by M. F. Lorson
“It’s only a four minute drive to the parks office, so you’re going to at least half-listen to my apology.”
“What are you apologizing for? Being a jerk, a creep, or a total snitch?”
I assumed the creep part was meant for the kiss, and I guess I deserved that.
“Look, I’m sorry I had to tell Hunt, but it was for your own good, Harper.”
“Ugh,” she groaned with her head hanging back. “Is it so hard for you to understand that what happens to me is not up to you. You’re so entitled that you think you can just butt into other people’s business.”
“Fine, then I’m entitled. But you’re safe from that super creep and his plans to frame you for a crime whether you believe me or not.”
I started up the car, gritting my teeth and feeling a redness creep up to my cheeks. Harper’s stare was focused forward, and the truck grew tense and quiet. Why couldn’t she just thank me for saving her a world of heartache and possible jail time? Why was she so ungrateful?
“I said I’m sorry. I said I was going to figure out your secret, and I figured it out. I’ll stay out of your business now. After this week, you won’t see me anymore.”
Her head turned toward me, but I kept my eyes forward. Eye contact was too risky in private, enclosed spaces.
“I watched that movie,” I muttered as we pulled up to a red light.
“What movie?”
“The Outsiders. You said it was your favorite.”
“Why did you watch my favorite movie?” she said, her voice low and her eyes still lingering on my face. I wished she would look away. It was hard to breathe when she looked at me like that.
“To see what all the fuss was about. Don’t look into it too much. You’re not that interesting.”
Finally, she looked away, letting out an annoyed sigh.
“So...what’d you think?” she asked, watching out her window as we passed the sign for Grover State Park.
“I liked it. It reminded me of us. You’re the greaser, of course.” I reached over and rattled her hair. We pulled into the parking lot for the Parks office, but she didn’t get out of the car right away.
“You realize the Socs were total douchebags, right?”
“What? No way. They were victims. The theme of the movie was about the greasers being a total stain on society, right?”
She rolled her eyes as she climbed out of the truck, slamming it in my face, and I laughed. It felt good to be back to the old us, comfortably hating each other, the way it was supposed to be.
Harper
Chili, it turned out, was the key to the riverwalk Mural project’s success. It didn’t seem to matter what I said or how inconclusive I was about the theme (though it was starting to take shape in my head), Eric mostly said, “Mmm…” and “Mmhmm,” pausing only to wipe his mouth with the corner of his napkin.
By the time we left, I had permission to use the city volunteer base to recruit a crew and up to $500.00 worth of city credit at the paint store on Tenth and Gilliam.
I really didn’t want to work with Landon on this project, but my dad was dead set on his serving as my babysitter. It didn’t seem like much of a police internship to me, but I wasn’t there when they went on ride-alongs or popped into his office each afternoon after lunch. To be honest, it bothered me that I wasn’t there for those things. So far this summer, my dad had spent more time talking one on one with Landon than he had me. I didn’t like the way Landon called him Hunt, or looked at him with such reverence.
There wasn’t a snowball's chance in hell that my dad picked up the phone to check on him once his internship was over. You only had my dad’s attention when he was on the clock. Not that Landon deserved my sympathy. I wasn’t going to give him a pass for tattling just because he watched my favorite movie.
After Eric signed off on the project Landon had to return to the station to learn some much needed paper pushing skills, and I got to bail for the day. I was thinking of meeting up with Drake. We hadn’t talked much since he passed out at camp, and when we did talk, it was all about the party he was planning and how I absolutely couldn’t chicken out, but when I tried calling he didn’t pick up. Reagan and Sloane were blowing up my phone about an emergency meeting in Sloane’s basement.
I knew that this meant Reagan had filled Sloane in on Drake and that most likely the two of them were going to go all intervention on me and list all the reasons he was a bad choice, but I also knew I was in the dog house for not telling them about him in the first place. So I might as well suck it up and let them say what they needed to.
Sloane’s dad was in the kitchen when I arrived.
“Cookie?” he asked, extending a plate full of snickerdoodles as if he had spent the afternoon baking them and there wasn’t an empty bag of store boughts sitting right behind him.
“I’ll bring them down with me,” I said, reaching over to take the plate and turning toward the basement.
“Hey Harper?”
“Hm?” I asked, already one bite into a cookie.
“I ran into your Dad the other day. He was concerned.”
I chewed slowly trying to imagine my dad confiding in Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller who was currently wearing socks with sandals and a golf visor.
“No need to worry.” I had my hand on the door to the basement, and I was really hoping he would drop it, but instead of getting back to whatever he had been doing in the kitchen, Mr. Miller folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on the counter.
“It’s not my place to interfere, but Sloane mentioned you might be seeing someone a little older?” His eyebrows lifted, and he was giving me that worried dad look usually reserved for the final scene of a heartwarming family sitcom. I wanted to turn the knob and end the conversation, but I had a hard time getting my feet to move.
If Sloane had been in the room, I could have focused my energy on shooting daggers with my eyes. Of course she told her dad. She and her dad were ridiculously close. Sometimes it made me jealous, but I wouldn’t trade her situation for mine. If it took my mom passing away to force dad and I to communicate I’d just as soon keep the walls up.
When I didn’t answer, Mr. Miller continued.
“I know it feels like there are only a finite number of boys in the world, and when one likes you, you want to go with it...”
Oh wow, he was really going for it.
“But just because he likes you doesn’t mean he’s the only boy who's going to. You know?”
I tapped my chin pretending to seriously ponder the question. “So what you're saying is, it is possible for another member of the male species to be attracted to me? That I don’t have to stick with my lover, the thirty-five-year-old long haul trucker?”
Mr. Miller’s jaw dropped. “Harper, I…”
“I am joking!” I cried. “Come on, you must have more faith in me than that.”
He uncrossed his arms and rubbed his hand over his jaw. “It’s not a lack of faith in you. It’s a lack of faith in men. All of them.”
“Well, now we agree on something,” I said, thinking about how both Landon and Drake had managed to sink to new levels of lame in the last week alone.
“I want you to know that if you need to talk to someone. I’m around. Pretty much all the time.”
I smiled. There was no way I was going to confide in Mr. Miller, but I appreciated the gesture.
“Sloane not keeping you busy enough?”
Mr. Miller made a shooing motion with his hand. “We’re on a maintenance plan at this point. All the hard parenting is over. Nowadays all I do is pop into the basement to make sure she and Gabe aren’t permanently fused together.”
“Gross,” I said. The two of them were bad enough at actual PDA. I did not want to picture what happened when they had a basement to themselves.
“Grosser for me,” said Mr. Miller, clearly a particularly traumatizing memory was surfacing because his face was twisted up in a grimace and his eyes were glazing over.
; “Thanks for the chat,” I said, bailing while he was still too distracted to try and push me to open up.
When I reached the bottom of the staircase Reagan and Sloane were going over a list in Sloane’s planning journal.
“Let me guess. You’ve drafted an agenda for this meeting.”
Reagan smiled at me as I plopped onto the den couch. “It’s just some bullet points to keep us on track.”
“Uh huh,” I said with a sigh. “Let me see.” I reached out my hand and waited for Sloane to give up her planner. “Oh and by the way, thanks for telling your Dad I’m dating an older guy.”
Sloane laughed. “Yeah, sorry about that. Did he tell you how you’re a precious gem and the person who gets your treasure has to follow the map, no shortcuts?”
“He did. And then I told him I saw Gabe taking a short cut just the other day in the back of the movie theatre.”
Sloane picked up a couch cushion and launched it at my head.
“Alright, let’s get this over with.”
Across the couch, Sloane and Reagan straightened their spines and put on their best serious expressions.
“Bullet point one.”
Landon
When I signed up to be an intern for Chief Huntington, I pictured myself getting him donuts, riding in his car, pulling over drunk drivers, and maybe even busting a few shoplifters. What I didn’t expect was doing paperwork and babysitting his daughter.
After a grueling morning of highlighting keywords in a 82-page police report, we sat around the break-room table together enjoying the homemade lasagna Mrs. Hunt sent them to work with today. Well they were eating it like normal fed human beings. I was shoveling it down like it was the only thing I’d eaten in months, which it wasn’t. Hunt’s been taking me home for dinner like a stray cat he knows if he gets into the habit of feeding too much, it’ll never go away.
After lunch, he sent me and Harper to the supply store to pick up the things she needed for her mural project. She reacted with the same physical disgust she did every time he informed her she’d have to be in close proximity to me. It could have been my imagination, but the more grossed out she acted about me, the more I was convinced she didn’t hate me.
Once again, she tried to ignore me with those double earbuds, and once again, I popped one out and shoved it in my pocket as soon as we got into the car.
“All I want is your undivided attention,” I teased.
“Murder is a form of undivided attention,” she answered with a sarcastic smile.
“You wouldn’t murder me. Your life would be terrible without me. You’d have no one to hate, and you’d miss my endless torment.”
“Doubtful,” she answered, looking down at her phone.
“Who ya texting?” I asked, peering over at her screen. She immediately pulled it away, trying to hide it from me but still finished whatever she was typing. The store we were going to was smack dab in the middle of the busiest, shopping street in town, and we seemed to be hitting every red light, making our uncomfortable time together extra brutal.
“None of your business,” she snapped back.
“Please tell me you’re not still talking to that massive butt wipe, Drake.”
She didn’t answer right away as she kept up her secret texting, but her silence said enough. It put a super sour feeling in my stomach. This girl would never learn, and she obviously didn’t believe anything I told her.
“Has Drakey-poo been over for dinner?” I asked. “Met your mom yet? Ate her delicious cooking?”
“You know he hasn’t, Landey-poo,” she answered snidely.
“Because you know she could never love him as much as she loves me.” Sending her one of my charmers that I knew she hated so much, she responded with a fake dry heaving into her purse.
Still staring at her phone after a few quiet moments she responded, “Are you telling me you brought home all of your various ‘girlfriends’ to meet your mom? I’m sure she approved every time.”
She was distracted and not thinking clearly, scrolling through Insta while her question landed somewhere in the space between us, growing more and more uncomfortable with every passing moment. Every moment that she didn’t acknowledge what she just said to me. So I waited because there was no response to that question…which I knew was meant to be sarcastic and funny, but still made my insides turn to solid, cold ice.
It took exactly three and a half seconds before she glanced up.
“Oh crap, Landon. I...I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
I forced out a laugh. “I always knew you were an ice queen, but dang, Harper.”
She covered her face with her hands. “I forgot, and now I feel like a real jerk.”
“You mean you haven’t been trying to be a jerk this whole time?”
“Well, not that much of a jerk.”
After that statement, I could smile without having to force it. Something about Harper not wanting to totally hate me was refreshing. I didn’t really hate her, at least not anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, her tone a little low and flat, sounding more genuine than I’d ever heard from her.
“Don’t be. I’m fine. It’s easy to forget,” I said as we pulled into the parking lot of the home improvement store.
“It is not easy to forget. At least...I should have remembered, but I guess…” her voice trailed as she kept her eyes focused on anything but my face.
“You guess what?”
“It’s not like you ever talk about her…”
It felt like a punch to my stomach. I was blindsided.
“Well, not to you,” I snapped, a knee-jerk reaction. I didn’t talk to anyone about my mom, not even Gabe. Not after he tried it once a few months ago, and I made him promise we weren’t going to do the mushy emo talks anymore.
I shut off the truck but neither of us moved.
“I just meant...you don’t talk about anything. You’ve imbedded yourself into my life and my business, but I don’t know anything about you.”
It only became a little easier to breathe, knowing Harper wasn’t completely blaming me for not talking about my mom, like not talking about her meant I didn’t care about her. Trying to lighten the mood, I lifted my arm and rested it on the back of the seat, but she didn’t recoil or react in disgust like she normally did.
“Well, what do you want to know about me? Let’s see, I love long walks on the beach—”
“I’m being serious, Landon.” When I finally looked her in the eyes, I could see the sincerity there, and it was too intense. I had to look away.
I wanted to ask her why. Why was she being serious? What were we? We weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies either. So why should I tell her anything?
All of those questions made me irritable.
“I’m not butting into your business anymore, so you don’t have to worry about it,” I said. With that, I turned and opened the door. Sure, it was a total escape, textbook fight or flight, but every moment in that truck cab with Harper staring at me with those serious eyes was making me feel crazy.
“Landon,” she said, drawing out my name as I slammed the truck door.
Once we met, behind the truck bed, she glared at me with an impatient expression. And I wanted her to drop it more than anything in the world. So I figured if I gave her an inch, it’d make her stop trying to torture me with talking.
“What? You want to come over to dinner at my house tonight? Is that what you want? Fine. You’re invited to eat $5 pizza from Antonio’s with me and Gabe, and you can butt into all of my business so we’re even. Happy?”
She laughed and shook her head. “You’ll literally do anything to keep from talking about your feelings, won’t you?”
“Pretty much. I’m inviting a convicted criminal to my house.”
Harper
No, I don’t want your pizza. It reminds me of your dumb face. Have I mentioned lately that I think your face is dumb? These are things I could have and probably should h
ave said in response to Landon inviting me over for dinner.
It was hard work not allowing him to weasel his way into my friendzone, but I had been managing all right. Until of course I accidentally mentioned his dead mother. Now I basically had to hang out with him.
Gabe and Sloane were in the kitchen eating pizza from paper plates when we walked in.
I watched her ginger eyebrows pop to the top of her head at the sight of me.
“We’re joining you,” said Landon throwing a piece of pepperoni on a plate and sliding it down the breakfast bar to where I stood.
Gabe and Sloane exchanged a knowing look, and I had a strong desire to launch my plate like a frisbee in their direction.
“So,” I said, looking around the room. “This is the Maxwell house without blacklights and teenage drinkers. Very lovely.”
Gabe grinned. “Not going to beat my baby brother up this time?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and savored the memory of hoisting my rhinestone bedazzled stiletto above Gabe’s startled face.
“I actually don’t remember that,” said Landon sheepishly.
I frowned. “Really? I think of it as a pivotal moment in our relationship.” As soon as the word relationship popped out of my mouth I regretted it.
“Aw snookums,” said Landon coming around the table to wrap an arm around my shoulder. “There is so much time ahead of us to make new memories.”
Across the table Sloane snorted. With a withering look in her direction I pushed Landon’s arm off my body.
“Where’s your Dad?” I asked, “Shouldn’t he be mixing drinks for us or ushering us toward the backyard for some poolside marijuana?”
Gabe and Landon locked eyes. “Dad’s in Texas this week,”
“New Jersey,” corrected Gabe. “Texas was two weeks ago. I remember because he sent a ridiculous selfie of himself wearing a cowboy hat.”
“Oh yeah,” grumbled Landon. “A three piece suit and a cowboy hat. Very authentic. I’m sure the great people of Texas were struck by his willingness to commit.”
