“Get in, loser,” she bellows, borrowing a line from one of our favorite movies. “We’re going to the diner.”
I grin and slide open the door to the back, startling a little when I see Alyssa and Dawson sharing the two-person seat. I hadn’t noticed them through the rain-smeared window. I greet everyone and move to the way back, which always smells like Sophie’s little brothers’ sweaty soccer gear. But the van is so warm and dry that I don’t complain.
“Why is no one at work?” I ask my friends. Out of all of us, Zach is the only unemployed one. He’s been unsuccessfully looking for work since May, but to be fair, he hasn’t tried very hard. Dawson has Ace Burger, Lyss helps out her mom at the jewelry store, and Soph lifeguards at the beach.
“Day off,” Dawson says.
“Same,” Zach adds with a snort.
Sophie eases the van into a gap in traffic. “Boss sent me home after it started pouring, so I figured, why not pick up the squad and get food?”
“They practically kidnapped me from the store,” Alyssa says, tossing an annoyed glance over her shoulder. “Ma was not impressed.”
I expect Dawson to come back with some good-natured remark about how her mother can’t ban her from eating, but he just sits there, staring straight ahead. He’s directly in front of me, so I can easily see the tension in his shoulders. Whatever’s going on between him and Alyssa is obviously still unresolved.
The first e in the Beacon Street Diner sign is burned out, making it the Bacon Street Diner. Dawson’s mood lifts at the sight, and he wonders aloud if they did it on purpose because BLTs are on special today. But his smile droops again when Alyssa squeezes in next to Sophie and Zach instead of sitting on the opposite side of the booth with him. Feeling awkward, I take her usual spot beside him.
“So, Morgan,” Sophie begins after we order our drinks. “You can ignore our texts, but you can’t ignore us in person. Tell us about last night.”
I lower my head and run my finger over a scratch in the table. “There’s nothing to tell. We went to a movie and then he drove me home afterward.”
Zach folds his hands under his chin and leans in like we’re having a secret gab session. “Did you guys make out?”
“Zach.” Sophie elbows him in the side and he jerks away, bumping into the wall. “Don’t be rude.”
“Making out is rude? I’ll remember that next time we’re in my basement.”
Alyssa rolls her eyes and looks at me. “So you didn’t have a good time?”
“It’s not that, it’s just . . .” He thinks I’m a wonderful, selfless person and I’m not. “We don’t have much in common, that’s all.”
Sophie frowns. “But you seem really into this guy. Why just give up after one date?”
I shrug, at a loss to explain. What can I tell them? That I’m wary of adding yet another name to the long list of people who I’ve fooled into believing I’m honest and good? Luckily, the waiter arrives with the drinks then, distracting everyone. After he takes our orders and disappears again, Alyssa excuses herself to use the bathroom. Sophie watches her go and then quickly switches from her side of the booth to mine, forcing me to scooch closer to Dawson. He’s arguing with Zach about the best headphones for gaming and barely notices.
“What are you doing?” I ask Sophie, who’s looking at me with a fiery-eyed intensity that reminds me of Fergus when he sees a fly on the window.
“No,” she says firmly.
“What?”
“Thrift Shop Eli. You like him. I know you like him. And now you say your date was fine but you have nothing in common? No. I don’t accept that.” She glances past me to Dawson and lowers her voice to a whisper. “We get enough of this from Lyss. I don’t need it from you too. Do you want to be like her? Afraid to date, afraid to live? No.”
She bounces out of the booth and returns to Zach’s side like nothing happened. I’m still digesting her words when Alyssa comes back from the bathroom.
“What did I miss?” She sits down, studying our faces with narrowed eyes. Suddenly, I realize I’m still squished into Dawson and quickly slide back to my spot.
“Nothing,” Sophie says, taking a sip of water. “Just badgering Morgan about her date some more.”
“Do you ever stop and think, Hey, perhaps this is none of my business?”
Sophie furrows her brow like the idea had never occurred to her. Which it probably hasn’t. She’s never had any qualms about inserting herself into someone else’s personal life. She’s lucky we love her. “No,” she replies.
I laugh, but I can’t stop thinking about what she said. No, I don’t want to be like Alyssa, who I’m almost positive avoids dating because she’s afraid of getting hurt. I’m not afraid. No guy could ever hurt me as much as my mom has. It’s more that I’m afraid of hurting him.
But maybe I don’t have to. I dated two guys over the past year and managed to keep my dirty little secret intact around both of them. The trick is to only show people the good parts. To keep to the edges of the circle, making sure no one gets close enough to see the ugliness underneath.
The first thing I do when Sophie drops me off at my car is pull out my phone and text Eli. She’s right. I really like him, and I don’t want to shut down whatever it is that’s building between us, even if it’s partially built on lies.
Hey, what are you up to?
I turn on the car and wait, my palm slick against the back of my phone. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. Maybe because there’s a really good chance he’ll reject me right now, tell me to get lost. Or maybe he’ll choose to ignore me, which would honestly feel even worse.
My phone chimes.
Just hanging with my friend Matt. How are you?
I shut my eyes for a second and sigh. For once, I didn’t ruin everything.
Feeling bad about last night. Sorry if I was being weird after the movie.
Consider it forgotten.
I’m not sure if he means the weirdness or the entire date, and I don’t dare ask. Instead, I type, Talk to you later? It’s vague and kind of impersonal, but also a promise of more to come. I hit send and tip my head back on the seat as I wait for his response. My full belly and the rhythmic tap of raindrops on my windshield lull me into believing that everything might actually turn out okay.
My phone chirps again. I peer down at it, fully expecting to see Eli’s answer waiting for me on the screen. Instead, I see another name, one that’s been buried in my contacts, unseen and unused, for almost a year.
Mom.
I blink once, twice, before what I’m seeing sinks in. What the hell? My thumb hovers over the text alert, hesitating. Why is she texting me? My brain starts tossing out all these horrible scenarios: She’s terminally ill. She left Gary and is moving back home. Dad is sick/injured/dead and she’s still his emergency contact. It’s the thought about Dad that finally convinces me to open the text.
Your sister suggested you’d be more comfortable with a text than a phone call. I just wanted to say that I hope you’ll reconsider coming to visit next month. There are some things I’d like to discuss with you and I think it should be in person. I miss you to the moon, Morgan. Congrats on the job, by the way. Rachel keeps me updated.
The car and rain and everything else around me disappears as I read her words to me. I miss you to the moon. When I was little, the first thing I’d do when she picked me up at the babysitter’s after work was ask her, “Did you miss me today?” And she’d answer back, every time, “I missed you to the moon.” I never knew exactly what she meant, but hearing it always made me feel safe. Treasured.
That was years ago, though. It’s been a long time since my mother has made me feel safe and treasured, and one stupid text isn’t going to fix that.
I reread her words, sparks of fury quickly burning through the nostalgia. She knows about my job? Rachel keeps her updated? Exactly how long has my sister been in contact with her? Maybe she knows about the shoplifting too. I get a jolt of satisfaction, imagini
ng her guilt when she realizes the effect her actions have had on me, how all the bitterness and pain she caused drove me to a life of petty crime.
I dump my phone in the cup holder and take a few deep breaths, trying to pull myself together enough to safely operate a motor vehicle. As I’m drying my eyes with a crumpled napkin I found in the dash, my phone dings with another text. Shit. After a long pause, I reach for it. My heart slows when I see it’s from Eli, a belated response.
Sure thing.
I stare at the words for a moment, imprinting them in my brain for the drive home. At least something in my life at the moment is guaranteed.
Chapter Fourteen
I CONSIDER NOT TELLING ANYONE ABOUT THE text from my mom, but two days later I find myself blurting it out to Alyssa while the two of us are hanging out in my room.
“Wow,” she says, her eyes wide. She’s lying on her back beside me, her dark hair spilling across my light blue comforter. “What are you gonna do?”
I lean back against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of me. “Ignore it? I have nothing to say to her.”
Alyssa frowns. Like Rachel, she’s a big advocate of forgiveness and second chances. Ordinarily I am too, but not when it comes to my mother.
“I wonder why she decided to get in touch with you now.” She rolls toward me and props her head up with her hand. “What if she wants you to live with her in her new house? Would you ever consider it? Leaving here?”
I glance around my small room, decorated and organized just the way I like it. When I first moved in I hated it, mostly because it didn’t feel like mine. Not like the bedroom I’d just left. Packing up my childhood room was one of the worst days of my life. Alyssa came over to help me, and together we sorted through my possessions, tossing all the unused and worn-out items and boxing up everything else. When the room was finally empty, save for a desk that would never fit into my new room, I leaned into Alyssa and cried.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, patting my back in a smooth, comforting rhythm. “Life always works itself out eventually.”
I believed her—and still do, I guess, even though my life clearly hasn’t finished working itself out. But it helps to know she thinks it will someday.
Packing up this bedroom wouldn’t make me quite as sentimental, but I’d live in a closet before I’d ever move in with Mom again. Besides, I could never leave my friends.
“No way,” I tell Alyssa. “Not even for a second.”
Hearing the firm certainty in my voice, she lets out a breath and smiles.
The next morning, as I drive past the Rita’s Reruns sign, it hits me that after today I’ll have completed twelve hours. Which means I’m almost halfway there, and right on target for finishing my requirements with a week or so of summer left over. It’ll be nice to get all this diversion stuff behind me.
“Morgan!” Rita exclaims when I walk into the store. She’s at the back of the room, fanatically dusting a shelving unit I’ve never seen before. “Come see my new addition.”
I obediently make my way toward her. The new shelves are made of dark brown wood and just narrow enough to fit between the “miscellaneous kitchen supplies” shelf and a window. “Nice,” I say politely.
She runs the dust cloth over the wood one more time and then stands back to admire her work. Today she’s wearing a black shift dress and the brightest orange lipstick I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to look anywhere else. “Eli and his dad put it together for me yesterday,” she tells me. “Well, mostly Randy, because he’s a surgeon and good with hand tools. Eli’s more suited to gardening than carpentry, poor boy.”
Aha. Internet findings confirmed. Eli’s dad is Dr. Randall Jamison, oral maxillofacial surgeon and healer of underprivileged children.
“What’s it for?” I tilt my head, examining the limited space between the shelves. “Little knickknack-type things?”
She beams at me. “Books! Someone dropped off scads of them the other day. Boxes and boxes of books. They’re stacked in the back room. I had nowhere to display them until now.”
I know without her telling me what my job will be today—affixing price stickers to books. Rita doesn’t spend much time on the inventory, at least not while I’m here. She likes to be out front, straightening things up, chatting with customers, helping them find things they didn’t know they needed, like a candy dish shaped like a boat or a gently worn Christmas sweater. She’s definitely not a behind-the-scenes kind of person. Which works out well, because I am.
“Some of the books look almost brand-new,” she continues as she turns and walks toward the front. At the door, she flips the sign on the window to Open. “Mark those two dollars. The rest can be a dollar or fifty cents, depending on their condition. Use your judgment.”
I nod and head to the back, leaving her to her tidying. The moment I open the door, I realize what Rita meant by “scads.” Six large boxes are haphazardly stacked into two groups of three and pushed against the wall. I try to lift one, but it’s not happening. My arms are too short and the boxes are too heavy. Eventually, I settle for opening the top box and hauling out books an armful at a time. Soon, the room smells like an old library.
It’s not until I sit down with my price stickers that I realize most of these paperbacks are of the romance variety. Shirtless cowboys and tattooed bad boys smoulder at me from the covers like they’re beckoning me into the pages. I stare for a moment at one guy’s perfect denim-covered butt and feel my cheeks go red. Maybe I’m missing out by limiting my reading to fantasy and sci-fi novels. I stop ogling the cover model’s tight behind and open the book to page one.
I’m two chapters in when a large shadow appears in the open doorway, blocking my natural light.
“Slacking off on the job?”
I stick a pen between the pages to mark my place and squint up at Eli. He’s back to his living-in-a-ditch wardrobe today—a dark gray T-shirt with a tear in the neck and grass-stained cargo shorts. It may be the sexy book getting to me, but I find his scruffy look almost as attractive as his well-groomed one.
“Just taking a little break,” I say, which is an obvious lie because my price sticker sheet is still full and so are all the boxes. “What are you doing?”
He smiles and inches into the room. “Just taking a little break.”
I give him a cautious smile back. We haven’t seen each other since Tuesday night, after our date ended on a sour note, but we’ve been texting every day. He seemed to accept the excuse I gave him for why I’d acted a little off the other night. I said it was because I hadn’t been on a date in so long, which is partially true. Still, there’s been no mention of going out a second time, so I’m not sure how to act around him right now.
“What are you reading?”
“Oh, um . . .” I slide the pen out and rest the book cover side down on the floor beside me. I know he’ll tease me if he sees it, especially considering the buff cover model looks vaguely like him. Or at least how I imagine he’d look if he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Not that I ever picture Eli without a shirt. Not often, anyway. “It’s nothing. Just a book.”
He peers inside the open box. “Just a book, huh. You mean erotica.”
“They’re not erotica. They’re romance.”
“Erotic romance.”
“Shut up.” I grab the price stickers and start attaching them to the paperbacks at my feet. Well, except for the one I was reading, because I plan to buy that one for myself. “Can you lift those boxes down for me? The ones on top?”
“Sure thing.” He lifts the open box like it’s filled with cotton balls and sets it on the floor in front of me, then does the same with the others. Soon there’s no room for him to walk, so he sits on one of the closed boxes and massages the back of his knee. I’ve seen him do this before, after he’s been standing for a while. Sometimes I wonder if he downplays his pain around me.
“Need some help?” he asks, lifting the flaps on the box beside him.
I shrug as I
put a dollar sticker on a book with a slightly ripped cover. “If you’re not busy.”
“I’m free for a few minutes.”
Rita’s strident voice filters in from the front. She’s gabbing away to what sounds like a woman and her army of kids. Usually, she has Eli running around doing everything from lugging donations to finding the pair of scissors she swore she just had in her hand two seconds ago. But she can spend ages chatting with customers, so it’s safe to assume that it’ll be several minutes before she calls for him again.
“Whoa.” His eyes widen as he pulls out a small, thin paperback. “You can’t tell me this isn’t erotica.”
I lean over to look at the cover, which features a busty brunette wearing a few tiny scraps of lace and clinging to the bare chest of a faceless man. In her right hand is a long, black whip. “Okay,” I say slowly. “That might be erotica. Rita won’t actually put that out for sale, will she? I mean, kids shop here.”
He snorts and starts thumbing through the pages.
“Hoping for diagrams?” I ask, going back to my price sheet.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one sitting in here all by myself reading filthy literature while I was supposed to be working.”
“I wasn’t . . .” I shake my head and sigh. “What I was reading had, like, a story. It wasn’t just sex scenes.”
“Mm-hmm.” He pauses on a page in the book and clears his throat. “‘She runs her trembling fingers over his granite abs—’”
I reach over and try to grab the book from him, but he keeps a tight grip on it.
“‘—and then shivers in pleasure when he moans her name—’” He dodges my hand again, holding the book out of my reach. “Hey, this is pretty hot.”
“Eli,” I say in a warning tone, but I’m laughing now, partly out of relief that he’s still treating me the same as he did before Tuesday. “You’re, like, obnoxiously irritating.”
He cracks a grin at the borrowed adjective, the same one he used to measure my cuteness the other night at the movies. “Okay, okay.” He closes the book and dumps it back in the box. “I would’ve liked to read the scenes with the whip, though.”
The Girl You Thought I Was Page 10
