by Nicole Baart
Now, the same woman was in his kitchen, approaching him with the same half smile that was burned forever in his memory. And Lucas panicked. It wasn’t that he found her irresistible, he had resisted her before. Sort of. But that night was ancient history, and much had happened in the time between. Lucas’s mind flashed to Jenna and the startling kiss in the mudroom only minutes before Angela sauntered back into his life. It was worlds away from the tenderness of the encounter that had made a younger Angela’s implicit offer easy to disregard. Much had changed.
Lucas was sure that Angela could sense that. That she could take one look at his face and see the hurt there, read the long, sad poem of their brokenness in the lines around his eyes and mouth. He knew what she was going to say, what she was going to do. And he didn’t know how he would respond.
“Why am I here?” Angela repeated, stopping inches from his rigid chest.
He waited for her touch, for her hand against him in an act of desire, maybe even longing. Something he hadn’t felt from a woman in a very long time. But it didn’t come. She cupped the apple below the curve of her neck, pulled it tight against the striking line of her collarbone as a talisman of sorts.
“I’m here because I’m going to clear my father’s name,” she whispered. She reached around him and dropped the uneaten apple in the trash can beneath the sink.
Then Angela walked out of the kitchen, hips swaying against Lucas’s shirt, pulling the fabric tight, and he couldn’t form a single coherent thought.
It was the last thing he’d ever expected her to say.
10
MEG
The day after the garage kiss, Jess drove up to the Painter house at a quarter to eight and gave the horn of his hand-me-down Citation a cheerful honk.
“What is Jess Langbroek doing in our driveway?” Meg’s mother asked, peering between the slats of the Venetian blinds. One hand was on her hip and the other still clutched the spatula that she had used only a moment before to flip a neat row of pancakes on the long, flat griddle that straddled two elements of her expansive stove.
Meg’s head jerked up in shock. She was at the counter, pretending to eat a bowl of Cheerios even though her mother was happily pouring rounds of sweet, fragrant batter for her dad and brother. Linda’s from-scratch pancakes were world-famous, or at least Sutton-famous, but Meg wasn’t in the mood. Her cereal was untouched, sparkling with a fine dusting of sugar and dotted with fat slices of banana that were slowly turning brown.
“Honey?” Linda prompted, and though her endearment could have been intended for any one of the members of her family, she looked directly at Meg. “Do you know why Jess is here?”
Meg cleared her throat and stirred the soggy Cheerios with her spoon. “I don’t know, Mom. Maybe he’s here for Bennett.”
Bennett was only a year older than Jess, but the two hadn’t been close since preschool, and he was already shaking his head no. Swallowing a mouthful of pancake, he shot Meg a meaningful glance. “Jess’s not here for me,” he said.
She shrank. How could he know? But he didn’t know, he couldn’t. Meg tried to glare at him, but mustering the appropriate disdain was beyond her. She had barely slept at all the night before, and the evidence of her insomnia was apparent beneath her eyes in pale blue smudges that shone like the memory of a faded bruise. No one had warned her that first kisses caused sleeplessness.
If her mother had noticed the dark lines, she hadn’t pressed her, and was even gracious enough not to fuss when Meg turned down pancakes and opted for cold cereal instead. Though it wasn’t like her daughter to turn down warm food, Linda’s only interference was to lean over Meg’s shoulder and slice half of a ripe banana onto the little O’s.
But Jess’s appearance in their driveway made Linda look at Meg again, her eyes flicking between the girl and the window as if the answer resided in the strained air between the two.
“Well, he’s coming to the door,” Linda said. She quickly tested a pancake, then flipped all four of them with a practiced twist of her wrist. Depositing the stack on a serving plate in front of her husband, she set the spatula on the counter. “Don’t anyone get up now,” she teased. “I’m not doing anything anyway. I’ll get it.”
Meg was grateful that her mother answered the door, because there was no way she could have trusted her legs if Linda had told her to go. The truth was, as ordinary, as commonplace as Jess’s kiss had been, she had spent every minute of the night reliving it. Face turned into the pillow, she thrilled at the thought of her first kiss, remembering the scent of his cologne, the lay of his hand, the way her hair fell against their cheeks side by side. And then, as quickly as her chest danced with butterflies at the memory, her stomach filled with dread.
It should have been Dylan.
But there was no time to contemplate the back-and-forth of her excitement—the almost bittersweet sense of both joy and loss—because suddenly Linda walked into the kitchen, trailing Jess behind her like a puppy on a string.
“Look who’s here for Meg,” Linda said, her voice blithe and her eyebrows raised just a touch higher than their normal, attractive arch.
Meg’s dad put down his fork and pushed away his empty plate. Sliding off the stool where he had been sitting, he said, “I don’t know why you’re here, Jess, but Linda will be insulted if you don’t stay for a pancake.”
“Thanks, Mr. Painter.” Jess grinned, taking the stool without a moment’s hesitation. “I won’t stay long. I’m actually here to pick up Meg for school.”
Meg was grateful that Bennett was between her and Jess so that she didn’t have to watch him as he spread butter on a pair of pancakes and drizzled warm syrup all over them. But though she didn’t have to look at Jess, she couldn’t miss the fleeting glance that her dad darted at her mom. Something instant and wordless passed between them. Meg closed her eyes. She didn’t want to know.
“School is only a few blocks away,” Greg said. “Meg’s been okay walking so far.”
“Just under a mile,” Jess corrected without malice. “And it’s getting cold.” He peered around Bennett and gave Meg a hopeful, conspiratorial smile.
Her lips pulled up faintly in reply, but she was too shy to meet his gaze for more than a second.
“Meg?” her father asked, giving her permission to answer for herself.
She gulped. “Okay.”
The entire exchange was light, insignificant. But when Meg accepted Jess’s offer, the room seemed to exhale, to acknowledge that Jess wasn’t asking out of neighborly benevolence. Greg sighed a little, and Linda took Meg’s bowl and emptied the sloppy contents into the sink, pushing the cereal into the garbage disposal with her spoon, each swipe deliberate but calm. Bennett was the only one who seemed unfazed, and he downed the last inch of his orange juice and left, his brooding shoulders hunched no more or less than they usually were.
“Well,” Linda said, taking charge of her kitchen with the one drawn-out word. “Better hurry up. You two don’t want to be late.”
Half of a syrup-drenched pancake was already gone, but Jess grinned between bites and assured her that he would get Meg to school on time.
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Linda told him. She wiped her hands on a dishcloth and wiggled her finger at Meg in summons. “Come on, hon. I have that note ready for you.”
Meg had no idea what she was talking about, but she was happy to follow her mother to the front door where Linda dropped the subterfuge with a knowing chuckle. “Meg, Meg,” she sighed, untangling a scarf from the collar of her favorite coat. It was a shapely tweed woven in browns and creams, and as Meg watched the pretty, matching scarf unravel in Linda’s hands, she focused on the wide collar of the coat, the cut of the straight hem.
“You know,” Linda said turning to wind the scarf around Meg’s neck, “you’re not allowed to date until you’re sixteen.”
Horrified, Meg sputtered mutely. “I—I’m not—”
Linda buttoned the corner of her mouth in a w
ry pucker. “I saw the way Jess looked at you. He’s been looking at you like that for a long time, but I think you may have finally noticed it.”
“For a long time?” Meg repeated.
“A year at least. Maybe years.” Linda tilted her head thoughtfully. “He’s a nice boy, Meg, but he’s older than you.”
“He doesn’t feel older than me.”
“He is.”
“Two? Three years? That’s not so much.”
Linda pushed her breath out with a decisive nod. “It’s irrelevant, really. What’s done is done. If I told him to leave you alone he’d only want you more.”
“Mom,” Meg whispered, peeking over her shoulder to make sure that Jess hadn’t finished his pancakes and wasn’t standing behind her listening to every mortifying word. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Just a few rules,” Linda continued, ignoring her daughter’s obvious embarrassment. “You can’t be alone with him. Group dates only. And no kissing.”
Meg’s heart sank so fast and so visibly that her mother laughed a soft laugh and pulled her close. “I’m teasing,” she whispered. “Well, not about the date part. But now I know you kissed him.”
“He kissed me,” Meg amended, but then, remembering how she had leaned into Jess, she immediately felt guilty.
“It’s okay,” Linda assured her. “But promise me you’ll be careful.”
It was the second time that somebody had warned her to be careful with Jess Langbroek, and Meg resented the intrusion. “I can take care of myself,” she told her mom.
“Oh, I know. Maybe I should be cautioning Jess.”
“Leave Jess to me,” Greg said, sneaking up behind his wife and daughter and enfolding the both of them in his ample arms.
“Dad,” Meg complained, pushing away. “You guys are ridiculous. This is insane. I’m not a baby.”
Greg pulled his wife close and rested his chin on the top of her head. She fit so perfectly against his chest that it seemed to Meg as if her mother’s every contour was made for that spot alone. Closing his eyes to enjoy the feel of his wife against him, Greg mused as if Meg wasn’t even in the room, “You know, I always thought Dylan would be the first in line. I have to admit this comes as a bit of a surprise. We were worried about the wrong boy.”
At the mention of Dylan’s name, Meg’s skin bristled. All at once she felt hot and cold, restless and tired, as if the mere thought of him was enough to whip her into a discouraging frenzy of contradictions. She wondered if she would be feeling this way if Dylan had been the one to kiss her in the garage. If she would be standing here, stunned with the understanding that something had been lost, had slipped between her fingers before she had a chance to realize it was gone. But she couldn’t stand to think like that, so she muttered, “Dad, please.”
“Okay, okay,” he relented. “I won’t make fun of you anymore.” Greg unwrapped himself from his wife and grabbed Meg by the shoulders to plant an earnest kiss on her forehead. “But whether you like it or not, you’re still my baby.”
It felt different to Meg, her dad’s heartfelt blessing, and something inside her loosened and floated away as if she had come undone. She pulled the edges of her innocence tight around her and tried to tuck in the flapping corners, the places where Jess’s kiss had begun to unfurl the bud of her youth like a flower forced to bloom in December. But it was no use.
When Jess bounded into the entryway and said it was time to go, she followed him resolutely, stepping out of her expectations with an air of determined acceptance. Life’s not fair, her dad had once told her. She hadn’t known what he meant until she saw Jess almost reach for her hand, almost, and then stop himself because her parents were watching. She realized that it wasn’t fair because this could only end badly. It wasn’t fair because she didn’t want Jess; she wanted Dylan. It wasn’t fair because she had grown up without warning, overnight.
It wasn’t fair because nobody ever got what they wanted, no strings attached.
Since Meg was taking an accelerated humanities track, she had second-period English with Dylan, even though he was a junior and she a lowly sophomore. She usually looked forward to seeing him for at least a portion of her day, but after Jess gave her hand a little squeeze in the hallway and strode away after the first bell, she dreaded seeing Dylan with a sober shame that seemed ridiculously out of proportion to the harmless incident that had caused it. Though it had taken a combination of Jess’s inexplicable, early-morning appearance on their doorstep and Meg’s own thinly disguised discomfort for her parents to connect the dots between their daughter and her brand-new boyfriend, Meg knew that Dylan wouldn’t need any such numbered puzzle to put the pieces together. He knew her. That was all there was to it.
She was right.
When she walked in to English a few seconds before the bell, Meg couldn’t stop herself from glancing across the row at Dylan. His desk was one seat behind hers and to the left, and while she hated herself for casting a furtive look in his direction, catching his eye was as much a part of her daily routine as brushing her teeth. It had to be done. She tried to be discreet, but Dylan was waiting for her silent hello, and the cool discretion she had practiced melted away under the force of his eyes. Her face was a study in regret; she could feel it.
I wanted it to be you, she thought, her words fine and insubstantial, evaporating even as she dared to think them.
Dylan blinked. Looked away.
It was the lack of expression that told Meg his cryptic caution in the garage had been about the very thing she had let happen.
She sat through English in a thickening fog of discontent. As her teacher droned on about pathetic fallacy in Shakespeare’s tragedies, Meg’s misplaced disgrace at kissing a boy she had never hoped to kiss slowly transformed into a tough knot of anger. She directed her fury at Dylan, and the list of his transgressions unwound to become long and multifaceted. From yanking her down behind the raspberry bush that summer to shooting her a pat glance that she was now convinced bordered on disdainful, Meg built a case against Dylan that was so solid, she determined to confront him the moment the bell rang.
Nearly an hour later it did, and she all but flew out of her seat, ready to race after him if he cut a hasty retreat. But Dylan was standing beside his desk, backpack clutched loosely in one hand and an indecipherable half smile on his face. The fact that he was waiting for her, that he was capable of pretending everything was okay, only made Meg more upset.
“Did you have a good time last night?” Dylan asked as their classmates filed out around them. His smile could only be interpreted as a smirk.
Meg glowered. “You left me there alone.”
“Well, you seemed . . . entranced.”
The tone of his voice was enough to make Meg long to hit him, but someone pushed past her just then and she stumbled a little. It was a small thing, but it jostled her willpower. “That’s not fair,” she managed.
“It’s a free world, Meg.” He started walking toward the back of the emptying classroom and she followed him as if they were connected, as if she had no choice but to fall in step.
“You were my friend,” she whispered through clenched teeth, her breath hissing over his shoulder.
Dylan stopped just outside the classroom door and tucked in close to the wall. The hallway pulsed with teenagers rushing to their next class, and though Meg should have felt conspicuous about their public tête-à-tête, it seemed as if they were utterly alone. No one existed for her but Dylan, and she pulled her bag against her chest to shield the place where he could inflict the most damage.
“What do you mean I was your friend?” Dylan asked.
Meg was surprised to see something real in his eyes, but it only fueled her fury. “Come on,” she snorted. “Don’t act all wounded. We fell apart and you know it.”
The door that he had momentarily left open for her slammed closed; his look turned glassy, cool. “Meg, you’re overreacting. I didn’t take you for the soap opera sort, but this is do
wnright Days of Our Light. Guiding Lives? Whatever.”
She stared at him for a long moment, realizing for the first time that she had never stopped to imagine life without him. Dylan was family. He was friend, constant, brother. Any distance between them had felt like only that—a little space, amendable by a few steps, a bit of give and take. Until now. “You’re overreacting,” he said as if all that had transpired between them was only the variable relationship of the young, those who claimed a different friend every week, sometimes every day.
We’re more than that, Meg wanted to say. But if he didn’t already know that, it wouldn’t do any good at all to tell him so.
“Okay,” she said instead. Just okay, as if he had made good sense and she accepted it at face value. Okay, I understand your easy answer, your casual dismissal of me. Of us.
Though she believed it was what he wanted to hear, Dylan seemed taken aback by her compliance. Meg couldn’t stand it; she couldn’t take the dumb look on his face. Don’t cheapen it, she thought. Don’t cheapen everything.
“Okay what?” he asked hesitantly. “I don’t know what okay means.”
Suddenly she realized that for once she held the cards. This was going to end, and it was going to end on her terms. No matter how bad it hurt. Meg fit a tight smile on her face and dropped her backpack. She wasn’t completely naive, and she knew that there was something in her, about her, that most guys found attractive. Might as well make use of it.
Meg took a deliberate step toward Dylan and put her arms around his neck, tucking herself against him. He went rigid for a second, then seemed to remember how it was done and slipped his arms around her, too.
She had hugged him before, but this felt different. He was a stranger, and she thrilled to the lingering hint of soap and the delicate trace of fabric softener woven through the cotton of his T-shirt. But this wasn’t about falling for him all over again. It was about saying good-bye. When she couldn’t hold him a second longer, she turned her face into his neck, brushing the tip of her nose against the hollow beneath his chin for a brief instant. Then she backed away, feeling his arms slide off her with what she hoped was reluctance, and picked up her bag.
