I chewed on my sandwich, thinking about that. Knowing what we know.
Knowing what I knew, I needed to tell Mom. She didn’t deserve to live a life built on a lie.
I set my sandwich down and rubbed my hands on my pajama pants. “Mom, can I tell you something?”
She brushed my hair behind my ear. “Anything, honey.”
A lump grew in my throat, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t swallow it down. I had to talk over it. “When I was at the capitol, I saw Dad with another woman.”
Her eyes went blank. “What do you mean?”
“I was in the basement, showing my partner around, and I saw Dad kissing someone else.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Are you sure it was him?”
I nodded, and she sighed.
Sure, I didn’t have much experience in this department, but was that how she was supposed to react? Why wasn’t she crying? Throwing his things on the front lawn? Calling him to confront him?
“Mom?”
She looked back at me like she was just remembering I was in the room. “Honey...” She pressed her lips together, thinking. “Marriage is...complicated.”
And then it dawned on me. “You knew he was cheating on you?”
Her hand went to the back of her neck, under her ponytail, and she looked down for a moment. “Yeah, I knew.”
“What?” If I’d thought my world was crumbling before, it was vaporized now, built on a foundation of sand.
She put her hand on my knee, but it felt all wrong. “No marriage is perfect. When you get married, there will be things about your spouse that you don’t like, and you’ll have to decide what compromises you’re willing to make. Your father is an excellent dad to you girls, always pushing you to be better. He provides for us, works hard to make sure we have a good home, that Amie can do ballet and you can volunteer without needing to get paid, that Opal can do karate. And just because he’s straying now, doesn’t mean he always will.”
Every word she said sounded more wrong than the last. How could she say what she did with such conviction? How could we go to church as a family every Sunday when Dad was breaking the number one premise of a Christian marriage?
My chin quivered, and I stood with the remains of my sandwich, my milk, my faith. “I’m going to bed.”
Her eyes were soft. “Okay. Just know no matter what, your dad and I love you girls more than anything else. That will never change.”
I nodded, sending tears down my cheeks. I dropped my food in the trash, my milk in the sink, and I went upstairs before she could see how thoroughly her words had sliced through me.
Instead of turning right at the top of the stairs, I turned left and went into Amie’s room. I’d lost the people I thought my parents were. I couldn’t lose my siblings too.
She stirred the second I walked inside, and she sat up, looking at me in the soft light coming in through her window.
“Amie, I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I love you more than anything. Just forgive me. Please, forgive me.”
Silently, she lifted her blanket and let me crawl in bed with her. I slid under the covers and wrapped her in my arms.
“I love you,” I said. “And I’d never trade you or the others for anything.”
She buried her head in my shoulder. “Promise?”
I nodded, against her cheek. “Promise.”
Nineteen
Emerick
Living in a garage/laundry room really sucked. Especially when I just wanted to be alone. Every time Aunt Linda did a load of laundry—which was a lot since she had three kids and a husband who owned a mechanic shop—she checked on me. And not just, “Hey, how are you doing?” No, she made sure to ask if I needed food, if I wanted some water, if I wanted her to push me around the block for some fresh air. The kind of stuff my mom might do if she wasn’t working 24/7.
Don’t get me wrong; it was nice as hell. Just not when you wanted to lie around and do nothing for a week.
The door opened, and I prepared myself for another run-in with Linda, which basically meant pretending to sleep, but this time, a little voice said, “Emerick?”
I opened one eye to see Janie standing in the doorway. “Yeah?”
She came into the garage and closed the door behind her. “It’s the last day of spring break.” She said it like that was supposed to mean something to me.
“One more day of freedom,” I said.
She smiled. “You mean boredom.”
Janie was weird like that. The kid loved school.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I meant.” I scooted over on my futon, and she lay down with me, staring at the ceiling.
“Why do you hang out in here so much?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”
“Don’t you lie to me.” She sounded surprisingly like her mom. “I know Mama’s been inviting you out to the park and stuff.”
How was a ten-year-old already so good at shaming me? “You know, you’d be a great cop.”
She smiled. “Or a forensic investigator.”
I scrunched my eyebrows. “How do you even know what that is?”
“Read about it in a book.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Really. What’s going on?” She rolled her head to the side and looked at me. “You sad? I read a book about depression, and—”
“Where are you getting these books?”
She looked a little sheepish. “Borrowed one from Mama’s shelf.”
I smiled, and I wanted to tell her I wasn’t down, that everything was fine, but I couldn’t. So I settled for the truth. “I applied for a job, but I didn’t get it.”
A frown transformed her face. “What job?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
She crossed her heart.
“I applied for an internship at a paper.”
Her eyes lit up. “Like a writer?”
I nodded. “Exactly like that. But I didn’t get it, so I guess whenever this leg heals up, it’s back to the shop.”
All the light in her face morphed to confusion. “Why would you go back to the shop if you want to be a writer?”
“’Cause I need a job.”
“Then just apply at another paper.” She said it like it was so obvious.
“It’s not that simple, Janie,” I said.
Her little eyebrows scrunched together. “Sure it is. Just keep applying.” She put a hand on my chest. “If you want it, you’ll make it happen.” She smiled at me. “Make us proud, Rick.”
I pulled her in for a hug. “You’re too smart for your own good, kid.”
“Thanks. Oh, and Mom says supper’s ready.” She held my hand and led me to the dining room, obviously under strict orders to get me out of there. I didn’t know who was smarter—Janie or Aunt Linda, but I was nowhere in the running.
That evening as I lay on my futon, Janie’s words and childlike faith stuck in my mind. If you want it, you’ll make it happen. Who was to say she wasn’t right?
A knock sounded on the door. Ma. She walked in and sat on the end of my bed. I sat up too.
“So,” she said, smoothing out the end of my blanket. “Janie tells me you want to be a writer.”
I waited for it—the judgment, telling me that writing wasn’t a real man’s job, that I’d be poor forever.
“You know,” she said. “I think that would be a fine career. You should go for it.”
“But what about you?”
She shrugged. “What about me?”
Then I asked the question I had to ask. “What if I get a job someplace else?”
Smiling, she patted the bed next to her. Slowly, awkwardly, I sat next to her with my massive cast hanging off the side.
She took my hand and looked at me, her eyes heavy and tired but intense. “You know, I’m the mom, and you’re the son. And I think we’d both be better off if we remembered that.” Taking in a deep breath, she stood up and looked down at me, a soft sm
ile on her lips. “Goodnight.”
“Night, Ma.”
After she left, I looked around the garage. Why was I taking on so much responsibility for Mom? She’d never asked me to. Uncle Ken would give her a place to live as long as she needed it. I could send her money from wherever I went, and I wouldn’t need much to survive on. As I pulled up the job boards online and searched for newspaper jobs—any newspaper jobs—I started to think, for the first time in my life, that this could actually happen.
For the next few hours, I filled out application after application, starting in Oklahoma and eventually moving my search out of state. But even after my eyes grew tired and my fingers felt numb, there was still one thing I missed. ThePerfectStranger. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that.
Or was there? Something Stranger—Nora—had said about being yourself no matter what others thought stuck out in my mind. Nora might have thought I was just a run-of-the-mill bad boy, but I wasn’t. I was Adam. I just needed to show her that.
Even though it was eleven, I sent her a text asking if she wanted to meet up to plan out some of our assignments. Maybe if I kept showing her how dedicated I was with school, it would make a difference.
Within a minute, she replied.
Nora: Let’s meet tomorrow morning? 7 at the school?
And even though it meant begging Aunt Linda for a ride, I said yes.
When I walked into the library the next morning, Nora was already at a desk, thumbing through her book. She didn’t see me walk in, so I just stood there for a little bit, watching her...like a creep, but what the hell.
Her blond hair fell over her face, and she pushed it back, leaving a patch of her neck, her porcelain skin exposed. Did it feel as silky as it looked?
She bit her full lips together and furrowed her eyebrows, then made a note on her paper.
Yeah, I’d known Nora was hot before, but how had I not realized the cute way she stared at books like the words were the only thing in the world? Or how the ends of her hair fell just below her shoulder blades, tickling the middle of her back? I wondered what the strands would feel like slipping through my fingers. What her hair would smell like.
God, I was a creep.
I walked closer to her and lifted my hand. “Hey.”
She looked up, then at her wristwatch. “You’re five minutes early?”
Eight if she counted the three I stood around watching her, but that was beside the point. “Yeah.” I went and sat next to her at the desk. She had nearly a page full of handwritten notes. “What were you working on?”
“I wanted to start an outline for our opening speech at the debate,” she said. “And I wanted to tell you something.”
That little line formed between her eyebrows again, and it took all of my effort not to reach out and smooth it down. “What is it?”
She tipped her chin down, then looked at me under her lashes. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for how I acted last Friday, when you came to check on me. That was...really nice of you, and I just wasn’t in a good place.”
Was she being honest? Her big, blue eyes just begged me to believe her. “It’s fine,” I said. “Everyone says stuff they don’t mean.”
A storm cloud crossed her eyes, bringing moisture with it. Panic rose in my chest. Had I said something wrong?
She lifted her hand and wiped at her eyes. “Ugh, I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “It’s been a long week.”
I rubbed her shoulder, not sure if that was the right thing, but she didn’t shy from my touch. “I bet it’s been rough.”
She laughed, bringing on a fresh round of tears. “You have no idea. You know what we saw on the scavenger hunt?”
We were deep in unchartered territory, so I just nodded.
“My mom knows about it.” She stared at me, unanswered questions in her eyes. “She knows about it, and she’s not going to leave.”
Not planning it, not thinking about it, I pulled Nora into a side-armed hug. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
A sob shook her shoulders. “I used to be able to talk to Adam—whoever he is—about things like this, but now my friends are mad, and I can’t tell my sister, and I don’t have anyone.”
She cried for a little bit, and even though it felt like her pain was leaking through my jacket, straight into my chest, it felt good to be there for her since I couldn’t as Adam anymore.
We didn’t get much work done that day, but something better happened. Nora went from being my social studies partner to being my friend.
For the rest of the week, we worked together to smooth out our speech, and on Friday in class, we went to the computer lab with our classmates to design campaign posters. And, trust me, this was all Nora. I couldn’t draw for shit, and I was about fifty percent sure I was colorblind. Or at least color deficit. If that was a thing.
Wolf came up behind us and looked over my shoulder at the poster Nora had made. “Dude, that’s awesome.”
Nora grinned. “You think?”
“Totally,” he said. “Hey, you think you could make one for me?”
We both turned to look at him, shocked.
“Not for this class.” His cheeks looked a little red. “I’m gonna start giving kids guitar lessons.”
I reached back and clapped his shoulder. “Corrupting youth. Nice move.”
He shrugged my hand off, laughing. “Nah, Imma be good.”
And I believed him. Since his random swim in the lake at Dolese Park, Wolf had been different. Yeah, he still cussed and picked up gigs at bars, but I never wondered if he was high or not. And he actually stayed with me after school to work on homework when he didn’t have a shift to work.
Since we still had about twenty minutes in class, Nora started on a design, and I had no idea how, but she made this bomb poster for him and sent twenty copies to the color printer.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Perks of being student body president.”
Yeah, regular Nora was hot, but taking-advantage-of-executive-privileges-to-help-my-friend Nora was irresistible.
Wolf looked like a kid on Christmas morning with the stack of warm flyers. “Hey, can you find another ride after school so I can go post these around?”
And since Nora was right there, and since she was nice, she volunteered.
After the final bell rang, we met by the front doors and went out to her car. She drove me to Uncle Ken’s, apparently remembering how to get there from last time.
What could I say? The girl was smart.
She pulled along the curb and looked over at me. “Here you are.”
I smiled at her, probably looking dopey as hell. “Home sweet home.”
Her lips twitched, almost forming a smile. “Hey, I just wanted to say, I’m sorry for being such a snob when we were first partnered up. You’ve actually kind of been the best project partner I’ve had all year.”
And I didn’t know whether it was the compliment or the smell of her hair—strawberries and mint if you were wondering—but I had everything I needed to do the craziest thing I’d done in all my life.
“Will you go to prom with me?”
Twenty
Nora
Emerick. Turner. Just. Asked. Me. To. Prom.
Breathe.
But that was a bad idea because I just got a massive heady whiff of his leather jacket and earthy cologne.
All the obvious alarm bells were going off—the ones that said Emerick and I lived parallel lives, never destined to cross, but here we were, sitting in my car, a question hanging in the air between us.
And I was blowing it because I couldn’t just open my mouth and give him an answer.
If I was being honest, it wasn’t all the pent-up teen angst and bad-boy persona that was holding me back, because something in Emerick had changed since that day I collided with him. He was...different. A great lab partner, kind, and not as rude to me about being a rich kid as I was to him about being a delinquent. Even though I’d totally misjudged him.
No,
the thing—person—holding me back was Adam. I missed him. Missed the idea of him. Adam had never been as real as this guy sitting across from me, all dark eyes, lean muscles, and this vulnerable brokenness that showed through no matter what tough exterior he put forth. How hadn’t I noticed it before?
Emerick looked down at his hands resting in his lap, and I realized there weren’t grease stains there anymore. He couldn’t work with his leg.
He sighed. “You don’t have to say yes. It was—”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes. I want to go with you.”
One of those transformative smiles covered his face, making a light dance in his dark eyes. “Yeah?”
I smiled right back. “Yes. I’ll text you later with details?”
His eyebrows scrunched like he didn’t quite understand. Guys never did.
“You know, dress color and stuff like that?”
“Oh,” he said. And if his skin would have been as light as mine, he might have been blushing. But that was just a guess. “Awesome.”
If I smiled any more, my face would crack in half. “Awesome.” I hopped out of the car and took in a deep breath of the fresh spring air. It smelled like everything amazing. Possibilities, new life, maybe something more.
I went to the trunk and got his wheelchair, and he met me in the driveway.
“When does your cast come off?” I asked.
He cringed. “I have a surgery the Monday after prom. Another eight weeks in a cast after that, and then I’m good to go. If everything goes well.”
That sounded awful, but Emerick had been through enough. He deserved better. “I’m sure it will.”
He nodded and settled into the chair. He looked over his shoulder and met my eyes. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. If all the letters in the paper had changed his mind about me.
“I’ll see you later?” he said.
I nodded. “See you later.”
As I drove away from Emerick’s place, I couldn’t get the smile off my face, and I knew I wanted to tell someone. Well, two someones.
For the first time in my life, I called in sick to my internship and drove back to the school. I sent out one text message to a group chat that hadn’t seen anything in more than a month, even before the leaked emails had ruined everything.
Dear Adam (The Pen Pal Romance Series) Page 12
