I set my empty glass down, then bury my face in my hands and drag my fingers over my eyes, nose and chin before dropping them off again. The answer to my mother’s question is a very resounding no. Moving to some backwater town several states away from the only home I’d ever known and into a house that, while nice, is in the middle of nowhere is not romantic, especially when I won’t be able to finish high school with my friends back in Denver.
But then I guess I only have myself to blame for that.
“Did you say something, Tyler?” Mom asks, rushing back to the table with another plate of eggs.
“I can’t eat those, Mom.” The idea of putting any more food into my mouth makes me sick. “I’m full.”
“You can’t be.” She sets the plate down in front of me. “It’s going to be a long day, and you don’t want to go through it hungry.”
“They have this thing called lunch, you know?” I’m trying to pull my wording off jokingly, not condescending, because I love my mom pretty much more than I love anyone else.
She doesn’t laugh or even smile really. Instead, she sits back down and folds her hands on the huge new table she and Dad hauled back from some store in downtown Spokane, the closest big city that is still only a fraction of Denver’s size. When she takes in a deep breath, I know she’s got something heavy in store for me.
“Sometimes I just don’t know what to do,” she says, her eyes growing misty. “I know I can’t fix it all for you, and I know loading you up with food isn’t going to help, but I just—”
“Mom.” I reach my hand across the table, dwarfing hers as I cover it with my own. “I appreciate everything you do for me… really… but I’m okay—I promise. You don’t have to keep worrying about me all of the time.”
She brings her hand out from under mine, then holds it with both of her much smaller ones. “It’s so hard watching your child hurt, Tyler. Then Laney had to go and top it all off, causing all those problems—”
“Mom… come on.” The last person I want to have a discussion with my mom about on my first day of school is Laney Barlow.
“What? We welcomed that girl into our lives, and she betrayed all of us… absolutely no sense of decency in her!”
“You can’t blame her for what I did in response though,” I say of my first love, my ex-girlfriend, and the way I reacted to her dumping me. “I don’t hate her, and I wish you wouldn’t either.”
If Mom knew I was still in contact with Laney, that I still loved her, she’d be sorely disappointed in me.
Mom shakes her head. Her hair is done to perfection, her makeup too, and she’s wearing a nice blouse and pants you’d wear to an office. But Mom works from home, has for the last six years as a virtual assistant for writers all over the country that hire her out to market their books. Most people would probably just stay in their pajamas, but not Mom.
“I don’t know how you can be so forgiving,” she says. “I’m proud of you for it, but I guess it’s the mama bear in me that can’t let it go, can’t understand what in the world Laney Barlow wanted when you’d given her everything.”
And that’s where the difference between a mother’s love and that of a girlfriend comes into play. What my mom must know but might not want to face is that what Laney wanted was my ex-buddy, Heath, who as far as I knew hadn’t had parts of his torso, legs and sex organs disfigured by a pit-bull named Pepper when he was seven years old.
“You have to stop this,” I say, pulling my hand from hers and standing up. “Not everyone is going to love me unconditionally, Mom. Some girls actually want a guy who doesn’t look like a freak under his clothes.”
“Don’t say that!” Mom is up and at my side so quickly that I don’t even have time to react. “Do not ever speak of yourself in that manner! You just haven’t met the right girl, one that will love you for you.”
“I know, Mom.” I don’t want to argue with her or tell her that her jumping to my defense like this hurts more than it would if she’d just stay quiet. I’d like to think I’m becoming a man, someone who can fight his own battles—who has fought his own battles—who can face a harsh world without his mother at his side reminding him he just needs to find a girl who can look past all of his shortcomings. She still treats me like I’m seven sometimes—or eight or nine or twelve—going to all those appointments, getting all of those surgeries so that I’d be more normal, eventually be the man my dad could look straight in the eyes without getting just a little bit uncomfortable.
“Moving here turned out to be a good thing,” she says, looking up at me. “You’re dad getting that job as fire chief was a blessing. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, well I still feel guilty about—”
“Not another word, Tyler. Basin Lake will be good for all of us.”
“Sometimes I wish you’d let me take some of the blame, Mom.”
She shakes her head. She won’t hear a word of it.
I bend down and give her a hug, wondering when she got so small or I just got so big… so tall.
She kisses me on the cheek.
“I better go,” I say, grabbing up my phone and keys. “Don’t want to be late for my first day.”
“No, you don’t,” she says with a hopeful smile. “Text me when you get there, okay?”
“Yep. Will do,” I call to her.
Jessup, our golden retriever, is waiting just outside the door on the front porch.
“You have a good run this morning?” I ask while I bend down to pet him.
He answers with a wag of his tail and what looks like a smile. And then he’s pawing at the door, and I open it back up for him. He darts inside, likely knowing there’ll be some leftover breakfast waiting.
The Jeep I climb into was a gift when I was sixteen, though I’m still kind of shocked I’d been allowed to keep it after what I’d done in Denver. It apparently hadn’t even occurred to my parents to take it away, and my payment for it remained the same. In Denver, my allowance and the privilege of driving the Jeep was hinged on me helping around the house. I did the chores my father would have done if he’d had more time, hadn’t always been so busy and exhausted from working as a firefighter for the City of Denver. I’d cleaned out gutters, mowed the lawn, dug out dead trees and planted new ones. I’d learned to do electrical work, unclog drains, paint, replace dry-rotted siding and repair a leaky roof. And I’d done plenty of vacuuming and cleaning and laundry too. Mom had always instilled in me there was no such thing as woman’s work.
Our new house here in Basin Lake won’t need much attention on the inside for a while, except for what Mom plans on doing cosmetically. Some couple had built it as their dream retirement house before the husband got sick and died from cancer—at least that’s what Mom said the agent told her.
But Dad has assured me there will be plenty of work to do on the outside, some dead trees that will need to be dug up, rocks that will need to be removed, and a planned landscape that I guess is meant to make it look like our house hasn’t been plopped down in the middle of desert and irrigated farmland, as flat as the plains east of Denver, with mountains rising in the far distance. There’s a lake of course, but you can barely even see it from here.
This town isn’t home, but as I start up the Jeep, I consider I could try to make it that way. Mom says being here is a blessing, but I’m not sure. Sometimes they say the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. There had been plenty of devils back in Denver, and as much as I try to move on, I feel like I’m still in love with one of them. Laney may have broken my heart, but broken hearts can still feel.
And when it comes to Laney Barlow, mine still does.
CHAPTER THREE
CLAIRE
After McKenzie picks me up, she goes right into this long, drama-filled story about a fight she and her boyfriend, James, had last night, so I don’t get a chance to tell her about Kate’s dye job until she’s nabbed a space in Basin Lake High’s parking lot.
“So, Kate came downstairs this
morning with black hair,” I say when I finally get an opening, not wanting to tattle on my sister but hoping McKenzie might give me some insight.
“No she didn’t!” She turns off the ignition and turns to me with animated eyes. “Is she like attempting a rebellious phase? Because that girl is so not the rebel type.”
“I think it’s more than that.” I grab my purse and book bag. “Something way more.”
We get out of the cute, almost new hatchback her parents bought her and start our walk toward school. It’s already getting hotter, and I’m glad I went with a sundress and light sweater today instead of the long-sleeved blouse and skirt I’d wanted to wear, wanting to look as studious and professional as possible for day one of senior year.
“She’s going to regret it,” McKenzie says, her curly bob-length cut—currently a shade of red—bouncing with her steps. “I mean, remember when I did it?”
“You cried for days,” I say, laughing at the memory.
McKenzie and I didn’t become good friends until we were fifteen. Even though she was Evan Mattson’s little sister, Evan being the love of my sister, Paige’s, life, I’d always been a little scared of her. I mean I liked her, but I’d been the quiet, sort of nerdy kid while she was the edgy girl that wore really thick, dark eyeliner, Chuck Taylor low-tops and Tshirts of scary bands I hadn’t heard of. But after the Christmas nearly two years ago when she, Evan and their little half-brother, Henry, came over, everything changed. Paige kind of took on this big sister role to them while Evan was in North Carolina, and then McKenzie and I just sort of connected, eventually becoming best friends.
“It nearly fell out when you tried bleaching it back,” I say, wearing the wedge heels I’d gotten on my last shopping trip to Spokane with Mom and Kate.
“Seriously,” she says, shaking her head, her sneakered feet making her shorter than me. “I of all people should have loved having black hair, so I can’t imagine Kate’s going to be able to ride it out.”
“She reminded Mom and I that Paige dyed hers black.”
“Yeah, and Paige is Paige. That was just her thing.”
“That and your brother,” I say, not able to help myself.
Even though we’re both looking ahead, I can feel her rolling her eyes at me. “God, don’t remind me. I mean, they’re totally cute together of course, but it’s kind of sickening too when they come home from North Carolina and can’t keep their hands off of each other.”
“Maybe we’re just jealous,” I say.
“Hey, we have men in our lives. Nothing to be jealous of.”
I’m incredulous. “No, you have a boyfriend. I had Austin… past tense.”
In the eleventh grade, when I’d made the decision that it was time to lose my virginity, I’d considered a few boys but had settled on Austin Michaels. I’d wanted to get the whole thing over and done with so that I didn’t have to keep thinking about it. I wanted to focus on school and grades, my job at the little nursing home in town and the volunteer work I did at a larger nursing home once a month in Spokane. But I didn’t want to fall in love either because that would defeat the purpose of being able to focus on my future. Falling in love could make you do stupid things, like follow a boy to a college you didn’t want to go to or get stuck in the same small town all your life because the boy you loved didn’t want to leave.
But I’d taken the calculated risk that wouldn’t ever happen with Austin.
“You know he has to take the first semester over, right?” McKenzie says, almost like it’s news to me.
“Yes, I realize.” I’m more than just a little annoyed at the prospect.
Part of why I’d chosen Austin, who besides being reasonably good looking, tall, athletic and a football player, was because he happens to be a moron. He was and probably still is a fairly nice moron, but I could never fall in love with someone who hadn’t heard of Shakespeare or literally couldn’t list all fifty states in the union—I swear that he thought Rhode Island was just some island off of New York. He honestly couldn’t even tell me who the vice president was. And he’d been a senior, and I figured once he’d graduate he wouldn’t want to keep dating a girl who was still in high school.
No such luck.
“He’s going to be a senior senior,” McKenzie says mockingly while we continue along the pathway toward school, nobody much else around except for the staff making their way in after a long summer.
I shake my head. “And he could have graduated over the summer if he’d wanted to.” I sigh and make one of those uggh sounds. “Why in the world did I pick him?”
“Because he’s cute,” McKenzie offers. “He’s cute and semi-trustworthy and has a big dick.”
“I never said that!” I feel myself pinking up, horrified. I may have a clinical way of looking at things, but I hadn’t told anyone the size of Austin’s penis, as if it was anyone’s business but his and mine.
“You said it hurt, and you were sore for like a week. So, it had to be big, right?”
I sigh. “Fine. It was kind of big, but it was my first time!”
“Slut,” she teases.
“Takes one to know one,” I bounce back, even though she and I are anything but.
The only boy she’s ever been with is her boyfriend, James, while Austin had been it for me, and I’d come precariously close to getting stuck with him. I’d plotted so carefully to find a guy I couldn’t fall for, but I’d done exactly that with a guy I’d considered a halfwit. I theorized it was a hormonal reaction to having sex with him. Beyond him telling me lame jokes or talking about football, there wasn’t much in the way of conversation between us, and yet I’d found myself hanging on his every word and counting down the hours until we’d see one another again. But even if I’d believed I was really and truly in love with him, Austin made it pretty clear he didn’t want a true relationship. He balked at holding hands at school or going on any kind of date that didn’t end up in the bed of his truck, though when he got a canopy for it so we wouldn’t completely freeze in the winter, I remember thinking he did it because he loved me.
Ha!
It took a while, but somehow I eventually came to my senses after having a good talk with myself in the mirror.
“If you stay with him, you’re going to end up pregnant and stuck in Basin Lake forever,” I told my reflection. “And you don’t really love him. It’s just the oxytocin and endorphins that get released when you have sex with him.”
Even after that pep talk, I’d agonized over telling him it was over. I’d waited three whole days, going back and forth in my head until I’d finally worked up the nerve. Austin put forth a half-hearted and quite pitiful attempt to change my mind that lasted no more than a few sentences. By the next day, he was pretty much ignoring me. And by the end of the next week, he was already dating someone new.
He hadn’t been worth it, but I’d still been fragile and volatile when I was with him. During our relatively short-lived romance, I’d gotten two B’s, which had messed up my perfect GPA. And that isn’t something I want to repeat anytime soon.
“Anyway,” she says as both of us take a shortcut to the cafeteria by jumping over a planting bed full of ornamental grasses that do well in the high desert we live in, “Since Kate has been weird all summer, this black hair thing is a cry for help—we kind of need to figure out what the hell’s going on.”
“We can tag team her at lunch maybe? I mean, she was a cheerleader last year, and now I’m expecting to see her show up with a tattoo and a piercing.”
“Hey, nothing wrong with tattoos,” she says, raising the sleeve of her Def Leopard T-shirt and showcasing her skull and crossbones as we head into the mostly empty cafeteria and grab a table.
“Yeah, but tattoos are your thing. They most definitely aren’t—” I’ve turned my head ever so slightly and am rendered speechless when I see a boy, a man really, sitting three tables away that I swear wasn’t there just a minute ago. He’s looking at me, our eyes locking for a second or two be
fore he’s bowing his head toward the table. Even from here, I think I can see the tips of his ears turning red.
“Kate’s thing?” McKenzie finishes.
“Yeah.” I turn my full attention back to her, away from the cute, dark-haired guy that I’ve never seen before. Like us, he’s super early, and one of the few people in the cafeteria.
“What are you looking at?” She eyes me suspiciously and then turns around.
“Stop,” I practically hiss, not wanting this apparent new boy to imagine he’s got a couple of stalkers.
“Ohhhhh…” McKenzie practically purrs, still looking at him. “Wow, he’s cute. Should we go over and say hello?”
I grab her wrist and pull. “Don’t stare. You’re being a creep.”
The guy lifts his eyes again, just for a moment, enough so that our eyes connect.
“How am I being a creep?” She turns back to me, offering a mischievous smile. I can tell she’s enjoying this.
“Staring is creepy,” I say, my eyes darting back to McKenzie and remaining firmly on her. I don’t want to risk getting caught looking at him again, getting mesmerized.
“We should just introduce ourselves now before we run into him in one of our classes and it gets all awkward,” she says with a dismissive shrug.
“Well, it just seems weird is all.”
But she’s right. Basin Lake isn’t exactly exploding at the seams. Everyone knows everyone, even if you don’t know everyone well. But even the thought of going up to the cute guy I’ve never met makes my stomach tight, a feeling I most definitely don’t have time for.
“We can be the welcoming committee.” She moves her hand in a theatrical arc.
“As long as we don’t—”
“Hey, who are we welcoming?”
Oh, God.
It’s him.
It’s Austin.
McKenzie’s attention immediately diverts to him and his big hands spread out, palms down, on our table. “Hey senior senior.”
“Real funny,” he says with an edge to his voice. “Not like I haven’t heard it before. Hey, how’s it going, Claire?”
Between the Girls (The Basin Lake Series Book 3) Page 2
