He definitely had a funny way of showing it, giving my camera away, shutting me out of his life. And the thing is, I absolutely wanted Brendan to be happy. Just with me, not Sofia. And now I had no clue how to tell him how very wrong he was.
“Do you even like her?” I whispered, squeezing the lump in my throat to the side to get the words out.
“At first? I didn’t. Not really. But Dad wanted me to be nice to her. Give her whatever she wanted, you know? And I did it, because I can’t handle taking care of Mom all the time anymore. I can’t handle managing the house, and all of Julia’s stuff, when she’s supposed to be doing it. I really can’t.” His voice broke.
“So, yeah. I was nice to her. And I saw she was a little fake, and a little bitchy, yeah. But I wanted her to want to stay, so we hung out. You were with Vincent, and…then we started to talk. And she’s nice. Really.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nice enough to give my camera to? To take away the only thing at this whole school that gave me an escape, that made me happy? What the hell were you thinking?”
“What were you thinking, leaving it behind in Pamela’s? And after Vincent gave you that shiny new one? Why not?” Now his words were the ones that had a bite to them.
I crossed my arms over my chest. How could he be so freaking blind? Didn’t he know me at all? Any thought I’d had about telling him the truth about how I felt died a quick death. Because that wasn’t even the point anymore.
And then it hit me. Fine. He thought he was off the hook? Well I didn’t need him to take care of me anymore, whether that meant giving me a camera or anything else. I was strong enough to take care of myself.
“Gave it to me? Brendan, I was trying to teach him how to use it. It’s his. That’s why—”
“Why you were making out with him out on Mount Washington on Sunday? Yeah. Did you forget? I saw that.”
“Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing you have Sofia, so you don’t have to give a shit who I make out with.”
I walked five steps away from him, and then stopped dead in my tracks. Not looking at him, I said to the empty hallway, “That’s what you notice? Of all things about me, that’s the one thing you actually see?”
With that, I stalked all the way down the hall and out the school’s double doors, swiping whatever tears had rolled down my cheeks minutes ago away. I was surprised the heat rolling off my skin didn’t burn them off.
I raised my head and saw Vincent leaning against his car, head back, eyes closed, basking in the near-winter sun. But, for some weird reason, the only thing I wanted to was to get home, and not in the passenger seat of his car.
I ducked around the corner of the building and dialed Aunt Kristin on my cell, muttering “please pick up” into the speaker. When she finally answered, it was all I could do to ask her to come get me, and sink to sitting against the side of the building until she texted me that she was about to pull up.
to feel affection without fear or restraint
I loved Kristin so much. She drove me home, saw that I’d been crying, and didn’t say a word. She carried my bag into the house for me, and when we walked into the foyer, cocked her head toward the kitchen and asked, “Ice cream?” I nodded and followed her. We spent the next hour at the kitchen island, me sobbing into a half-gallon of mint chocolate chip and her rubbing my arm and listening. I told her all about Mathletes, and Brendan, and Vincent, and Brendan and Sofia.
Turned out she always knew I was in love with Brendan. Probably, everyone did.
“The thing is, honey,” she said, squeezing my hand, “boys are stupid. Especially high school boys.”
“You mean, it doesn’t end in high school?” I said.
She laughed. “Afraid not. Have you ever seen Uncle Bruce take out the trash unless I look him in the eye and ask him to do it? Even if there are three bags waiting by the door?”
“I guess not,” I laughed.
“So, the boys are stupid, which means you have to tell them exactly what you want. Exactly what you feel. It doesn’t mean we love them any less, unfortunately.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, moving my spoon to dig into the ice cream again.
“What about Vincent?” she asked.
“He is…very cute. And he really likes me. Like, a lot.”
“I can tell. I think probably anyone could. Do you like him?”
I knew I should like him. I knew everything about him was right. And I knew that when I closed my eyes and imagined kissing someone, no matter how much I wanted it to be, it still wasn’t Vincent. It was Brendan. Even after our fight in the hallway, he was still the guy I’d fallen in love with last year. It didn’t make sense, but even I couldn’t rationalize my daydreams.
Then I looked out the kitchen window to see Brendan pull up in his driveway, walk around to the passenger side, and open the door. He took Sofia’s hand and helped her out, slinging his arm around her shoulders as hers snaked around his waist. They walked through the front door like that and I felt like crying and throwing up in equal parts.
“I…I don’t know. You know what? I just don’t know. I think I need to get out of here for a little bit. Away from him.”
“Well, Thanksgiving is next week.” She shifted in her chair. “I know we’re supposed to host here, but I’m happy to drive up to Williamson for the week. Stay in a hotel, come in and help your mom with the cooking. She’s been missing you, I think. And since I’d be there, things wouldn’t be hectic for her. I could give her a call.”
I thought about that for a minute. Normally, going back to Williamson would fill me with dread. Thinking about running into Kaylie Mitchell, that bitch who initiated all the torture, at the grocery store, or even at the playground with the boys. At the worst of Project Bully Ashley, they were throwing eggs at my car as it passed, and knocking my grocery basket out of my hand. But it was Thanksgiving. And if I really wanted to, I could hole up in my room for the whole week. Read a book. Not talk to anyone. Not look at Brendan’s stupid smug house and watch him making out God knows where with my least favorite person in the universe. Not think about Mathletes. Get away from everything.
“Yeah, okay. I think that’d be good.”
“Okay. Want me to call her?”
Mom hadn’t done that much about the bullying, besides arrange for me to go to Aunt Kristin’s. I could tell it was just one more overwhelming thing on her already exhausted plate. Not that I blamed her, but we hadn’t been very close since then. I was in no emotional state to start calling her now.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be awesome. And…can I just stay home from school Monday and Tuesday?”
Ω
My phone rang about seven times on Saturday morning, all from Brendan. I didn’t care. Didn’t pick up, didn’t answer one of his million texts. I did talk to Vincent, but only for a few minutes and to tell him I was going home for Thanksgiving. He was predictably sweet, funny, and awesome.
God, why didn’t I like this kid more?
Aunt Kristin and Uncle Bruce were the most awesome people to go on a road trip with that you could imagine. Uncle Bruce liked a quiet drive because he said any noise distracted him, or something. Aunt Kristin liked to listen to old political speeches for work reference on her headphones, so I was free to do what I wanted. I spent the entire three and a half hour drive drowning in classical cello. Deep and mournful and beautiful, it was absolutely perfect for the waning autumn scenery flashing by my window.
Thank God, I didn’t see a soul as we drove through town. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. It was mostly farmland. But I had imagined a gauntlet of all the assholes from school lining the streets with insults to hurl at me as I passed through.
I was totally accosted by the triplets—Luke, Teddy, and Tess—when I walked in the house. And, for that moment, I totally loved it. Tess alternately clung to me and stared at me like I was a starlet. The boys jumped on me and screamed, “Love pile!” and I really didn’t mind all that much that they wrestled me
to the ground and messed up my hair. At the same time, I made a mental note to call them more often, and to further appreciate that my mom was plenty busy, even without all the stress my bullying brought into the mix. As much as I loved that fresh-baked bread smell that seemed to cling to every surface of the house even when it wasn’t baking day, and missed the view of sunrise, misty orange and blue against a tree line that stretched to eternity pretty much every morning, I knew that it was best for me to be in Squirrel Hill.
Ω
The second morning I was home, I sat with my mom at the breakfast table, before any of the triplets had really stirred from their rooms. For the first time in a long time, I felt profoundly glad that I was a morning person. I wondered if this was why my mom was one—a skill she had cultivated to spend some time with just her coffee and the misty farm sunrise. I totally understood.
We chatted about everything, Brendan and Vincent and Sofia. Photography, school. What I liked best about Pittsburgh. What I was thinking for college. Mom said she’d take me on a college visit. I smiled.
I heard the kids start stirring in the back of the house, and one by one they trickled in to the kitchen. “We miss you, you know,” she said, mussing Tess’s hair.
“I know.”
“And I think it’s best for you to be with Kristin and Bruce.”
“I know that too.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Mom said, with a heavy sigh, wiping one of the boys’ noses. “You were so…”
“Depressed?” I offered.
“Yes, though I hate to say that. It sounds like it was all about you. But it was this school, and this small town…”
“And the things asshole kids will do at a small school in a small town. I know. But…here’s the thing. All I learned was how to run away from my problems. How to duck and hide instead of fighting back.”
“Oh, honey. There wasn’t much fighting you could do.”
“I could have stuck it out,” I muttered, twisting my hands together. “I could have…”
“What? Gotten revenge?” Mom covered my hands with one of hers.
I knew she was right. Facing the thing that was keeping me down would have been a recipe for disaster at Williamson, where the bullying had started to approach violence.
“Sometimes I just wish I was the kind of person who knew how to stand up for herself.” I swallowed a lump back.
Mom squeezed my hands. “Well, then it’s up to you to learn when to back down and when to stand up for what you know is right. Moving was the right thing for you. School at WHS would have been horrible for you no matter what you did.”
I swallowed again. “I know. You’re right. Now I just need to learn not to run away from everything else that’s hard.” I sighed and looked around me. The kitchen window’s edges still had spray paint from where someone had scrawled “whore” across the front of my house. Even though the school district had paid for the repainting and the professional window cleaner, and suspended Kaylie, you could never completely get rid of the traces.
“But, you’re doing better, right? You’re here because you just wanted to come home. Right?”
I looked around the house. It was a disaster, and Mom sat there with bags under her eyes, her hands dry and cracked from doing so many dishes and laundry. She was probably counting down the years until the triplets started school. Until she could get a moment of peace and quiet to herself.
“Yeah. I just wanted to come home. Missed your cooking. Kristin’s always ordering out.” I smiled, covering her hand with mine. It wasn’t true. Kristin was a great cook. But even though this house was messy and chaotic, and it was way harder to relax here, it would still always be home. Mom would always be my mom.
She smiled. “You always wanted there to be more takeout places here.”
“Yeah, well, greasy pizza and bad Chinese is still greasy pizza and bad Chinese. But it’s nice to eat something that doesn’t come out of a carton every once in a while. They’re taking great care of me, but I miss you.”
Mom gave me a smile that looked grateful, and it was a really nice moment, until I heard a crash from the other room. Her head whipped around.
“Better take care of that,” I said, smiling.
a foolish precipitation
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving. The triplets had been out of school for three days in a row, and Mom and Kristin had cooked up a storm in the kitchen for hours. (This made Mom question to a small extent my insistence that Kristin didn’t cook, since she whipped up a mean cauliflower gratin from stuff she found hiding in the corners of the freezer, pantry, and fridge.)
The house was a total disaster. I was a complete disaster, too, and it felt wonderful. I’d rolled out of bed and pulled on yoga pants and an oversized turtleneck, piled my hair in a bun on top of my head, and swiped on some lip gloss to combat the dry air. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and Tess and I were recovering from a late lunch of pecan pie and mashed potatoes by snuggling on the couch and watching How to Train Your Dragon while the boys did the same by playing the ten thousandth game of football on our front lawn.
We were just making the requisite swooning noises over the scene where the two kids fly on the dragon for the first time when my phone buzzed against my hip. I pulled it out to see a text message from an area code I didn’t recognize.
First:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING. WHATCHA DOING?
Then, two seconds later,
(THIS IS VINCENT.)
Despite myself, I smiled. There was something about the familiarity of being home while texting with Vincent, or maybe being far away from Brendan, or maybe just living in a completely suspended reality, that made me one hundred percent comfortable.
I texted back:
NOTHING. BUMMING AROUND WITH BABY SIS.
Almost immediately, he replied:
GOOD. OKAY IF I STOP BY?
I made a strange choking-gasping sound and basically launched poor Tess off my lap when I jumped off the couch.
“Ow!” she whined. “Why’d you do that?”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s just….oh my God.” My hand flew up to my face and felt how greasy it was. “He’s coming? Over here? How is he here?” I texted the question to him and got no answer.
I buzzed with a weird nervous energy as I dashed up the stairs to pull on some jeans, splash some water on my face and swipe mascara on my lashes. I stood back from the mirror. I touched my fingertips to my lips and remembered that morning, just a week ago, on Mount Washington. I hadn’t been crazy about Vincent by a long shot, but his lips had felt so good on mine.
And my first thought when I got that text wasn’t how to get out of seeing Vincent, but how to look nice when I did.
I stood in front of the mirror, tugged the elastic tie out of my hair, then winced at how frizzy and misshapen my hair looked. I normally ironed it before school, and this was a disaster. I tied it back up again.
I checked my phone. Nothing from Vincent.
Then, a knock on the front door. Holy shit.
Holy. Shit.
I half skipped, half tumbled down the stairs to see Mom answering the door and Vincent’s dark honey-colored mop peering in. “Good evening, ma’am,” Vincent’s smooth voice said, “Is Ashley home?”
“You can call me Linda.” I heard the smile in Mom’s voice. Even she was charmed by Vincent. She turned around and called “Ashley!” but I was already standing at the door.
“Hey,” I said, surprised at the breathiness in my own voice.
“Hey.” He smiled. “Doing anything for dinner?”
“Not that I know of,” Mom chimed in. I turned around and she was grinning too. “Introduce me, maybe, Ashley?”
“Uh, yeah. This is Vincent.”
“Right. The Vincent you told me about.”
A triumphant smile spread across Vincent’s face, and he bounced a little. If I hadn’t known better, I’d say he was barely restraining himself from doing a victory dan
ce.
“So, can I take you out? I promise I’ll have you back before ten.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Let me just get my purse.” I ran upstairs, checked the mirror one more time, decided my ridiculously flushed cheeks did not need any blush, and sprayed on some perfume for good measure.
Ω
I climbed into the giant pickup truck Vincent was apparently driving around my hometown. “Nice ride,” I said.
He shrugged. “Just a rental.”
“Are you…I mean…how long are you here?” And what are you doing here?
“I was bored. Day after Thanksgiving and all. I was going to call you and see if you could hang out when Brendan told me you were here.”
“I don’t remember telling him that.”
“You didn’t, but you did tell Julia, and she told him.”
“And he told you.”
He nodded. “He was over this morning.”
Oh. He was over at the Cole house. The morning after Thanksgiving. Yeah, he and Sofia were definitely a Thing.
“Anyway, I missed you. So Brendan gave me your address and here I am. So…can we hang out?”
“Yeah, but won’t you be back kind of late?”
He shrugged again, like a three-hour trip to see a girl he wasn’t even officially dating was no big deal. “Got a hotel. I’m yours all night.”
“Vincent, I…”
“Oh, God. No. No, I didn’t mean it like that. I swear. I swear, Ashley. I just meant I don’t have to drive back at any particular time.”
I laughed. “Okay, I got it. Don’t freak out.”
“Okay. But you don’t freak out. Because I’ve got something I think you’ll like.”
He had hit cruising speed along the narrow winding country roads, and the cold gray sky against the last orange leaves holding out on the trees looked eerie and beautiful all at once. “Where are we going?”
Solving for Ex Page 17
