Wake (65 page)

I sit down at the kitchen table, wishing I’d brought some honey or rice bread for the road. As I brood and chew, I feel an arm wrap around the front of my shoulders in a hug. It’s not Jem—her hair tickles my neck and she smells like the bar.

“Aren’t you an early riser,” she says sweetly, and kisses the back of my head. Why the fuck is she still touching me? I told her last night that I wasn’t in that basement to do anything but inhale.

“Oh, I’m just full of tricks,” I tell her dull y. I don’t want to tell her off when I’m a guest in her house, but if I bore her she may lose interest and leave me alone.

Ava chuckles and nuzzles the back of my head. “So I’ve heard.” What did she hear?

“Want me to show you how to make a newspaper into a weapon?” How’s that for a trick? Maybe I’ll demonstrate how to draw blood and break bone with it, too—she can be the dummy.

Ava laughs and heads to the fridge. She says she doesn’t think it’s possible to make a newspaper dangerous. I resist the urge to look for one to prove her wrong.

I get up to wash my plate without a word while Ava pours a bowl of cereal. I’m wrist-deep in suds when she comes to stand behind me, hugging me and resting her chin on my shoulder.

I want to elbow her in the gut.

“Do you not grasp the concept of being used for weed and nothing else?”

Ava sighs in my ear and pets my hair. “Do you like him?” Now I really want to hit her. “He’s not ready for anything serious, you know,” she whispers. “So much of him has changed, he’s not ready for…

intimate relationships.”

In my short eighteen years, I’ve met a lot of people who were full of shit. People who, by all rights, should have had it coming out their ears—who I should have been able to smell a mile away. But Ava’s insightful pile of bullshit makes me wonder if she even knows Jem. I bet he’s never told her a secret. I bet she’s never been all owed to witness a weak moment.

My hand stills on the dish sponge. “What do you see when you look at him?”

“Oh, he’s still in there,” she assures me. “But he’s…different.”

No. He’s dead.

“Ava?”

“Yeah?”

“Get off me before I shank you with a butter knife.”

She chuckles like I’m joking and kisses me on the cheek before departing with her cereal. I rinse my dish and put it in the drying rack, eager to go get dressed, to get out of her company for five minutes.

When I turn around Jem is standing right there, leaning against the kitchen wall with his arms folded. He doesn’t look happy.

“What time do you want to get out of here?” he asks.

I shrug and tell him it’s up to him. Jem gives Ava a scathing look—which she misses—and says the sooner the better.

“I’ll get dressed.”

I head down the hall to the bedrooms and Jem follows me. I assume he’s going to get changed too, but before I get to Ava’s bedroom door he grabs me by my upper arms and holds my back against his front.

“Don’t listen to a word she said,” he says in my ear. “She’s…”

“full of shit, I know.”

Jem blows an angry sigh out through his nose.

“How long were you standing there?”

He ignores my question. “What do
you
see when you look at me?”

I roll my eyes. “Do I really have to tell you again?” His grip loosens a little and I walk away from him, into the bedroom. I lock the door behind me. I just want five minutes of peace to get dressed.

He knows what I see. I’ve been telling him for months. He just never listens.

*

I sit up front with Eric on the ride home. I figured it would be less awkward this way, and Jem has the whole back seat to lie down if he feels tired.

There isn’t much conversation on the way home. Jem constantly has his phone in his hand, texting.

When I look back at him in the mirror he’s sometimes pensive, other times pissed off, and just before he conks out with his head against the window he looks sad.

We stop for gas in Kemptvil e. Eric sends me inside for snack food while he fills the tank and Jem sleeps on. When I come back to the car I set the food up front and climb into the back with Jem. It’s not good for his neck to be slumped over like that.

Very carefully, I unwrap the seatbelt from across his chest and loosen the band across his hips. He’s still not that heavy, and it only takes a slight pull to get him to lean toward me. I make a pillow on my lap from my folded jacket, and Jem snuggles in without ever really waking.

His phone buzzes on the seat and I pick it up to switch it off. Then I get a devilish little thought: perhaps I should record an annoying ringtone for him, like he did for me.

I have no idea how his phone works. I scrol through the menu, looking for a settings or voice recorder option. His text message inbox has a lot of unread texts in it. It keeps flashing red, begging for attention. I open the inbox to get the alert to stop flashing.

Al his most recent messages are from Ava. Judging by the way his face looked an hour ago, this probably isn’t a pleasant conversation. I open the earliest message, just to see.

Relax, we hardly even did anything.

I get the feeling she’s talking about me, and the next message confirms it:
Just a little making out. She

wasn’t even that into it.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually wanted to be physically close to someone in that capacity. I didn’t want Ava. I just wanted…something. Beyond a decent joint, that is.

Don’t give me that shit, you said you were done with her.

I still can’t believe he’s not.

Last time we talked you were planning to stop being friends with her.

I think back to Ava’s phone message. She sounded like she thought Jem and I were no longer on speaking terms, and that she was extending the olive branch to me in spite of that. I wonder if it says something about Jem’s relationship with Ava that he tells her about his anger but not his happiness.

Her next message is a little mean:
Well did you really think you’d get anywhere?
I stop reading and shut off his phone. What does Ava know?

Eric drops me off at home and I very carefully slide my legs from under Jem’s head, trying not to wake him. He sleeps like a bear in January. I thank Eric for the ride and he tells me to come around again soon.

“Mom misses you.”

I promise to come tomorrow, maybe after I’m done pretending for the people at Group. As they pul away I take out my phone and send a text to Jem. He’ll get it when he wakes up.

I’m sorry I didn’t say no to her.

Frank is out when I get home. He left a note on the counter about going to Port Elmsley to help Doug fix a wiring problem. The note doesn’t say when he’ll be home, but that doesn’t surprise me. Home improvement projects have a way of getting out of hand, and even if they do finish today, Frank will probably stay for a beer and an hour or two of Sports Center. At least, that’s how Frank will explain it when he gets home.

I unpack last night’s clothes and take advantage of having the house to myself. I send Mom an emaill with the week’s news, playing up the part about how therapy was so incredibly life changing and I can’t wait to go back and work through some of these issues. Let her have a little hope.

Frank doesn’t come home for lunch, and I don’t know if he’ll be here for dinner, either. But I feel like cooking, so I start preparing zucchini fritters. I’m shredding the zucchini when my phone vibrates.

I walked in when Ava asked you if you liked me.

So Jem saw her wrapped around me. He heard her say that he’s not worth having a relationship with.

No one needs to hear that. It hurts like hell to be told that, no matter how many times it’s said.

I didn’t answer her because it’s none of her business. I do like you.

Thanks.

Maybe he was better off not answering that message, if that’s what he’s going to say. He’d have thrown an insecure shit-fit last night if I’d said ‘thanks’ to his admission.

Jem texts me:
I’m trying, okay? I want to make peace with what you did.

You’re an idiot.

He doesn’t have to forgive me in order to be civil to me. As far as I’m concerned, even trying to make peace with my past is a waste of effort.

Optimists usually are. That’s why I’m a pessimist.

I almost smile.
Never change,
I tell him
.
That dork sends me a smiley face in reply. He’s got a sentimental streak and it’s disturbingly adorable. I set my phone aside and heat the oil for the fritters. I almost have the entire batch fried and ready before my phone moves again.

Can we ‘see each other’ again?

I stare at the screen for so long I forget the pan on the stove and two of the fritters burn.

“Shit!” I throw the fritters in the sink and take the pan off heat. The fritters are so burnt they’re unsalvageable. I scoop them into the garbage can and turn back to Jem’s message.

How do I answer it?

We need to talk about this.

Okay.

Can I come by tonight?

Not tonight. I don’t feel well. Maybe tomorrow, okay?

Do you need anything?
As long as I’m cooking, I could make something for Jem and take it over to his house later.

Rest. Tomorrow, okay?

Maybe I should be gratefull for the delay, because I don’t know what the hell I’m going to say to him.

Sunday

I love Mrs. Elwood. She calls early in the morning and gets me out of group therapy by asking me to cover a shift. Frank isn’t happy about me missing a session, but I point out that I need the money for college (yeah right) and he grudgingly agrees to let me skip a week of therapy. I think he just doesn’t want to sit through mass again. I text Jem to let him know about the change of plans, but he doesn’t reply.

He probably just read the message and roll ed back over to sleep.

I have the opening shift at the B&B with Chris. The house is quiet for the first hour while we wait for guests to come down to breakfast, so I busy myself with sweeping the floor. Chris gets the task of setting up the dining room and back patio for the meal.

I feel bad about the way I talked to him last week, when it was just the two of us working. I took my own problems out on him and aside from a tendency to flirt, he’s a pretty good friend.

“Hey, Chris.”

He looks up from the sideboard buffet. “Yeah?”

“You want to do something sometime?”

Chris smiles. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we could get a group together to go to the movies?”

“What do you want to see? I’d love to go with you.” I don’t miss the fact that his wording leaves out any suggestion that this will be a group outing. I suggest a slapstick comedy and tell him I’ll invite Brian and Hannah, and he can invite who he wants.

Chris shrugs. “We could just go the four of us. That’s almost a full car. Double dates are fun, but any more than that is a crowd.”

I should have known he would assume. “Oh, this isn’t a date,” I tell him as politely as I can. “Come on, Paige is my friend. What would she think of me if I asked you out so soon after you two broke up, huh?”

Thank God they break up every other week.

Chris agrees, but I can see he isn’t thrill ed. He’s just telling me what I want to hear. I can’t hold that against him. I know what it feels like to spin lies because the truth isn’t fit to swallow.

I leave the B&B at five, ready to head home for dinner. I wonder what Jem is doing—a persistent thought that has an obnoxious tendency to intrude on my brain—and remember our promise to meet and…talk.

I sit in my car and call him, wondering what I’m going to say when we sit down to discuss where we stand.

Jem answers the phone sounding completely exhausted. “Hey Willa.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. What’s up?”

“I just got off.”

“You
what?”

“Easy, pervert. I just got off
work.
Can I come over so we can talk about…yeah?”

“Um, now isn’t a good time,” he says awkwardly. “Can we postpone again?”

“You’re not stalling, are you?” I tease him. He chuckles and assures me he isn’t.

“I’m just not feeling well enough for company.” Jem apologizes and promises that tomorrow night we’ll set time aside to sit down and talk about…stuff.

“Tomorrow, then.” I intend to hang up, but then he asks me if I’ve heard Bad Religion’s new album.

“Don’t tell me you have it?” That bastard. We talk about it for an hour, dissecting every song—he plays them one by one into his cell mic. Jem’s favorite track is “The Devil in Stitches.” I like “Turn Your Back On Me.”

“You’re going to make me a copy, right?”

“Consider it done,” he agrees.

“I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

He laughs and I look at the clock. Shit. It’s almost six. I’ve been laying across the front seat for too long, chatting the evening away. I say goodbye to Jem and he tells me that I don’t have to come with him to dialysis this week, since we didn’t go to my therapy together.

“Pul your head out of your ass,” I tell him. “I’m coming with you.”

I call Frank as I drive home to ask if I should pick up takeout on the way. He’s already eaten leftovers, and apparently there aren’t any zucchini fritters left. That was quick.

I tell him not to expect me home till late and take the road to Port Elmsley.

*

Mr. Thorpe is out when I arrive. It’s just Luke and his sister Briana, who is holed up in her room, blasting metal.

“She’s been in a pissy mood lately,” Luke says, and apologizes for the way the walls shake. “Are you hungry?”

Luke makes spaghetti. He boils the whole package of noodles, which could regularly serve a family of four. Luke eats about three helpings alone. His idea of an appropriate portion for me is enough pasta to make me feel stuffed and dozy.