Unable to sleep in, I sneak into Kate’s room and nudge her. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
I’m hoping for some sisterly advice about the whole situation with Austin and Tyler, which I could really use, but I’ve also got an ulterior motive. If I share a few of my own problems with Kate, maybe she’ll let her guard down and open up to me too.
She doesn’t answer and is still as a corpse when I give her another soft nudge.
“Kate?” I shake her, and the only reason I don’t totally freak out and think that she’s dead is because her color is perfectly normal and her chest continues to rise and fall with her breathing.
“What do you want?” she hisses at me, stirring and then turning away, her blonde roots now coming in and offering quite the contrast to the rest of her hair that remains dyed black.
“I want your advice,” I say resolutely, putting my hand on her shoulder. “It would really help me out, and you and I haven’t had a decent talk since summer started.”
“For good reason,” she says, turning to me. “I’m not really in the mood to discuss stupid problems.”
I take a moment to let that sink in. “I totally get it, Kate. I’m not going to try to tell you I understand what you’re feeling, but we’ll all get through this as a family. We’re here for you.”
“Sure… I know… but being here for me won’t give me a normal uterus, now will it? It won’t let me have kids.”
That still breaks my heart. I think Paige or myself could handle not having children, but Kate? That want has always been a part of her.
“No, it won’t, but having us around will make it harder for you to wallow in misery.”
She looks at me with a fire in her eyes, and I think she’s about to tell me to get the hell out of her room. Instead, she exhales deeply and relaxes. “Fine. What is it you think I’ll have some magic answer for?”
“It’s a boy thing,” I say with no small amount of relief and a hope I’ll hook her with the boy component.
Ever since Kate figured out she liked boys, I’d pegged her a hopeless romantic. Her first love, unrequited of course, was Garrett Hevener who she looked up to adoringly whenever Paige brought him around. But with him off limits, she’d gone through a string of other boys her own age who never seemed to measure up to what she really wanted in a boyfriend.
“What is it?” The way she says it, with a spark of interest, I know I’ve got her.
“Do you know the new guy at school, Tyler Duncan, the fire chief’s son?”
“Yeah… the guy who I ran into on the first day of school and knocked his lunch tray out of his hands?”
I sigh. I hadn’t wanted her to be reminded of that visual. “Yes, that’s Tyler.”
“So, you and him like a thing?”
“Sort of. Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s not like I wanted to get involved with anyone this year.”
“But you can’t help yourself, huh?” She’s alert and interested but not even close to the girl I’d known just last spring who would have been bouncing off the walls and wanting me to leave no small detail unspoken.
“Like I said, Kate, I don’t know where it stands, but Austin is being a real ass, following me around, wanting another chance—”
“But Austin is a jerk.” She perks up a bit more.
“Yeah, he’s definitely proving to be an even bigger one than I thought.”
“And you don’t want Tyler to get wrapped up in the drama, right?”
“I don’t want any drama,” I say, allowing the tightness in my muscles to ease a bit at finally being able to talk to my sister. “But I like Tyler, and he already got sucked into it yesterday. Austin tracked us down in Spokane and wanted to fight him.”
“Oh… so that’s why you were so quiet when you got back.”
“You actually noticed?” Her paying attention to the rest of us offers a glimmer of hope she’s not completely lost inside her own misery.
“It’s obvious to see when you’re pissed off or upset about something, Claire.”
I laugh at that. “Paige used to say I always looked pissed off.”
“Yeah, but Paige wasn’t around you enough to notice the minute differences like I can.”
“So, I don’t have a very good poker face then, huh?”
She shakes her head, and we both sit up in her bed, our backs against the headboard.
“Did you have to like call Austin off of Tyler then, like defend him?”
“No, Tyler was kind of ready to kick his ass. He followed him down to this alley and everything, but then Austin got cold feet.”
“Figures.”
“Yeah, well, he started something, and Tyler wasn’t going to back down. He ended up punching one of his friends, and then they all went after Tyler—it was kind of awful.”
Kate sighs. “Will guys ever realize that violence isn’t attractive?”
“I don’t think so. For the foreseeable future, it’s sort of ingrained in their reptilian brains, and the testosterone doesn’t help I’m sure.”
“So, is he like okay? Tyler I mean.”
“I think so—he had a bloody nose, but it wasn’t broken. I’m a little worried he might have a bruised rib and—”
“Go to his house and find out if he’s okay if you’re so worried.”
“You don’t think I should just call him or text him?”
I’d thought of doing those very things earlier, but there was still that part of me that figured he was mad at me. If not for my involvement with Austin, he would have never gotten into that fight.
Kate shakes her head, her lips pursing. “For something like this, a phone call or a text is too impersonal. Show him you really care.”
“I don’t know where he lives… well, not exactly.” It’s the first excuse that comes to mind. I’m not really in the habit of just showing up on someone’s doorstep.
To this, Kate shrugs. “How hard can it be? This is Basin Lake, not Seattle.”
“You’re right. I’ll figure it out.”
“And bring him something, like a basket of food he likes… you know… show him you really care.”
“Thank you, Kate. I’ll do my best.”
I give my sister a hug and remind her I’m always here to talk if she needs me.
“Okay,” she says.
Okay is at least a spoken word, and our talk, no matter how brief, gives me hope that Kate will eventually start opening up.
Perhaps as a way to prove to Kate that I truly am following through on her advice, I take a long, hot shower and send a text to Nick, hoping he’ll have been to Tyler’s and can give me some detailed directions. Being Nick, he makes me jump through a few hoops but provides the information I need when I assure him I’m not planning on stalking Tyler.
In order to borrow the Volvo, I have to let Mom in on my plan, though I leave anything to do with violence out of my story. When I mention the basket Kate said I should put together, Mom decides she wants to do a Welcome to the Neighborhood—or in this case, town—kind of thing. By the time I’m on my way, I’ve got a basket filled with freshly baked banana nut bread, some strawberry jam Grandma made this summer and one of those little paperback books that tells the history of Basin Lake. Mom used to give them out in her classes and must still have a couple dozen lying around.
“Let his parents know I’d like to meet them soon,” she calls out after I’ve loaded the basket into the car and am just slipping into the driver’s seat.
“I will, Mom!”
My nerves are fine until about ten minutes later when I make the turn onto Tyler’s road.
TYLER
It wasn’t easy sleeping last night. The fight with Austin had weighed heavily on my mind, not so much the fight itself but Claire’s reaction to it. She’d forgiven me, even thanked me, but I doubted she was really okay with what I’d done. I could have explained to her how tired I was of backing down from guys who liked to run their mouths or do whatever they wanted without facing the
consequences. But I wasn’t sure I could really convey my frustrations without delving deeper into the real reasons behind them, reasons she might just see as an excuse, the same one I’d used when I’d gone after Heath Larson.
Today, I don’t want to dwell, want to clear my mind and keep from discussing the fight with anyone, especially my parents. Of course that will be difficult considering the black eye that won’t be disappearing anytime soon, the one I was able to hide yesterday with sunglasses and the excuse I was going to bed early. For today’s escape, I consider slipping out of the house and driving off somewhere with Jessup, doing some hiking through some desert trails Claire mentioned her sister used to run all the time, and staying out of Mom and Dad’s way, only leaving a note as to my whereabouts. But you can only evade your parents for so long.
“What in the world happened to your eye?” Mom has got to be twenty feet away from me, painting one of the entertainment room walls with Supernatural playing on the TV, and yet she’s able to zero in on my eye like a hawk as I’m grabbing a bagel and some orange juice in the kitchen.
“Nothing,” I say, then nearly spill my orange juice when Dad comes out of nowhere holding a mug of coffee.
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” he says with investigative attention.
“Got in a fight,” I admit to Dad, puffing my chest out and standing firm, already regretting mentioning it but knowing there aren’t too many other ways to explain a black eye.
“With who?” he demands, taking his reading glasses off and setting his coffee down on the counter.
“Just some guy from school. He wanted a fight, so I gave it to him.”
“Oh, Tyler!” Not surprisingly, Mom rushes over with worry written all over her face.
“It was nothing,” I continue nonchalantly. “He was bothering a girl I know, and I just wanted to shut him up.”
“A girl. What girl? Is that who you were with yesterday?”
“Yes, Mom. Her name is—”
“And how does the other guy look?” Dad cuts in.
I sigh. “Probably not as bad as me.” I don’t mention that it was basically four guys on one.
“Must be some girl if you were willing to risk your future to get in a few punches and forget absolutely everything your last fight cost us.”
“I wasn’t trying to risk anything,” I reply curtly. “And I’m sorry… I wasn’t thinking, okay?” I don’t bother adding that the girl was definitely worth it, even if me getting into that fight probably didn’t make me any more appealing to her.
“This is why I told you to just focus on school,” Dad continues with an edge of anger and accusation. “You don’t need to be complicating your life with another ill-fated relationship, and you sure as hell don’t need to be getting into more fights.”
“Are you all right?” Mom asks me in a soft, quiet voice, touching her hand to my arm.
I nod, clenching my jaw and forcing myself to lock eyes with my dad before I can’t take seeing his disappointment any longer. Beyond his obvious concern about the ramifications of me using my fists to settle problems, something else lies beneath, his fear of a potential girlfriend finding out what I look like beneath my clothes and her blabbing to the entire town. I can’t imagine that Dad, as the new fire chief, wants those rumors swirling around, and he’d like even less to have to defend me from them.
“I don’t want you fighting, Tyler.” Mom echoes Dad but in a much calmer, kinder voice. “And I mean that, unless the girl you’re defending is in mortal danger.”
“Maybe she was,” I mumble.
“He won’t be getting into any more trouble, will you, Tyler?” Dad grips my shoulder, his eyes all steely and directed at me.
“No, Dad… I won’t.”
“That a boy,” Dad says like I’m a dog, then picks his coffee mug up and heads back to wherever he’d come from.
“I think I might go for a drive and take Jessup with me,” I tell Mom, willing to forgo the bagel and the orange juice just to get out of here.
“You’ve got to eat something first. What can I make you?” She’s already got the refrigerator door open and is foraging.
“I’m not hungry, Mom. I’ll just grab something later.”
“You know,” Dad says, back in the kitchen without his coffee, his thick arms crossed over his chest. “You could work out some of that anger you’re feeling in the yard. Those diseased trees I cut down still need their stumps and the roots dug out.”
I’m beyond annoyed at the suggestion, angered that the best Dad can do is put me to work to deal with my anger instead of maybe taking me aside and having one of those long honest father-son discussions with me. But just like he’d become Denver Dad instead of vacation Dad, I have no expectation that he’ll suddenly be the father I’d always wanted him to be.
So I don’t argue. I just say, “Sure thing, Dad. No problem.”
It’s hot out. Early October in Basin Lake isn’t all that different than it was in August, except for the shorter days and the slightly crisper air. Mom says the locals at the grocery store in town say it’s a fluke, that they’ve never seen an October this warm before. Whatever it is, I’m glad Mom insisted on sending me outside with a gallon of cold drinking water after she’d loaded me up with a hearty breakfast I’d eaten most of outside.
Jessup is chasing bugs in the air while I dig at the first stump, trying to remove most of the dirt surrounding it so that it will be easier to take an ax to it and break it apart. The digging part isn’t much fun, not like it is to use a chainsaw or to wield an ax or to throw branches through a chipper that spits them out into a million different pieces. And it’s not doing a lot of good for my sore flank, but it does at least focus my energy.
After sweating through my shirt, I drop the shovel and start pulling the material over my stomach. I stop, out of habit, then confirm in my head that I’m at home, that it’s okay to take my shirt off, that nobody except for maybe Mom or Dad will see. I continue dragging the material up and over my chest and over my neck, toss it to the ground and pick up the water and drink a good quarter of a gallon. With the warm sun on my back, I pick the shovel back up and lean on the handle.
“You catch anything good?” I say to Jessup who is still jumping through the air.
He barks a response, excited and happy. He’s a good dog, wouldn’t hurt a fly, even if he could actually catch one. I’d once thought that about Pepper too, but then again Pepper could snarl at you through her chain-link fence in a way that could make you pee your pants if you didn’t know her, not something I’d ever witnessed our friendly, easygoing Jessup doing.
Getting back to work, my thoughts find their way back to Claire. I think about how I’d wanted to whip my shirt off back at the bonfire and run into the water with her. I hadn’t dared of course, didn’t want the questions that would follow after everyone saw how marked up my body was, even in the dark of night. I hadn’t always had to do that back in Denver, especially if I was among just a few of my friends. But there were always those hot summer days at the river when there were just too many people around, and I’d err on the side of caution. Hiding sucks, and I’d always wished I were stronger, wished I didn’t care what people said or hadn’t been affected by their tendency to stare at anything that was different.
I start to wonder what Claire might think, what her reaction would be, but I push the thought out of my mind, not wanting to consider it might not be good. Putting my focus back on the job at hand, I continue digging and remove enough dirt to open up one side of the first stump. Anxious to do something other than dig, I grab the ax and start hammering down on the gnarl of wood and roots.
A hollow whoomp sound follows each blow of the ax and is then joined by some sort of crackling that I don’t quite place until I set the ax down and turn to see a car driving up to our house, the tires crunching the gravel beneath until it comes to a full stop. I’m not exactly close to the car, but it’s easy enough to see that it’s a Volvo wagon, just l
ike the one I’d noticed before at Claire’s house. I figure it probably belongs to her mom, initially thinking it is her mom just stopping by to say hi to my parents or something. Or it could be something worse, like Claire having told her Mom about the fight yesterday and her Mom heading over to tell me to stay the hell away from her daughter.
But the beautiful girl that gets out of the driver’s side is definitely Claire. She’s wearing a short flower-patterned dress, the kind with thin straps over the shoulders, the kind where I can get a good view of her legs and the lower portion of her thighs. The sight of her stirs up a physical reaction, an obvious increase in my heartbeat—even above what it had been wielding the ax—and a tightening between my legs. It might not be the prettiest thing down there, but it sure isn’t dead.
Claire doesn’t appear to see me and looks up to the house instead. Then Jessup barks, friendly and curious, making her turn toward us. She waves at me, and holding a basket, she starts on her way over. I’m glad, so glad that she’s smiling and not angry. And I’m excited to see her again, even if I’m confused about what it means when I think my heart still lies with Laney. Jessup is excited too, and me telling him to calm down and stay back is like telling a bird it can’t fly. He darts off toward Claire, jumping all around her and then splaying himself on the ground for a belly rub.
“He’s shameless,” I call out to her as she bends down to pacify him.
“I don’t mind,” she calls back, rubbing circles over his belly.
I’m walking toward her, a smile spreading across my face when I suddenly stop.
Shit.
I don’t have my shirt on.
I whip around and look for the shirt I’d so casually cast off. It could be anywhere, hiding among a clump of long, untamed grass or beneath one of the piles of dirt I’d been making without considering I might be covering up the one thing that would shield my long-ago injuries from Claire’s eyes. With Jessup tearing back through the yard, Claire is back up and getting ever closer to me while I scramble around like a mad man, finally spotting the fabric and snatching it up.
Between the Girls (The Basin Lake Series Book 3) Page 11
