Everything (40 page)

I want in

I rolled my eyes.

We can’t kill him u psycho

Then what?

I don’t know

Let me think

OK, txt me l8r

I threw my phone onto the bed and buried my face in the mattress and let out a big giant scream.
 

It didn’t help. I still felt the giant weight pinning me down, pushing me to go back in my cave and shut everything out, but I knew I couldn’t. Even though it would be so easy to say “fuck it” and let Mick have the shop and not fight him, to let everything just fall away. But I couldn’t do that to me or to Aria. We had to come out of this on top. We just had to.

A knock at my door woke me. I hadn’t even realized I had fallen asleep.

“Dac?” Aria poked her head in.

“Hum.” I lifted up my head, looking around. It was dusk, throwing the room in slight shadows.

“Officer Parks is here, with pizza.” She grinned.

What time was it? I glanced at my cellphone beside me and saw that it was 7:01 and I had slept the afternoon away. “Tell him I’m coming. I totally forgot,” I said, getting up and putting my hair in a messy bun on top of my head, not really caring.

“That’s how you’re going out there?” Aria wrinkled her nose at me in disapproval.

“Yes, why?” I asked, oblivious.

She rolled her eyes. “Because he likes you and you’re going out there like
that
?” She gestured to my hair and face, which I assumed was all puffy and swollen from crying then sleeping on it.

“Yeah, so?” I was still not getting it.

She pivoted me to the bathroom. “Look at your face.” She pointed at the mirror.

While my eyes were puffy, I didn’t see anything wrong, other than that I was in need of a facial, I looked like I hadn’t slept in days, and I was oh-so-pale. “I don’t get it.”

“Dacey, a little blush and eyeliner wouldn’t kill you,” she finally said, frustrated.

 
“Oh, would you knock it off? I’m not interested in him like that. I told you,” I said, moving her out of the way and exiting the bathroom.

“It doesn’t mean he’s not interested in you,” she hissed, just as I rounded the corner to the kitchen.

“Hey, Southern belle,” he greeted, as he had taken to calling me. He was sitting on one of the chairs talking to Riley but stood up when we walked into the room. He was in his normal snug-fitting jeans and band T-shirt, this time Radiohead, and a baseball cap pulled down low. Seeing him like this, it was hard to believe he was a cop.

“Hey, JP,” I said returning the moniker. I heard Aria whisper something to Riley about pet names, which I chose to ignore.

“Are you okay?” Justin frowned, noticing my face.

“Yeah, I just woke up,” I explained.

He looked at me as if he was about to say something, then thought better of it and motioned to the box of pizza sitting on the table. “I didn’t know what kind you wanted, so I just went with my gut and got pepperoni.”

“Your gut was right—I love pepperoni.” I went to the cabinet and grabbed four plates.

“You guys eating too, right?” I asked Riley and Aria.

“No, we are going to Spinner’s,” Aria said before Riley had a chance to say something, which I’m guessing was not what he was going to say.

“Aria, how about you stay home sometimes, huh, like tonight?” I gave her a knowing look.

She ignored me. “Nah, we’ve had a shitty day, I
need
greasy fried food and skates in my life tonight, Dac.” She started pulling Riley toward the back door.

“Curfew, A!” I called as the door slammed shut.
 

I got in one bite of pizza before he pounced. “So you want to tell me what happened today?”

I swallowed loudly. “Can I eat first?”

He showed his dimples again. “Sure, you know I won’t object to that.” He watched me eat my one slice of pizza while he ate his four and, once I was done, pounced again. “So what happened today?” He leaned back in his chair.

“This isn’t an interrogation, you know.”

“I want to know what made you cry today.”

“Why is it so important to you? It’s not like you can help,” I said. “No one can,” I added to myself.

He crossed his arms over his chest, making his biceps strain against the fabric of his shirt. Maybe he needed bigger shirts.
 

“Because I don’t like it when...” He closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. “Just tell me, please.” He leaned forward and grabbed my hand across the table.

Feeling taken aback and unreasonably guilty by his sudden show of affection, I removed my hand quickly from his, causing him to immediately start apologizing.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head, feeling the need to explain. “It’s stupid and twisted. I just still feel like...”

“Like you are still tied to him?” he supplied, leaning back in his chair and taking off his baseball cap.
 

“And when you grabbed my hand, I felt guilty, which is fucked up because god knows what he’s been grabbing, and here you are just being nice and—”

“Dacey, stop,” he said firmly, stopping my rant.

I looked over at him, leaned back in his chair, and locked onto his autumn-colored eyes, and my breath caught. The way they were fixed on me, with a mixture of sadness and something else I didn’t want to admit was there, I turned away.

“First, there is no reason to feel guilty because we are just friends and when I touch you or hold your hand, it’s strictly platonic,” he said resolutely, making me look back at him. “Second, it’s not fucked up to feel the way you feel. Your heartache is still fresh. You can’t just turn off the love you felt for someone. If you were truly in love with that person, you can’t just move on so quickly. Ever.”

The message in his statement wasn’t lost on me. “I don’t think I’ll ever move on,” I said honestly.

“You don’t see what I see.”

“What’s that, a weak and miserable girl who is still pining for her jerk of an ex who dumped her for her dorm mate and whose Mom’s sleaze of a brother may be plotting to sell the one thing my dad has worked his whole life to build from the ground up?”
 

“He’s dating your dorm mate now?” His brow furrowed angrily.

“Yeah, he didn’t go far in his search for love,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm off of the word
love
.

He leaned forward slowly and reached for my hand, looking me in the eye to let me know his intentions.
 

I let him grab my hand and squeeze, and I noticed how soft and warm his hands were for a cop.

“If I ever see him on a dark street, just for hurting you this way...” He trailed off as a muscle in his jaw flexed.

“Thanks, but you’d lose your job. You’re a cop. You can’t just go beating people up for the hell of it.”

“Yeah, I’m a cop,” he sighed, and I got the feeling I was missing something. “I’d get away with it, you’d be surprised,” he said. He gave my hand one last squeeze and leaned back in his chair, removing his warm softness. “Now tell me about this sleaze of an uncle.”

 
We moved to the living room, and I proceeded to tell him everything about Mick and the will and the agreement. I told him about Mick’s past with Mom and how he had robbed her out of her inheritance money and how he didn’t even come to the funeral and how he had run off with the things from Mr. Eugene’s house—everything.

“Do you have any idea where he is now?” he asked, concerned.

“No, none. Aria doesn’t even know about him taking the things from Mr. Eugene’s house. We just know he’s going to try and sell Dad’s shop and we don’t have ten thousand dollars, Justin. We’re going to lose my dad’s shop,” I looked over at him, tears filling my eyes again.

“Hey, hey, we will figure something out.”

“We?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t abandon my friends.”

“Justin, I didn’t tell you all of that to ask for your help. I told you so that...I don’t know why I told you, actually,” I sighed.

“I didn’t say you did, but I want to help. Or are you too good of a Southern belle to get help from the likes of some lowly commoner like me?” He smiled.

“Well, I suppose I should be polite.” I fluttered my eyelashes and dialed up my Southern accent.

“That’s better. I’ll look into tracking down Mick for you and see if we can work something out with your father’s shop.”

I wanted to say “fat chance,” but Justin looked so sincere and eager to help, I didn’t want to shoot him down. “Thank you, really.”

“It’s not a problem, really.”

It was getting late, and Aria had ten minutes before curfew. I was just about to text her when the front door opened and she and Riley strolled in.

“You’re cutting it close,” I tapped my wrist with my finger.

“I still had ten minutes,” she beamed, then noticed Justin. “It’s not like you were lonely.” She giggled.

“I had better be going, I still have a forty-five minute drive ahead of me,” said Justin, standing up and stretching just enough so that his shirt rode up, showing a stretch of chiseled abs.

“Hey, Officer Parks?”
 

“I’m off duty, Aria. You can call me Justin,” he said, turning to her.

“Oops, sorry. Anyhoo, do you like plays?” She smiled suggestively at me, and I knew where she was going with this.

I tried looking to Riley for help, but he was looking every way
but
in my direction. Traitor.

“Justin, just say no,” I warned.

“You hush, Dacey,” Aria shot over his shoulder, causing him to look questioningly between us.

“I’m in a play at school this Saturday, and I was wondering if you would like to come?”

“I didn’t know you were into acting,” he said, looking back at me accusingly, like I should have mentioned this to him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, that totally slipped my mind to tell you, what with all the million other things going on,” I said sardonically.

“Fair enough.” He held his hands up in surrender, and then turned back to Aria, “What’s the play about?”

“Oh, it’s so good. It’s called
The Frost
, and it’s based on a collection of poems by Robert Frost. I’m doing the poem ‘Fire and Ice,’” she told him excitedly.

“Interesting. I happen to like Frost. ‘The Road Not Taken’ in particular is my favorite.”

“Oh, Dacey got a C on a paper about that poem,” Aria supplied, subtly giving me the thumbs-up sign like she was putting in a good word for me.

“Yeah, thanks. We covered that, A,” I said giving her my middle finger behind Justin’s back, which she promptly ignored.

“So can you come?” she pressed.

He turned around and looked at me, his eyes silently asking if it was okay that he come. Part of me knew it was because Aria had this perverse need to make this love connection that was never going to happen, and the other part remembered back to the day she told me she had gotten the part and I told her she would have a mob of people there in her section to make up for the two most important missing ones.

“If you don’t mind hanging out with a bunch of college kids all night, you’re welcome to come,” I said, making it clear that if he did come, it was
not
a date.

Aria’s smile was visible from space. “Yay, so you’ll come?” She clapped her hands.

“He didn’t say yes, A.” I rolled my eyes at her exuberance.

“But I didn’t hear a no,” she looked at him with hopeful eyes.
 

He smiled at her, much like an older brother would smile at his kid sister. “Sure, I’ll come. What time?”

“Yay! Seeeee, Dacey!” She stuck her tongue out at me. “You can just meet Dacey here since I have to be there before her,” she told him.

“Is that okay, for me to pick you up here?” He turned to me.

“Uh, sure. What time is the play, A?”

“It’s at seven, so you should leave here by six-fifteen to get good seats,” she explained.

“Okay, sounds perfect,” he said, then turned to me to state he was leaving. He said his good-byes to Aria and nodded to Riley and headed toward the door, as I followed.

“Thanks for agreeing to go. We don’t have a lot of family, and she wanted a lot of people in her section, you know.”

“I understand, but you don’t have to thank me. I genuinely wanted to go.” He smiled down at me and moved to push a lock of hair behind my ear that had fallen into my face.

“Thanks,” I said lamely, bowing my head.

He chuckled. “Platonic, Southern belle, totally platonic. See ya Saturday.”

I looked up to see him walking down the driveway to his police cruiser. “Bye,” I called back and went inside. If it was platonic, why did he look at me in that way that I knew was not platonic? In the least, I couldn’t have a relationship with him, with anyone right now. My heart was shattered, first split with my parent’s death, then Trevor’s “revelation,” and it wasn’t near healed. And the large gaping hole that Trevor had gouged out with a rusty spoon had no intention of loving or even liking someone anytime soon, and that left no room for Justin and his incredibly sexy body and kissable dimples. Yeah, I noticed. I was in mourning, not blind.

The next morning, I was awakened early with a phone call from Dr. Pfeiffer’s office. While she was rattling away about the tests she had done, I went to wake Aria and put it on speakerphone.

“Your aunt has what’s called hypocalcemia, which just means she is not getting enough calcium in her blood. Usually it’s caused by hyperparathyroidism, but in your aunt’s case, it could be because by her diet. Does she eat regularly healthy meals?”

Aria and I looked at each other and refrained from laughing out loud.

“Our aunt has an eclectic taste bud when it comes to eating,” I said, stifling a laugh.

“I see,” said Dr. Pfeiffer, seemingly catching on.

“Wait, so is this fixable?” I asked with a spark of hope.

“Yes, this is fixable. She needs to be on a high dose of calcium supplements, and her diet needs to change, ASAP, or it will get worse, but the memory loss should correct itself and as long as she follows doctors orde—”

The rest of what she said was drowned out by me and Aria’s screams of joy at the first piece of good news since, since I couldn’t even remember, it had been so long. Opal was going to be okay, and she was going to be Opal! Aria and I hugged and cried and hugged some more.