Thirteen

I was disturbed from my Saturday morning solitary cartoon-watching by Hunter ripping the door open, looking frantic and carrying his guitar case. That was a first.

“Can I borrow your car?”

“What’s wrong with yours?” It was early, and I hadn’t had my coffee yet. I’d been planning on vegging out for a few hours, since I had the place to myself. Renee was home for the weekend, and Darah and Hunter were supposed to be visiting the Masons.

Or so I had thought.

“It won’t start and I have to get home. Can I have your keys, please?” he said, holding his hand out as if I was just going to pass them to him, no questions asked.

Oh no. There was no way I was letting this guy drive Sassy, my red Charger. No effing way.

“I’m not letting you drive my car,” I said, crossing my arms. “No one drives Sassy, but me.”

“Your car is named Sassy?” he said, and then shook his head. “Never mind, I’ll ask about that later. Will you please let me borrow your car? I have to get to Bar Harbor.”

“You’re not driving my car.” That was one line no one crossed. Not even Tawny.

 Hunter looked like he was going to blow up and yell. Instead he dropped the guitar case, reached down, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to my feet. 

“Fine, you drive.”

 I tried to pull away from him, but it was early, and he was strong and determined and I didn’t have my wits about me yet.

“No way, I’m not driving you to Bar Harbor.”

“Then I’m taking your car. It’s your choice, Missy. Either take me, or I take the car.”

“You’re not going to steal my car,” I said.

“Missy, I can hotwire it if I have to.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Want to test it out?”

 We glared at one another, neither willing to blink. Finally, I realized that I’d be a horrible bitch if I said no. It wasn’t like he was asking me to drive him to a bar to get wasted.

“Fine. Let me get dressed.”

“Hurry up, we have to go,” he said, pointing at a non-existent watch.

“Why, you going to be late for your appointment with Joe?” I said through the bedroom door.

He was enough of a non-ass today to not follow me. He must really be in a hurry, because this would be a prime opportunity to catch me naked. I tore through my closet. Damn, did he expect me to come in with him, and like, meet them?

“Are you decent yet?”

“Don’t rush me. If I’m meeting your family, I have to look at least presentable.”

“You’re going to meet them, not try to sleep with them. Whatever you wear will be fine. You’d look gorgeous in one of those hospital gowns.”

“Well, I’d like to look like I at least tried to make an effort.” I ripped through my closet, looking for my favorite baby blue gauzy shirt. 

“Oh, for the love of —” He banged the door open.

“I swear to God, if I was naked, I would have torn your eyeballs out of your head,” I said, with my head in the closet.

“I don’t doubt it. Now, what are we searching for?”

“Top. Baby blue. Kind of ruffly on the sleeves.” Why was my closet so freaking dark? It didn’t occur to anyone that I might need a light in there.

“Like this one?” He held up the exact shirt he’d somehow extracted from my dresser drawer.

“Yes! Now I need jeans,” I said, glancing at the mess I’d made. I had a pair of dark skinny jeans that would look great with a pair of silver sandals I knew were under my bed.

“Here,” Hunter said, finding the exact jeans I was thinking of. 

“Are you sure you’re not gay? Because you can put an outfit together.”

“Can you just get ready?”

Hunter was not in a playful mood. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was stressed. Hmm. That was a new emotion for him. What was he so stressed about, and what did this Joe guy have to do with it? Looked like I was going to get to find out.

“Okay, keep your shirt on. I’ll be right back.”

I grabbed a new set of underwear when he wasn’t looking and dashed to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth with one hand and finger combed through my hair with the other. I was going to leave it down, but it was doing this weird poofy thing on one side, so I whirled it into a messy bun and called it good. I usually didn’t wear much make-up and today didn’t seem like the time to mess around with my new mascara. 

“If you aren’t done in thirty seconds, I’m going to break the door down, whether you kick me in the balls or not.”

I waited until he got down to ten before I opened the door. He stopped counting.

“Better than a hospital gown?”

“You could say that. “ He blinked a couple more times and rubbed his tattoo. I tried not to smirk in satisfaction.

“Don’t we need to go?” I said when he hadn’t moved. 

“Right. Here,” he said, tossing me my keys.

“These were in my purse.”

“And?”

“And you would have had to go into my purse to get them.”

“We’re in a hurry,” he said.

“We will discuss this in the car,” I said, pointing my keys in his face. “And we’re listening to my music. No arguments. Also, we’re stopping for breakfast and you’re buying.”

His eyes narrowed, but when I didn’t move, he sighed.

“Fine. Let’s go.” He picked up his guitar, and we were off.

“What do you need that for?”

“Harper,” he said, as if that explained it. He was still grumpy so I didn’t push the issue.

We trooped out to the student lot, and it took me a second to remember where I parked Sassy.

“Sassy, this is Hunter; Hunter, Sassy,” I said, pointing from car to boy and back.

“Am I supposed to shake her hubcap?”

“No mocking my love for my car. I can leave you by the side of the road, Mr. Zaccadelli.”

“Yes, Miss Caldwell,” he said, opening my door for me.

“Thank you.”

I got in and cranked my Florence and The Machine CD as he stowed his guitar in the backseat. If he made any cracks about Florence, he was going down.

“God help us,” Hunter mumbled when he heard the music.

“What was that?”

“I love this song,” he said, bopping his head and tapping his hand on his knee. One, two, three, four, five. Pause. One, two, three, four, five. Pause.

“You are so full of shit.” I turned the radio up louder and yawned.

We stopped at a drive-through, and I made Hunter get me an iced coffee and cheese Danish. He got black coffee and a bagel, and seemed to be okay with my musical selections. I’d switched to The Band Perry, and I even caught him humming along.

“So where does your family live?” I said.

“Bar Harbor.”

“Yeah, I got that part when you said we were going to Bar Harbor. Can you be a little more specific?”

“I’ll let you know when we get there. You’ve been there before, right?”

“Sure.” A few times. Bar Harbor was actually part of an island known as Mount Desert Island and was home to Acadia National Park, the only National park in Maine. It also had a lot of rich people. 

I finished my Danish as we passed through Bangor.

“So, aren’t you going to give me a pep talk? Like, things to avoid, what to be prepared for? I know about Harper, but is there anything else?”

“Not really. Hope is my aunt; John is my uncle. You don’t have to call them Mr. and Mrs. Mason. They kind of hate that. The only other person of importance is Harper, and you’ll get to meet her, too.”

“So they aren’t your legal guardians?”

“I’m over eighteen. I don’t have a guardian.” Ugh, he wouldn’t stop shutting me down as I fished for information. So frustrating.

“But when you did need a guardian, were they your guardians?” I glanced over to find him watching me intently.

“Has anyone ever told you that you ask way too many questions?”

“Nearly every teacher I’ve ever had. They used to call my mom in for parent-teacher conferences and they’d always write that in my evaluation.” True story.

“It’s a long story, and one we don’t have time for.”

“When will you have time? I’m really not trying to be nosy. I’m just curious.” He was my roommate, and I guessed maybe he was a friend… sort of. I wanted to know about his life. I wanted to know how he became the gorgeous douche who wrote a song about doing the dishes one minute and grabbed my ass the next.

He shifted in his seat, clearly uptight with the direction our conversation had taken.

“Do you mind if I change it?” he said.

“Sure, CDs are on the visor.” If he was going to answer my questions, he could play whatever he wanted.

He flipped through my eclectic selection and finally settled on Parachute. Huh. Not what I would have picked for him.

“I can hear you judging me,” he said as I merged onto I-395.

“I just didn’t think you were a Parachute kind of guy.”

“Why not?”

“No reason. So, you were talking about your aunt and uncle.”

“Right,” he said, but I knew he remembered. He let out a deep breath that seemed to go on forever. “They took me in when I was eleven. My parents died, and there was nowhere else for me to go.” He stopped, and I waited a few seconds before asking my next question.

“So Hope is your mother’s sister?” I had no idea, so thought I’d take a stab at it.

“Right. My mother’s younger sister, but they were only two years apart. My mother’s brother lives in Texas. He’s an ass.”

“So it runs in the family?”

“It’s genetic, what can I say?” Well, he was okay enough to joke, so that was good.

“That explains why you and Mase are like brothers.”

“We are, more or less. We grew up together, we beat the shit out of each other to solve our issues, and we’d take a bullet for the other one.”

It was like me and Tawny. If I had to stand in front of a moving truck to prevent it from hitting her, I would. She’d saved my life once, and I could never pay her back.

“I know what that’s like,” I said.

“So do I get to ask you about your family situation now?”

I shrugged. There wasn’t much to tell. 

“My parents split up when I was thirteen. Dad’s an ass who just pretends like he cares. My mom’s amazing and then there’s my sister. I have a few aunts and cousins and such, but they all live in different states.”

“So that’s why you have anger issues with men.”

It took a second for the comment to penetrate my brain. He was getting very close to pushing a button he most certainly did not want to push. If he’d thought I was nuts before, it was nothing to how I could be. He hadn’t seen the worst. Not by a long shot.

“Walk away, Hunter. You have stuff you don’t want to talk about and I respect that. So I’m asking you to walk away.”

“Okay,” he said, turning the volume of the CD up and staring out the window. “Pie.”

“What?” Not that it wasn’t great, but I didn’t see what that had to do with anything relevant.

“Hope loves making pie. She’ll probably send you home with one. There’s a tiny apple orchard in the back of the house, and she always goes nuts in the fall, making as many pies as she can. She made so many one year, she walked around downtown handing them out to the local businesses. They started calling her ‘the pie lady.’ So, I hope you like pie.”

“What kind of a question is that? Who doesn’t like pie?”

“A very fucked-up person.”

“I guess I’m not that fucked-up, then.”

“Not even close,” he said, pushing his seat back.

I kept driving until we got to Bar Harbor. I rolled the window down to catch the salty air. There was nothing like the smell of the ocean. We’d switched the CD to Coldplay by mutual consent.

“Turn here,” he said, pointing to a road on the left. I put my turn signal on and made the turn. 

“Turn here,” he said a minute later, and we made another turn and then another.

We were off the main road, and all I could see were quaint houses with little porches and cute lighthouse mailboxes and wind chimes. It looked like a really nice place. I kept going until he pointed out one last turn onto Mason Drive. I should have seen that coming.

“Here we are,” he said as I stopped the car. Oh, Jesus. 

The house was effing huge. The little cottages along the rest of the road had not prepared me for this. It was at least twice, if not three times the size of my house. My eyes traveled up to count three floors. It was white, sort of Victorian looking with a huge wrap-around porch that had a handicap ramp leading up to it on one side. There was a huge red barn as well. Somehow I didn’t think there was a tractor in it. I recognized Darah’s Camry nestled between a BMW and a brand new Impala, with an Escalade on the other side. 

“Shit, Hunter. You never said your family was loaded.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You never asked.”