by Mariah Dietz
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Leela jumps from the couch, and seconds before the bathroom door slams shut, I feel the tiniest bit relieved. Maybe she wasn’t rejecting me. She’s sick, and I’m being a selfish asshole worrying about my own feelings.
…Right?
12
Leela
I stare at my reflection and cringe. Throwing up again helped, but I still feel terrible, and look even worse. Minutes ago, Wes was mere inches from me, staring at the mascara staining my cheeks, my chapped lips, and face that looks like I applied a thin layer of foundation three shades lighter than my naturally light tone. And that doesn’t even cover my ponytail that’s moved to the far side of my head.
It’s not a look I would want anyone to see—even my family—let alone Wes. Taking a deep breath, I splash cool water on my face and proceed to wash the remnants of my makeup from last night away. I free my hair from the elastic and pull it into a top knot that helps make me look more human. I then rinse my mouth repeatedly in hopes that my breath won’t be rancid.
With the slight improvements to my appearance and pride, I find Wes in the kitchen. The room is spacious. The counters spanning the full length of one wall with an island as well. Everything is shiny and new and clean. I wonder if they find the same silverfish bugs that are in every cupboard in our house.
Wes begins to pull down bowls and utensils as I continue looking around at the fancy kitchen equipment, questioning if they’re all used or if Jamal’s right and rich people just own things as status symbols. Some accessories I don’t recognize, others I’m completely envious of. Foods could be diced, mixed, or shredded within seconds. The dishwasher alone gives me heart palpitations from envy.
“Can I help?” I ask.
Wes shakes his head. “Sit down. You should rest and drink something. You want some orange juice?”
I hate that his polite and simple question leaves me to once again compare our lives. Juice is another expense we rarely splurge on. “I can get it.”
He shakes his head. “Sit down.”
“So…” I begin. Sitting at the table, I work to stop staring at things while struggling not to throw up again.
He looks at me, cocking one eyebrow while reaching for the juice.
Guilt settles in my belly, adding to my discomfort. Maybe Jasmine’s right. Maybe I’m afraid Wes might be like Luna’s ex who distributed the nude photos she’d sent to him last year. “Are you from San Diego?”
He smiles, delivering a full glass of orange juice before turning back toward the bowl that he begins cracking eggs into. “A little south of here,” he says.
“Why are you smiling?”
He shakes his head. “You just don’t seem like the type to ask questions like that?”
“Questions like what?”
“The kind that will lead you to revealing things about yourself.”
I stare at him, unsure if it’s defensiveness I’m feeling or fear because he’s right.
“I’m from a town about seventy-five minutes south of here,” he adds.
“Do you still live there?” I ask. “Is that why you stay here so much?”
Wes raises the fork he’s using to beat the eggs. “That’s not how this game is played. It’s my turn now. Where do you live?”
“About an hour south of here,” I tell him, and then ask the question he avoided again, hoping he tells me ‘yes,’ so I know why he’s always over here.
He places some sausage into a heated pan, and smoke instantly billows as the meat snaps and hisses. Wes is calm and composed, revealing he’s done this before. He uses a spatula to break up the contents. “No. I have an apartment that’s like fifteen minutes from here.”
“With a roommate?” There has to be some reason he prefers being here.
He looks over at me, his eyebrows drawn with confusion that falls into a smirk. “What are you trying to Jedi-mind trick out of me?”
I hate that I find his words both hilarious and sexy. Granted, it’s Wes. Every time I see the hard planes of his jaw and his quick smile that steals not only my breath—but my thoughts—I’m reminded that he could be reading me the phone book and it would be sexy. But referencing my favorite series of all time makes the fan girl in me jump up and down while screaming ‘he’s perfect!’
“You’re a Star Wars fan?” I don’t know if he’ll hear it as a question or observation because my voice is too high with excitement that I’m failing to control.
“Describe fan?”
“You’ve watched the movies?”
He gives me the side-eye. “Aim a little higher. George Lucas would be insulted.”
I giggle, my laugh robust and loud like when I’m with Jasmine. Wes grins.
“Okay, you’re up three to one. It’s my turn.”
“You never answered if you’re a fan! I’m only up by one.”
“I had Star Wars themed birthday parties every single year until I was too old to have them.”
“To old to have a party or too old to have a themed party?” I ask.
Wes smirks, and I laugh once more. I love that his first reaction is to smile or laugh versus be offended or embarrassed. “Until my mom stopped putting together goodie bags and sending out invitations on my behalf.”
“So last year?”
He laughs again and the reaction has his eyes closing and smile widening, and I lose myself there, watching his happiness and feeling like I can literally experience it. “Tell me the truth,” he says. “How big of a Star Wars junkie are you?”
“When I was little, I wanted to marry Han Solo.”
Wes looks at me with rounded eyes. “Me too.”
We both laugh. He transfers the cooked sausage to a plate and then adds the egg mixture to the same skillet.
“Are you sure I can’t help?” I ask again, standing up. I grip the back of the chair for support because while I don’t feel dizzy any longer, I’m drained.
He shakes his head and leaves his position in front of the stove and pulls my chair out. “You just sit and keep telling me about you Star Wars addiction.”
There’s still a dull ache in my head, but I don’t care. I will endure it to spend more time with Wes. “I feel bad having you do all the work.”
He shakes his head. “It’s just a burrito.”
But it’s not. This moment is much larger than just breakfast, it’s the first time someone has cooked for me.
“Do you like to cook?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “Sometimes. I don’t know how to make a lot of things, but I have fun with it.”
“Did the bachelor life teach you?”
“Is that a roundabout way of asking if I can make anything besides top ramen and breakfast burritos?”
Smiling, I nod.
Wes chuckles. “Growing up I had a nanny named Marnie.” He shrugs and I can’t tell if it’s indifference or embarrassment that makes him turn away or simply the next step in his recipe. “She was an amazing cook, sometimes she let me help her.”
I smile.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“No. That smile is definitely something. Tell me.”
“It’s just funny because I had to learn to cook when I was young. I was often responsible for getting food ready for my younger sister and sometimes my older brother because he was too lazy.”
“I was an only child,” he tells me. “I always wished I had brothers and sisters.” A scoff leaves me before I can edit it, and Wes straightens. “I’m serious.”
“You haven’t met my siblings.”
“Did your brother go into medicine as well?”
Embarrassment creeps across my skin, heating my skin as I look away from Wes and take a sip of my orange juice. “Academics was never his strong suit.”
“He didn’t want to endure more school after college?”
“He didn’t even make it through high school,” I admit.
He stares at me. Shock is barely visible in his
eyes, but there’s definitely an underlying current of judgment, and it makes my eyes narrow as I pull my shoulders back.
“Sometimes, I feel the weight of my parents’ accomplishments on my shoulders. Like I have to graduate and do something great in order to live up to all the expectations,” he says, surprising me.
I know all about expectations.
I don’t know how we got here or why. Whether he’s sharing an admission with me or condemning mine. While I want to discover more of this topic with him and more of his experiences with expectations, now is the wrong time with my head still pounding and my patience thinning. I want to hear him laugh again—to enjoy the break this morning, because I know I’ll be paying for it once I get home.
“Do you really go running every day?” I ask.
Wes’s eyes turn bright, a happiness burning in them, one I hope is for me rather than the exercise. “Yup.”
I laugh before I can manage to ask my next question. “And it’s not because someone’s chasing you?”
His laughter joins mine and he shakes his head. “It just makes me feel better. In high school it was always about bulking up and conditioning, but now I just need the release. It helps me focus.”
Sighing, I watch him fill a tortilla. “Maybe I should try running.”
Wes walks over with two plates, delivering one in front of me. He sets the other plate across from me, and then heads back over to the fridge. He grabs salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and cheese. I could kiss him. There’s nothing I love more than toppings.
“What do you need a clearer mind about?” he asks.
“Isn’t it my turn to ask a question?”
“You just asked me if I go running every day, and then asked if people chase me. That’s two, plus I had some banked questions so…”
I roll my eyes, but his chuckle makes my lips break into a grin as I add toppings to the steaming contents of my burrito. “My sister,” I tell him. “She’s having a rough time.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s a tough age,” Wes says, and I wonder if he’s saying it to be polite because I can’t imagine any age being difficult for him. He’s so confident and easygoing. Everything just seems to roll off of him, and since learning he had a nanny growing up, I’m confident his pockets reach as deep as his friends.
I nod. I hated being seventeen. Aside from Jasmine, I didn’t have any friends. Troy had been in prison, and Dad fell through a roof at a job site where he wasn’t legally hired to work. In addition, my hips had started to widen, my breasts and butt both rounding, and for the first time in my life I was being noticed, and it wasn’t the kind of attention I either wanted nor knew how to respond to, making me self-conscious and even more of a loner. “What were you like at seventeen?” I ask.
Wes rubs his chin. It’s a gesture I’ve seen him do numerous times, so when his hand pulls back in the opposite direction, and his finger gently pulls his bottom lip, I’m waiting for it, staring at the movement. “Probably an asshole,” he admits. “My parents were always been gone a lot. By seventeen, I didn’t have a nanny and was alone too much, hanging out with a lot of people I probably shouldn’t have been.”
“Did you get in a lot of trouble?”
He tips his head back, and his eyes nearly close as he considers my question. “Not really. I mean, I was on a path to where I probably would have, but then Max and I became really good friends. All the shit I had started to care about—all the bullshit stuff that seems important in high school—mattered less.”
“Sounds like you two have quite the bromance.”
Wes laughs. “We do. Max is like my brother.”
His honesty makes me smile. “No, I get it. He helps to ground you. My best friend, Jasmine, does the same. I never have to worry about impressing her or being anything I’m not.”
“Exactly.” Wes nods. “What about you? What were you like at seventeen?”
I avoid telling him my mental recounts of seventeen, and summarize the time with one word, “Awkward.”
“I can’t imagine you awkward.”
Heat floods my face, thinking of last night and this morning. “Oh, shut up!”
“I’m serious!” he says.
“How about the past twelve hours?”
Wes shakes his head. “What’s causing your sister to have a rough time?”
I’ve always worried about Luna. I don’t know if it’s from watching Troy, make countless bad decisions or because my parents drilled into me that it was my responsibility to look out and care for her, but Luna has always been one of my top concerns.
“She’s just in a bad place right now. She wants to be cool and fit in, but she’s getting involved with bad things and worse people.”
Wes furrows his brow, his attention focused entirely on me. It’s as unnerving as it is enchanting and makes me wish I had some mascara and blush on or at least had access to a toothbrush. “Did something happen?”
I don’t know what Wes knows of the world outside of what sounds like his very privileged one, but I look at him and my filter seems to evaporate. “She’s been having issues at school.” My vague response only offers a fraction of the issues that she’s struggling with between her recent suspension, sneaking out, and some of the hateful words she’s been muttering.
“But, we should eat,” I tell him, motioning to our plates. “I have to hand it to you, these burritos look and smell really good.”
He grins, and reaches for some toppings that he begins adding to his burrito. “I told you.”
13
Wes
As soon as we finish our first burritos, Landon wanders into the kitchen. And like he does whenever he enters a room, he looks around, taking note of everything and everyone before proceeding to the coffee pot. “Morning,” he says, filling a mug.
“Hey.” My greeting ends there as I notice Leela dipping her face with embarrassment. I feel guilty, wishing I had considered this and taken her out for breakfast, but I doubt she would have wanted to do that either since she’s wearing the same clothes from last night. I know he isn’t judging her or me—and wouldn’t care if we had slept together, though he knows that isn’t the case. He came home last night and saw her passed out while I was watching SportsCenter. “There’s enough for everyone. Help yourself.”
Landon nods, and reaches for a plate. “Thanks, man.” He begins filling a tortilla and I look to Leela and place a hand on her knee.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed. They’re not going to pass judgement,” I whisper.
“I look like a sloppy drunk,” she whispers, her cheeks tinted pink.
“If you had been over last year, you wouldn’t be even a little worried about what you looked like.” She doesn’t understand. Can’t, because she didn’t see how many times Max drunk himself into a stupor, or the times Kendall and her sisters would return home from drinking too much and be giggling and slurring until they passed out. Even Ace had gotten plastered, and she was gone most of the year.
Landon sits beside me, his plate in his hand. He looks between us, clearly attempting to read the situation and if he should leave.
I nod in Leela’s direction. “I was telling her we’ve all had way worse nights than what she experienced last night.”
Leela frowns, shooting me a glare that expresses her anger clearer than if she were to yell.
Landon nods. “It’s true,” he says, releasing the grip on his plate. He leans forward to get toppings, unfazed by her unease now that he knows what it’s regarding.
“Want another?” I ask Leela, scooting back.
She shakes her head. “I should probably call and get a ride to my car.”
“I’ll take you.” I could eat two more breakfast burritos, but I grab our plates and head to the sink to wash them before depositing them into the dishwasher. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait a little longer for your hangover to pass?”
“That’s okay. I’m actual
ly feeling a lot better, and having everyone see me like this is only going to remind me that I was stupid. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get home so I can shower and change my clothes.”
Landon watches her, and for a moment, I wish I could read people as well as he can.
“Sure,” I say.
She stands and looks at the floor. I’m questioning if she’s feeling ashamed or afraid. “Was I wearing shoes when I got back here?”
Relief makes me smile. “Yeah, they’re by the couch.”
She sighs. “Thank God.”
When she disappears into the living room, I look to Landon, sensing his stare. “She’s hiding something,” he says quietly.
My heart drops. “What do you mean?”
He shakes his head. “Something’s off.”
“Because she got drunk?”
His face turns sour. “No, moron. Are you paying attention? She hides her face all the time. She’s constantly nervous. She wants to go home, but stared at my burrito like she could taste it. Something’s off.”
I consider his words, realizing I don’t want to read people like he does. I want to explain that the tactics he picked up from all of his military training shouldn’t be applied in everyday scenarios because they constantly lead him to believing that everyone is bad, when in reality, we all keep secrets. Our secrets don’t make us bad, they make us human. But Leela is mere feet away, and without the white noise of the TV or the others, I don’t want to risk her overhearing us. I knock my fist against the table twice, and then pat Landon on the shoulder as I pass behind him. “Catch you later, man,” I say, attempting to sound casual for both of our benefits.
I find Leela digging through her purse.
“Are you missing something?”
She looks up, eyes round with surprise. “No. I was just double checking that I had my keys and my phone.”
I slip on my flip-flops and head to the front door which I open for her.
