Regretting You

by Hoover, Colleen

  I don’t want to interrupt the moment. It’s heartwarming, which is odd, since I was so full of anger just minutes before. But I can see in Jonah’s expression that he realizes he can’t just walk away from Elijah. No matter who fathered him, Jonah has raised him. Jonah is the one Elijah knows and loves. I’m happy that Jonah didn’t make my worst fears come true.

  I walk to my bedroom and give them a moment while I repack Elijah’s diaper bag. When I return to the living room, Jonah hasn’t moved. He’s still cradling him as if he can’t apologize enough to Elijah. As if Elijah even understands what happened.

  Jonah glances up, and we make eye contact. As much relief as I feel right now from knowing his love for Elijah overpowers any DNA they do or don’t share, I’m still a little pissed that it took him almost four days to come to his senses.

  “If you abandon him again, I’m filing for custody.”

  Without wasting a second, Jonah crosses the room and wraps an arm around me, tucking my head under his chin. “I’m sorry, Morgan. I don’t know what I was thinking.” His voice is desperate, as if I might not forgive him. “I’m so sorry.”

  The thing is . . . I don’t even blame him.

  If Chris and Jenny weren’t already dead, I’d kill them for doing this to Jonah. It’s all I’ve been able to think about for the past few days. Jenny had to know there was a chance Chris could be Jonah’s father. And if Jenny knew, Chris knew. I’ve asked myself why they would allow Jonah to think for one second that he fathered a child that wasn’t his. The only reason I can come up with isn’t good enough.

  I believe they kept it a secret because they were afraid of the fallout the truth would bring. Clara would have never forgiven them. I think Jenny and Chris would have done anything in their power to keep the truth from Clara. Even if that meant pulling Jonah into the lie.

  For Clara’s sake, I’m relieved they did such a good job of hiding it.

  But on Jonah’s behalf—and Elijah’s—I’m livid.

  Which is why I don’t say anything else to Jonah to make him feel guilty. He needed time to adjust to such traumatic news. He doesn’t need to feel guilty. He’s back and he’s remorseful, and that’s all that matters right now.

  Jonah is still clinging to me, still apologizing, as if I need more of an apology than Elijah. I don’t. I understand completely. I’m just relieved to know that Elijah won’t have to grow up without a father. That was my biggest concern.

  I pull away from Jonah and hand him Elijah’s diaper bag. “There’s a load of his onesies in the dryer. You can come get them later this week.”

  “Thank you,” he says. He kisses Elijah on the forehead again and stares at him for a moment before going to leave. I follow them across the living room. When Jonah reaches the front door, he turns around and says it again, somehow with even more conviction. “Thank you.”

  I shake my head. “It’s okay, Jonah. Really.”

  When the door closes, I fall onto the couch with relief. I don’t think I’ve ever been this exhausted. From life. From death. From everything.

  I wake up an hour later in the same position when Clara finally returns home.

  Without diapers.

  I rub sleep from my eyes, wondering where she’s been if she wasn’t out getting diapers like I asked her to. As if having an infant all week wasn’t exhausting enough, having a teenager who decided to start her rebellious period on the day of her father’s funeral takes the cake.

  I follow her into the kitchen. She opens the refrigerator, and I’m behind her, trying to see if she smells like weed again. She doesn’t, but nowadays they all eat those gummies. It’s easier to hide.

  Clara looks at me over her shoulder with a raised brow. “Did you just sniff me?”

  “Where have you been? You were supposed to be out getting diapers.”

  “Is Elijah still here?”

  “No. Jonah came and got him.”

  She sidesteps around me. “Then we don’t need diapers.” She pulls the diaper money out of her pocket and sets it on the counter. She heads for the kitchen door, but I’ve been way too lenient on her. She’s sixteen. I have a right to know where she’s been.

  I block her from leaving the kitchen. “Were you with that guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy who got you high at your father’s funeral.”

  “I thought we were past this. And no.”

  She tries to step around me again, but I stay in front of her, still blocking the door. “You can’t see him anymore.”

  “Uh. I’m not. And even if I were, he’s not a bad guy. Can I please go to my room now?”

  “After you tell me where you’ve been.”

  She throws her hands up in defeat. “I was cleaning Jonah’s house! Why do you automatically assume the worst?”

  I feel like she’s lying to me. Why would she be cleaning Jonah’s house?

  “Check the app if you don’t believe me. Call Jonah.” She squeezes past me and pushes open the kitchen door.

  I guess I could have checked the app. I just feel like, even with the app, I don’t know what she’s up to. Her app said she was at the movie theater the day of Chris’s funeral, but it certainly didn’t tell me she was doing drugs while she was there. I feel like the app is useless at this point.

  I should probably just cancel it because it costs money. But Chris is the one who subscribed us to the app, and Chris’s phone probably got smashed in the wreck. It wasn’t in the box of belongings they gave us from Jenny’s car.

  I wouldn’t know the password to his phone even if I did find it. That should have been my first clue that he was hiding so many things from me. But who needs clues when you don’t even realize you’re supposed to be playing detective? I never even suspected anything was amiss.

  Here I go again.

  I kind of wish Elijah were still here. He kept my mind preoccupied. I didn’t have to think about what Jenny and Chris did when every minute was consumed by Elijah. Jonah is lucky in that regard. Elijah will probably keep him so busy and exhausted that his brain will have time for little else.

  I’ll pour myself some wine. Maybe take a bubble bath. That might help.

  Clara stormed out of here a good thirty seconds ago, but the kitchen door is still swinging back and forth. I hold it with my hand, then stare at the back of my hand, my palm pressed flat against the door. I fixate on my wedding ring. Chris gave me this one for our tenth wedding anniversary. It replaced the gold band he bought me when we were teenagers.

  Jenny helped Chris pick this one out.

  Was their affair happening way back then?

  For the first time since the day I put on this ring, I feel the urge to get it off me. I slip it off my finger and throw it at the door. I don’t know where it lands, and I don’t care.

  I push the kitchen door open and go to the garage in search of something that can take care of at least one problem in my life.

  I really want a machete, or an ax, but all I find is a hammer. I take it back to the kitchen with me to take care of this damn door once and for all.

  I swing the hammer at the door. It makes a nice dent.

  I swing at it again, wondering why I didn’t just try to take the door off the hinges. Maybe I just really needed something to take out my aggression on.

  I hit the door in the same spot, over and over, until the wood begins to chip. Eventually, a hole begins to form, and I can see from the kitchen into the living room. It feels good. That kind of worries me.

  I keep hacking away, though. Every time I swing at the door, the door swings away from me. I swing again when it comes back. My hammer and I fall into a rhythm with the door until there’s at least a twelve-inch hole.

  I put all my strength behind the next swing, but the hammer gets stuck in the wood and slips out of my hands. When the door swings back toward me, I stop it with my foot. I can see Clara through the hole in the door. She’s standing in the living room, staring at me.

  She look
s bewildered.

  My hands are on my hips now. I’m breathing heavily from the physical exertion this hole took to make. I wipe sweat from my forehead.

  “You have officially lost your mind,” Clara says. “I’d be better off as a homeless runaway.”

  I push at the door, holding it open with my hand. If she really thinks it’s so bad, being here with me . . . “Run away, then, Clara,” I say flatly.

  She shakes her head, as if I’m the disappointing one, then walks back to her bedroom.

  “That’s not the way to the front door!” I yell.

  She slams her bedroom door, and it only takes three seconds for me to regret yelling at her. If she’s anything like I was at that age—which she is—she’s probably packing a bag and is about to climb out her window.

  I wasn’t serious. I’m just frustrated. I need to stop taking it out on her, but her attitude with me is making her an easy target.

  I go to her bedroom and open her door. She’s not packing a bag. She’s just lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Crying.

  My heart clenches with guilt. I feel terrible for snapping at her. I sit down on her bed and run an apologetic hand over her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t really want you to run away.”

  Clara rolls over dramatically and faces the other direction. She pulls a pillow to her chest. “Get some sleep, Mom. Please.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CLARA

  I finished my first-ever full cup of coffee about two weeks ago, the morning after my mother knocked a random hole in our kitchen door. Since then, I’ve discovered the one thing that just might save me from my monthlong depression.

  Starbucks.

  Not that I’ve never been to a Starbucks before. I’ve just always been that teenager who orders tea at coffee shops. But now that I know what it’s like to be sleep deprived, I’ve been through almost every drink on the menu and know exactly which one is my favorite. The classic Venti Caramel Macchiato, no substitutions.

  I take my drink to an empty corner table, one that I’ve sat at almost daily for the last two weeks. When I’m not at Lexie’s house after school, I’m here. Things have gotten so tense at home I don’t even want to be there. My curfew on school nights is ten, as long as I don’t have homework. My curfew on weekends is midnight. Suffice it to say, I haven’t been home before ten p.m. since the last argument my mother and I got into.

  If she’s not demanding to know where I am and who I’m with or sniffing me for signs of drug use, she’s moping around the house, knocking random holes in the doors.

  And then there’s everything we haven’t talked about. The fact that I was texting Jenny when they died. And I know where she and Jonah went when they left the house together—the Langford. I saw it on the app. I asked her that night where they’d gone, but she wouldn’t tell me. If I brought it up to her now, I have a feeling she’d lie to me.

  Things just feel uneven with her. We aren’t on the same page. We don’t know how to talk to each other now that Dad and Jenny are gone.

  Or maybe it’s me. I don’t know. I just know I can’t take being in our house right now. I hate the feeling I get when I’m there. It feels weird without my father there, and I’m scared it’ll never go back to the way it used to be. It used to feel like home. Now it feels like an institution, and my mom and I are the only patients.

  It’s sad that I feel more comfortable at Starbucks than in my own home. Lexie works at Taco Bell five days a week, and tonight she’s back at it, so I get comfortable in my quiet little corner of Caffeine Land and open a book.

  I’m only a few pages in when my phone vibrates on the table. I flip it over to look at the new Instagram notification.

  Miller Adams started following you.

  I stare at the notification, allowing the meaning of it to soak in for a moment. Did Shelby break up with him again? Is this his way of getting back at her?

  I feel a smile attempting to form on my lips, but I bite it back because I’m kind of getting whiplash. Get in my truck. Get out of my truck. Let’s be friends on Instagram. No, let’s not be friends. Okay, yeah, let’s be friends.

  I won’t allow myself to feel happy about this until I know what the hell he’s up to. I open our Instagram messages, since I deleted his number, and I send him one.

  Me: Get your heart broken again?

  Miller: I think I did the breaking this time.

  There’s no biting back my smile this time. It’s too big to fight.

  Miller: What are you doing right now?

  Me: Nothing.

  Miller: Can I come over?

  My house is the last place I want him.

  Me: Meet me at Starbucks.

  Miller: On my way.

  I set my phone down and pick up my book again, but I know I won’t be able to concentrate on the words while I wait for him. It doesn’t matter, though, because five seconds later, Miller is pulling an empty chair over to my table. He sits, straddling the chair backward. I pull my book to my chest and stare at him.

  “You were already here?”

  He grins. “I was standing in line to get coffee when I messaged you.”

  Which means he probably saw me grinning like an idiot. “That feels like an invasion of privacy.”

  “It’s not my fault you’re severely unaware of your surroundings.”

  He’s right. When I’m here, I don’t have a clue what’s going on around me. Sometimes I sit here for two hours reading, and when I close the book, I’m surprised to look up and see that I’m not at home.

  I slide the book into my bag and take a sip of my coffee. Then I lean back in my chair, my gaze rolling over Miller. He looks better. Not so heartbroken this time. He actually looks content, but I have no idea how long that’ll last before he realizes how much he misses Shelby and unfollows me on Instagram again.

  “I don’t know how I feel about being your backup plan every time things go south with your girlfriend.”

  He smiles gently. “You aren’t a backup plan. I like talking to you. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore, so I no longer feel guilty talking to you.”

  “That’s essentially what a backup plan is. Priority doesn’t work out . . . move on to second tier.”

  A barista calls Miller’s name, but he stares at me for five long seconds before he scoots his chair away from the table and goes to retrieve his coffee. When he comes back, he doesn’t revisit the conversation. He changes the subject entirely.

  “Feel like going for a ride?” He takes a sip of his coffee, and I have no idea how something as simple as a cute guy sipping coffee could be appealing, but it is, so I grab my bag and stand up.

  “Sure.”

  Aside from a few dates I went on with a guy named Aaron last year without my parents’ permission, I’ve never been on a date with anyone else. Not that I consider whatever this is we’re doing an actual date, but I can’t help but compare it to what little experience I’ve had in the past. My parents have been extremely overprotective, so I never even bothered asking if I could go out with a guy. The rule has always been that I could date at sixteen, but I’ve been sixteen for almost a whole year and have avoided it. The idea of bringing a guy into my house to meet my parents always sounded dreadful, so if I wanted to hang out with a guy, I usually just did it behind their backs with Lexie’s help.

  I do know enough to know that silence is your enemy on dates. You try to fill that silence by asking trivial questions that no one really wants to answer, and then, if you can get past the terrible answers, you might get to make out at the end of the night.

  But whatever this is between me and Miller is not a date. Not even close. We haven’t said one word to each other since we got into his truck, even though that was over half an hour ago. He isn’t forcing me to answer questions I don’t want to be asked, and I’m not forcing every ounce of information out of him about his breakup with Shelby. It’s just two people, listening to music, enjoying the silence.

  I love it. I
t might even beat my cozy corner in Starbucks.

  “This was Gramps’s truck,” Miller says, breaking our comfortable silence. But I’m not annoyed by the break. I’ve actually been wondering why he drives such an old truck and if there’s a story behind it. “He bought it brand new when he was twenty-five. Drove it his whole life.”

  “How many miles are on it?”

  “There were just over two hundred thousand before it was gutted and everything was replaced. Now there are . . .” He lifts his hand to look at the dash behind his steering wheel. “Nineteen thousand, two hundred and twelve.”

  “Does he still drive it?”

  Miller shakes his head. “No. He’s not in any shape to drive.”

  “He seemed like he was in pretty good shape to me.”

  Miller scratches his jaw. “He has cancer. The doctors are giving him six months, tops.”

  That feels like a brutal punch to my gut, and I’ve only met the man once.

  “He likes to pretend it isn’t happening and that he’s fine. But I can tell he’s scared.”

  It makes me wonder more about Miller’s family. Like what his mother is like, and why my father seemed to hate his father so much.

  “Are the two of you very close?”

  Miller just nods. I can tell by his refusal to verbally answer that question that he’s going to take it hard when it does happen. That makes me sad for him.

  “You should write everything down.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

  “Write it all down. Everything you want to remember about him. You’ll be surprised how soon you start to forget everything.”

  Miller smiles at me appreciatively. “I will,” he says. “I promise. But I also have a camera in his face most of the time for that very reason.”

  I smile back and then stare out the window. That’s all that’s said between us until he pulls back into the Starbucks parking lot fifteen minutes later.

  I stretch my back and then my arms before unbuckling my seat belt. “Thank you. I needed that.”