The Broken Lake (11 page)

Something about the reflective tone in his comment made me think back to how Lenny died. I vividly remembered a dream where Lenny fought with her dad over Wes, stormed out, and died in a car accident shortly afterward.

And all I did was remind him of that by rambling and complaining about the bookstore. Something that had nothing to do with us.

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?” He was looking both ways, waiting to pull out onto the highway, but I knew him well enough to know he was thinking back.

“I’m sorry about reminding you of Lenny. I didn’t realize. Dawn’s stupidity really isn’t that stupid.” Fighting with your parent over someone you love is serious, especially if you’re willing to give up everything for someone. I wanted to take Wes’ mind off of Lenny’s decision to come see him over her father’s wishes. So I tried to change the subject.

“I don’t know what you’re going to do about Chase.”

He looked at me for the first time since pulling onto the highway. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Mr. Chase thinks I have pretty eyes.” I batted them trying to be funny.

Wes smiled. “You do.”

“Yeah, but that’s your job to remind me. Don’t you think?”

“Sophie, anyone with a brain can see that. I can’t get mad if another guy notices.”

“Yeah, but he intrudes into my personal space.”

Casually, still driving and focusing on the road, he replied, “Now that’s another matter.”

I smiled. Why is it that girls get a kick out of their boyfriends being jealous? I don’t know, but I liked it. I bounced and shifted closer to him.

“Are you jealous?” I prodded, leaning over to kiss him on his ear.

“No.” He answered confidently.

“No?”

“No, I’m not jealous. But if he violates your personal space again, let me know.”

He turned toward me and kissed me on the tip of my nose, looking ever so confident and strong.
Yum
, was all I thought. Well, that’s not totally true. I was also thinking about not wanting to go back to work. Unless Dawn was going to be there, it was going to be too weird. In the meantime, I resumed kissing Wes on the entire right side of his face and neck until he broke out into a laugh.

A
mazingly, Dawn managed to get herself out of major trouble. She ended up telling her parents that she and one of her friends, Jenny, met up to hang out with Jackson and his brother, and when she got tired, she just went home with Jenny. She said she never got her dad’s calls because she left her phone in her car.

It was a ridiculous story, and I’m not sure Mr. Healey believed it, but he only grounded her for a week for sneaking out. He also told her that Jackson was off-limits until she learned to become responsible.

I was just glad that she was at work. Things were almost back to normal, other than Danny’s strange
studying
behavior. He started leaving work earlier and earlier, until sometimes he took the whole day off. The story was that he had major tests coming up and wanted to start thinking about grad school for an MBA. None of us could picture Danny in a suit and tie, but Mr. Healey was just tickled pink at the idea.

Besides making Dawn sick, and making me curious as to what he was up to, I had no problem with Danny taking off work. Until Chase started filling in. He was extremely annoying. Just one of those guys who feeds off attention. It seemed like he expected girls to swoon over him and when they didn’t, he shamelessly attempted to turn the chips.

When it came to Dawn, he managed to find ways to infiltrate her boundaries by doing something to make her laugh. He often walked by her and taped something onto her back, and once he put a dead cricket on the stack of books she was putting away. Dawn found him amusing. He was like a big brother who didn’t know it all. Sometimes he got on her nerves, but the two of them couldn’t go five minutes without cracking up about something.

I always ended up being the mature one. Maybe I just wasn’t the horsing-around type, or it could have been that my history made me more serious. Either way, the bookstore was becoming a bit of a downer. All I thought about was Wes, all day, every day. Was I obsessed with him? Probably. Was that wrong? I don’t think so.

If he wasn’t meant to be the center of my world, then why did I keep coming back to be with him? No, obsessed was not a bad thing in my mind. It was simply the truth. He was my past, my present, and my future, and other than the safety of my mom and friends, nothing else mattered, including an annoying new attention sponge named Chase, who was cramping my style.

I had to separate the bookstore from my personal life, because if I didn’t, I found myself griping about it the entire ride home with Wes. So I learned to block out the annoyances of work as soon as I got into his car. Wes wasn’t even in the same league as a regular teen or college boy, and he made it a point not to even step onto the playing field. That was until Chase pressed his buttons.

Wes dropped me off one day at work, as usual, and Chase was outside smoking a cigarette. We pulled right up to the front, and I leaned over to give him a good-bye kiss.

“I miss you already,” I complained.

He smiled softly.

I kissed him again and turned to get out when I noticed Chase staring intently through the windshield.
Peeping Tom
. Then I realized this was something different because, when caught, peeping Toms look away quickly. Chase was still staring—but not at me.

I followed his gaze to Wes, who was staring back.

“See you later,” I muttered, dreading going in, wondering who called in sick this time.

Without taking his eyes off of Chase, he said, “Call me.”

“Will do,” I said, shutting the door.

I walked past Chase, wondering what his problem was. He took one long drag on his cigarette without looking away from Wes. Once inside, I turned back to see Wes backing out of the space, certain that Chase was still watching him. Dawn was there, which meant Danny was the one MIA.

“Where
is
Danny?”

“Where
is
Danny?” she repeated. “Since when are you Danny’s keeper?”

“Since it means I have to work with
him
.” I tilted my head toward the door.

She laughed, following me to the back room. “He’s not that bad.”

“Yeah, right.” I checked to make sure he wasn’t coming. “He gives me the creeps.”

“Why? He’s just a goofball.”

“Yeah, with you. With me, I don’t know. He’s always looking at me like he’s trying to figure something out. Not to mention he just spied on me and Wes kissing in the car.” Maybe I was being overly sensitive. But still. “I just miss Ms. Mary.”

“Yeah, me too. But, you have to admit, he brings some flavor to the store. It was getting way boring for me before.”

She may have had a point, but I kind of like boring. There’s nothing wrong with peace.

I relished the thought and put my purse away.

As if on cue, Chase interrupted. “Is one of you going to work the register, or what? A lady wants to check out, and I can’t count, so it’s one of you two.”

Dawn laughed, as always, and that time I couldn’t help but join her. Even though it was probably true, that was not why he wasn’t able to check people out. Mr. Healey never trained him on the register. He only used him for stocking and inventory-type stuff.

Actually, the more I thought about it, Mr. Healey probably didn’t trust him at the register. How did he get the job anyway? Oh, right. Danny.

I volunteered for the register and was reminded of his filthy habit when the fresh scent of cigarette smoke wafted off his shirt as I passed him in the doorway. I had never liked the smell of cigarettes, and now I hated it since Andy had reeked of it.

“Excuse me,” I said, holding my breath.

Pretending he didn’t know he was in my way, he stepped back, then forward, then finally to the side, his square dance over. Dawn probably would’ve found that funny too. Not me. I preferred to breathe, which I resumed doing after I passed.

After ringing up the sale, I started straightening up behind the counter, something Dawn hated doing. Thankfully, Dawn kept Chase occupied by playing hide-and-seek in the aisles when there weren’t any customers. After about an hour, I got a text:

HOW’S YOUR PERSONAL SPACE?

I smiled. It seemed Mr. Chase’s little staring episode got on someone else’s nerves.

Taking the time to think of something clever, I responded:

TOO EMPTY. WANTS YOU.

SHOULD I COME NOW?

Mr. Healey wasn’t in. Sometimes he left in the evenings and came back to close if Danny wasn’t in. I could’ve asked Wes to come by, but it felt sort of selfish, especially when he was picking me up in a little while. Plus, for some reason, I didn’t really want him there when Chase was there. So I went with patience.

TWO MORE HOURS, TWENTY MINUTES, FIVE SECONDS AND COUNTING.

:) SEE YOU SOON. LOVE YOU.

U 2.

“Who’s that?”

“Geez.” I jumped and snapped my phone closed.
Oh, my gosh.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” His unapologetic expression and continued proximity near my shoulder told me that he wasn’t.

“It’s my boyfriend.”

“Oh, I wondered. You looked so intent with those lightning-fast fingers.”

I turned around and straightened the already straight-ened flyers on the counter, hoping he’d take the hint. He didn’t.

“Actually, I came over to tell you I’m fighting this weekend. I think you should come.”

What?
“Fighting? Um. I’m not really into that.”

“But it’s fun. You should come. I think Danny and Dawn are coming.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay.”

I turned in time to see him wink before walking off. The truth was I had no intention of going. None. Not until I got sucked into it.

After Wes picked me up, he drove me home and waited in my room while I took a shower. I no longer savored the bookstore smell anymore. Maybe it reminded me of all the unwanted changes there.

When I climbed into the bed, he was waiting with open arms. I unwound in no time, again reminded of my heaven on earth.

Unexpectedly, Wes jerked upright into a sitting position. “Oh, man. I forgot to e-mail Dr. Lyon.”

I glanced at my alarm clock, and it was 12:30 a.m. “About what?”

Sitting on the edge of the bed now, he slid out his QWERTY keyboard and began e-mailing from his phone. “I signed up last summer for a medical conference in Arizona. I need to cancel. I meant to do it earlier, but it slipped my mind.”

“Cancel? Why?”

He was typing away by then. “Because it’s this weekend. It’s on the use of alligator blood in creams. The lab is presenting.”

“So why aren’t you going?”

He turned, looking me in the eyes, and calmly and confidently answered. “Because I’m not leaving you for a weekend.”

As much as the reality of that sucked, I couldn’t let him give up all he had worked for to babysit me. “Wes, you shouldn’t cancel. You need to be there. It’s a huge breakthrough, and you shouldn’t miss your lab’s presentation.”

Pulling me over onto his lap, he put one arm around my waist and the other hand kept clicking away. “I have plenty of people who can go in my place. It’s not a big deal.”

I put my hand over his. “It is a big deal,Wes. Finding medical cures is your whole life. It’s your purpose.”

“No, you’re my purpose now, Sophie.”

“
No
, finding cures for the sick is your purpose. You are
my
purpose. And my duty tells me you should go.”

He stared at me in the blue glow of my alarm clock. I knew a million and one things were going through his mind, all related to my safety, so I used the only thing I could think of.

“Besides, Wes, I’m not nineteen yet.”

Though I felt him tense at the mention of the age Amelia and Lenny had died, I knew he got my point. Even if I was going to die, as far as we knew, I still had at least six months.

“Why are you so set on my leaving you?” he asked, unsettled.

I scrunched my brows together. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds awful. But seriously, how long would you be gone?”

“I’d leave tomorrow evening and come back Saturday night.”

“So we’re talking about twenty-four hours?”

He squeezed my knee. “It’s not the hours that bother me, it’s being that far away from you that I don’t like.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek softly. “We can do one day, as long as you don’t break up with me when you come back this ti—”

He kissed me before I could finish. But I pulled back.

“As long as you don’t break up with me.”

He kissed me again, and between kisses whispered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Before I could protest, he lay back with me on my bed. Making out with him was getting easier. He was much more relaxed when it came to being close to me, but it seemed that his momentary seducing episodes were very well calculated. He knew exactly how to make me forget any unwanted thoughts and only allowed them to return under much more peaceful terms.

Breaking our moment, he said, “I will not break up with you ever again. I’m yours every single day, forever.”

I melted into his chest, but not in a passionate way. Hearing something like that only makes you want to be cradled in the arms of the one who said it. No kissing was necessary. All that was needed was the closeness of his entire body against mine. And I stayed there, just like that, for the rest of the night.

The morning brought much greater disappointment than I’d anticipated, since he had to be at the airport by 6:00 p.m. That meant I had to drive myself to work on Friday.

I was fine. I wasn’t depressed about it or anything, but it only highlighted the fact that Wes was gone. I pulled into the parking lot, glad to see both Dawn and Danny’s cars there. It was a perfect greeting to an evening of work, and just like old times, things were great. Danny and Dawn were actually getting along and even Mr. Healey was in good spirits.