Kiss Me Again (13 page)

“No!” I said, perhaps a bit loudly. “Whatever you have to say? Just say it.”

“I want us all to be respectful of, well, newly close quarters. And I don’t want to get overly … I don’t want to, don’t want you to feel that I am …”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, WHAT?”

“I just think we have to be mindful that we are now, de facto, a family, and …”

“I changed my mind. Can we not talk about this?” I begged.

“I think we need to,” he answered solemnly.

The bus was going to reach the stop in about two minutes. If he didn’t hurry and tell me what a slut I was and I should stay away from Kevin, I’d be late for school, and have to walk all the way there. That kind of pissed me off, which was a relief. Better than quaking. I’ve only ever been late once in my life, the day I first kissed Kevin, and it goes on your permanent record. So I said, “You know what, Joe? It’s none of your business, actually.”

“Actually,” he repeated, maybe mocking, his face reddening in blotches exactly the way Kevin’s does sometimes. “It really is my business, Charlie.”

My lower jaw slid out in front of my upper teeth, and my right knee thrummed back and forth with the effort of not fighting back against this man who was sleeping with my mother, living in my house, and, to be fair, had basically just caught me waking up in his son’s room.

“If you don’t wash out your bowl,” he said, “I am the one who has to do it.”

“My—what?”

“Your cereal bowl,” Joe said. “I’d appreciate if you’d rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher from now on.”

“My cereal bowl.”

“After breakfast.”

“Okay,” I said.

“We’ll all have to get used to one another, but I think mutual respect is the right way to start.”

“Sure,” I said. “Definitely.” I squinted into the sun, toward where Kevin was a speck, at the end of the block. “I don’t want to miss the bus.”

“Oh, right; go. Absolutely.”

“Okay.” I stepped backward, away from him, down the step.

“Charlie,” he said, and smiled happily, relieved almost, when I turned around. “Glad we had this talk.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Have a great day!” he was yelling as I sprinted away from him. I made it to the corner just as the bus did. Kevin was already on by the time I started up the steps. “Well, that was weird,” I said, slipping into the seat beside him. “Busted for lack of dishwashing.”

His low chuckle warmed me almost as much as his arm, pressed along the length of mine.

I smiled at Tess between first and second periods, wishing with part of my brain that I could tell her everything, because she would double over laughing at the disconnect between what I thought I was going to be yelled at about and then actually getting a Talk About Not Washing My Bowl—but knowing in another part of my brain that it was kind of okay, keeping it to myself, too.

I walked to third with Jen, and for one second considered telling her, but came to my senses pretty fast when I remembered that, for one, her parents were friends with Kevin’s dad and, for two, she’d get stuck on the part where I woke up in Kevin’s bed and not jump right into how funny it was to be yelled at for dishwashing issues instead.

For a minute I sank into the sadness of no longer having a friend I could share absolutely everything with—but then that funk got crowded out by the sentence:

I woke up in Kevin’s bed.

I didn’t pay one bit of attention in math. That crazy sentence echoed around in my head, blocking out every other equation: me + Kevin over Kevin’s bed divided by everything equals …

“WHERE IS EVERYBODY?”

“I’ll be with you in a …” My mother trailed off when I kept lurking around.

“It’s Friday night,” I mumbled. Who works on a Friday night? What did we used to do on Friday nights? Did she always hunch over her books and laptop like that? What did I used to do? It was not that long ago. Two weeks ago, what did I do on Friday night? Watch TV? Click around the internet?

I wandered into the kitchen to help myself to something to eat. I was most of my way through a Luna bar, staring blankly into the refrigerator, when Mom said, “I thought we’d go out.”

I turned around. She was leaning against the counter, watching me carefully.

“Just the two of us?”

“Yes,” she said evenly. Judging? Accusing?

“Why?”

“Spend some time together? Just, talk?”

They knew. Damn. Divide and conquer.

“Where’s, where are, what about the other people?”

“‘The other people.’ Oh, Charlie.” She smiled. “Joe’s taking Samantha to a movie. Kevin is at a friend’s house, sleeping over. Jared, maybe?”

“Brad?”

“Okay. And I thought maybe you and I would have a night just to ourselves. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” I said warily.

She suggested we both change, or we didn’t have to, and we could go to the Mexican place or sushi if I wanted.

“Okay,” I said again.

“Why do you look so suspicious?” Mom asked me.

“I do not!” I yelled somewhat abruptly, and then stormed upstairs, past Kevin’s quiet, empty room, to change into slightly different clothes. We ended up going for Thai food, because Joe doesn’t like Thai.

Over curry and rice and pastel-colored crackers that disintegrated explosively on my tongue, I got questioned about friends, school, my life, and my adjustment to living as a family with the Lazarus clan.

Yes, I admitted, it has its awkward moments, since Kevin and I are in many classes together and also the same social group, yes.

“Joe thought maybe Kevin went out with Tess for a while at some point,” my mother said.

When I finished choking on a piece of chicken, I said, “Mom.”

“Too awkward?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask about you?” she asked.

“Me? What about—why are you—me?”

“I don’t want to pry,” Mom said.

“Good,” I said, mopping my damp, sweaty face with my least-absorbent-ever-made pink napkin.

“I just want to, you know, stay up on what you’re doing. Stay connected. It’s important, with you in high school, and all these changes. The psychologist Joe and I spoke with recommended I should try to stay connected with you not just in terms of school but, regarding friends, too, and, romantically …”

Though I had vowed never to touch alcohol again, since I made my horrible Kevin-kissing confession after three shots of cheap gin at Darlene’s party over the winter, I would have given a kidney right then for a gulp of my mother’s Thai beer.

“Mom, no way. You spoke to a psychologist about me?”

“Not just you, of course,” she said. “The whole situation.”

I put my fork down on the table instead of through my eye. But it was close.

Mom wiped her mouth delicately with her napkin, laid it down in her lap, and leaned forward. Her hand covered the top of mine lightly, and her eyes squinted in that crinkly-kind/smart way of hers. “Charlie. Let’s be honest with each other.”

“Why?”

She leaned back and laughed at that.

“What?” I was having a complete internal freak-out and she was
laughing
?

“Oh, I do love you, Charlotte Reese Collins. Why indeed?”

I tried smiling a bit. Failed.

She took a long sip of her beer. “That psychologist was so self-serious.”

“Yeah?”

“Ugh. Yes! She was very convincing, too.”

“Why did you, what made, why? A psychologist? Am I crazy?”

“No.” She chuckled, as if I’d been kidding. “Charlie, no. Joe has found her a great resource in helping Kevin and Samantha, over the years since their mom left, and he has naturally discussed this new transition with her, with Dr. Jackson, I mean. So I went with him and we discussed the challenges that all three of you, all five of us, really, will be facing, and—”

“You
talked
about
me
?” The betrayal stung like a slap. “In front of Joe, with a stranger? You said stuff about me? Like what? Private stuff?”

“Yeah,” Mom said. “I told her how you get constipated if you don’t eat enough dried apricots.”

“Still working?” the waitress asked.

“What?” I asked my mother, not the waitress, who backed quickly away. “You didn’t!”

“Kidding,” Mom said. “Come on, Charlie. A little credit? We talked in general terms about our new situation and how it is likely to affect each member of our family.”

“Our family,” I echoed.

“Yes,” she said. “Like it or not, we’re kind of a family now. Aren’t we?”

Instead of answering, I gulped my icy water and got an immediate ice-cream headache as a lovely parting gift.

“Well, we are,” Mom said. “And Dr. Jackson thought, well, mentioned, actually had me almost convinced that it was going to be extremely awkward for you, as a teenage girl, with your emerging sexuality, and—”

“Ew! She said my ‘emerging sexuality’?”

“Well …”

“And Joe heard?”

“Sure, he …”

“I am going to have to move, alone, to Alaska,” I said, slumping against the bench.

“She said it was vital for me to stay connected to you, stay in tune with your feelings.”

“My feelings.”

“Yes.”

“I’m feeling nauseated,” I said.

“Me too,” Mom said. “So I guess that’s connected.”

“We never really talked about that stuff before,” I mumbled. “Who Tess is hooking up with, or whatever. Why would we have to start now?”

“Still working?” a different waitress asked.

“We never were,” I said. “We were just eating.”

Mom rolled her eyes at me but smiled. “We’re all set,” she said. “Just the check, please.” After our plates were cleared, Mom leaned forward. “Maybe we’ll get some ice cream on the way home.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Tess is hooking up with people?”

“Mom!”

“What does that mean, exactly, hooking up?”

The waitress put the check down in its vinyl folder between us. A tiny smile crossed her delicate face as she glanced at me. Laughing at me or feeling sorry for me? Did her mother ask her about her friends and their hook-ups?

I covered my face with my hands. “Fooling around,” I whispered. “Making out. You know.”

“Okay.” Mom chugged the last dregs of her beer. “Fine. Good. Just checking.”

After she signed the slip, we walked out through the cool night breeze toward the car.

“Are you?” Mom asked, pressing the remote to make the car beep and the doors unlock.

“Am I—what? Jeez, Mom. Seriously?”

“Not—I don’t think you’re having sex, but …”

“Ew!” I said. “Mom!” I was barely filling my B-cup bra. I got my period, what, a year and a half ago? And my first kiss six months ago? Outside school, that warm fall day with …

Do not think about kissing Kevin in front of your mother, Charlie!

“Mom, no. So far from … stop, please, and never go back to that horrible person who put these ideas in your head. We are not on some cheesy reality show. No!”

I pushed the image of waking up next to Kevin out of my mind as best I could, even squished my eyes tightly closed, but it stayed there anyway, the smell of his neck in my nose, the sound of his long hum-sigh, from somewhere deep in his throat and so quiet I could only hear the edge of it—it thrummed in my ears so loud it seemed completely possible my mother, beside me there on the dark, suburban sidewalk, could hear it reverberating from inside my memory.

I dashed away from her, toward the passenger side. With Joe missing, at the movies with Sam, I got my front seat back. It was probably too warm for the toast-your-buns feature, but I flipped the seat warmer on anyway while my mother fiddled with the ignition key. I waited impatiently for the engine to turn over so I could turn on the radio and AC to drown out whatever Kevin sounds and smells I was emitting.

“Hooking up,” Mom said, looking straight into the rearview mirror.

“What?”

“I was just wondering if you are ‘hooking up’ with …”

“Mom!”

“… anybody. Because I have a feeling I know that you are.”

Oh, crap.

“And who it is.”

Aha. The actual reason for the fifty-dollar dinner and the divide-and-conquer strategy.

“So,” she said. “Are you?”

“I’m just sitting here minding my own business,” I answered.

Mom smiled dubiously. “You should take up dodgeball.” She shifted into reverse. “Or fencing.”

“Do I still get ice cream?”

“Is it George?”

“Is what George?”

“That you—you seem, kind of, distracted lately. And I was thinking maybe it’s awkward for you to be—hooking up with a friend of Kevin’s, and maybe Kevin is hooking up with your best friend, and—”