything was bad enough without him being right in the middle of it.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Nothing about this was okay. “I’m fine,” I said through the door.
Mom nudged me away from the door. “I need to get back.”
More injustice flared. “Is this what you’re doing every time you say you’re working late? Throwing a few back with your friends?” I was snarling.
“Don’t talk to me like that. You have no right to tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m the parent, not you.”
“Then act like it,” I said.
Mom ran her eyes over me, reducing me to nothing, making me conscious that there was a hole in my shorts and that the soles of my shoes were separating from the uppers. “I’ll see you at home.”
She unlocked the bathroom door and pushed past Ian. A wave of laughter and noise rolled over me, receding as the door shut. I wanted to hide inside the silence.
I woke up early on Monday to a quiet house. Sunlight poured through the kitchen window, and the honey-colored cabinets helped bathe the room in a warm, golden light. I’d finished all of the boxes and most of the doors, and the kitchen was transformed. Funny how some old pieces of wood made a place home, and made me feel a part of it. The cabinets were my signature on the house. I liked being a solid part of the house where Jenna had spent so much of her time.
I headed out to the shop, the dew dampening my shoes and grass sticking to my ankles. It wasn’t even seven-thirty yet, but it was already hot. I flipped on the fan, the blades struggling to push the heavy air out of the opened doors.
I had a few pieces of wood to plane in order to finish the last of the cabinet doors. I stacked the wood next to the planer and turned it on. It rumbled in my feet. I fed the wood into the big machine, stripping away paint and time. The dark, rough wood became smooth as I ran it through, caught it, and ran it through again. I grabbed the last piece. It was damaged and took longer than the rest. Amazing how many layers of crap could develop over the years. I thought the board might have had a touch of rot inside, but it didn’t, just a fracture along the bottom. Sometimes boards got broken, but that didn’t always mean they were rotted all the way through.
I used all the clamps in the shop and set the doors to the side. I had two more to do once the clamped ones dried. I picked up the cracked board and examined it again. The grain was interesting. The cypress was a beautiful color, rich lines of gold and blond swirling around an almost white oval in the top center of the board. The bottom half of the board was useless, but it would’ve been a shame to throw the entire piece out.
My mind scrambled through possibilities for its use, something beautiful from the brokenness. When I saw the door molding I’d torn out of the kitchen, I knew exactly what I wanted to create. And who I wanted to create it for.
There was hope in the fact that even damaged boards could be salvaged.
It was well after lunch by the time I got to a stopping point. The house felt emptier than usual. Mom had agreed to work even though it was the Fourth of July, since she didn’t really have a family to celebrate with. Apparently Ian and I didn’t count. Dad was off in Massachusetts strutting around in his uniform and accepting gracious comments about his service to our country. What about his service to our family? Going AWOL wasn’t exactly honorable behavior for a distinguished veteran of the armed forces, and he’d been absent from the family for a while now. I hoped he enjoyed all the prestige that came with his title. I really hoped he was lonely as hell.
Ian didn’t seem to want to celebrate with me either, since he was holed up in his room and ignoring my attempts at conversation. I ate lunch alone at the tiny kitchen table and wondered if anyone would hear me if I screamed.
I hadn’t met a single other person in this town. That was why I cleaned up, took the truck, and headed to Jenna’s. I needed someone to verify that I still existed, and there was no place I felt more alive than with Jenna.
I didn’t call. I should have, but I didn’t want to take the time. Or risk her telling me no. She didn’t expect anything else from me anyway. I always just showed up.
It took forever to get through town. The streets were crowded with sweaty kids and red-faced parents. Red and white streamers hung still in the absence of a breeze, and several signs promised family fun at the town fireworks show.
Jenna probably wasn’t even home. Or she was having some big family barbeque or something. I knew she wasn’t just sitting around hoping I’d show up. The last time I’d seen her, I slunk out of her house before she’d woken up. I hadn’t said goodbye. I hadn’t talked to her since. I wasn’t good at feeling this way. It was completely new territory, and I was hopelessly lost.
But Jenna’s Bronco was parked in the driveway. Maybe Fate wasn’t quite the bitch I believed her to be. She’d been almost kind to me lately.
I pulled to the curb two houses down and reached for my cell before I remembered I no longer had one and I’d forgotten to take Ian’s. I was going to have to go to the door. I hoped her mother wasn’t home.
She was. I heard the staccato of her heels on the tile floor before she opened the door. It was the first time I’d seen Jenna’s mother, and there was some resemblance.
She grinned at me. “Ian! Please, come in.”
I didn’t correct her, just stepped inside the front door and stood awkwardly to the side. Thankfully, it didn’t take Jenna long to appear.
She had a scowl on her face when she walked into the room, but that changed when she saw me. I had to take a deep breath, even though I doubted she knew with any certainty which one I was. It made me ache. I didn’t want Jenna looking at Ian like that. I didn’t want her even thinking about him when she looked at me, but that was unavoidable.
Vivian clapped her hands together in delight. “This is just perfect! Now you have a date to the party!”
“What party?” I asked.
Jenna grimaced. “Some lame party with a bunch of old people I don’t really know that my mom thinks she’s dragging me to so that I won’t have to spend the Fourth by myself. But I’m not going.”
Her mom ignored her. “I told her to invite you, Ian. Susan is just dying to meet you,” she said.
“He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Jenna said. “He shouldn’t be punished.”
“So you’ll come?” Vivian asked me, as if she hadn’t heard a word Jenna had said.
“Well…” There was no way I was going to that party. “I kind of had a surprise planned for Jenna,” I lied.
Vivian’s eyes widened with interest. “Really? How romantic. Well, far be it from me to ruin the perfect surprise. You two have a good time, but don’t stay out late.” She turned to Jenna, whispered something in her ear, and left the room.
“My hero,” Jenna said, throwing me a smile. “I don’t know that I would’ve survived the evening.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“So where are we going?” she asked, opening the door and stepping out onto the front porch.
Was she so eager to leave with me because she thought I was Ian? I had no plans—my only thought had been to see Jenna. Now that I’d accomplished that, I was winging it. I followed her down the steps.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be burned by the sun?” Jenna asked.
I stopped. “You know who I am?”
“It’s pretty easy to tell you two apart now.”
“How?” I was interested in how this girl, who I’d known less than two months, had managed to figure out something that even my own parents had trouble with.
“Your expressions,” she said simply. “Ian’s eyes are a bit wider and his smile is pretty open. I never have to wonder what he’s thinking. You slouch,” she said, opening the passenger door of my truck, “and I never have any idea what you’re thinking.”
“Good,” I told her, climbing in the truck and turning the ignition. Because I was usually thinking all sorts of things I shouldn’t. I pulled away from the curb and headed into the sun.
Seeing Luke shouldn’t have made me feel better. I should have felt infinitely worse, should have hated myself for being so happy to see Luke after I’d just been out with Ian. And kissed Ian. And liked kissing Ian. But my weekend had been long and treacherous, since I wasn’t really speaking to Mom and she seemed to have forgotten that she’d done anything to earn my anger. I was a little surprised when Luke showed up at my doorstep.
I shouldn’t have been. Luke always managed to surprise me. But he’d never knocked on the door before. He seemed more at home in the shadows than the sunlight. I didn’t know why he was trying to hide from everyone but me. It couldn’t only be about whatever he’d done in Massachusetts. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that bad.
Luke obviously wasn’t perfect, but he was wonderful in a flawed way, which I thought might be the best way. I never knew where I was with Luke, which made me both frustrated and interested. Luke was a riddle I wanted to solve.
I had no idea where we were going, and I was beginning to suspect Luke didn’t either. I really didn’t care—I was content just to be with him.
“Fourth of July—love it or hate it?” Luke asked.
“It’s looking pretty good so far,” I said.
He smiled and reached across the seat to take my hand. I could feel the callouses on his palms and across his fingers. I was glad Luke wasn’t perfect, because that meant I didn’t have to be perfect either. Perfection was more pressure than I needed. I didn’t have to be worthy to live in his flawless little world. He didn’t make me think about the things I didn’t have, the things I wasn’t. He didn’t want me to reinvent myself to fit, because he didn’t exactly fit either.
“It’s okay,” I said, answering his question. “Um, I like the whole premise of the thing, you know, celebrating independence. It’s like the Founding Fathers were rebellious teens who wanted to get away from the authority of their parents. I can understand that.” I wanted independence more than anything. “And it was fun when I was a kid. We ate hot dogs and Mops made homemade ice cream with a churn and everything, which was incredible, and then I got to run around the yard with sparklers.”
“I hate sparklers,” Luke told me. “What a bust—all light and no bang. I like the ones that make a lot of noise. Ian and I used to have bottle rocket fights.”
Typical boys. “I don’t really like fireworks all that much. I like the really big ones that the town sets off. They’re gorgeous. But someone else lights them. I don’t like being up close to all that noise. That, and Tommy Johnson set me on fire with one once.”
“Really?”
I rolled my eyes. “We were like thirteen and Steph had a party at her house. It was supposed to be all grown up—my mom made me wear a dress.” I hated wearing dresses. They showed everyone just how skinny my legs were. “There was a DJ and everything, but the boys wouldn’t dance. The girls were trying to act all grown-up, but some of the boys had brought a bunch of bottle rockets and started shooting them at everyone. I didn’t even notice when one landed on me—not until it blew up.”
“It hurt?” Luke asked. His eyes were soft, like he was really worried I’d been injured.
“A little. It scared the crap out of me. And my dress caught on fire. Just the top part, and just for a second. Becca threw punch on me and put it out. But the dress was ruined, and my stomach was burned. I had a bunch of little blisters. And I went home early in a tattered dress.”
“I would have kicked his ass,” Luke said. I believed him.
“Thanks. Not necessary at this point, but I appreciate it anyway.”