The Girl You Thought I Was

by Rebecca Phillips

  I nod like it’s a possibility, even though it’s not. Dad already has a week booked off for Rachel’s visit, even though time off work means losing sales commissions. He can’t afford to take another vacation right now. But our money troubles are definitely not something I want to discuss with Eli. Just like I don’t want to discuss my family. He knows my parents aren’t together and that I live with my dad and haven’t seen my mother in months, but he’s never pressed me for details. It’s one of the things I like most about him. It’s like he senses that the topic of my mother is painful for me, so he’s waiting until I’m ready to bring it up myself.

  “I guess I’d better get inside,” I say grudgingly, like I’d like nothing better than to stand out here with him in a sea of dusty castoffs. Which is true.

  After one last hug, I head toward the side doors. Then, remembering something, I walk toward him again.

  “Are you doing anything tonight?”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Hanging out with you?”

  “My friends want to meet you. Would you mind if we hung out with them instead? No pressure. I mean, we’ll probably just sit around and play video games in my friend Zach’s basement. His mom is always with her boyfriend, so he practically lives by himself.”

  “I like video games. And sitting around in basements.” He takes my hands and draws me closer, grinning down at me. “How about this. I’ll hang out with your friends tonight if you come to my house tomorrow for dinner.”

  I stare at a tiny hole in his T-shirt, unsure how to respond. Introducing someone to friends is one thing, but bringing them home to meet the family is something else altogether. Are we really at that stage?

  Eli sees my hesitation. “Aunt Rita will be there too. She comes for dinner every Sunday. So you’ll know someone besides me.”

  That doesn’t make me feel any better. Having Rita there will make me even more nervous, because unlike Eli and his family, she knows why I’m really working at the thrift store. I don’t think she’d reveal my secret over dinner, but still. What if she drinks too much wine or something and lets it slip accidentally?

  Screw it. I’ll have to take the risk. Eli will start wondering about me if I avoid his family. And I do want to meet them, even though it’s a big step on the relationship meter. Considering how adamant I was at first about keeping things casual, I’m surprised at how much I like the idea of us getting more serious. Still, it’s scary to think about all the things I’m still hiding from him, even as our relationship advances.

  “Okay,” I say after a pause.

  He grips my shoulders and leans down to kiss me, then turns me in the direction of the door. “Now get moving. Slacker.”

  I stick my tongue out at him and go, skirting past the minefield of boxes and bags on the way to the side door. Inside, I find Rita polishing the counter, her bracelets clanging together with each swipe of the cloth.

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” I say.

  She squints at me over her glasses, which are perched on the end of her nose. All of a sudden I feel self-conscious, wondering if my face is red from Eli’s stubble. But she just nods and goes back to her polishing.

  I stand there awkwardly in front of her, waiting for her to tell me where she wants me today. When she doesn’t speak or even look at me, I turn toward the rear of the store. Surely, there’s something that needs sorting back there. Just as I’m about to move, Rita speaks.

  “You’re a good girl,” she says, her eyes on her cloth.

  “Sorry?”

  She suddenly stops cleaning and picks up her bottle of Windex, bringing it and the cloth over to the main door. “You’re a good girl,” she repeats, spritzing down the square of window. “I know that in my heart. But I also know my nephew, and that boy can’t handle getting hurt again.”

  I stare at her. How does she know we’ve moved on from just friends? She was bound to find out eventually, of course—like when I show up for dinner tomorrow—but Eli hasn’t told her about us, and I certainly haven’t. We thought if she knew, she wouldn’t leave us alone in the stockroom anymore. What, can she see through walls with those bifocals?

  And what does she mean, Eli can’t handle being hurt again? Does she think I’m going to hurt him? Why would she think that?

  An ice-cold tremor creeps down my spine. Of course. Rita knows the other version of me—the lawbreaker, the liar. Good deep down, maybe, but not quite good enough for Eli. I’ve earned her trust around the thrift shop, but not around her family. Not yet.

  She finishes with the window and turns to face me, pushing her glasses up high on her nose. “That’s all I wanted to say. You can work the cash today, okay? Not much to do in back until Eli brings that newest load in.”

  I swallow the annoying lump in my throat and do what I’m told. For the next three hours, I stand behind the counter and try my best not to smudge the shiny clean surface.

  After the thrift store, I go straight to Royal Smoothie, where I spend the next six hours blending fruit and wondering if Rita will eventually tell Eli the truth about me. Why hasn’t she? When she hired me, she said she believed in giving people a fair shot in life. Maybe that’s why she’s kept my secret. Or maybe she’s waiting for me to tell him.

  Thinking about coming clean to Eli and my friends rattles me so much that I screw up making a Pineapple Punch smoothie and have to start over. I try to picture how they’d react to finding out what I’m really like. Shock, definitely. Anger. Disgust. Or maybe they’d feel sorry for me. Poor Morgan resorts to committing petty larceny to make herself feel better after her mom’s betrayal. Sad, misguided girl.

  No. I won’t be the one everyone pities. The one who can’t handle life’s infinite crap. Alyssa’s father died. Zach’s parents are divorced and his mother leaves him home alone all the time. Eli lost a possible hockey career and the ability to walk for long periods without pain. Dawson and Sophie each have their own troubles. They’ve all experienced pain, anger, and injustice, and not one of them uses a vice like mine—one that causes personal and public harm—to ease the sting.

  I need them all in my life too much to risk driving them away with the truth.

  After work, I go home to shower. My cell rings as I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror, twisting my damp hair into French braids. When I see Eli’s name on the screen, my heart leaps into my throat and all I can think is, This is it. She told him. He knows. But when I pick up, all he says is, “Hey, do you think your friends would mind if Matt tagged along with me tonight? He’s looking for something to do.”

  My relief is so strong, I need to grip the edge of the counter. “Oh. Sure, he can come. The more the merrier.”

  He doesn’t seem to notice any weirdness in my voice. “Great. See you later.”

  I finish braiding my hair with slightly shaking fingers and leave for Zach’s house. I’m the last one to arrive, with the exception of Eli and Matt, who will be coming later. When I walk into the basement, I immediately sense a hint of tension crackling through the room. It takes me a moment to figure out what’s off. Instead of sharing the love seat like they often do, Alyssa is sitting with Sophie and Zach on the couch as they pummel each other in a game of Street Fighter, and Dawson is sprawled in the chair a few feet away, watching. Just like at the diner, our regular seating arrangements have evolved. It makes me uneasy.

  I sit by myself on the love seat just as Sophie releases an outraged yell and tosses her controller down.

  “Serves you right after coming at me with those fireballs,” Zach crows.

  They start squabbling back and forth over game-play tactics while the rest of us sit in a triangle of edgy silence. When the doorbell rings a few minutes later, I’ve never been so glad for a distraction in my life.

  Eli and Matt’s presence lightens the atmosphere immediately. After I go through the introductions, Sophie relinquishes her controller and comes over to join me on the love seat. Alyssa does the same, leaving the four guys to take turns beating the
hell out of each other on-screen.

  “You didn’t tell me you were dating Captain America,” Sophie says in my ear. She gives me a discreet high five. “Nice job.”

  I laugh and turn to Alyssa. She’s watching the guys too, but her gaze keeps flicking to Dawson. Whenever she looks at him, a slight frown appears on her lips.

  “Is he still ignoring you?” I ask. I’m not used to seeing them this way. Usually, Dawson can’t pry his eyes from her. Now he doesn’t even glance in this direction.

  “He barely even said hi to me,” Alyssa replies, her frown deepening.

  Sophie jumps up. “Chips! There are chips in the kitchen. Let’s go get them.”

  I look at Eli. He’s playing a round against Dawson, his brow knit in concentration as he taps on the controller. It’s cute. Zach and Matt are chatting like they’ve known each other forever. My two worlds have merged seamlessly in less than ten minutes. I feel myself relax.

  Up in the kitchen, Alyssa refuses to talk anymore about Dawson and the romance that will never be. Instead, she busies herself dumping chips into bowls like her life depends on it while Soph and I gather drinks, keeping our questions to ourselves.

  We head back downstairs, balancing everything in our arms. Zach’s now playing against Eli, and Dawson’s back in the chair, deliberately focused on the sparring figures on TV. He doesn’t even look up when Sophie and I deposit the drinks on the coffee table. Alyssa is right behind us, and just as she reaches the table, one of the bowls she’s carrying tilts sideways, spilling a handful of Doritos. Matt jumps up quickly and grabs it before the rest of them hit the floor too.

  “Close call,” he says, grinning at her.

  She smiles back, her cheeks slightly pink, and then crouches down to pick up the fallen Doritos. Matt immediately crouches beside her, sweeping up the crumbs with his hands. Sophie and I exchange a quick look before both our gazes shift to Dawson. Just as I figured, he’s watching them like he’s trying not to watch them, his face falling more with each moment the two of them stay huddled together on the floor. I feel a pang of sympathy for him. A few days ago, Alyssa turned him down flat, and now here she is laughing with the charming new guy.

  Not that I think Alyssa is interested, even though Matt is cute and nice. She means it when she says she doesn’t want to date. But in Dawson’s case, even the most basic interaction is probably hurtful when witnessed through a haze of rejection and unrequited love.

  “Thanks,” Alyssa says to Matt once the chips are cleaned up. He stands and nods at her, his gaze lingering a little longer this time. Oblivious, Alyssa rejoins Soph and me on the love seat, taking one of the bowls with her.

  Across the room, Dawson quietly seethes, his jaw twitching as he glares at the TV. Tension rises from him like steam. The guys are going to think he’s sullen and unfriendly, even though he’s neither. I resolve to explain the situation to Eli later.

  “Later” comes sooner than I thought. Dawson ducks out early, claiming he has something to do at home, and the party breaks up shortly after that. I’m mostly glad. My friends are great, but I’ve been waiting all night to spend some time alone with Eli.

  “You’ll give me a lift home, right?” he asks as we leave the house. “Matt drove me here.”

  “You should’ve asked me before you let him leave,” I say teasingly, then pretend to think it over. “Okay, I guess so. Do you want me to take you home now?”

  He grins slyly. “Well, not home exactly, but maybe to my neighborhood. I know of a good deserted spot.”

  I raise my eyebrows, intrigued. When we get into my car, Eli has to put the seat back all the way to accommodate his legs, and even then he has to scrunch. His head almost touches the ceiling. His size and height make my car feel as tiny as a Hot Wheels.

  “It smells like vanilla in here,” he says.

  I don’t want to think about my mom’s scent locked forever in the seats, so I lean over and kiss him. He kisses me back, and all the weirdness from earlier fades away. Until we stop kissing and he says, “That was fun. Your friends are cool.”

  I almost laugh, because in most worlds, he’d be considered the cool one. Mr. Popular, with his athleticism and magnetism and smoking-hot ex. Cool isn’t a word that’s often used to describe my friend group, but I’m relieved he thinks so. After going to Zander’s party, I was afraid he’d think our get-togethers were hideously dull.

  I start the car and back out of the driveway. “I hope Matt had fun too.”

  “Matt has fun everywhere.”

  No kidding. I remember the way he smiled at Alyssa, how he jumped to help her before anyone else had the chance. “Is he always like that? So flirty?”

  His head snaps toward me. “Did he flirt with you? I’ll kill him.”

  “No. No.” We reach an intersection and I flick on my right blinker. “With Alyssa.”

  “Oh.” He relaxes against the seat. “Figures. She’s exactly his type. Do you think they’d . . . ?”

  “No,” I say again, firmly. “She doesn’t date, and Dawson’s in love with her.”

  I see him wince out of the corner of my eye. “Man, that sucks. I’ll make sure Matt backs off, then.”

  “Probably a good idea.” I start to say something else when the flash of lights ahead distracts me. Several police cars are parked along the road leading into Birch Grove. My heart thumps. I’ve been wary of cops ever since I faced one down at the mall security office. “What’s going on over there?”

  Eli leans closer to the windshield and surveys the scene. “Spot check,” he announces. “They set up there every few months. Trying to catch drunk drivers, I think.”

  I’m definitely not drunk, and I haven’t done anything wrong tonight, but still. My palms break out into a sweat as I stop the car beside an officer standing on the road. She motions for me to roll down my window, which I do with a shaking hand.

  “Where you heading?” she asks, pointing her heavy-duty flashlight into the car.

  She’s tall with a firm, no-nonsense air and I resist the urge to cower. Instead, I nod toward Eli and say, “His house.” Not a total lie, since I’ll eventually drop him off there.

  “Have you guys had anything to drink tonight?”

  “No, Officer.” I squint up at her, debating on whether to smile. She must notice how jumpy I am, because she asks to see my license and registration.

  Eli grabs the registration out of the glove compartment for me while I dig out my wallet. After she’s studied everything under her flashlight beam, her stoic expression relaxes and she waves us on. I’m so freaked out that it takes me a second to remember how to drive.

  “Are you okay?” Eli asks as we move past the red-and-blue glare.

  I let out a jagged breath. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Were you worried that she’d confiscate your penguin?”

  My leg jerks, and I almost smash into the car in front of us. I hit the brake and glance over to see him holding the tiny penguin statue I stole from Zander’s house last weekend. I tossed it in the glove compartment after it fell out of my purse during my drive to work the other day, and I’d totally forgotten it was still there.

  “Um, can you put that back?” I ask. I don’t like seeing it in his hand. What if he recognizes it? But no, Eli has never even been in that room. He’d never figure out where it came from. There are probably a million things in that giant house that no one would ever miss. Eli’s house too, though I refuse to let my mind go there.

  “Sure thing.” He puts the penguin back without comment and shuts the compartment door behind it. I start breathing normally again, until I catch him watching me like he’s wondering about my sanity. “Are you sure you’re okay? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were a wanted criminal, on the run from the law.”

  My body goes cold. One of those things is right, at least. I force myself to smile at him. “Do I look like a criminal?”

  “Oh, yeah, totally,” he says, then laughs like the idea is too ridicul
ous to even joke about.

  I don’t laugh with him. If I didn’t know any better, he said. The thing is, he doesn’t know any better. In fact, when it comes down to it, he doesn’t really know me very well at all.

  Chapter Twenty

  “WHAT TIME DID YOU SAY THIS LEVI KID WAS PICKING you up?”

  I shake my head. My father is even worse with names than I am. “It’s Eli, and he said four o’clock.”

  Dad places his empty bottle of beer on the coffee table and rises from the couch with a groan. “I guess I should get dressed, then.”

  I examine his outfit of baggy pajama pants and wrinkled T-shirt and agree that he probably should. Sunday is the one day of the week that Dad allows himself to laze around and drink beer. He never has more than three, and he spaces them out throughout the day, a routine he’s been following for as long as I can remember.

  While he’s getting dressed, I rinse the beer bottle and put it in the recycling bin. Then I walk around the apartment for the tenth time in the past hour, making sure everything is tidy. When Eli insisted on picking me up for dinner at his house, I was hesitant. For one, I always like the idea of having my car in case I need to take off for whatever reason. Two, I figured Eli would want to pick me up at my actual door like a nice, polite date, which meant he’d see where I live. Not that I’m ashamed of it, but my tiny apartment is downright drab compared to his beautiful, ginormous house.

  “Don’t expect anything special,” I told him last night when I finally agreed to him coming over. “It’s just me and my dad, so we don’t need anything big or fancy.”

  “Morgan,” he replied with a tinge of exasperation, “do you honestly think I give a crap about what your apartment looks like? You could live in a cardboard box under an overpass and I’d still want to visit you.”

  I didn’t have any snappy comebacks for that.

  Dad emerges from his room wearing old shorts and a slightly less wrinkled T-shirt. Fergus darts ahead of him, his fur ruffled from sleeping in the laundry hamper for the past few hours. I have the urge to groom them both, but Eli will be here any minute.