Home and Away

by Candice Montgomery

  Suddenly, I know with 100 percent certainty why I agreed to come. I came to meet my grandmother, this uninhibited version of her, different from the woman I met at dinner. The one that speaks with a soft emphasis on even the heaviest things, her voice going nasally before evening out. “You can have it back, if you want,” I say.

  She waves it away. “Why do I need a box like that if I have the milk for free?”

  “I mean, that’s not—Okay.”

  “I thought many times about sending the box. Wrapped it for sending and had gone so far as to write your name and address on it.”

  “And in the end?”

  “In the end, I did what I thought was best.”

  “For Merrick.”

  “For you, cherie. You seemed happy. Well loved and lacking for nothing. I didn’t think you needed anything or anyone else, even if we needed you.”

  God, if only this could be simple enough that I could take it all at face value. Right now her reasoning feels flimsy. She’s said it herself, she’s been protecting—babying—Merrick his entire life and continues to do so.

  Just … I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like enough yet. This particular wound, it hasn’t quite scabbed over. Though I get the feeling, just by the way she’s looking at me now, all eyes and pride and heart, that it could start healing pretty soon.

  In a rare moment of clarity Tristan might be proud of, I realize V was maybe a little desperate. For her family. For her son. For the granddaughter she thought she’d never know well enough to ask about the way her boyfriend treats her. There isn’t a malicious bone in her body and I don’t know how I ever imagined there was.

  “What do you want to know about Kai?” The soil feels good between my fingers. It’s cold, because the weather is just cold AF now. At least, for Los Angeles it is.

  “He’s kind to you?”

  A secret smile that belongs to Kai and Kai alone spreads across my lips. “Kai is, like, the nicest person I’ve ever met. Let alone the nicest boy.”

  “You date a lot of boys.”

  Is she asking, or …? “No. I’ve dated a few. I’m eighteen. These things happen.”

  Then she laughs. “True. I was a tart at your age.”

  “V!” I think my grandmother just called herself a slut.

  “It was France. It was the 1960s.” She pauses. Looks up from the echinacea she’s planting. “Honestly, that whole period is a little of a hazy.”

  “A blur,” I correct.

  She grunts. “But I was young once.”

  “You’re still young.”

  “Vous êtes un menteur.” I shrug.

  “Lies. You’re a cute little liar, my Tasia.”

  I am. It’s just one of those things …

  She reaches over and puts her cold, powder-soft hands on top of mine. “You have to pack this soil tight, for the Erica heath. Otherwise they’ll come right apart in the windy months.”

  I nod. And we plant in silence. And I glance over at her like I can’t drink her profile in fast enough. She’s gorgeous, and maybe she’s more than either of us know. Maybe she is more than just a white woman, a French woman, who’s chosen to give up her French connection. Maybe she’s a reservoir of power and potential. My grandmother is beautiful. Her hard gray eyes are the diamond of her person, a sophisticated contrast to the soft curve of her high, pillowy cheeks. It strikes me as so, so impossible that we are related on any level. That part of me is her. Part of me is delicate and part of me is a gale-force wind. Just like her.

  Maybe part of me is protective, too, the way she is. The longer I think about it, with cold soil between my fingers, the more I understand how and why she would work so hard to protect her son at any cost to me or herself. It’s what she does. It’s who she is. Strip her bare, and family is all she has. I’ve felt that way before—like the time we flew to Cannes a few years ago and every passenger in our first-class section eyed us like we might send the plane into a nosedive at any moment.

  After, V and I go inside to wash up. V brings me fancy, pretty-smelling honey soap and a matching lotion, and she washes my hands and forearms for me.

  I spot Pépé in the living room, reclined, doing the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle.

  V nods at me. Go. Make him yours, her eyes say.

  I walk over, hands pressed to my hips, and I glance down.

  His pen hovers over five across. “Athletic supporter.” Three letters. “Fan,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “The letters don’t match up.”

  I think again. The last two letters would have to be Es.

  “Tee,” I say.

  He writes it in, but says, “What is this? ‘Tee’?”

  I pull out my phone and Google a picture. “It’s, like, in golf …?”

  He nods. “Sit down. Aidez moi.”

  So I sit, and Pépé and I do the daily crossword. I stay until Merrick texts me that I need to be home by 10:00 p.m.

  As I gather my things to leave and head back to the garage apartment, I think about rituals. About promise and potential and staying power. I think about the way Mamma would undo my football braids after every game and about the way Kai puts them in now, how these two things started as basic practices, breezed past ritual, and now sit inside tradition.

  I think I maybe want that. To drink awful tea and plant in the garden with V and do the crossword with Pépé. I think I’d like to call that tradition someday.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  As Kai’s hair grows out, he tells me its texture has grown differently. It’s changed, he says. The weather changes, and with it, Kai’s look. Merrick brings home another girl and the only thing that stays the same is that I am still, somehow, angry at Mamma—though with time, maybe that means something different now.

  Another thing that doesn’t change is that I still hang out with Dahlia like she has the answers to all of life.

  We end up at the mall one Saturday and run into the drama teacher. His name is Joseph Goddard, and most of the students just call him plain old Goddard, even though he always tells us to call him Joe.

  Dahlia’s talking about a strapless bra she just got when I see him.

  “Oh, hey. It’s Goddard.”

  For this moment, he is her prey and she literally drags me toward him. “Joseph Goddard. In the mall. In the wild,” she says.

  “Dahlia,” he says, pleased. I can tell he’s pleased. His face says, I am pleased at this. “Taze,” he continues. He calls me Taze, and I have to say, I like it. I know once we’ve walked away and Dahlia and I gush about seeing him in the wild—that’s the phrase she and I will use when we tell people at school—I’m going to talk about how Joe Goddard called me by my very personal nickname.

  “What are you girls up to?”

  D shrugs. “Just browsing. I needed a new strapless.” She shrugs again like this is the kind of thing you can totally talk to your male teacher about. If she shrugs any more or any harder, she’s going to dislocate something.

  “A new strapless, huh? A strapless what?” But he knows what. Obviously he knows what.

  “A bra,” she whispers. They are having verbal sex in the middle of this very crowded, family-friendly establishment.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve always been a fan of that whole visible-bra-strap look.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” And he tilts his head toward me like an adorable puppy. He body checks me—full on scans my body from head to toe—then does this boyish smirk that is, I have to say, very appealing.

  But he is pathetic, I remind myself. And I am grossed out and appalled, but only because I think I’m supposed to be.

  After Dahlia makes up some excuse for why we have to leave, she laces her fingers with mine and we walk away like we’re too important to care about whether or not he wanted to continue to talk.

  I think about that encounter for the rest of our mall trip. What made the situation weird wasn’t that he’s our teacher, or that he’s thirty-e
ight and we’re eighteen. It was that he has been married for as long as we have been alive, and the most I know about commitment is that some of my friends have just recently given their first blowjobs to boys who would never speak to any of us again.

  I wonder if Mamma had thoughts like this about Merrick.

  I know immediately that it’s something I want to talk to her about, which is great because I happen to have Tristan’s list in the back pocket of my shorts.

  GAME 6 – EL CAMINO REAL VS. BIRMINGHAM PATRIOTS

  Homecoming is a week after my mall trip with Dahlia.

  Friday’s game is comical.

  Like, ECR isn’t known for its football prowess. We’re not over here breeding future NFL players. Right out the gate—the other team fumbles.

  They pull their running back and swap him with another. Poor guy. We spend the entire half cracking jokes at his expense. It should’ve been an incredibly sweet gain. Instead, it puts their offense in a huge hole.

  The second half isn’t much better. They opt for an onside kick, which, if you ask me and the scoreboard, is a mistake, given the Birmingham Patriots still have plenty of time to get a stop and get the ball back—probably with a better field position. Every time we pass the Birmingham bench, I hear a few curses from their coaches. I revel in it, knowing how much the desperation to win this thing has started to bleed into their play calling.

  At the final whistle, I walk into the locker room after one last glance at the scoreboard.

  Final: 38–8, El Camino Real.

  For all the games for her to miss—I wish my Mamma could’ve been there.

  Saturday, my mood’s on a figurative upper. I expect Kai to show up to Merrick’s dressed outrageously. He doesn’t. When I asked him if he wanted to know what color my dress is, he laughed and said no.

  Which makes sense, since he showed up wearing all black. Black slacks—fitted. Black button down—also fitted. Black tie, black wingtips. The one thing that he does deviate on is the thin gold chain hanging from the hoop in his nose to the diamond in his right ear.

  Merrick does not hassle us for photos the way Mamma would have. But Emily is here and she does. Slim, too. She does her job as my best friend and takes “candid” photos of Kai and me being cute together.

  Him kissing my cheek, me staring into the camera.

  A photo of us from behind as we hold hands.

  Couples show up slowly. Dahlia and Scott first. Then Victory and Sam, who can’t keep their hands off each other, which excites me on some pretty ridiculous levels. Cole and a boy whose name I don’t know. I don’t stress about it, because before I get a chance, Kai looks me in the eye, smiles, and shakes his head, a reprimand that says, You and me, remember? Drop it. So I do.

  Guy from football is there with his date Kayla, who tells us, vehemently, not to call her Kayla, but KK instead, so we do.

  Adrian bear-hugs me and then introduces me to his date, Lyssa, a tiny Japanese enby with silvery hair styled like Rufio’s from Peter Pan.

  Chasia is the cheer captain who I’ve asked several times to redo up my French braids during football. They’re the only one going solo since they broke up with their partner two weeks ago: “I’m not talking about it, but singlehood looks best on me, is all I’m saying.”

  So we take them at their word and then all pile into the Hummer limo, which we all say is trashy—because it is—but the funny thing is that we’re all a little bit excited about it, too.

  The night is good.

  The music is good because the DJ is good. The decorations are cool, even though we’ll never admit it, because our theme is Steampunk—suggested by one of our nerd teachers or the nerd dean or the nerd-something. The punch is, much to the chagrin of many, not spiked. But we all take shots out of Adrian’s flask before we go inside a broom closet that smells like Cheetos. And Sam, Dahlia, Lyssa, Guy, and Kai and I all take turns pulling hits off the pipe that Dahlia pulls out of her black clutch.

  The only stain on the night is that toward the end of it, our group makes its way to the bathrooms to check makeup and help each other carefully out of our dresses and tights to pee.

  Shortly after, all the football players are called onto the stage to be lauded for our Homecoming game efforts. When they call Cole’s name first, he’s nowhere to be found.

  This whole charade is ridiculous. I mean, we won because the Patriots kinda sucked, so although the win feels pretty stellar, the celebration around it feels a little forced. It’s all hilarious because most of us are either tipsy or high as hell, or some mixture of the two in a cross-fade cocktail.

  As we’re all coming off the stage, I halt. Cole and Kai are talking. Though, it looks like more than just a casual discussion. It looks like they’re disagreeing. It looks like they’re having an intimate argument.

  Kai leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, and Cole leans into Kai’s personal space from right in front of him.

  Kai uses small gestures to discount or reduce whatever Cole is saying to something insignificant. That’s Kai. He’s a total Scorpio if ever I’ve seen one.

  Cole grips his red hair repeatedly and then throws his arms out wide. At one point, he grabs Kai’s shoulder and I watch his mouth slowly form the word please.

  “They used to have these little spats so often,” Dahlia says from behind me. “Like, before you. It didn’t matter who Kai was with. You can’t keep them—”

  “Why are you doing this?” I spin on her, feeling the fabric of my dress kiss the top of my knees as it moves with me.

  Dahlia holds her hands up. “I’m just saying. Look, don’t be mad, okay? I’m really trying to just give you a heads-up. I step back whenever they get like this, because Kai can’t say no to him. So if I ever wanted to keep him on any level, I had to let him figure out what he wanted. And since we never labeled our thing—”

  “You never told him you wanted exclusivity,” I say.

  She nods, shrugs.

  “But you did want it.”

  She doesn’t speak.

  Kai’s chin lifts and his gaze touches mine. Cole still stands beside him, but he’s facing away, toward the wall, arms around himself.

  I nod toward the exit and Kai follows me outside, leaving Cole. The feeling I get, seeing Cole alone … it makes my teeth itch.

  When I feel Kai approaching, I turn, swallow, and try to focus.

  But it’s impossible to focus with love in your throat.

  My arms come around his neck and I don’t give him a chance to say anything before I whisper, “You’re my boyfriend.”

  His hands find my hips. “Taze. Listen. In there—”

  I shake my head. “You’re my boyfriend. And I’m your girlfriend.” My one good thing. I promise to be honest with him the way he’s been so honest with me. I can do that, at the very least.

  I drag my lips back and forth across his cheek and Kai pulls me flush against him.

  “I’m your boyfriend,” he says.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  We spend the night, all of us, at KK’s house. Her parents’ bedroom is downstairs, so we have the entire upper level to ourselves and I don’t even know what kind of parents would let their teenage daughter have a coed sleepover after a late-night dance, but here I am wondering how best to slip them a copy of Holistic Parenting magazine.

  We hurry through the upstairs portion of the house in pairs, trying to find some private space. Kai and I end up in a guest bedroom that’s been turned into an office. It’s smaller than a kidney bean in here. Half the size of my room at Merrick’s. A quarter size of my bedroom back home. The rest of them who don’t find bedrooms end up in walk-in closets and guest bathrooms.

  Still, Kai and I have a pallet of five blankets and as many pillows, all of which smell like somebody’s grandma’s oatmeal cookies.

  “Are you sure?” he says. “You’ve been drinking. You smoked part of that bowl.”

  “Are you asking me if I’m sure I want to have sex with y
ou, or if I want to do it in here?”

  “Both.”

  “I want to have sex with you, even if it’s in this straitjacket of a room. You’re not sober either. Do you want to?”

  “Y-yes. Yeah—I-I’m mostly sober. Yes, I want to.”

  “Okay. So do the sex.” I shrug. Jesus Christ, Tasia. What?

  “Merrick would kill me.”

  “Oh my God, Kai, don’t talk about my dad when—”

  “When we’re about to do the sex?”

  I collapse facefirst into the oatmeal pillows, but not before I manage to throw an embroidered one at Kai.

  It takes us longer than it probably should to decide if I would be the one to remove my clothing or if he should. After we each present our defense on it, with counterpoints, he helps me take my dress off and it is easily one of the most awkward moments of my life. I’m pretty sure he’s just broken my zipper. We do his together which, again, awkward.

  The last thing I remove from him is the chain connecting his piercings, slowly.

  “That didn’t have to take you twenty minutes,” Kai laughs.

  “Shut up, asshole! Neither did you breaking my dress zipper.” I punch him good, right in the arm, and he laughs at me again, cringing like I actually hurt him.

  “That hurt.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “It did,” he insists. “Kiss it better.”

  With a smirk, I do. I kiss up his elbow, to the space I punched, around the rounded apple of his shoulder, and then I press a straight line of kisses to his neck.

  And then we are kissing each other. We’re kissing so much and so long, my mouth hurts. But it feels good and I never want to stop, but we do so that Kai can grab his Sweet Mint eos to press first against my fuller lips, then a swipe across his.

  I smile.

  He smiles.

  He removes my bra, my panties, his briefs, and then he guides my hand, slow, slow, slowly, to his dick.

  I don’t look. I can’t. I’m not that bold yet.

  He laughs and hisses when I squeeze too tight, so he helps me readjust my grip and I stroke him slow, and—after a moment—I stroke him surely.