Life in the Lucky Zone (The Zone #2)

by Patricia B Tighe

  Forty-Eight

  Berger

  Wiping off one of the tables at The Coffee Bar with a rag, I mentally kicked myself for the hundredth time. Why had I tried to make a move on Lindsey right before Spring Break? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’d violated the second basic step of Operation Lindsey—be patient. I’d just wanted to kiss her so much. It had been the way she’d laughed and then her sudden nervousness that had drawn me in like we were tied together at the waist.

  And so when she’d spent the last two days of that week pretending we were distant acquaintances, it didn’t surprise me at all. It had been too much, too soon.

  I moved on to bus another table, glad that my parents had talked me into helping out at the shop this week. A couple of people had quit, leaving them short-handed. And now I was so busy I didn’t have time to miss Lindsey. Ha, right. Stop lying to yourself.

  Okay, I missed the hell out of her. Because I wanted to be around her all the time. But I had to be more careful when she finally came home. Stay patient. Let her make the first move, no matter how long it took. So in keeping with that, I hadn’t texted her at all. And it was already Tuesday. Four days. A long time to go without one little word. She’d be home on Friday, but I probably wouldn’t get to see her until next Monday at school. Then I could see how she acted around me—find out if I’d screwed things up completely. Don’t think about that possibility.

  “Trey.” My dad walked up to me, wearing his The Coffee Bar apron, even though he rarely worked behind the counter. “I need you to head home.”

  I looked around. I really didn’t want to sit around staring at the wall at home while I waited for Gray to come hang out. “I’m supposed to be here for another half an hour. And I have two more tables to clean.”

  “Okay, just get the tables and then go home. Ashley has to go somewhere, and we need you home with Nana.”

  I blew air out one side of my mouth. I wished they hadn’t given the caregiver Maggie three days off. Even though she probably deserved it. But still. Hanging with Nana wasn’t on the top of my fun list. Sudden guilt burned in my chest. Man up, Trey. “Okay. Where’s Ash going?”

  Dad smiled at a customer, then looked at me. “I don’t know. The message came through your mom.” He held out the car keys.

  I pocketed them. “How are you getting home? Because I—”

  “Ashley can pick us up later.”

  “—have to work at the Cineplex tonight.”

  “We’ll all be home by then. You can use whichever car you want.”

  “Ashley will love that.”

  He chuckled and then clapped a hand on my shoulder. “See you later.”

  “Yeah, later.”

  I finished my tables quickly and took everything to the kitchen in back. Time to go see what kind of mood Nana was in.

  ***

  Nana shuffled into the kitchen in her slippers half an hour after I got home. “Hello, dear. Did you work hard this morning?”

  Did she really know where I’d been or was she just guessing? Impossible to tell. “I worked, but not too hard. You know me, Nana.”

  She chuckled. “Do you think you could make me a cup of tea? I think I’d like that better than milk this afternoon.”

  “Sure.” I got up, filled the teapot with water, and turned on the burner. “Did you have a good nap?”

  “Yes, but I believe I may have had a nightmare.”

  “Oh. About what?”

  She sat at the kitchen table. “I don’t rightly remember.” She rubbed her forehead. “I think everything in my garden was dead.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Good thing it was just a dream.”

  She stared at me like she didn’t see me.

  “Nana?”

  “I need to tend to it.”

  “Your garden?”

  “Yes. That’s why things die, you see. They’re not well tended to.”

  What the heck did that mean? Okay, I knew what it literally meant, but I wasn’t sure what she meant. I took out her favorite cup and saucer with the flowery pattern, then put a tea bag inside to wait for the hot water. Maybe I should just talk about something different. “The coffee shop was busy this morning.”

  “It always is,” she said, her gaze still distant.

  “There was a group of really noisy ladies there.”

  She blinked like I finally had her attention. “Oh? How noisy?”

  “Very. Shrieks of laughter. I would even say a cackle or two.”

  She smiled. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “You would’ve fit right in.”

  “Quite true. I can cackle with the best of them.” She traced the edge of the teacup’s tiny handle. “I’m not fond of coffee, though I remember putting used grounds in the compost pile back when Douglas was alive. He loved coffee.”

  This was odd. Nana rarely talked about Grandpa. He’d died when Ashley and I were little, and the only thing I remembered about him was the smell of pipe tobacco.

  A hissing, tumbling sound came from the teapot, and I turned off the burner. I didn’t want the water to get to a full boil and burn poor Nana’s lips off. I poured the water into her cup while she stared out the window over the sink. Her eyes held a vague look that usually meant she wasn’t in the present anymore.

  After several quiet minutes, she refocused on me. “I’m going to have to work with the compost later today. The garden needs it.”

  I smiled. “Sounds good, Nana.”

  “I don’t want everything to die.”

  “That’s a good plan.”

  She dunked her tea bag twice, put it on the saucer, and then sipped her tea. Was she happy? It was just so freaking hard to tell sometimes. I didn’t know what else to do but keep talking and hope something I said took her mind off the bad dream.

  Maybe when Gray showed up in another twenty minutes or so, it would cheer her up. Make her think she was taking care of us like she did when we were little. It was worth a shot.

  ***

  It was about twelve thirty that night and I’d just gotten home from the Cineplex when my phone buzzed.

  Lindsey: Hi! Drinking hot chocolate sans schnapps.

  Finally! I dropped onto the couch in my room and toed off my sneakers.

  Berger: Probably wise

  Lindsey: Heh. What’re you doing?

  Berger: Nothing. Just got home from work. You having fun?

  Lindsey: A little. Ready to come home though.

  I wanted to say, “Yes! Come home! I miss you!” But no. Mr. Patience was in charge of this conversation.

  Berger: It’s very boring here.

  Lindsey: I doubt that.

  Berger: Busing tables at coffee shop + cleaning up after people in movie theater = very boring

  Lindsey: K, you’re right. Uh-oh. Dad here. More family fun time. haha He says hi

  What kind of family fun were they going to have at twelve thirty at night? Oh, wait. She was in an earlier time zone. It was only eleven thirty there.

  Berger: Tell him hi back

  Lindsey: See you in a few days :D

  Can’t wait. Hurry home. Be waiting on your front porch.

  Berger: Sounds good. Bye!

  It was pretty clear that Mr. Patience and I were going to be wrestling a lot in the next few weeks. Geez. It’d better be only weeks. Not months.

  Forty-Nine

  Lindsey

  Rehearsal on Monday afternoon after Spring Break outright stunk. The actors walked around like zombies, Mrs. Mac kept patting her hair for pencils and not finding any, and I couldn’t stop watching Berger in the wings. It was like he’d activated some hidden beacon that only I could sense, and whenever his head was turned away, I took advantage of it.

  I stared. And kept thinking about how soft his hair had been that humiliating night I’d run my hands through it. Or how I wanted to straighten his glasses. Or how I wished we could go somewhere and do nothing together. Just t
alk, and argue, and laugh like we always did.

  And then he’d catch my eye and grin with an expression that said, This really blows, doesn’t it? And all I wanted to do was grab his hand and leave the auditorium. I’d missed him so much when I was in Colorado.

  I mentally shook myself. Stop it, Lindsey. He’s your lucky boy, not your crush.

  It wasn’t like we hadn’t talked since I’d gotten home. We had, and the awkwardness I’d felt around him before I left town was gone. But now, something else had replaced it. Something that I couldn’t quite identify. A sense of waiting. For words or actions or … I just didn’t know what. Which was weird enough that I was doing my best to ignore it.

  “Don’t you think so, Lindsey?” Marta asked.

  Uh-oh. Caught not paying attention. I looked up. “What?”

  “In this last scene, Beulah should sound sad, and Kara is saying the lines like we’re going to a picnic.”

  “I am not,” Kara said.

  “Okay, like we’re going to the movies,” Marta said.

  “Shut up,” Kara said.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Take a couple of deep breaths, and then let’s run through that section one more time.”

  Marta frowned, but she inhaled super loudly. I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing. Kara squinted at me, then went through her lines with Marta. I hated to think it, much less say it, but Marta was right. And how the heck was I going to help Kara when I’d promised I’d be nicer to her? She’d think I was being mean. Whatever I tried, I had to include Marta, who already hated me. Woo-hoo, directing is fun.

  “I can see a problem,” I said. “Are y’all willing to try something?”

  They wore twin irritated expressions, but they nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Shut your eyes and take some more deep breaths.”

  “Seriously, Lindsey?” Marta asked.

  I shrugged. “You want to make this better?”

  She glared, then shut her eyes. I couldn’t believe I actually had to do this with them. They should’ve already been doing it on their own. “So remember a time when you were really sad. It doesn’t matter when. Just remember and think about how you felt. Feel how you felt.”

  I ignored the sounds of people moving around or talking near us. Instead, I watched Marta and Kara. Slowly their expressions softened, losing the irritation. Marta’s face relaxed, and she lowered her head. But Kara was a different story. She started breathing faster, her skin turning red, her eyelashes fluttering even with closed eyes. She looked like she was about to ugly cry, or even sob. And since that was way more emotion than the scene required, I stopped them.

  “Open your eyes,” I said quietly.

  They did, looking away from each other like they were embarrassed.

  “Do the scene again. Marta, you can start.”

  She glanced at me and then launched into her lines. It wasn’t Mike-brilliant, but it was better. Way, way better. Especially Kara. When they were done, they looked at me expectantly. “How did that feel?” I asked.

  “Good,” Marta said.

  “Sad,” Kara said.

  “You were really convincing,” Marta said to Kara.

  “Really?” Kara asked. “I didn’t like that. It hurt.”

  Welcome to acting. I wanted to throw my shoulders back and say, “And my work here is done.” Something touched my shoulder. I jerked in my chair, twisting around. It was Mrs. Mac, with a slight smile on her face. She gave me a brief nod and then walked toward center stage.

  She must’ve seen what had just happened. It was nice to have her approval, but I still wished I had a part in the stupid play, instead of showing people how to act.

  Mrs. Mac clapped her hands. “That’s it for today. We’ll pick up again tomorrow, and hopefully we won’t resemble an episode of The Walking Dead quite so much.”

  People chuckled and set about gathering their stuff to leave. Berger was nowhere in sight. Was he already gone? Dang it. I wanted to at least talk to him. I took out my phone to text him when Mike and Parker appeared in front of me.

  “We’re going to Sonic,” Parker said. “Want to come?”

  Their faces shone with overeager smiles, which I knew they were doing on purpose. I laughed. “Y’all are crazy.”

  “Come on,” Mike said. “We haven’t hung out with just us in a long time.”

  Yeah, so that “just us” obviously meant no Berger. Which wasn’t going to work, because as much as I would have liked to sit around laughing with them, I wanted to do the same thing with Berger a whole lot more. “Some other time, guys. I need to get home.”

  Parker looked skeptical, but Mike clutched his chest. “Okay, just break my heart all over again.”

  I laughed, which was what he wanted. “Bye, guys.”

  I grabbed my stuff, then headed out to my car. Once inside, I took my phone out again.

  Lindsey: Where’d you go?

  Berger: Had to leave early to help with Nana. Started to tell you, but you looked busy with the girls

  Lindsey: Ok See you tomorrow.

  Berger: Yes you will

  His response made me smile. Why, Lindsey, why? It was just a simple phrase. It didn’t mean anything.

  Then why did it feel like it did? And why did I want it to?

  Fifty

  Lindsey

  “Oh,” I said the following Thursday afternoon at my house. “You never told me how things are going with Nana.”

  Berger looked up from the book of poetry he was reading. “Some days she’s great, some days she’s not.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged.

  We weren’t rehearsing. There didn’t seem to be any reason to since we’d gone over the play a thousand times. So we’d decided to study instead and chose the formal living room because it was farther away from the back of the house and the noisy yard workers with power tools.

  Berger shifted his position on the other end of the couch, causing his legs to bump mine. We sat facing each other with our knees bent, but since his legs were a lot longer, his feet were practically in my lap. I tugged on the toe of his sock. “You’re in my space.”

  “I am? You’re hogging the whole couch.”

  “There’s no way I could be doing that. You’re bigger than me.”

  He smirked. “And don’t forget it. I still owe you for knocking me off the other couch a while back.”

  Oh my gosh. How many times was he going to bring up that night? It was enough to make me swear off peppermint schnapps forever. Almost. I stared back at my biology textbook, the words and pictures blurring together. Until I’d interrupted his reading, I was actually getting a lot of studying done. And I did have a test tomorrow.

  But I’d much rather flirt with Berger. We’d been hovering on the edge of flirtdom for most of the afternoon. And I was really curious about what was on the other side. Would he be normal flirty? Or, because something new was happening with us, would he give in to it? Only one way to find out. Dive over the edge. “So what poet wrote that book?”

  “Not just one, it’s a collection,” he said, not looking up. He leaned his elbow against the back of the sofa and idly chewed on his thumb while he read.

  “Well, who wrote the one you’re reading now?”

  “Shelley.”

  “Shelley? That’s it? Just Shelley?”

  He lowered the book and jiggled my hip with his foot. “Are you really interested or do you just want attention?”

  My mouth dropped open. “Jerk,” I said with a laugh. “Yes, I’m really interested.”

  “Percy Bysshe Shelley. A nineteenth-century poet.”

  “Would I like him?”

  He cocked his head and considered me. “You might.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “Nope.”

  I frowned. “Why not?”

  “Today’s not a good day for that.”

  Hmm. Very secretive. “Will there ever be a good day?”

  “To r
ead you a poem?”

  “Yeah.”

  His lips curled in a lazy smile. “Maybe.”

  The smoldering look was back. I hadn’t seen it in so many weeks that I’d almost decided I imagined it. My heart rate sped up, so I stared at the blurred words in my textbook. Berger was so different from other guys I’d been interested in. He didn’t pursue, didn’t make what he wanted obvious. And that made it hard to know how to act.

  All I knew was one thing: I wanted to kiss him. My sweet, lucky boy. And I didn’t know how to do it without embarrassing both of us. I wouldn’t throw myself at him again, that was for dang sure. But getting closer to his lips was definitely the first step. I stretched my legs out flat, pointing my toes.

  He grabbed my ankle and chuckled. “You are seriously taking up all the room. I’m getting squished here.”

  “I can’t sit the same way forever.”

  “For-e-ver,” he said in a robotic voice. “We’ve been sitting here forever?” He pressed his fingertips into my ankle slightly, causing me to squeak.

  “That’s not what I meant.” I started wiggling around, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit.

  “Hang on,” he said, as though I were exasperating him. But his eyes gleamed. He moved my legs onto the floor out of the way, then swung his off the couch. He scooted closer to me, placing my legs over his lap and putting his feet on the coffee table. He bent my legs at the knee and then rested his stupid book of poetry on them. “See?” he asked with a grin. “This is perfect. We both get to stretch out our legs and still share the sofa.”

  Was he was messing with me? It sure seemed like it. “What if I want to put my legs down?”

  “Hmm. Then I wouldn’t have a book holder, but maybe we could trade off. Up for a while, down for a while. What do you think?” He ran a hand up and down my shin.

  Okay. Definitely messing with me. Because it wouldn’t have been a big deal if I were wearing jeans, but I had on leggings, and it almost felt like he was touching my bare skin. “I guess it could work.”