Everything (6 page)

“No, it’s okay. I know you’re just trying to help. Thank you for coming tonight, by the way.”

“You don’t have to thank me. You want me there, so I’m there.” He bent down to kiss my forehead as we headed for his TrailBlazer. Such a boy’s truck.

When we arrived at my parents’ house, it was just after seven o’clock. I barely got to the front door before it was yanked open by Aria with her Cheshire cat grin on her face.

“You brought Trev! Yay,” she said as she shot past me and ran into the big bear hug he always gave her.

“Hi to you too. I’m fine by the way,” I mumbled as I walked into the house.

“Oh, I just saw your lameness like three hours ago, and you’re still lame. I haven’t seen Trev in, like, forever!” she exclaimed as she still clung to him like a lobster as they walked into the house.

“It hasn’t been forever—more like a week,” he said as he gently disentangled himself from her and closed the front door. He was always on his super extra-best gentlemanly behavior when at my parents’ house.

“Well, however long it’s been, it’s been too long,” said Mom as she came in from the kitchen. “How are you, Trevor?”

“I’m good, Mrs. Harper,” he said, giving her a hug.

“Please, I have told you since you started dating my daughter to call me Ann. You may even call me Mom one day, who knows?” She gave him a wink.

“Mom,” Aria wailed. “Why would you jinx them like that? Oh my gosh, you’re so...” She put her head in her hands and shook it back and forth. “Your mom is so embarrassing,” she mouthed to me.

“She was your mom first,” I mouthed back.

“Only by four years,” Aria said, holding up four fingers.

“What are you girls talking about now?” Mom asked.

“Nothing,” we both said at the same time.

“I hate when you do that!” she said.

“Sorry,” we said at the same time, again.

“I give up,” she sighed and went into the kitchen.

That left us to go sit in the family room with Wally, who had been ignoring us so far by reading his paper.
 

When we sat down next to him, Trevor, bless his heart, actually spoke first. “Good evening, sir,” he said, extending his hand.

“Uuh,” my dad grunted, not bothering to look up from his paper.

“Hey, Dad,” I said.

“You’re late.”

And you’re a dick,
I thought to myself as I watched Trevor drop his hand limply to his side. “By like three minutes, and Mom said
around
seven not
at
seven, so...” I lagged .

“All I know is I am hungry and we had to wait for you, and you stroll in here being ungrateful for a meal that’s
free
,” he grunted out.

“Dad, I didn’t mean—” I started.

“Daddy,” Aria cut in, “you didn’t ask how my classes went today, grouchy pants.”

“Thanks,” I mouthed, shooting her a grateful look.

She shrugged it off. She was used to defusing our father-daughter “conversations,” especially when he was grouchy.

“I’m sorry, baby girl. How was your day? Do you like all your classes?” he asked her sweetly. He did a complete Jekyll and Hyde. If I wasn’t so used to it, I would have been suspicious and started looking in the basement for his laboratory.

As she proceeded to tell him about her day, he listened avidly, putting aside his paper and showing genuine interest. I was glad that out of the two of us, it was Aria who was getting his love and attention. I felt that my soul could handle rejection more than hers could. I had been at it longer, after all. She was sweet by nature, even as a child never taking adverse things well. When things got too much for her, she was known to have one of her “A-1 meltdowns,” where she would run away to some place of significance to her at the time or just become different, and usually I would be the only one who knew where to look or how to talk her back down, so to speak. She hasn’t had one of those since she was six and her pet hamster died. I had found her by her father’s grave, huddled in a ball crying with her hamster in a shoebox. She had wanted to bury the hamster with him so that the two would be together. That’s the kind of person she was.

“Dinner is ready, guys,” Mom said, breaking me from my reverie.

Dinner went without fail. Dad was his normal grouchy self to me and Trevor, then excused himself when he was done. Mom said he was just tired from working, but I knew better. He would rather eat dinner at Opal’s than with me. It was something I had come to accept. Truth was, it was better if I pretended that my family consisted of the three of us: me, Mom, and Aria.

Mom had bought blueberry pie from the store and was taking out plates for dessert.

“Trevor, would you like some pie?”

“Actually, I don’t like blueberry. Do you have any apple pie by chance?” he asked apologetically.

“
No!
” we all cried in unison.

“Okay,” he sang out as he looked at the three of us like we had all just flashed him.

“Sorry, babe,” I explained. “Aria is allergic to apples, like deathly, so no apples cross unto this house.”

“Really?” he asked, looking at her in disbelief.

“It’s true,” she stated proudly.

“It’s why she’s so wired,” I teased. “What red-blooded American child doesn’t eat apples or has never had apple pie or apple cobbler?”
 

“What’s ap-p-l-e cobdl-er?” she asked in her best impression of a Valley girl voice, vacant eyes and all.

“Nice—did you learn that in Acting 101?” I laughed.

“We did actually, but I added the Valley girl. What do you think?”

“I think—” I paused for dramatic effect, tapping my finger to my chin.

“Dac!” She slapped me on the arm.

“Okay, okay. I think you’re gonna
kill
in theater, little sis.” And I wasn’t even joking a little bit. I really did think she had what it took.

“Right?” She beamed.

Mom just did her usual thing and shook her head as she always did.

“So how did you guys find out she was allergic?” Trevor asked.

“Oh, we were at the county fair when she was ten and Dacey gave her a candied apple, and her face and throat swelled up and she had to be rushed to the hospital for going into anaphylactic shock,” Mom explained.

“I think I remember there was some big commotion one year at the fair,” he mused.

“That would have been me, causing a scene even then. I was destined for stardom,” she stated, raising her hands over her head as if presenting herself to the world.
 

We all laughed, and I looked over at Trevor, who had a weird look on his face, but when I asked him what was up, he shrugged it off.

“I’m just tired. It was a long day at work,” he said.

But somehow, I didn’t think that was what it was. By the time we had our dessert and said our good-byes, it was going on nine thirty and I had to be up for class and Opal duty at seven. The car ride back to my dorm was uncomfortably silent as I was still caught up in thoughts about how to deal with Aunt Opal’s increasingly declining health, and I assumed Trevor was caught up in thinking about work and other stuff.

“Man, it must really be bothering you,” he muttered.

“Huh?” I asked, half-listening.

“Exactly, you’ve been so in your head you didn’t even notice where we were.” He chuckled.

I looked out the window and saw that we weren’t at my dorm but at his home over by the Shaddy Groves Memorial Hospital.

“Why did you take me to your house?” I asked, confused.

“Floor show,” he said before grabbing my hand and kissing it.

“I thought you were tired,” I accused.

He gave me a knowing look. “I’m never too tired to perform to the best of my abilities,” he said, then got out of the truck, leaving me to process that.

I scrambled from the truck to catch up to him as he unlocked the door to his small and modest home he shared with his mother. He had never known his father, as he had died when Trevor was very young, so it had always been just his mother and him, and his mother worked all the time. He had told her that because he had the job at the animal clinic now, she didn’t have to work so much, to which she retorted that she liked to keep busy. She worked as a librarian, and even though the public library closed at eight, she always stayed well past then, doing some project or another or organizing and cataloging books.

“I’m guessing your mom is not home?” I asked.

He closed the door and pinned me to it, giving me a kiss that said, “Would I kiss you like that if she were?” The kiss told me all I needed to know.
 

I kissed him back eagerly while his hands eased down my side and hiked my legs up around his waist, picking me up off the floor. We moved into the interior of the house, down a small hallway that led to his bedroom.

“This is a promising start to the floor show,” I said breathlessly when he broke the kiss to open the door to his room.
 

He set me down on my feet long enough to close and lock the door behind him, then he turned to me with that look in his eye I knew all too well.

“Shhh, there is no talking during the floor show,” He said, and he crushed his mouth back to mine.
 

I lived for when he kissed me like this. These kisses were fervent and soft rolled into one, and they made me feel as though I was the only person in the world he gave them to, which, for his sake, I had better be. “Okay,” I said breathlessly, “I won’t talk during the floor show, but I just want to say I love you.”

He paused and studied me for a moment, enough to make me feel slightly uncomfortable, before saying, “And it goes without saying that I love you. Now shhh.” And I didn’t utter an identifiable word the rest of the night.

Chapter 3

I awoke at about five thirty in the morning, tension-free. I looked over at Trevor and kept myself from laughing as I always did when I woke up before he did. Trevor was a mouth breather, so his mouth was wide open like he was trying to catch flies, as Opal would probably say. Sometimes, just to mess with him, I would stick my finger in his mouth and just let it hover there to see if he would somehow feel it and wake up, but he never did and I would always wake him up by shaking with silent laughter.

I reached over and brushed his hair back from his forehead, the movement causing him to stir.

“I love that your touch is the first thing I feel in the morning,” he said, his voice heavy with sleep.

“Is that really the
first
thing you feel?” I asked, looking pointedly south of the covers.

“Besides that, smart ass.”

“Me too. I wish I could do this every morning,” I sighed.

“You could. We could get our own place, you know.”

This wasn’t the first time this conversation had come up. He had been pushing the issue for about three months now, but with school and Opal, I just didn’t think it was a good idea to move in together at the moment.

“Babe...” I began.

“I know, I know. Forget I brought it up,” he said moodily.

I hated that he thought I didn’t want to move in with him for any other reason than I just wasn’t ready. I wanted to go into it further, but he got up to go use the bathroom. I got up to put my clothes on and head back to the dorms. I always hated feeling like I was doing the walk of shame in his house. I didn’t want to run into his mom. It’s not like she didn’t know I was here most nights. If Trevor was here, then she knew I was too, but I felt like a ho because we spent the night in the same room and, well, this was a small town and people talked. He told me on many occasions that his mom wasn’t like that, but one could never be too sure.

When he came back out, he saw that I was getting dressed and started to silently put on some basketball shorts and a tank top.

“Hey,” I said softly, making my way over to him. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said, hugging me. “I just hate that you have to leave me.”

“I know,” I said. “But it’s only for a little while so I can get some learning.”

He smiled but he wasn’t really into it. “Yeah. Come on, let me get you back.” He took my hand and intertwined it with his as he led me out to his truck and only let go to get in, then resumed holding my hand once we got on the road.

He dropped me off with a kiss and a promise to call me if anything changed with Rufus and said he would see me later. I went in and gathered my shower caddy so that I could take a long, hot shower.
 

Once I was done, it was already going on six thirty, so I decided to head over to Opal’s early, knowing she wouldn’t mind, plus it was always good that I showed up early from time to time, just in case.

When I arrived at Opal’s, I let myself in with the key she had given me and found her in the kitchen frying fish, at six forty-five in the morning like it was totally okay to be doing so.
 

“Um, hi, Auntie”

“Oh, hey, chile,” she said as the grease from the pan sizzled and popped.

“Um, whatcha doing?”

“I’m fryin’ up summa this here ol’ catfish I got from the store,” she explained.

“Why,” I asked patiently, “are you doing this at six forty-five in the morning?”

“Oh, pshh. Haven’t you eva had fish an’ grits for breakfast befo’? You were raised in Florida.”

“Yes, but, Aunt Opal, we usually fried the fish up the night before so we didn’t have to get up so early.”

“No sirree, Bob. That ain’t the way to do it. Then it’s not fresh,” she said as she clucked her tongue.

I realized that Aunt Opal was completely lucid, not crazy lucid, but lucid lucid. This was a rarity in and of itself. The last time I saw this side of Opal was almost three weeks ago. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, whatever that meant—it was a mom-ism I picked up—I went over to see if she needed any help and looked into the frying pan.

“Did you do something different to the catfish?” I asked, puzzled. “It looks funny.”

“Oh, this ain’t no catfish. I don’ already ate that. This here is toad.”

Oh dear god.
Lucid went out the window. Back was crazy Opal. And gross-as-hell Opal.

“Auntie, where did you get a toad from?” I asked, trying to take the frying pan from her.