by Brooke Moss
“Because the Coulters are stable.” She adjusted her massive wedding ring on her finger. “Take it from someone who knows, when you come from a family that does nothing but fight and hurt each other, you’re going to gravitate toward the people who will love you.”
“Yeah, right.” I grit my teeth together. “That must be why she took off with her mom last night.”
“She’ll be back,” mom said. “Paula and John have shown her love and kindness and given her the first real home she’s probably ever had. Once she realizes how much better it is than whatever hell her mother has to offer, she’ll find her way back.” She took a deep breath, then released it slowly. She seemed to pull herself together in an instant. “And when she does, I’ll do everything I can to make her feel welcome.”
I raised one eyebrow at her. “Is this some sort of ploy to lure me back under the same roof as Dad?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t expect you’ll ever live under the same roof as your father again. I supposed it’s just as well. But promise me you’ll let me help take care of you. Let me help pay Karen for your room and board. For the food you eat. Let me help you at least until your graduation.”
“No.” I stood up and started pacing again. “Mom. No. I don’t want to be indebted to Dad. I never want to owe him anything again.”
“I know, I know.” She stood up, too, facing me. “But you forget. I have money of my own. And I can spend it on whatever I want.”
I watched my mom for a minute. I could see she was trying so hard to reach out to me, even though actually physically reaching for me was impossible for her. It wasn’t her fault she was emotionally constipated. I knew that now.
“Okay.” I sighed. “All right. But only until graduation, and it’s only for Karen. Anything else I need I’ll get it myself.”
“Deal.” She smiled, picking up her purse. “Thank you, Andrew. For letting me take care of you. I know I haven’t always done that. I should have protected you, and I didn’t. I’m sorry for that.”
My stomach clenched. “I… it’s okay, Mom.”
“I love you, son.”
We stared at each other for a long, awkward moment. I opened my mouth, the words on the top of my tongue, when all of the sudden the cell in my hand buzzed. I jumped, and pressed it to my ear, motioning for my mom to wait.
“Hello?”
There was a lot of noise in the background. Traffic and the sound of seagulls cawing. “Drew?”
John Coulter. I sucked in a sharp breath. “Yes. This is Drew.”
“Great,” he said. “Um… good news.
The knot in my stomach loosened. “Okay.”
“Posey just called. We’re waiting for the ferry. We’re on our way to Seattle to pick her up.”
“Thank you, sir, I… um…” Covering up my phone, I looked at my mom. “I have to take this, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow, or something, okay?”
Her smile widened, and she picked up her purse. “She’s finding her way home, isn’t she?”
I nodded at her as she grabbed the front door handle.
“Oh, hey wait,” I called when she opened the door. She looked over her shoulder at me, and I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I… I love you, Mom.”
Chapter Thirty
Her.
“Hello? Hello? Posey, is that you?”
Paula’s voice sounded frantic, and my throat tightened in response.
“Y-yes… it’s me.”
She burst into tears, her sobs echoing through the phone. I rested my head on the cold glass of the phone booth. I could still see Norm’s building down the street, and by then another car had pulled into the parking lot. More scary looking people filtered into the apartment in a cloud of cigarette smoke. My mom hadn’t come looking for me, even though I hadn’t come back with her soda, and I’d been gone for well over thirty minutes now. I doubted she even remembered I’d come home with her.
I heard John’s voice in the background. “Give me the phone. Posey? Posey, are you okay?”
A lump grew in my clenched throat. I’d been doing a lot of crying over the past few hours. “I’m fine. Just… tired. And dirty. And… tired.”
“Dirty?” He croaked. “What does that mean? Where are you?”
The lump became bigger than ever. I sucked in a breath and looked up at the ceiling of the booth to keep from crying. Again. “In Seattle. Near Rainier Valley. At a convenience store.”
He sighed, and I pictured him taking off his glasses to rub his eyes. He always did that when one of the kids frustrated him. “How did you get there, Posey? Drew said you left with your mother. Is that true?”
As soon as he said Drew’s name, the lump filled my entire throat, and I choked. “Yes.”
“And are you still with her?”
I glanced at the complex with a steely glare. I’d blown it. Big time. “No. I… I was wondering if I could come home.”
He paused while Paula sniffled in the background. “Of course,” he said finally. “I’ll come get you.”
My eyes prickled with unspilled tears. They still wanted me? I thought for sure they would tell me that I’d made my choice, and now I had to live with it. “Really?” I whispered, my hands shaking as I held the phone up to my ear.
“What? Of course I will. I’ll need an address, though. Can you tell me where you are exactly?”
I looked around, rattling off the names of the cross streets. “There’s a Denny’s on the corner. I… I’ll wait there.”
“Okay.” I heard the sound of him searching the counter for his keys, then the familiar clinking of metal as he found them. “Stay there. Do not leave again. Do you understand?”
I grimaced. I wasn’t an idiot. Well, I guess I had been, but I wasn’t anymore. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there in an hour. And Posey?”
My breath hitched. Was this it? Was I going to get reamed now? Told what an F-up I was? Squeezing my eyes shut, I said, “What?”
John sighed. “We love you.”
***
The waitress approached me again, this time scowling.
Back off, lady. It’s been a rough morning.
“You sure you don’t want a table?” She started reorganizing the sticky plastic menus that were stacked on the hostess stand. “Coffee, maybe?”
I looked away. Out the window towards the parking lot. Still no minivan. “No, thank you.”
She shook her head. “You waiting for a deal, or something?”
I brought my gaze back to her face. “A deal?”
“We don’t tolerate that crap in here, got it?” She ignored my question and started wiping the sludge off the menus. “You kids need to find somewhere else for that garbage.”
“I’m not here for that.” I sank down on the vinyl bench. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Yeah, right.” She stepped closer to me, coming into my bubble a bit. “You and the friends you’re waiting for can find somewhere else to crash for the day. You hear me?”
“I’m not waiting for friends.” I brushed at the pet hair all over my clothes, wishing I didn’t look like someone who’d slept in a drug den with a knife under her pillow. “I’m waiting for my… my, um, foster parents.”
I wanted to say parents. Geez, if the last fourteen hours had taught me nothing else, I knew now more than ever that I wanted to be a Coulter permanently. I may not deserve Paula and John for parents, but if they wanted me, I wanted them for good.
“Foster parents, huh? Figures.” She flared her nostrils at me as she turned and waddled away. “You got five more minutes, and then you wait outside.”
Shame washed over me. I wondered if the embarrassment of being a foster kid would ever go away. I doubted it. I craned my neck to peer out the window into the far corner of the parking lot.
I missed the noise in the Coulters’ house. The sound of Jessa and Lacey giggling in the next room. Tabitha’s favorite tween television shows playing in the living room. The rumbling soun
d of Micah and John’s laughter as they try to tackle algebra. And the sound of Paula singing nursery rhymes to Cooper as he wriggles around his bed trying to get to sleep. I wanted my bedroom at the top of the old farmhouse, with its creaky floors and faded wallpaper. I wanted chores, rules, and curfews.
I wanted a real family.
My heart back-flipped when the beat up minivan slowed to a stop in one of the slots. I stood up, pushing through the glass doors, then halting at the edge of the sidewalk.
Oh, God. What if I was about to get it? After all, I had run away, stayed out all night, and slept in a drug dealer’s apartment. Maybe during their long drive to Seattle to pick me up, they’d rethought their plan to adopt me. I mean, sure. They loved me. But maybe I was too much trouble. Too much drama. Too much everything. I would inevitably rock the boat. Heaven knew that was the truth. Even if I never did something this stupid again, at some point I’d tick them off somehow. Maybe they’d talked about it on the ferry, and come to the realization that I wasn’t a match for their family.
John climbed out of the car, meeting Paula on her side. They clasped hands and started across the parking lot towards me. Both of their mouths were pulled into frowns, and John had a baseball cap pulled low on his head, casting a shadow on half his face. I lifted my hand, waving weakly, then let it flop to my side when neither of them responded.
My heart pounded. This was it. I was getting the ax.
Oh, well. It was cool while it lasted.
Oh, who the hell was I kidding? This sucked. Hard.
My heart started to swell in my chest, pressing against my bones and making them ache. The pull I felt towards John and Paula was peculiar. Not quite like the magnet pull I felt towards Drew, but every bit as strong. I loved them.
I loved them.
And I wasn’t entirely sure if I could live without them.
I didn’t think. I didn’t say anything. I just lunged for them, throwing myself into their arms with all my might. Their arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against both of their chests. Tears immediately sprouted from my eyes, soaking the shoulder of Paula’s coat while I shook with sobs.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
She stroked my hair. “Shhh. It’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t have done it.” I sniffled. “I made a mistake. I never meant to hurt you.”
John rested his cheek on the top of my head. “It’s not your fault. She had no business showing up at your school.”
“I won’t make this mistake twice.” I looked up at their faces, hiccupping. It had been years since I’d had a good cry, but in the last twenty-four hours, I’d made up for lost time. “I… I can’t promise you I won’t do anything stupid again. But I’ll try. And I’ll never run away again. I can promise you that.”
Paula’s hands cupped my face. “That’s enough, Posey. That’s plenty.”
John put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you hurt? Did you take anything while you were with her? Did you drink anything? Did anyone hurt you in any way?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Nobody hurt me. I’m fine.”
“Good.” He leaned in and kissed my head. “We’re so glad. We were so worried.”
“What would we do without you?” Paula whispered.
“I-I still want it.” I looked from her face to his, waiting for them to understand what I was saying. It was so awkward to say it out loud. Too much emotion in one sentence to deal with. I squirmed, the words making my skin feel tight.
“What?” John asked.
I swallowed, my throat feeling thick and swollen. “I want to be adopted. I want to be a Coulter.”
Paula’s mouth trembled, and she pulled me to her shoulder again.
John joined the hug. “And so you will be.”
We stood like that—in a hug circle in the middle of the Denny’s parking lot—for a long time. I’m sure we looked stupid, but they didn’t care. And neither did I. For the first time ever, I had parents. Not just one, but two people who actually cared about where I went and what I did. People who wanted the best for me, not some watered down version of the best that benefitted them more so than me.
After a spell, we pulled apart, and Paula took my hand to lead me to the car. “Come on. Let’s get you home and into the shower. You smell like…” She cast a nervous glance at John.
“Like crap. I smell like crap.” I laughed when she slid open the van door. I looked in, and the car was empty, except for an empty booster seat and some cracker crumbs. My stomach dropped.
I don’t know what I had expected. Maybe when everything else fell into place like some sort of ABC Family happily ending, they’d open the car up, and Drew would pop out, smiling.
No go. He wasn’t there. And who could blame him, really?
I buckled my seatbelt, then watched as Paula and John did the same. “So… you said Drew called you?” I tried to sound casual, but my voice was high pitched.
“He came over last night,” John said, putting the van into gear and backing out of the slot. “As soon as he got back to Twisted Tree. He wanted us to know where you’d gone.”
Did he hitch a ride? Did he walk? Was he mad at me?
I had a ton of questions, but didn’t ask them. Of course he was mad at me. I’d cussed at him, and then watched him leave. Hell, I was mad at me.
I bit my lip. “Is he… still at the house?”
“No. We sent him home.” Paula flipped down the cover on her vanity mirror. “John called him when we heard from you.”
“You did?” My voice cracked as we turned out of the Denny’s lot, and started down the road. I felt sweat prick underneath my arms. “What… what did he say?”
John watched me in the rearview mirror for a beat. “Are you okay, Posey?”
We passed Norm’s complex, and my insides seized. Three cop cars sat in the parking lot, with lights flashing, and the door to my mom’s apartment stood open. The blur of blue uniforms was visible through the crowd of gritty neighbors who’d come out to gawk at the scene.
I waited for the inevitable worry to set in. For the protective instinct I’d had towards my mom to kick into high gear like it always did… but nothing happened. My stomach didn’t tighten and roil. I didn’t give a damn anymore. She deserved what she got. And I deserved whatever it was that I got.
“No,” I finally said, meeting John’s eyes in the mirror. I swallowed thickly. “But I will be. I hope.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Him.
As soon as Posey came out the door, my breath caught in the back of my throat. She’d obviously just gotten out of the shower, as her face was void of any makeup, and her long dark hair hung over her shoulders in damp strands. I wasn’t sure she’d ever looked more beautiful.
She’s good. She’s okay. I released a whoosh of air, and the knots in my shoulders loosen for the first time in seventeen hours.
“You’re back.” That was all I could think of to say. So much for being the big man on campus who knew what to say to every girl, every time.
She came down to the bottom step and paused. “Yeah. I’m back.”
I wanted to grab her. My arms screamed for me to wrap them around her body and tangle my hands in her hair.
I didn’t do it, though. Instead, I jammed them into my pockets and looked at the ground. “Good. Are you okay?”
She took another step toward me. “Yes.”
The last time we’d been this close, she’d sent me packing. Her words still stuck in my brain like tar, and now that I knew she was home safe… it was impossible for me to forget. If we kept dating how would I know she wouldn’t play me like that again? How could I be sure that the next time things got hard, she wouldn’t bail on me? Push me away because she wrongly convinced herself I was going to do the same to her?
My insides hurt being this close to Posey and not touching her.
If this was love, the saps could have it. This sucked.
“Good.” I dragged my eyes
up the length of her body, back to her blue eyes. They seemed to shoot laser beams straight through my chest into my heart. I backed away from her, toward where I’d parked Mac’s truck. “I gotta go, then.”
She gulped. “Why?”
I let my arms rise and fall. “Because I just came to see that you were safe. That’s all. We already said everything we needed to say to each other yesterday.”
Her face crumpled. “Drew, listen—”
Jessa opened the screen door behind Posey’s back. Her hair was pulled into some fancy style, and she had a pair of pantyhose in her hand. Her eyes went from me to Posey, and she smiled kindly. “Hi.”
“Hey, Jessa.”
She sighed. “Tell Mac I’ll see him in a few hours.”
“Yup.” Everyone in town was getting ready for homecoming, but not me. I was too busy breaking up with my girlfriend. “See ya.”
Jessa ducked back into the house, and Posey wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re just leaving, then?”
I pressed my lips together to keep from yelling at her. I didn’t want to argue. I hadn’t come for that. I just wanted to see that she was home and okay. Part of me had hoped she would apologize, but in all my time with her, I’d learned one thing for sure. She was hella stubborn.
Say something. Just tell her what happened yesterday doesn’t matter. Just tell her you can pick up where you left off.
We stared each other down for a few minutes. She wasn’t the only stubborn one.
Finally I cleared my throat. “I have to go, Po.”
She reached for me, but I turned towards the truck and tugged the door open. Turning it on, I gunned it and took off down the driveway, the rumble of the engine drowning out her voice as she called my name.
***
“Drew, are you sure you wouldn’t like to borrow my car to go get Posey?” Karen asked, holding out her keys.
I looked up from the wall I’d been staring at for the last forty-five minutes since Mac left to pick up Jessa. The TV was on across the room, but I couldn’t pay attention to it. I’d been zoning out for the last four hours, and planned on doing that for the rest of the evening, if I could get away with it.
