Don't You Wish (2 page)

“Sweet cheeks!” Lizzie looks like she might die.

I already have. Fire licks up my own sweet cheeks as I stand for the stop. I glance at Lizzie, but she’s already sinking in her seat, so my gaze goes right over her shoulder and lands … on Courtney.

Guess I’m on her radar now. While she whispers something to Shane, she stares hard at me. Scary hard. Nasty hard. Courtney-on-a-mean-mission hard.

The whole bunch of them burst out laughing, and Courtney starts poking Shane. “C’mon. I dare you.”

He looks at her, then at me, then at her.

The traffic refuses to cooperate, holding me hostage a full lane from the sidewalk.

Shane steps into the aisle. OhmyGodohmyGod
ohmyGod
.

“I can get out here,” I say to Geraldine, like she’s a cabdriver and I’m in New York or something.

Evidently she doesn’t hear the raw desperation in my voice. “Are you kidding me? I’ll lose my license if one of Pittsburgh’s finest is watching. You just wait a second, and don’t bother with those morons in the back.”

But one of those morons is walking right toward me. I clutch the pole, the metal slippery in my wet palm.

Every single eye on the bus is on him. And me. And him. And me.

“Hey,” he says, in that low, sexy Shane voice that Lizzie can imitate perfectly.

Except now it doesn’t make me giggle. It makes me want to throw up.

“Hey.” I manage the whole syllable without choking.

“You going to homecoming?”

My hand slides a little down the pole. “What?” It comes out like a half choke, half squeak. From my peripheral vision, I can see Lizzie’s eyes opening to the size of headlights.

“Home-
coming
,” he enunciates like English is my second language. He’s close enough now that I can see his eyelashes. Dark, but tipped in gold. The eyelashes of the gods. “On Saturday night.”

I somehow clear my throat, and then the heavens open up and so does the traffic. Geraldine hits the gas, and I almost fall down the first step, but cling to the bar as my backpack rolls around and hits me in the chest.

Could this get worse?

“ ’Cause maybe you’d want to go with me.”

Yes. Oh my, yes. It actually
could
get worse. “Excuse me?”

I know what’s happening, of course. He’s asking on a dare. As a joke. Behind him, I’m aware of howls of laughter, hands over mouths as the cool kids watch the drama play out.

And then … I have that thought. That thought no girl in this situation should ever have. Not that any girl should ever be in this situation, but if she is, the very last thing she should have is
that
thought. That stupid, idiotic, pathetic loser thought of a hopeless nobody.

What if he’s serious?

I just stare at him, digging around my Shane-numbed brain and finding … nothing. Forget a witty retort. I couldn’t tell him my name right now.

“ ’Cause if you need a date …”

“Yeah?” Did I say that?
Why
did I say that?

“My dog’s lookin’ for someone to hump that night.”

The entire bus explodes with laughter just as the doors open and the sidewalk beckons. All I can do is look at Lizzie as I step down, into the underworld where douche bags like Shane Matthews come from, blood rushing in my head loud enough to almost drown out the sound of Geraldine yelling at him to sit the hell down or never ride a bus in this town again.

I stand on the sidewalk as the doors swoosh behind me and the bus pulls away. I refuse to turn, terrified that if I do I’ll see Courtney looking out the window, her giant white teeth bared in laughter. In fact, I don’t move for a good fifteen seconds while those words roll over me like Geraldine’s bus wheels. The words about the dog?

No. The other words.

’Cause maybe you’d want to go with me
.

Because for that one insane flash of a magical moment, I could pretend he really did ask me.

I know, that’s even more pathetic than Googling his backpack.

My buzzing phone pulls me out of the depths of self-pity. It’s Mom, telling me she’s already done shopping, so she’ll wait for me in the book section. No doubt she was ogling some high-end houses in
Southern Living
or some other magazine that makes her whine about wanting a nicer house. She says she only reads those magazines for work, but, honestly, they’re like crack to her.

Sure enough, I find her nose-deep in the Mother of All House Porn,
Architectural Digest
, her frosted hair covering her face. She doesn’t look up, but I hear her sniff.

“Mom?”

She shakes her head a little, turning away. Is she crying?

“What’s the matter?”

Finally, she looks at me, her face streaked with rivers of
black mascara, her eyes red, her lower lip trembling. What the heck? She so isn’t a cryer.

“What’s wrong?”

Her hands are shaking as she holds the magazine out to me, saying nothing, as if the pictures and words do that for her. But all I see is some museumlike place with fountains and statues and water views from every floor-to-ceiling window. The headline reads “Living a Flawless Life.”

“This could have been mine,” she says in a strangled voice.

Hers? Her what? “Your listing?” I ask.

“My house.”

I give it another glance, still clueless. “What are you talking about?”

“Him.” She flips a page and points to a guy in scrubs, hands on hips, big phony grin. “Jim Monroe.”

“Who is he?”

“Dr. Jim Monroe,” she repeats, sliding her hand to another picture, where the same guy stands in front of a building with two giant gold intertwined F’s behind him. “The cosmetic surgeon who started Forever Flawless?”

“Oookay.” I think I’ve seen this guy on TV, hawking a chain of plastic-surgery centers popping up all over the country like they’re McDonald’s, but that doesn’t explain the tears. “Why are you crying?”

“I could have married him, Annie,” she says, another harsh whisper, as though saying the words out loud is somehow wrong. “I dated him in college. He went to med school at Pitt.”

“Really?” Totally did not know Mom had a doctor boyfriend pre-Dad. I take another look at the magazine, and
Jim. Not bad-looking, in a young Ben Stiller kind of way, maybe midforties. And, whoa, dripping in dollars. “Yowza, this guy’s loaded.”

She snorts softly. “Estimated net worth of over a billion.”

Holy crap. “With a B?”

“Billion,” she repeats, swiping some mascara and smearing it across her cheek. “Look at that house, Annie. Just … look.”

“It’s nice.” Which is like saying the ocean is wet. Mom hands the magazine to me so she can dig a tissue out of her bag, and I skim the article, picking up key words. Words like … “twenty-three-thousand square feet” … “Star Island in Miami Beach” … “pizza oven in the kitchen.” “He’s got his own pizza oven?”

“Look at the last paragraph,” she says, her voice cracking. “Read it.”

Our tour ended in the master bedroom, where Dr. Monroe showed off the cavern of a “Hers” walk-in closet. Only there is no “her” in Jim Monroe’s life. “I’m still waiting for my princess,” he says with a wistful smile. “And, no, she doesn’t have to be flawless, just fabulous.”

I throw up a little in my mouth.

“I came so close.” Mom blows her nose, and I cringe, praying that no one hears. “So close to having that.”

She stuffs the tissue back into her purse and takes the magazine from me, staring at it again.

“How close?” I ask, a little fascinated by this new side of a woman I never thought about with anyone but my dad. And am not sure I want to.

“When he finished med school, he went to do his
residency in Florida. He asked me to go with him, but I still had my senior year left.”

“And he wouldn’t wait for you to graduate and marry you then?”

She hesitates, a little color returning to her face. “Well, to be honest, he never really … proposed—he just talked about us being together. But he would have,” she adds quickly. “I’m sure he would have. But he wanted to live together first.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Oh, probably because of Nana. She said men don’t pay for the cow if they get the milk for free.”

Yep, that sounds like my grandmother. “But this dude can pay for a whole farm.” Interesting that he never bought one, staying single long past the age when it’s cool. “Did you see him after he moved?”

She stares at the page. “After college I met Daddy, and I was going to go see Jim, but …” Her voice trails off. “Things happened, you know.”

I
know
. My birthday is seven months after their wedding anniversary.

She blows out an exasperated breath and gives me a shaky smile. “Jim Monroe never really offered more than … cohabitation. Then I met your father and discovered what it was like when a man really cared about me. Frankly, until this minute, I forgot all about Jim. He was a go-getter, that’s for sure.”

Closing the magazine, she reaches to put it on the rack behind her, then shudders a little before tossing it into the
cart on top of some groceries, a pair of pliers, and a thick roll of electrical cable.

“You’re buying that magazine?” I ask.

“So I can get a taste of how the other half lives.”

Right. The other half that we’ll never be. We’ll never have much money, let alone a house that could go in a magazine. At least, not unless one of my dad’s so-far-out-there-it-inhabits-its-own-time-zone inventions takes off.

“Looks like the other half lives with pizza ovens,” I say, ready to make light because Mom looks a little wrecked over this.

“Money isn’t everything.” She swipes at her face with her hands, making a holy mess out of her mascara. I don’t have the heart to tell her, though. “Anyway, this is what’s meant to be. I have you and Theo. And Daddy.”

“Instead of a twenty-bazillion-square-foot house.”

Without responding, she shoves the cart to the checkout line and starts unloading with a little more force than necessary.

I can’t help flipping the magazine open to the article again. I’ve never seen anything like this place. A mongo curved staircase, room after room of total luxury, a master bedroom that kind of hurts to look at, it’s so gorgeous.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to be that rich,” I muse.

“Money doesn’t make you happy,” Mom insists, whipping carrots and lettuce out of the cart. “Money doesn’t make you laugh when you’re lonely, or make you full of contentment on Christmas morning.”

Sorry, but on Christmas morning, money can make you
really
happy.

I hold out a picture of a giant pool built on the edge of a patio, the water spilling over into an ocean beyond it. “Looks like money does buy something called an infinity pool overlooking the Bay of Biscayne.”

She shrugs, opening her wallet. “He wasn’t capable of loving anyone but himself,” she murmurs. Then she takes the magazine from my hand and plops it on the conveyor, the last item to be rung up. “I can’t believe I’m spending six dollars on that.”

“Did you love him?” The question sort of pops out without full brain engagement. Maybe it isn’t my place, but I really want to know.

“I … I …” She slides the credit card slowly through the machine, holding her breath a little as she always does until it clears. “I did.”

When she scribbles her name and flips the last plastic bag off the round bag holder, I can’t resist pushing a little more. “Did you love him more than Dad?”

I stay close to her while she rolls the cart to the auto-open door. I’m dying to know the answer, but kind of scared to hear it, too. I don’t want her to love anyone more than Dad.

“I loved him the way a woman loves a man she wants to change, but knows she never will.”

Which makes zero sense and strikes me as a non-answer. “What did you want to change about him?”

“I wanted him to be faithful, for one thing, which I never really could be sure he was. And I wanted him …” She thinks for a minute as we wait for a car to pass. “I wanted
him to love me for who I was, and I never felt quite good enough for him. You’ll understand someday.”

Someday? I understood about ten minutes ago on a school bus.

We stop talking about it on the hike to the van, which is parked in another zip code. About halfway there, she freezes in her tracks with an SUV behind us.

“I really love Daddy,” she announces. “I mean, you and Theo are all I live for. What would I be with Jim Monroe? Rich and lonely, that’s what.”

“Maybe you’d still have us.” I guide her to the left to let the SUV by.

“I wouldn’t have
you
,” she insists, giving the cart a push toward the minivan. “Maybe I’d have some other kid. But not you. Not Theo.”

She reaches for the dented hatchback—a mistake of backing into Theo’s basketball hoop that would cost $2,600 to fix, so we lived with it—and yanks the door upward.

“You don’t know that,” I say.

“You wouldn’t exist, Annie.”

How does she know? “I look way more like you than Dad,” I tell her. “People always say I’m your clone. So I might look just the same, only I’d be rich and living in Miami Beach.” I look up at the typically gray Pittsburgh skies. “That’d be nice.”

She flips a plastic bag into the back. “You are who you are because of Daddy and me. Get in, and I’ll put the cart away.”

I do, watching her walk to the cart return, the frown deepening that line between her eyebrows that she’s always trying to hide with her bangs.

When she climbs into the driver’s seat, she lets out a little sigh. “I’m not hungry. Let’s just skip Eat’n Park and go home.”

“ ’Kay.” I wasn’t in a Superburger mood anymore, anyway.

As she sticks the key into the ignition, she makes a little grunt. “Oh, sh—sugar. I forgot Dad’s duct tape.”

“He has enough at home,” I say. “It’s just … under something else.”

Her eyes shutter closed for a second. “Don’t I know it.”

“You can show him that magazine and tell him you got distracted.”

Looking over her shoulder, she backs out of the spot. “He doesn’t need to see that. It would just make him feel inadequate.”