Chapter 11

It’s chaos in my house.

Mondays aren’t usually so hectic, but here we are: one sister singing musicals at the top of her lungs and the other telling her to shut up, my parents sitting in the living room discussing something important in hushed tones (their attempt at quiet makes them louder than usual), Tom and Andrea yelling at each other on the front porch.

And here I am, minding my own business, waiting for the storm to pass.

We’ve already eaten dinner, but even that was broken up by Andrea showing up to “talk”. What’s happening outside is not exactly what I would call talking, and I don’t think Tom would, either.

After a half hour of texting Gretchen, I decide I can’t take it any longer, so I plug in my phone and head into the kitchen. Astrid doesn’t pause her singing to say hi, but Millicent approaches me and buries her head in my shoulder, moaning in agony.

“Make her stop,” she says, practically weeping.

“I wish I could. Only stabbing her will do the trick.”

“No, that will make her wail louder.” Millie moans again.

“Then there’s nothing left but to bury her in the backyard,” I tease.

This earns a laugh. “Think Mama and Daddy will miss her?”

“Nah. I bet that’s what they’re talking about in there right now.”

We both turn our heads toward the sitting room, where my parents are bent over some paperwork. Looking at them—my mother, stiff and tight-lipped, and my father scratching his head—makes me oddly…dizzy. I glance down at Millie. “Any idea what they’re actually talking about?”

“No. They look so serious. And Mama was crying earlier.”

I shake my head. Millie looks so distraught that I know it won’t do to wonder aloud, What on earth are they so sad about? So I think it instead. “Well, then. Are Andrea and Tom almost done?”

Millicent gives me a look. “I hope so. She’s dropped the F-bomb, like, a million times.”

“Seriously?” I pat Millie’s arm. “Gunna go kick them off the porch.”

Astrid sings over to us, “You do that, Bee.”

I shoot her a glare before heading to the front room. I can see Tom and Andrea through the bay windows in the front room, their mouths open as they yell, their fingers close to each other’s chests, accusing. Their eyes full of nothing but disgust (on Tom’s part) and anger (on Andrea’s part). I’m working up the nerve to go to the door and tell them to take it somewhere else, when Andrea shakes her head, drops her arm, and—walks away.

I’m as startled as Tom; Andrea is never the one to say goodbye first. She’s too aggressive, too intense. She has too much to say. But now she’s straight up leaving, waving her hand over her head as if to tell him not to follow. My heart breaks a little bit for him.

Behind me, Astrid stops singing, and I can hear my parents talking in a normal tone, although I can’t hear the words. When I look outside again, Tom has disappeared, and without a second thought I bolt for the door.

He’s heading toward his car, his stride sad and slow. (Andrea’s car is already gone from our driveway; I can hear her angry tires screeching down the road.) I catch up to Tom, hands in my pockets, watching him from the corner of my eye. His jaw works and clenches. His hands fist and his eyes burn.

“Want to talk?” I whisper.

“No,” he grinds out.

“Can I come with you?” I head toward the passenger side, whether he likes it or not.

He doesn’t answer, so I sit beside him. He pulls out of our driveway and I lean back in the chair, soaking up the last pink rays of the sunset. Tom’s driving is smooth and controlled, despite his mood, so I relax until he’s ready to talk.

This turns out to be an hour later when we park in Ocean Beach right in front of the water. Tom drove around a bit, as though he wasn’t sure where he was going, and by the time we stopped the sun had gone down completely. I spent the drive thinking about a lot of things, lost in my own little world, enjoying the silence. I thought about flowers and promotions. I thought about glitter and shoes and donuts. I thought about my parents sitting close together, their stressed expressions, and Millie hearing my mother cry, and what I will ask them once I work up the courage.

Mostly, however, I thought about Levi. (But isn’t that obvious?)

Tom’s voice interrupts my thoughts of Levi’s swooping hair and bright eyes and infectious joy. “Bee?”

“Yeah?” I whisper. My voice is weirdly hoarse. I clear my throat.

“Sorry. I can take you home if you want.”

“I don’t mind,” I murmur. Goodness, he sounds so broken. I’m tempted to ask all my questions, but he’s a thin pane of glass about to shatter anyway, so I wait.

“I was right,” he says. He pauses, his breathing shallow, then says again, “I was right.”

“About what?”

“She cheated.”

I’m so angry I’m about to bust a hole in the car window. “With who?” I sputter.

“Some asshole her sister dated once.”

God, I hate Andrea. I hate her so much. (I feel a rush of dark pleasure that I was right to hate her all along.)

Tom heaves a breath. “I can’t believe I trusted her so much.” Then he shakes his head, saying, “You know when you see things in hindsight, and you wonder how you didn’t see the details when they were in your face the whole time? I was so blind to so many things. Especially,” he adds, facing me, “how rude she was to you. To everyone. I let her do that, and I’m sorry.”

I take his hand, holding his rough fingers in mine. “She was pretty terrible.”

“Everyone kept telling me, but I wanted to believe that we could go back to normal. To before. That’s stupid, though, because we’ve never wanted the same things. Not even in the beginning.”

I bring my knees to my chest and lean my cheek on them. “You can’t really go back to the beginning, though, Tom.”

“I noticed.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tom’s quiet a moment, his hand squeezing mine now, too tight for comfort. But I can’t seem to move away. “I’m trying not to regret it, but…” He lets out a sort-of-chuckle, but it’s completely mirthless. “What does that say about us, then, if we’re already so ready to regret each other?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. I feel an ache in my chest strong enough to break something.

“I gave her so much, you know? I went into our relationship wholeheartedly, and look where that got me.”

“Don’t,” I warn, leaning my head on his shoulder. “We do things, and we learn from the bad and celebrate the good.”

He huffs out a breathy laugh. “You wizened old goat.”

“Wow, thank you.”

“No, thank you.” He kisses my forehead, like a sweet brother.

I close my eyes. The world around us is quiet except for the crashing of waves and the dim beating of our hearts. And my thoughts. Once again, my thoughts are quite loud. They overtake everything else in a way that I don’t quite understand.

I’m thinking, more than anything, about my first kiss. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but I guess that’s the point. It wasn’t special, and neither was the boy. Karl, in tenth grade, with his long-ish pale hair and his freckles and his cute smile. We weren’t popular kids, both lost in the terror of high school, not sure what the hell was going on—so he kissed me. Somehow, those two facts are always linked in my mind.

We dated. For two weeks.

It wasn’t the kiss that turned me away, or any of the kisses after. It wasn’t even Karl. Instead, it was the way we were around each other—intimate, but not. We were so close, our mouths and our hands and our hips and yet, it was the way I wanted to be with someone…not Karl.

So while the rest of my classmates were attaching themselves to someone the moment they had the chance, I was holding back. I was seeing things I liked and things I didn’t like, making mental lists and compartmentalizing everything.

Thing You Should Know About Me #5: I made the decision, one month after breaking up with Karl, that I wanted to wait until I was married to have sex. It wasn’t out of fear—nothing like that. It was because the memory I had of my time with Karl was incomplete, like I had done something with no meaning. I wanted the next kiss to mean everything to me, and someday I’d marry someone who meant even more than everything.

I still want that. Call me a romantic, call me unrealistic all you like. Of course, now, sitting here in the dark, it has me thinking about Levi and how much I like him, and how one day I’ll like a guy enough that it will turn into love. (I don’t think, What if that guy is Levi? Because at the moment, it would be too unbearable if he wasn’t “that guy”.)

Tom brushes my forehead with another kiss and puts his car into gear. “Let’s go home,” he says quietly.

I nod, saying a silent goodbye to the ocean and the clean line of sand and the pier (and a cluster of Ocean Beach hobos). “Thanks for letting me come with you,” I say.

He glances over at me, his arms resting lightly on the steering wheel. “I take that back. Let’s not go home—let’s go get ice cream.”

“FroYo?”

“Nah, I’m talking real, good ole fashioned Cold Stone.”

“Bravo,” I say, and make sure he knows he’s paying.

We sneak back into the house at midnight, rushed with sugar and trying to laugh quietly. We fail, our laughs coming out as snorts that are nearly as loud as the door that we accidentally slam behind us. (It sounds suspiciously like we’ve consumed copious amounts of alcohol instead of ice cream.)

Tom changed over the last hour, from hurt and angry to soft and laughing. I was beginning to suspect he didn’t miss Andrea at all. Maybe he will tomorrow; maybe he’ll cry over her next week. But for now, I’ve made him happy. (Me, and ice cream.) For now, he could think about everything except Andrea.

Looking at Tom in the dimly lit hall, I realize how much he’s like our father, warm and welcoming, with broad shoulders and strong arms. When we say goodnight, trying to catch our laughter before it escapes again, I force him into an embrace. But then it’s not so much forcing because puts his chin on my head, running his hand up and down over my hair, tangling it in a truly brother-like fashion.

Then he says, “Don’t ever change, Beef.”

I smile and tell him I won’t. He leaves me standing in the hallway, where I lean against the wall, immersed in the sudden quiet.

Then I hear, “Bee?”

“Papa?” I gingerly step into the dining room.

He sits at the table, his hands in his pockets, and he looks up at me like he hadn’t spoken my name in the first place. “Hey. Did you have fun?”

“Yes.” I stand by the opening, still unsure. “What… What are you doing awake?”

He shrugs. “Just couldn’t sleep, is all.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“You work tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Keep up the good work, Baby Bee.”

“Thanks, Papa.”

He stands up, scratching his head like I saw earlier. To me, his head-scratching has always been associated with nerves, which he usually hides tremendously well. But here it is, twice in one day, and he’s up late.

So is my mom, who I hear sniffling in the other room. I look at Papa, and he looks at me, and we both pretend we can’t hear her. He nods, shuffling out of the room. Confused, heart pounding, I turn and head in the opposite direction. I shut my bedroom door behind me and pray it keeps out that sad, quiet noise.