Love? Maybe. (9 page)

“It’s okay, Mom. You don’t have to pay her for that. I’ll watch them.” My mother sighs and I can see her, fighting with herself, biting her lip.

“You sure?” she asks finally.

“I’m sure. I’ll just keep adding to that
You Owe Me
list I have going.”

She laughs. “It might be a long list before this season is out.”

Suddenly inspiration strikes. “Mom, why don’t you get some help?”

“I don’t have the time to find someone and then train them. And I can’t trust just
anyone
to take on some of this stuff.” The voices get louder and I hear my mother say something to someone there in the shop. “I have to go, Piper. I’ll call Mrs. Bateman back. Thank you again.”

“No problem,” I say, but the line is already dead. I toss the phone on the bed and look over at Jillian. “I am about to solve two problems with one stone.”

“Don’t you mean kill two birds with one stone?” Jillian asks.

“Yes, but that’s cruel.” She laughs and tosses a pillow at me. We hear the door to the bathroom open and Claire comes around the corner. She’s stopped crying, but her eyes are red and she’s sniffling into a tissue.

“I have the best idea in the whole world,” I say. Claire raises her eyebrows at me. I quickly explain that my mother needs help at the shop and I think it would really be good if she had something to do other than miss Stuart.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Jillian says. It sort of makes me mad that Claire seems unsure until Jillian says that.
Like my opinion isn’t quite enough to make her consider it. “And,” Jillian says, drawing out the word, “being around all those flowers and all that romance is definitely going to get you in the Valentine’s Day spirit.” Why do I have the feeling that a new phase of The Plan is in the works?

“Did your mom okay this?” Claire asks.

“Oh, she will. My mother loves you,” I say. What I don’t say is that love her or not, my mother is desperate. Claire nods and gives one more sniff before reaching to throw her tissue in the trash. In the process, she accidentally knocks my heart paperweight off the desk. Papers go everywhere, and even though I tell her not to worry about it, she scrambles to pick them up. She picks up the last paper and looks at it.

“Jack?” she asks. It’s the slip of paper with my father’s phone number on it. I just nod. “Are you going to call him?” she asks.

“I’m thinking about it.” What I mean is that I’m trying not to think about it, but not succeeding very well.

“Who’s Jack?” Jillian asks. Before I can answer, she continues. “Is he cute?” I sigh, but then there’s a loud thump on the roof, saving me from answering.

Jillian doesn’t scream this time. She just jumps up, runs to my window and sticks her head out. “Hi, Charlie,” she says. I can’t hear exactly what he says, but I can hear his tone of voice and he sounds more than a little nervous. Jillian’s intensity can make anyone a little nervous.

“Tell him to come over,” I say, taking some pity on him. She tells him and pulls her head back in. Her eyes are shiny and her cheeks are flushed.

She sighs and pretends to fan herself like she’s Scarlett in
Gone with the Wind
or something. “He sure is yummy.” She is halfway out the door when she turns and looks at us. “Too bad we don’t have any more candy,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, remembering that Charlie already had some of it last night. “It is too bad.” Jillian starts down the stairs. I wait for Claire. I don’t know what else to say, so I just take her arm and give it a squeeze. We walk downstairs like that, arm in arm, and I feel a little like Scarlett myself, although our staircase is carpeted and narrow and I’m wearing jeans and a Jan the Candy Man shirt. And Claire is no Rhett Butler. I shake my head, wondering if all the romance in the air is making my brain mushy.

I
watch Jillian and Charlie the whole time they’re together, trying to see Charlie the way she sees him. Jillian’s pretty much the same, only intensified. She tosses her hair around so much, I’m afraid she’s going to get whiplash. Charlie is like he always is too: nice and vaguely oblivious.

Jillian and Claire leave pretty much as soon as Lucy and Dom arrive. Not that I blame them. Those two know how to clear a room. Charlie asks if he can stay.

“Of course you can. I figured your dad was in the middle of something big,” I say

“Sort of,” Charlie says, not looking at me.

I start to ask what “sort of” means, but Dom starts yelling from the other room that he’s
starving
. I take a package of spaghetti from the pantry. Thinking about how much Charlie usually eats, I grab two.

Charlie sneaks a handful of baby carrots from the bag on the counter and starts munching on them. While I put a pot of water on to boil, I tell him about barfing in the pool and about how Peter had to buy me breakfast.

“You break up with him and then you make him buy you breakfast?” Charlie laughs. “Classic. I would have given a lot to have seen that.” Charlie doesn’t hide the fact that he’s not a big fan of the guys on the swim team at my school. I always tell him that he’d probably like them if he got to know them individually, but all he knows of them is when they are all together. It’s like one big testosterone fest. It’s not pretty. I start to tell him about Ben Donovan, but he’s not listening anymore. He’s staring out the window toward his house. “Charlie?”

“What?”

I tilt my head at him, but he just looks away. There is a big crash upstairs, then Miss Kitty shoots through the room like she has a string of firecrackers tied to her tail, which thankfully she does not. “Would you mind?” I ask, pointing at the ceiling where I can hear Dom and Lucy stomping around.

“No problem,” Charlie says. He grabs another handful of carrots and heads upstairs.

I smirk. “So he says.”

About halfway through boiling the pasta, I hear loud music start upstairs. I shake my head and finish setting the table. I call my mother at the shop, but it clicks over to voice mail. Either she’s too busy to pick up the phone or
she’s on her way home. I set a fifth place for her, hoping for the latter. After draining the pasta, I go to the bottom of the stairs and yell that dinner is ready, but the music is too loud for me to be heard. I climb the stairs, unsure of what I’m going to find. I round the corner toward Dom and Lucy’s bedroom and stop, just watching. I smile, but it quickly becomes laughter. And it’s not Dominic’s wild jumping or Lucy’s imitation of a whirling dervish that makes me laugh, but Charlie’s strange gyrations that make him look like a cross between a salmon swimming upstream and a scarecrow with its head on fire.

Dom sees me first and waves. Lucy collapses on the floor and starts giggling, leaving Charlie to dance alone. I can’t stop laughing and it’s not just Charlie’s weird dancing, it’s him, how he always is with my little brother and sister. Charlie never bolts when they’re around. In fact, it’s the opposite. He actually seems genuinely bummed when they’re gone. I watch him for several more moments before taking pity on him.

“Hey!” I yell. He stops mid-twirl and looks over to where I’m standing. His face turns as red as the tomato sauce I was heating up.

“Not a word,” he says, pointing toward me. I start laughing again, so hard this time that tears spring to my eyes. He walks over to the stereo and turns the music way down.

“Isn’t Charlie a great dancer?” Lucy asks.

I nod, trying to catch my breath. Charlie shakes his head
and smiles at me, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “He is a very interesting dancer,” I say. Lucy nods, smiling. Lucy has a crush on Charlie. She frequently tells me that she is going to marry him. When she gets old,
like eighteen
. I don’t have the heart to remind her that when she’s eighteen, Charlie will be
really old
. Over thirty.

“Dinner is ready,” I say. “Unless you guys want to keep dancing.”

“Charlie loves to dance,” Lucy says, walking over to take his hand. She looks up at him expectantly.

“I love to dance with you, Lucy-lu,” he says. He throws her over his shoulder, making her squeal. Then he goes for Dom, who bolts out from under his grasp and heads for the stairs and freedom. Charlie walks downstairs carrying Lucy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Thanks,” I say, and I don’t mean just for the dancing. It’s bigger than that. Charlie’s had dozens of tea parties with Lucy and played hours of LEGOs with Dom. He has no idea what that means to them. To Mom. To me.

“They’re fun,” Charlie says. “Course now I think I need to take a nap.”

I smirk. “He can bust out a three-hour workout in the pool, but fifteen minutes with these two and he’s down for the count.”

“They have a lot of energy.”

I laugh. “If that’s code for they are the spawn of the devil, then yes, they have a lot of energy.”

“I’m not the debil,” Lucy says, her voice nasally from hanging upside down.

I ruffle her hair. “No,” I say. “You’re not the debil.”

Mom arrives just as I’m dishing up the plates. She sinks into one of the chairs and sighs. “Long day?” I ask. She nods and accepts a plate of pasta with a smile. We eat as she tells us about this woman who came into the shop demanding blue roses.

“I just kept telling her there’s no such thing, but she refused to believe me. She said she saw a painting of one.” Mom shakes her head. Lucy tells us she’s going to grow blue roses. “Do you think you can do that before Valentine’s Day?” my mother asks, smiling.

Lucy looks serious for a moment. “If I do, will you be home more?” she asks. Mom smiles at her, but her eyes are sad. She opens her arms toward Lucy, who climbs into her lap. I can tell Mom doesn’t know what to say. I mean, I hate it that she’s gone all the time too, but I can understand why. Supporting three kids on your own is hard, especially when all your money comes from flowers. I start clearing the table. Charlie helps by finishing up the rest of the pasta, eating it straight out of the strainer in the sink.

“So how’s the training going?” Mom asks Charlie.

He shrugs. “Good.” I shake my head as I rinse off the dishes. Even when Charlie broke three state records his sophomore year, he still said “good.” I’ll bet he could make the Olympic team and still he’d keep it to himself. Mom smiles too but doesn’t press him. Charlie always
seems so embarrassed when he has to talk about himself.

“Are you still seeing Julie?” Mom asks. I look over at Charlie.

“We decided that we make better friends,” he says.

“So she dumped you?” I ask.

“No, Pipe. Unlike when you say it, sometimes people actually mean it.” I flick some bubbles at him. “Is it okay if I just hang here for a while?” he asks my mom.

“Of course, Charlie. You are always welcome here,” she says. “Sure your dad won’t want you home?” Charlie looks over in the direction of his house for a long moment, then shakes his head.

“He’s busy,” he says. He slides a box of chocolates out of the cabinet over the fridge and sits at the table. He rummages in his backpack and pulls out his notebook and a textbook that has O
RGANIC
C
HEMISTRY
printed on the spine.

I resolve to ask him why he’s acting so weird about his father next time we’re alone. I’m scrubbing the pot I heated the sauce in when I start hearing seagulls and the crashing of ocean waves. I look up, trying to figure out where the noise is coming from, but then I see Charlie grinning. I look at my cell, which is peeking out of the front pocket of my backpack.

“I’ll get it,” says Dom, sliding down from the table.

“No, just—” I begin, but it’s too late. Dom already has my phone to his ear.

“What do you want?” he asks. Someone needs to work on
his phone manners. My mother tries to take the phone from him, but he scoots out of her reach. Finally Dom extends the phone toward me. “It’s for you.” I smirk and resist the urge to say
duh
. “It’s a boy.”

“Ooooo,” Lucy says from my mother’s lap loud enough for the person on the phone to hear. I quickly dry my hands and reach for the phone, looking at the screen. I don’t recognize the number. Instantly I feel sort of wobbly. I try to remember the number printed on the slip of paper still sitting on my desk upstairs, but I can’t.

“Hello?” I say, hesitantly. I avoid looking at anyone else in the room, especially my mother.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end says. “Piper?” It’s not my father, which makes my heart start thudding a little less.

“Yes,” I say. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Ben,” the voice says, which of course makes my heart start up again. “Is this a bad time? I mean I can—”

“No,” I say, turning to walk into the living room where I can maybe have a tiny bit of privacy. “It’s fine.”

“Peter gave me your number,” Ben Donovan says. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Don’t mind?
I think. I can’t imagine anyone minding if Ben Donovan called. “No,” I say. “I don’t mind.”

“I just wanted to call and see if you wanted to hang out this weekend.”

I start to say no, because even if Ben Donovan is my ideal, I just don’t date. But then I remember Charlie calling me
cynical and Claire begging me to go along with The Plan. I take a breath. “Sure,” I say all casual, like getting asked out by someone like Ben Donovan happens all the time to someone like me.

“Cool,” Ben Donovan says. “After the meet then,” he says.

I nod, but then remember that this is a phone and he can’t see my head move. “Yeah,” I say.

“Cool,” Ben Donovan says again. “See you tomorrow then,” he says. All I can do is keep nodding, but it’s okay this time because he’s already hung up. I stare at the phone in my hand and then tap “Save number” and type in B-e-n-D-o-n-o-v-a-n. I look at my phone until the screen goes dark.
I am now a girl with Ben Donovan’s number in my phone.
No wait,
I think.
I am now a girl who is going on a date with Ben Donovan
. I feel disconnected from myself. It’s like I’m watching myself to see what I’ll do next.

“Piper?” my mother says. I look up and see her looking at me from the doorway. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “Everything is okay.”

“I’m going to get the kids to bed,” she says. I hear her shepherding Dom and Lucy up the stairs.

I walk out to the kitchen and slide my books from my backpack. I sit across the table from Charlie and open my notebook. Charlie looks at me, his eyebrows raised, but I just give him a big smile. I try to make it through the reading for Brit lit, but I’m so distracted that I give up and slide out my biology book and a box of colored pencils. We have to color in the
digestive system. Coloring I can do. I’m trying to figure out how I feel about agreeing to go out with Ben Donovan. Any other girl at Montrose would be dancing through her house, having already called her friends and told them. Me? I’m doing homework.

“So, who’s the new guy?” Charlie asks, without looking up from his homework.

“No one you know,” I say. It’s a tiny lie. Charlie knows who Ben Donovan
is
.

Charlie looks up at me. “Just be careful,” he says.

“Always,” I say, sliding a blue pencil out of the box.

“I mean it,” Charlie says.

“You can stop with the big brother stuff,” I say. “I’m good.”

“I’m not trying to be your big brother, Piper,” Charlie says. I look back at him, but he’s staring down at his textbook. Even though he’s not looking at me, I can tell he’s blushing. I shake my head and start outlining the pulmonary veins in blue. Charlie is definitely acting weird. I switch to red to color in the arteries.

“Hush,” Charlie says from the other side of the table.

“What?” I ask, looking up.

“You’re humming.” He shakes his head and looks back at his textbook.

“Sorry,” I say. I stop humming aloud, but I can’t stop the song from sliding around inside my brain. I don’t recognize the tune, but I’m sure Jan would. I’m pretty sure it’s Sinatra.