Slow Burn (59 page)

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Chapter 50

I remember when I wished my mom would see me.  Now I want to just fall to the ground, roll under the coffee table, and maybe stay put for a while.

She’s crying right now.  It’s the angry tears.  I’m in a lot of trouble.

“How could you?”

I sink down onto the couch, my shoulders hunched forward.  Finally, I look up at her.  “Are you upset that I had sex—or that I had sex with the son of the woman Dad cheated on you with?”  I’m not trying to be mean, I honestly want to know.

Mom doesn’t answer.  She squeezes her eyes shut, and presses a hand to her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it.  “I didn’t do it deliberately to hurt you.  I just—I fell for him.  It’s not his fault that his mom is—it’s not his fault,” I remind her.

“You lied about who he was,” she reminds me.  “That was deliberate.”

“Because I knew it would upset you,” I counter.  I nervously play with the chain of my necklace, mostly hidden by the collar of my shirt.  “You’re still so mad about everything.  I don’t know…I feel like I can’t talk to you anymore.  You’re just—you’re never here.”

Mom’s entire posture stiffens defensively. 
“And where do you think I am, Juliet?  Going out to parties, and having sex on fancy yachts?  I work sixty plus hours a week to keep a roof over our heads, and money in the bank!  I’m sorry I don’t have the time and the energy that I used to when your father and I were together—but circumstances change.  I’m doing the best I can.”

“I get that.  I do—and I appreciate it.  But…”
  I take a deep breath, nervously pleating my fingers together.  “I never see you, and when I do, you’re always so tired, and we never talk.  It’s kind of like you gave up on having a life.”

Totally wrong thing to say.  I realize this the moment it comes out of my mouth—and I really realize it when Mom’s eyes flare dangerously.
  Oh, shit.

“Regardless what you think of me and my non-existent life,” she begins coldly.  “I’m still in charge around here, and I don’t appreciate being ma
de a fool of.  Allow me to maintain the illusion that you have some respect for me.  No more sleepovers.  He is not to step foot inside of this house again, are we clear?”

I knew she knew!  “Y
eah, well, you don’t have to worry about that,” I mutter bitterly.

Sympathy briefly soften
s her face.  “You broke up?”

“Something like that.”  I sigh, running my hands through my hair.  “It doesn’t matter.  Mom—really, I’m sorry.
  I’m not even seeing him anymore.  Not to change the subject, but can I talk to you about how much you’ve been working?  You practically live at the hospital, and you look exhausted, like, all the time…I’m really worried about you.”

Mom’s shoulders tense, and she looks like she wants to snap at me.  Then
she sighs, letting her head fall back.  “I know, but we’ve been so understaffed lately.  A lot of the girls I work with are much younger than me, and they’re always having babies!  Or they have little ones at home that need them for one thing, or another.  Someone’s always begging me to cover their shift for them, and I don’t mind doing it.”  She smiles sadly at me.  “And you don’t really need me around, anymore.”

My eyes suddenly fill with tears.  “That’s not true.  There were a lot of times when I—I don’t know—I could have used your advice.  Or just to eat dinner with you once in a while would be nice.”  I choke on my words, trying to sound casual when I really want to scream. 
“I’ll be graduating and off to college in a few months, so…I’d really like to spend more time with you before I leave.”

I exhale noisily, and look up at her.  She’s just staring at me in a vague kind of way, like she’s not sure if I said something, or if she’s just hearing things.

“I can do that,” she says after a while.  “The overtime pay’s great, but—I’ll make more of an effort to be at home.”

“That would be awesome.” 

“Okay.  What time is it?  Oh, shoot…I need to get some rest before my shift tonight—and I still have to call your grandmother.”  Mom rolls her eyes as she starts to turn away.  “She’s convinced you’re going to show up on her doorstep one day, pregnant and homeless.”

I cringe back into the cushions.  “Do you want me to call her?”

Mom waves a hand in the air.  “No, no, I’ll deal with her.  Honey, I’m dead on my feet right now.  We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Sure.  Thanks for…”

But she’s already gone, disappearing into the kitchen.  Damn, she walks fast.  “Thanks for listening,” I say to the living room.

Well, that went a lot better—and a lot worse—than I thought it would.

Later, when I’m about to leave for work, I reverse directions and knock lightly on Mom’s door.  There’s no response—she’s probably sleeping—but I want to apologize to her once more before I go.

She’s not in her bed.  I find her in the bathroom.  The door is cracked open, and I can see he
r leaning against the sink, and crying hoarsely into her hands.

You know what’s worse than a daughter who makes her mother cry like that?  One that turns and walks away without a word.

Work is not fun. 
I get hit in the face with a basketball, and my nose starts gushing blood.  For real.  I’m a total bleeder.  Kathy runs to help me, and skids right through the blood spill, and into a cabinet full of red rubber balls.  I don’t know why, but I laugh at her, and blood sprays all over my hair and clothes.  This one kid, Brandon, asks me if I have hepatitis.

I’m sent home, which is probably for the best.  I go from obsessing over my mom, to Dean and that kiss.
  But mostly Dean and the kiss, because I don’t want to think about my mom crying.

Why did he kiss me?
  Was it just gratefulness because I went to Aunt Jo?  It sure didn’t feel like gratefulness to me.  It felt like—like beauty and pain.  It filled me up with heaven as much as it tore me to hell.  I shouldn’t have let him do it, shouldn’t have kissed him back.  I should have demanded answers.  I should have made him admit he really does care about me.

Yeah, right.  Then why haven’t I heard from him?

I lie in bed, wide awake, remembering the day I found out Dad was cheating on Mom with a client of his from work.  Mom had somehow found out her information and was threatening to go to her house to confront her, while Dad begged her not to.  They didn’t even notice that I had come into the room.  When Mom ran upstairs, he followed her, and I went over to her computer where I found a web page open with Dean’s mother’s name, and her business and home address.  Because of my stupid little crush on him, I realized who she was right away.

I wasn’t thinking straight.  I remember being so pissed—some at my dad, but mostly at this woman for destroying my family, and making my mother cry.  I jumped on my bike, and rode all the way over to Dean’s neighborhood, forty-five minutes away by bike.  I barely felt the burn in my leg muscles as I pedaled at a furious speed to Dean’s house.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to do once I got there.  But I saw Dean in his driveway, dragging boxes out of the garage, his dark hair flopping into his eyes—and something just snapped in me.  I rode right up to him, and started screaming at him.  I called both him and his mother every bad name I could think of—and that was a lot, thanks inadvertently to Michelle.

I remember Dean’s face getting darker and more thunderous as I ranted on, his odd-colored eyes narrowing when I started push
ing him.  He never hit me back—but when I called his mother something very terrible, he got pissed enough to pick up my bike and throw it out of his driveway, hard enough to break the chain and a handlebar.  A man came out of the house after that, and I got scared and ran away, leaving my broken bike behind.  Thankfully, Diego’s house was just a couple of streets down, and his mother was nice enough to drive me home.

The next day, I found my bike leaning against our garage door, good as new.  I never saw Dean at the park again after that.

I guess I never thought about it, but he must have found out about him mom’s affair from me.  He did look stunned when I screamed at him about it.  What an awful way for Dean to find out.  At the time, I wasn’t concerned about his feelings.  He was the boy who made my life miserable, and his mom was the woman who ruined it.  I hated them both.

It’s strange to
realize how much our lives have intersected.  You’d think we were destined to be together, or something.

******

Chapter 51

By the end of school the next day, I’m
about ready to crawl my car, and burst into tears.  Rumors are swirling through the air about the nasty little skank (me) being passed around between the football players (mainly Dean and Johnny, but apparently they’re generous) like a collection plate.  It’s like my first day here, but worse because of Dean’s involvement.  Everyone seems to know about that kiss yesterday—and a lot of girls are pissed.  Dean Youngblood doesn’t go around kissing girls like me.  He’s supposed to be unattainable, and there are at least thirty-eight girls ahead of me that would have made much more sense for him to want.  So I must do things that good girls don’t, right?  That’s what they tell me, anyway.  I’ve never heard of most of those moves they accuse me of being an expert at, and I make the mistake of looking some of them up.  I have to wonder why there is even a technical term for that thing with the bottle caps.  It doesn’t seem physically possible to me.

Tanya warns me not to go online, because it’s even worse
in cyberspace.  Awesome.  I don’t care anymore.  I’ve never been gossiped about so much in my life, since going to this shitty school.  I remind myself that I only have a few months left, then I’ll go off to college, and they can all go to hell.

Yeah, tough words from someone who is currently sniffing back big baby tears.
  What they’re saying hits too close to home.  I could have gone my whole life without being called a (insert bodily fluid here) dumpster.  Some of these rich chicks are brutal with their insults.  Do they hang out in dark alleys to learn to talk like that?  My god.

So, between all the direct confrontations and whispered accusations, I’m just done for the
day.  I make a beeline for the parking lot with my head down, and mowing down any unsuspecting freshmen unlucky enough to get in my way.  If I can just get to my car, I’ll be okay.  I can go home and pretend like this day never happened.

Well, that wa
s the plan—until I get to my parking spot, and find Dean leaning against my car like it’s never been leaned on before.  My heart nearly lunges out of my chest at the sight of him.  He’s wearing jeans and a gray shirt, not his uniform, which confirms my suspicion that he skipped school today.  He looks amazing—I can never
not
notice.  Oh, my god.  Now I know why they use hot models to sell cars.  I would buy my old Nissan again, if Dean came with it.

His gaze zeroes in on me standing there like a statue, and he immediately straightens
.  His expression goes from closed off to one of imperious determination.  He starts to take a step toward me.

This morning, I would have given my entire carousel horse collection for Dean to talk to me again.  Now—I just want to go home.  I am too close to the edge of my limits to hear anything he has to say right now.
  That’s why I do an abrupt about-face—and slam nose first into a rock hard chest.

“
Wrong direction, girl.”  Big Mack chuckles as he steadies me with both hands.  “Home is that way.”  He nods his chin toward Dean.

I hold my tender nose while trying to get around him.  “I forgot something in my locker,” I lie.

“Come on, it can wait until tomorrow,” Mack says, and picks me up when I refuse to turn back again.

I hold myself as stiffly as possible, but not like it’s any kind of impediment for him. 
He just carries me over to Dean, and plops me down right in front of him.  I should have never made that wish about Mack carting me around because look what happens!  Humiliating.

“Thanks, Mack,” Dean says quietly, watching me.

Mack flashes us both a dazzling white grin.  “No problem, cuz.  I’ll see you two later.”

I glare at Mack’s retreating back for a couple of satisfying seconds before I turn to Dean with a sigh.  “Look,
can we talk later?  I really need to go home, and—I really can’t do this right now.”

“It’s important,” he says, looking dow
n at me with an immovable expression.  “I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t.”

I take my time debating
internally while he waits patiently.  I don’t care how good an excuse he has, he still cut me open—and it is so hard right now to pretend that his presence isn’t shattering me into a million pieces right now.

“Fine, but not here,” I decide, glancing around at all the nosy groups of people loitering around to watch us. 
“Meet me at Sally Brown park.”