Perfectly Flawed (17 page)

“How was it?” she instantly shoots, sitting
up on the couch and muting the television. “Was he a gentleman? Was
he polite? Did he treat you nice? Was he mean?”

“Any other way you want to rephrase that
question, Aunt Hil?” I ask, plopping down on the ouch next to her
and letting out a large sigh. Home never looked so good.

“Sorry,” she sputters. “I’ve just been
waiting up for you.”
Just so I can ask all these questions
burning in my mind
. She yawns, her face contorting oddly as the
loudest sound escapes her throat.

“It kind of sucked,” I tell her honestly,
shrugging my shoulders. I don’t want to go into any detail; she
doesn’t need to hear anything more about it, really. That’ll just
create more questions I don’t want to answer. “But, oh well.”

“Oh, honey.” Hilary wraps her arms around my
shoulders, shaking me with a hug that I don’t want, a hug that I
never gave any sign to wanting. “I’m sorry,” she whispers into my
ear. It’s either for my horrible date or for hugging me, though I
know it’s for the former more than the latter. Hilary’s a
hugger—
blech
.

Hilary’s dated more than
me—
obviously
—so she knows about bad first dates, good first
dates, average first dates—first dates in general. We’re having a
moment, we’re bonding, I can tell by the way her hands lock
together and the way her eyes look me over, and she’s trying to be
my mom, or at least mom adjacent.

I shouldn’t ruin this.

But I do.

“Can we not do this right now?” I ask, prying
her arms from around my body despite the warmth and, I will never
willingly admit this again; I liked her hugging me. I like the
feeling of being loved and what that meant. “I just want to take a
long, hot shower and climb into bed.”

Her smile drops as she feels I’ve rejected
her. In a way, I have. In a way, I’ve pushed away another attempt
to be closer. But that isn’t the case, not this time.

The smile is quick to return, even if forced.
“You do that, sweetie.” She releases my arms, calling me more pet
names, and lets me stand up and away from the couch. “We can talk
tomorrow, if you want.”

I won’t want.

I climb the stairs to my room, kicking off my
boots as I go, and strip from the borrowed outfit leaving
everything in a messy pile on the floor by the door. I know I
should be nicer to Jamie’s clothes but the only thing that seems
worth the effort is a nice, steaming hot shower, one where the
water peels the layer of bad decisions and booze from my body and
the disappointment and regret from my bones.

After my shower, I take the clothes to the
laundry room—or garage as we call it here—and start the washing
machine. Hilary won’t mind the noise. I know because she’s already
in bed, snoring lightly. I can hear her through the door as I walk
past toward my own room, my bed calling my name.

The sheets, the blankets, the pillows,
everything is soft and cozy as I climb beneath and between,
burrowing until I’m comfortable. Soon, I’m asleep, entering the
dark world I dread.

Four

Sunlight streams through the open curtains—the
hideous off white venetian blinds that I forgot to close last
night—warming my eyes before I even crack them open, alerting them
to the painful signs of morning. I moan and groan loudly, objecting
to all things ante meridiem. It’s Sunday; my final day of freedom
before the week starts anew and I find myself confined within the
cement walls of the prison we teenagers call high school.

Excuse me while I briefly turn into a
melodramatic teenager.

With that scary thought running from my mind,
the sweet chocolate scent wafts through the crack in my door,
another thing that I forgot to close last night. There’s a hint of
banana and I know, as I shoot up in bed and fight the smile
blooming across my chapped lips, that Hilary is making breakfast
for the first time in months.

I swear the heavens have opened and the
angels are singing.

Not only
just
breakfast—my favorite
breakfast.

I trudge down the stairs, still in a morning
daze—which isn’t a good thing for a person with klutz-like
tendencies to do. I walk into the kitchen, taking in the full
aroma, my mouth watering before I can even see them.

“I smell pancakes,” I moan like a zombie in
search of brains, only I’m in seeking pancakes. My eyes zero in on
the target on the counter, a full plate of them. Ah, I think this
is the best Sunday of the year.

Hilary laughs to herself, the metal spatula
in her hand flipping a cake in the pan. She deals with this every
time she makes breakfast, whether it’s pancakes or eggs. However,
when bacon is involved, I’m funnier, and I steal the plate,
sneaking it up to my room before she can notice that it’s
missing.

“I was in a breakfast mood,” she tells me as
she slides the plate of pancakes over to me. I move toward them, my
arms outstretched, mouth still watering. You’d think that I haven’t
eaten in days with how I’m acting.

I lift it gingerly from the counter, because
it’s the most precious thing to me at right now, and take a deep,
deep breath, smelling the chocolate chip banana goodness that I
have loved since I was a kid.
Since I was a little girl…
I
think. I’m not sure but I do remember that these were the only
things that Hilary could get me to eat when I started living with
her. For some reason, they remind me of my mother; that’s when I
start to wonder if she ever made them for me as a kid.

She must have.

I’m lost in the thought when the front door
creaks open with a loud whine—
it was unlocked?
—and Zephyr
walks into the kitchen wearing red basketball shorts and a grey
t-shirt with the school mascot on the back with his jersey number
beneath it. His hair is a straggly mess around his head, matted
down on one side, completely frizzy and wild on the other, like
this was his first destination once he got out of from bed.

“I smell pancakes,” he mumbles as he heads
straight for the plate in my hands, determination set in his eyes,
like every other time he sees food.

Hilary snaps to attention, her eyes darting
between Zephyr and me, before settling on Zephyr as he stands in
the doorway to the kitchen. “Now that was creepy,” she says,
watching as Zephyr tries to take the plate from my hands.

I’m prepared to bite him if he gets too
close. I start snarling and growling like a hungry dog—don’t ask,
I’m still waking up, here. He takes the hint and backs away from
me, his arms up in weak surrender.

He smiles at me, knowing me and my love for
breakfast foods, and he starts laughing as I protectively hover
over the plate.

I have issues.

“Where’s Jamie?” I ask, still hoarding the
plate away from the human garbage disposal. He could trick me and
snatch it away, something he’s done before. Hilary, knowing how
much Zephyr can eat, starts preparing more batter by cutting more
bananas and setting them aside with the bag of chocolate chips, she
grabs the large bowl from the sink and rinses it out, all to listen
to whatever we have to say, I know.

She wants me to speak more about that damned
date.

“Asleep,” he answers half-heartedly, holding
back a yawn, as he searches the cabinets above the refrigerator for
syrup. “Your window’s open and the mouthwatering aroma was too
strong for me to ignore,” he tells us, still on his maple syrup
search.

“Really?” Hilary sarcastically asks from the
stove. “I’m pretty sure the thought of food was enough to drag you
out of bed, Zephyr.”

“Just the thought of your delicious cooking,
Hilary,” Zephyr says with an faux-innocent smile as he wraps an arm
around her shoulders in a side hug.

She raises an orange eyebrow in skepticism.
“Does your family feed you?” Hilary finally asks after a few
moments of quiet, mostly to the chocolate chip speckled pancakes in
her pan.

“More often than you think,” he answers,
leaning against the counter as his eyes watch her hand flip and
lift the breakfast cooking in front of her.

“Well, you know where the plates are, kid,”
she tells him, pointing the spatula at his head. “Start handing
them out. And make sure Joey takes one, she’s eating with her hands
again.”

They both look to me as I munch on a pancake,
training my eyes anywhere but on them.

Zephyr grabs three plates from the cupboard
closest to the sink, bringing them to the table and setting them at
different seats. He grabs the silverware as I continue to snack on
pancakes, too eager for syrup and utensils. One quick look at me, a
pancake dangling from my mouth, and he starts laughing like it’s
the funniest thing that he’s ever seen. Hilary looks over to see
what’s so funny and she snickers from the sight of me.

Settling down and setting the silverware
where it needs to go, Zephyr takes his seat, the one next to me.
“How was the date with Golden Boy?” he asks, grabbing five
pancakes, half of what remains on the plate, and covering them in
maple syrup. Knowing him as well as I do, I know that he doesn’t
have any real interest. I can tell by his eyes, but he did ask, so
I’ll tell him.

“Don’t get me started on it,” I mutter,
placing three pancakes on my own plate, foregoing the fork,
deciding to still eat them with my hands. “We ended up at Jennifer
Long’s house for some stupid party.”

“Oh, yeah, that party,” he says, as if it
were an afterthought. As if he’s remembering where he put his keys
or what the math homework was from last Tuesday. “I didn’t go.”

“Well, duh, I knew that,” I tell him, poking
him in the arm with the end of my fork. “I would have left a hell
of a lot sooner than I did if you were there.”

Hilary clears her through with a very audible
ahem
, stealing our attention. She’s staring at me with her
hand on her hip—the woman just went sassy. I can picture her
tapping her foot in annoyance. “Was there drinking?” she asks. We
didn’t make it hard, but I forgot that Hilary was in the room
listening to me talk about a high school party where there were, no
doubt, underage drinkers, me as one of them. Her parental instincts
were kicking in.

But I didn’t treat this situation like you
normally would when conversing with a concerned parent/guardian. I
treated it like I would anything else.

“No, not at all, in fact, we just sat around
playing board games and using a sharing stick to talk about our
hopes and dreams.” It wasn’t too early for me to get hit in the
back of the head for my deadpan speech of pure sarcasm.

“Josephine Elizabeth,” Hilary barks out as
Zephyr chuckles behind his hand.

Thanks, Best Friend. Way to make it
better
.

I steal a glance at Zephyr, noticing his
playful smile, and take a bite. “Do you want honesty,” I ask with
my mouth filled with pancake.

As she asked, I told her about the alcohol,
how I had one beer—technically—and Ryder was good to drive. She was
happy and proud that I didn’t get into a car with a drunk driver. I
was happy that she didn’t go overboard and decide to call Ryder’s
parents to let them know that their son had subjected me to
alcohol, that he was a bad influence turning her honor roll niece
into a delinquent.

Okay, maybe I’m imagining that last part, but
the sentiment is still the same.

While Hilary has never seemed like the tattle
type, who knows what she could do now that I was, quote, unquote,
dating. I mean, I’ve never given her a reason to have a long
discussion with someone’s parents about the trouble me and their
child got into. I’ve never been in trouble; I’m a good kid.

Zephyr sprawled along my unmade bed, kicking
off his shoes, as he got comfortable with the pink of my sheets.
After breakfast, we decided to laze around and spend the rest of
our Sunday morning uneventfully. Like every other Sunday. “What are
you going to do today?” he asks, his hand reaching for the remote
on my bedside table.

Is he going to force me to watch sports in
my own room?

“I don’t know,” I answer, following it up
with a wide yawn—politely covered with my hand. I watch him flick
through sports channel after sports channel from the worn recliner
in the corner of my room.
Yes, he’s going to force me to watch
sports in my own room.
He’s too comfortable in my room, too
used to the femininity that surrounds him. I remember when he would
play with me when we were kids, he’d try and boy it up as best he
could, but his attempts were all failures. He wasn’t used to
hanging around with a girl all the time; he wasn’t used to all the
pink plastered everywhere. Now, while I’m not so girly anymore, I’m
still very into pink and purple and pastels and it’s very obvious.
Though, I spoke too soon, he lands on a football game I didn’t know
was playing. “Nap, maybe.”

He turns his attention to me, ignoring the
game, and drags his hand through his long brown locks. The
intensity of his gaze makes my stomach flutter, something that has
never happened when any guy—let alone Zephyr—looked at me. I try to
shake it away. “Last night took a lot out of you, huh?” he asks
quietly. There is something about his gaze, something about his
eyes that I love. The feeling of them gliding over me when he
speaks to me, how they never turn away, like I’m all that he can
think about, all he can see. There is importance in his stare,
something no one else has really made me feel.

“You could say that,” I answer sheepishly,
leaning back in my chair and covering my bare legs with my
pink-and-gray No-Sew throw blanket. He turns his attention back to
my television set, I continue to stare at him.

“Joey.” Hilary’s snaps me back to reality as
she pokes her head through my open door, spotting me in the chair
and Zephyr on my bed. She smiles at the sight and seems relieved.
“Someone is here to see you.” She steps back, disappearing into the
hall and Ryder walks into my room, filling the doorway where my
aunt once stood with his six-feet height.