Love Like Crazy

by Megan Squires

  “You are shockingly refreshing, Eponine.”

  I’d feared he’d opened a tragedy when he plucked me from the bookcase, but this was turning into a downright comedy. What could he see that was refreshing in me? Other than the impromptu shower he just took in my bathroom, I couldn’t offer much in the way of refreshment. Even the jam that coated the bread had gone bad back when I was a freshman.

  “Eppie.”

  “What?” he asked, downing the last bite of his sandwich.

  “My friends call me Eppie.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “That I have a nickname?” I wondered aloud.

  “That you have friends.”

  I laughed.

  His eyes laughed. “I’d like to be your friend, Eppie.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, a teasing lilt to my voice. “Don’t tell me you’re a loner that sits in a dark basement all day playing video games with virtual people that have made-up names like DeathSquadron420 and PrinceLucifer. Because I honestly don’t have a whole lotta extra time to devote to being someone’s BFF right now.”

  “Right. Saving the canine population of Masonridge from utter turmoil is a full-time job.”

  “That part’s easy. It’s the high-school-student-slash-daughter turned mother-slash-trying-to-be-a-decent-human-being thing that takes up a good portion of my days.”

  “Then I’ll settle for your nights,” Lincoln quipped. His Adam’s apple danced up and down in his long throat. He really was exceptionally tall.

  “I’m seventeen.” Wow, that was fast. I surprised even myself with how quickly I threw up that barrier of age. It didn’t always work because some guys were into jailbait, but I didn’t take Lincoln for one of those guys, campervan aside.

  “Get your head out of the gutter, Eponine.”

  “I told you to call me Eppie,” I corrected.

  “So you’re saying I’m a friend?”

  Lincoln managed to spin me around in a full circle with his words, a tornado of double meaning and quick wit. Dizzied, I retorted, “Okay, friend. I’ll need dog food.”

  “I’ll bring some by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “And a collar and probably some tags.”

  “Consider it done.”

  We faced one another, a breakfast bar between us, but not much else.

  “You said you didn’t know how to take care of a dog, but look at you asking for help. Not everyone is able to do that.”

  “I’ve made that mistake before. The mistake of trying to do it all on my own,” I sighed.

  “And how’d that turn out for you?” he asked, head cocked, brown eyes slanted.

  I paused. So did Lincoln.

  “It ended with three broken ribs and a dad that drinks himself into oblivion every night.”

  Lincoln’s expression was a vacant front. Poker face.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow at 3:00. And the next day at 5:00.”

  I hung my head languidly before looking up from under my dark hair at this boy who I’d only met just a few short hours ago. “Thank you.” I felt like I owed him more than that, but for now, it was all I had.

  He shook his head and smiled widely. “It’s nothing.”

  FIVE

  “I’m so sorry, Mama,” I said, the lipped rim of the bowl pressing into my abdomen. The washing machine tumbled in the room next door and I could hear the cycle switching and the water swishing into the tub to rinse my bed sheets. “I didn’t mean to make a mess again.”

  “Sweet girl.” Mama pressed a warm palm to my cheek, cradling it almost. “You don’t ever have to apologize for getting sick.” Her celery green eyes sparkled as she shook her head. I loved how her red hair puffed out around her chin, the natural curls coiling the ends up just under her ears. She was so pretty, like a doll almost. Daddy said I wasn’t old enough to have one of those porcelain kinds because I’d probably break it, but I didn’t need one. I had Mama. “It’s my job to take care of you.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very good job,” I laughed, but my stomach muscles hadn’t recovered from the latest bout and the laughter only made them hurt more. Mama noticed. She was such a good Mama.

  “Lie down, sweetie.” With one hand at my back and the other on my shoulder, she helped me lower onto the twin mattress. I didn’t want her to go. I wound my arm through hers to tug her close so she could lie next to me. She smelled good, like roses. I took a really deep breath, like the ones you do with those Scratch and Sniff stickers. She even smelled so much better than those. “Believe me, it’s the best job in the world.”

  “To clean up throw up?” I made sure not to laugh again.

  “To look after my child.” Her face pressed against the pillow. Bringing her hand up to my hair, she dragged her manicured fingernails over my scalp. It felt so good and helped me relax. For a moment, I forgot about the twisting feeling in my tummy. “When you have a daughter someday, you’ll know exactly what I mean.”

  I closed my eyes and pulled my blankie over my shoulders. The chills kept sweeping through my body. I hated those.

  “Will you stay with me?”

  Mama’s smile looked so big this close up. “Of course, sweetie.”

  “For how long?”

  She continued playing with my hair, never once stopping, even when she spoke through her smile fixed on her lips. “I’ll be here for as long as you need me, Eppie.”

  I scooted closer into her. She was much warmer than my blankie. “I think I’ll always need you, Mama.”

  With her lips pressed to my forehead, she spoke softly, a promise that sounded like a prayer, “Then I’ll always be here for you, my sweet girl.”

  SIX

  Lincoln came by the next day just as he said he would, toting the stash of items I’d requested: three different types of dog food—the forty pound bags—a collar, and some tags.

  One selection of food was for large breed dogs, one was gluten-free, and the other was specially formulated for mature canines. There was a sad image of dog with a salt-and-pepper gray muzzle plastered on the front of the last one, like he was the AARP spokesperson of the canine world. Lincoln said he knew little about Herb, even less about the eating habits of dogs, which was the unfortunate case for me, too.

  So he decided to cover his bases, and we decided to keep them all, mixing our own cocktail of kibbles that Herb seemed to thoroughly enjoy. But 120 pounds of dog food wouldn’t fit in a simple storage container, so Lincoln went out later that evening to buy one of those metal trashcans like the kind Oscar the Grouch lived in to dump all the food into. Herb and I waited expectantly at the front bay window, him with a wagging tail and me with a racing heart, as Lincoln pulled into the driveway this time rather than against the curb.

  We made the mistake of emptying each dog food bag into the canister in the middle of the family room, and had to balance the garbage pail on its bottom rim in order to get it out onto the back patio, like rolling a tire on its side toward its destination.

  Lincoln was close to me as we maneuvered the can and navigated our way around Dad’s leather recliner and the end table stacked high with old copies of Field and Stream that didn’t serve as reading material anymore, but instead as canvases for the sweat rings of bottles and a snuffing place for the tired red embers of a used cigarette.

  Our hands brushed each time we rotated the garbage can. Eight times total, because I’d counted. The first time I wrote it off as accident, the second occurrence a lucky break, and the third and fourth as an intentional, but still innocent, gesture. By rotations five, six, seven, and eight, I felt like we should be making out on the couch.

  We watched Herb eat three bowls of our mixed-brand food out of a bent Marie Calendar’s pie tin I’d scrounged from the pantry, and we added a proper dog bowl to the list of his housewarming gifts.

  We sat on the kitchen barstools, and though our eyes were on the dog, everything else was focused on each other. Lincoln’s leg was two inches away, the tip of his shoe pressing into
the rubber tread of my Converse sneaker. His long thigh ran the length of mine, creating a triangle that didn’t quite meet up at the top, leaving a gap just by our knees. I leaned my right shoulder toward him for no other reason than the fact that I wanted to see how close I could get without pushing him away.

  We laughed when Herb finished off his meal with a burp bubbling out of his throat, and Lincoln suggested we cut tomorrow’s serving size in half, just to be sure that Herb kept it all down. I agreed and giggled, but since we’d been sitting in this precariously balanced pose, my arm brushed into his, and I know we both felt it, because the roll in my gut and the flash of his eyes matched, even though the reactions were different. It didn’t necessarily matter what form your impulses took, they were all felt the same.

  Lincoln left quickly after that. Said something about how he wasn’t even supposed to be here, but I knew the “here” in his speech didn’t necessarily mean my house. It was a word that could encompass so many things, from a moment in time to life as a whole. “Here” was relative.

  I wanted to know what Lincoln’s “here” was.

  The next day was Friday. I began my morning race to school like all other days, and managed to cross onto campus without becoming responsible for an injured creature. I counted that as a big win.

  Sam was already waiting for me with a toothy grin and a story when I lowered myself into the chilled metal seat in our chemistry lab. I slung the arms of my canvas tote over the back of my chair and then dropped my elbows onto the desk; fists balled up under my chin as I eagerly awaited her greeting.

  She always had good stories. Really good. For the most part, her life encompassed an excitement I wasn’t ever sure mine would achieve when it came to intimate interactions with the male gender. Plus, she was eighteen already, and for some reason, that one month difference seemed to matter so much. She was an adult, and even though I’d had to play that part for so many years already, my numbers didn’t match up just yet.

  Mr. McMillan was at the front of the room, scribbling some assignment on the blackboard. He was a man of tradition, even though the room was outfitted with enough technology to retire his pack of chalk. He was decidedly old school in the purest, most refreshing sense. I found that really endearing. His slim mustache, curled upward at the corners in a loop-de-loop, helped with that, too.

  “How’s Herb?” Sam’s hair was blue today, green yesterday. Tomorrow it would be indigo, Sunday violet. This week, Sam was working her way through the colors of the rainbow. I think she mentioned metallics for next week, but I couldn’t remember correctly. Whatever it was, it would be a statement. Everything was when it came to Sam. She was crazy that way, and I appreciated it so much.

  “He’s as good as one could expect for suddenly losing one fourth of his mobility.”

  She tilted her head back in laughter. Her slender neck was so pale, her skin like alabaster. She was the marbled beauty of Venus de Milo brought to life, but with arms and hands and an actual shirt draping over her upper body, though many times Sam didn’t even feel the need for that.

  That’s what I figured today’s gossip would be about. She’d gone out with that college boy again. The first time they had a two-hour make out session, complete with lots of clothes-covered groping in her pool house bedroom. Sam still had her Hello Kitty comforter from when she was a kid, and she’d told me that the guy—Brian I think his name was—called her “Kitty” throughout the whole thing. I found that creepy, but she apparently got off on stuff like that.

  “Ryan and I had sex,” she whispered matter-of-factly, and the first thing I noticed was that I’d had his name wrong. Ryan, not Brian. Did it make me weird that I was more focused on the semantics of things than on the fact that my best friend just admitted to sleeping with a guy she’d only known for just four days? And one she met at her court mandated, monthly community service down at the food bank at that? Sam had made some pretty decent-sized mistakes in her past, and though I didn’t know the details of all of her transgressions, I knew it was enough to make her cover herself in rainbows and drape herself in men, so I didn’t hold any of that against her.

  Mistakes weren’t measured on a sliding scale, I didn’t think. How did it go? All sin was equal or something all-encompassing like that? Some people covered their sins with prayer, others with distractions that hid them away so deep, you couldn’t detect them on the surface. I was still trying to figure out what to do with mine.

  The first warning bell dinged.

  “And how was it? The sex?” I whispered as I slid out my notebook and began transferring the information from the board onto the paper. The Periodic Table of the Elements. Lots of boxes with a couple numbers and letters squished into them. All I could think about was Breaking Bad. I wondered if Mr. McMillan had a little bit of Walter White in him. Now that would be something.

  Sam twirled a shiny blue strand of hair around her index finger and popped her gum loudly. She always had a pack of Chiclets in her backpack. Her dad owned the only candy shop in town, a small one over on the corner of Third Street and Maple, and it kept all of the sweets in these big wooden barrels like they’d been rescued from a pirate ship. Today it looked like Sam had separated each individual Chiclet by color, as I could only see faded red sugar each time she opened her mouth.

  Leaning closer like she didn’t want anyone else to hear, but loud enough that anyone within a six desk radius of us would be able to make it out clearly, she said, “Best thirty seconds of my life.”

  I’d never had sex before, but I assumed that was short.

  Chemistry lab flew by, as did my five other classes, making the school day feel pretty short, too. But time, like the meaning of the word here, was also relative.

  Those two hours before Lincoln was supposed to come over, though? Those dripped by like molasses, oozing down each minute in a slow, sticky tick-tock. That wasn’t relative. That was just a fact. Time practically stood still.

  Since it was the weekend, I didn’t have any homework to busy myself, and the English assignment due next Thursday on the symbolism of the Eggs in The Great Gatsby had been completed weeks ago. I’d even rewritten Sam’s paper after she’d shared her original thesis with me. Scrambled versus Over Easy wasn’t going to help her get any closer to graduating come June. I didn’t want to walk alone. Sure, there would be about a hundred of my other peers, but without Sam, I’d be alone.

  I wasn’t alone as I waited for Lincoln.

  Herb had been glued to my side as much as proximity and ability would allow since the day I brought him home. When I’d go upstairs, he’d wait at the bottom, one hind leg sitting, the other jutting out like it didn’t even belong on his body. He wouldn’t whine for me to come back, but would wait patiently. His blond feathered tail would swish against the carpet like a windshield wiper as I got closer. That tongue would hang out of his mouth, every once in a while dripping with an excited pant.

  I probably didn’t look too different as I waited for Lincoln, actually.

  I got excited about exactly three things in life: school, graduation (which, I realized, was an extension of school), and the apple fritters old Miss Ruby made down at the Golden Barn diner. I didn’t get the fritters much since I didn’t have a job. Dad was still scouting for one, but sometimes I’d meet Phil there for our sessions and he’d treat me to one and I’d forget about everything other than that donut. Just the first savory taste alone would get me to that happy place.

  Funny thing was, I also felt that way as I stood at the window, looking out for Lincoln’s camper. I didn’t even have a donut to keep my mind off of things.

  His vehicle rumbled into the drive at exactly 5:04. The two hours of waiting had been long. Those four extra, unexpected minutes were like going in reverse.

  When his door clicked open, I plastered myself to the wall, just outside of view from the window I’d been spying from. I could still see him, though, and he flipped his cap off, smoothed down his unruly hair, and fit it back to h
is head as he did an awkward skip-jog up to my doorstep. I heard two feet plant loudly on the other side, and my heart rammed against my ribs in response, my breath sputtering.

  I knew the knock was coming, but when it echoed through the door I still shot clear up to the ceiling. Counting one, two, three, I paused, and then grabbed the handle.

  “Eponine,” Lincoln smiled, all lazy and lopsided. There was an appearance of a dimple that I hadn’t noticed before. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Four minutes isn’t really late.” I just admitted to watching the clock as I waited for this guy. Super pathetic.

  Maybe he wouldn’t notice.

  He smiled again. Crap. He did.

  “I got caught up at the site and couldn’t cut out as early as I’d hoped.”

  Hoped. Did that mean he was hoping to get here earlier? Maybe my recent comparative essays made me prone to the analysis of syntax, but hoped was usually considered a good thing, right? That was universal, I was pretty sure.

  “Can I come in?”

  I hesitated in my movements, and so did he—matching me as I shadowed nervously right, then left. After doing that three times, Lincoln grabbed onto my shoulders and physically slid me to the right so he could pass through. He didn’t really need much room. He was crazy lanky.

  “You make a better door than a window, my dear.” Again with the smiling. Each time he did it, my stomach would tighten, like when you coughed and it contracted.

  “You know a lot about windows and doors?” I teased, but that was a stupid thing to say. My words were clumsy and my fingers were suddenly extra body parts that I had no idea what to do with. I clamped them into a fist and shoved them into the front pockets of my jeans. I was still in the entryway and Lincoln was now in the family room, hunkered down over Herb. I thought he was assessing his leg, but I couldn’t really tell. It looked sort of medical.

  “Matter of fact, I do. Part of the job.”

  “And what’s that?”