Faking Perfect (7 page)

“You’re Ben’s friend Lexi,” the girl said, nodding at me. “I’m Tori.”

“Hi,” I said, stretching my lips into a credible version of a smile.

Tori smiled back at me the way most of Ben’s girlfriends did—with a hint of a warning simmering underneath.
Watch your step
.

Don’t worry
, I wanted to assure her. “Ben’s friend Lexi” was a permanent position.

Ben offered to drive me home, of course, but I wasn’t in the mood to sit in the backseat of his car and watch him and Tori make googly eyes at each other in the front. So I lied and told him a friend was picking me up. Then, first making sure the happy couple was long gone, I walked home in the early spring drizzle.

By the time I reached my house, it was starting to get dark and my stomach gurgled with hunger. I found my mother in the kitchen, dumping spaghetti noodles into a colander. Steam rose up, half-obscuring the expression of annoyance on her face.

“Is it too much to ask that you be here on time to start dinner?” she asked, shaking the colander in short, jerky movements. “The last thing I want to do after nine hours on my feet is come home and cook.”

Like boiling pasta and opening a jar of sauce is difficult and time-consuming,
I thought, opening the fridge to get the parmesan. Barer-than-usual shelves greeted me, and I tried to figure out what was missing. It hit me as I sifted through the jars of condiments in the door. Mom’s ever-present box of wine was gone, along with the several bottles of beer we always kept on hand.
Interesting.
I found the cheese and shut the fridge door, studying my mother as I did so. She didn’t
seem
drunk.

“I had something to do after school.” I turned to place the bottle of parmesan on the table and noticed a pink vase filled with a dozen red roses sitting by the salt and pepper shakers. I ran my index finger over a silky petal. “Where did these come from?”

The irritation on her face melted into a sort of dreamy glow. “Jesse sent them to the spa today. For no reason at all. Isn’t that sweet?”

An image of those eerie colorless eyes flashed through my mind and I held back a shudder. “So you like this guy?” I extracted a couple of plates from the cupboard. “Don’t you think he’s a little, uh . . . young?”

The spoon she’d been using to stir the sauce slammed down on the counter, sending red drips flying. “Spare me the judgmental attitude, Lexi, okay? He’s thirty-two. I’m not one of those . . . what do you call them . . .
cougars
. God, you just have to find something wrong with everyone I date, don’t you?”

“But it’s so easy,” I shot back.

Her eyes narrowed into slits and she yanked one of the plates out of my hand. Turning away from me, she grabbed the pasta spoon, scooped a clump of noodles onto the plate, and ladled on some sauce. She carried it to the table, where she sat and began to eat, ignoring me. Calmly, I fixed my own plate and sat down across from her. The cloying scent of the roses tickled my nose.

“Where’s all the booze?” I asked, cocking my head toward the fridge.

Mom twirled some spaghetti onto her fork and shoved it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, making me wait for her answer. “Got rid of it,” she said after a minute. “Jesse doesn’t drink. He’s . . . he’s a recovering alcoholic.”

I covered my dinner with parmesan and dug in. “Better than a practicing one, I guess.”

She opened her mouth as if to chastise me some more, but realizing what I’d said wasn’t a dig, she shut it again. We ate in silence for the remainder of the meal.

“I could stand to cut back a bit on the wine, anyway,” Mom said as we cleared the table together.

I just shrugged noncommittally. It was far from the first time she’d vowed to stop or cut down on drinking. Nor was it the first time she’d tried to change for a man. She always went back to her old self, eventually.

“Jesse’s great. Really. He has a stable job, he doesn’t drink, no kids. I’m telling you, he’s not like the men I usually date. He’s different.”

“Okay,” I said flatly. I was still unable to shake my first impression of him. That icky vibe.

Mom’s mood seemed to improve as she loaded the dishwasher. “I’ll have to invite him over for dinner one night. So you can get to know him better. It’ll be fun.”

I scrubbed hard at a patch of burnt tomato sauce on the stovetop and thought about how getting to know Creepy Latte Guy wasn’t high on my list of fun things to do. “I guess so. Just don’t make it for Sunday. I’m going to the Bruces’ house for dinner.”

“Oh.” Her face contorted the way it always did when I mentioned them. Nothing dampened her mood faster than the thought of me across the street, bonding with her ex-best friend, the woman who almost succeeded in taking me away from her. I’d never blamed Teresa for that—she did what she felt she had to do—but Mom was a different story altogether. Five years later, she still blamed her.

My mother and Nolan’s mother had grown up together, just like he and I did. The only time they were ever apart was when Teresa decided to go east for college. Mom stayed out west in Alton, the same town in which they’d both been born and raised, and skipped college for a series of minimum wage jobs. Two years later, she met a tattooed bass player named Eric Davis and got caught up in his wild cyclone of bar gigs, liquor, drugs, and partying. . . until she got pregnant a couple years later, that is, and put a stop to it all. My father stopped too, for a while, until the music scene—and everything that went along with it—beckoned to him again.

Through all this, my mother kept in close contact with Teresa, who’d married Malcolm Bruce, a local guy, and settled down with him in his hometown of Oakfield. Despite their distance and contrasting lifestyles, my mother and Teresa’s friendship was as solid as ever. So when Mom called her up one day, crying, saying she needed to get as far away as she could from Alton and the horrible man who’d fathered me, it made perfect sense for us to go and stay with Teresa and Malcolm for a while. Until we got back on our feet, they said. They’d even pay for the plane tickets.

We lived with the Bruces for two years. During that time, Mom took a massage therapy course while I stayed home with Teresa and quickly became attached to her and to Nolan, who was only a few months older than me. He and I did everything together, even though he was bossy and pushy at times (qualities he still possessed). I didn’t remember much of those years, but what few memories I had were all happy ones. We were a family.

One of my sharpest childhood memories was the day my mother found a stable job and told me we were moving out of the Bruces’ house. I remember throwing myself on the floor in an epic tantrum, and I didn’t shut up until I heard where we were moving. Not back to “that place I was born” like I’d feared, but to the house right across the street with the pretty lilac bush in the front yard. Teresa, who was a realtor by then, had received some inside info on when it would go up for sale. When it did, we grabbed it.

Having our own place was fun at first, but I hated not having my best friend beside me full-time. And my mom wasn’t sweet and fun like Teresa. She didn’t cook chicken nuggets for me or remind me to brush my teeth. She didn’t give me hugs at bedtime or praise me when I cleaned up my toys. I wanted to live with the Bruces again, but I knew I couldn’t because my mother needed me way more than they did.

Even though Teresa didn’t agree with many of Mom’s life choices or her parenting style, she tried not to interfere. But when I turned twelve and Keith Langley exploded into our lives, all bets were off. Keith was a nightclub bouncer with a fondness for Jack Daniels and a hair-trigger temper. The first time he beat the crap out of Mom, I cowered in my room with the lights on, too scared to react. The second time, I threw a can of mixed vegetables at his head and ran across the street for help. Teresa called the police while Malcolm stomped over to break it up and I huddled in the family room with Nolan, shaking under the blanket he’d gently wrapped around me.

Teresa and my mom had a screaming fight in my house that night, one I did not witness. I stayed at the Bruces’ house overnight, and in the morning, Teresa told me what had happened. When she’d arrived across the street, Keith was being led to a police car while my mother sat in the living room, a dishcloth packed with ice pressed up against her swollen lip. The cops came back inside and Mom declined to press charges, which sent Teresa into an uncharacteristic rage. “If he ever comes back,” she’d warned Mom, “if he ever so much as shows his face around here again, I’ll call Child Protective Services and have that beautiful little girl taken away from you for good. She deserves better than this, Stacey, and so do you.”

Teresa never had to follow through on her threat because Keith never came back, but it didn’t matter. My mother was so insulted by her best friend’s words, she stopped speaking to her altogether. They hadn’t exchanged a civil word since. In the years following that night, Mom had worked her way through a parade of skuzzy boyfriends, but there was never another one as volatile as Keith Langley.

Maybe this Jesse guy will be different,
I thought as I wiped the kitchen table and inhaled the scent of those perfect, fragrant roses. Maybe he’ll be good for my mother. After years of kissing frogs, she was long overdue for a prince.

Chapter Seven

I
showed up early at the Bruces’ house on Sunday afternoon and was greeted by Gus, their hyper rat terrier. After sniffing me for a minute, he took off in the direction of the living room, where he curled up on his bed and started gnawing on a rawhide bone. Their cat Hugo, a plump black and gray tabby, dozed on the back of the couch. The house smelled amazing, like roast turkey and onions frying in butter. I wandered into the kitchen, salivating.

“Hey there, Lexi.” Nolan’s dad stood at the counter, pouring beer into a tall glass. “How goes it?”

“It goes good,” I said. We had this exchange every single time we saw each other, which wasn’t too often. He was a field service technician for a heavy equipment company and traveled a lot. “How goes it with you?”

“Oh, can’t complain,” he said, curling his thick fingers around the beer glass. Nolan and his father were nothing alike, aside from their height. Malcolm was big and burly, his forearms thick with muscles after years of working on heavy machinery. He’d played football in college and dreamed of doing it professionally. Instead, he married Teresa, took a steady job, and transferred the dream to his sons. Nolan had zero interest in sports, but Landon fortunately inherited enough of the jock gene to keep their father satisfied.

Teresa breezed into the kitchen, tossing me a “Hi, sweetie” as she made a beeline for the oven. She opened it a few inches, peeking inside at the delicious-looking bird. Pleased with its progress, she shut the oven door and adjusted the timer on the stove.

“Can I help?” I asked, watching her dart around the room like a flea on crack. Strands of light brown hair stuck to her forehead and she had what looked like grease stains all down the front of her jeans.

“Sure.” She nodded toward the pile of produce by the sink. “Peel carrots.”

I went to work on the carrots while Malcolm took his beer and fled the scene. I felt like dragging him back and sticking an apron on him. He was one of those gruff, old-fashioned types, the kind of guy whose only contribution to a dinner like this was to sit at the head of the table and carve the meat. Nolan didn’t get along with him all that well, mostly because they had no common ground. Artistic talent, according to his dad, wasn’t nearly as impressive as a good defensive tackle.

“Where’s Nolan?” I asked as I dug around in the bottom cupboard for the cutting board.

“I sent him to the store for milk.” She dried her hands on a dish towel and looked at me sideways. “He mentioned something the other day about your mom having a new boyfriend.”

I heard that familiar undercurrent of concern in her voice, the one she’d adopted way back in the Keith Langley days.
Do I need to worry about you?
it said. I told her everything I knew about Latte Guy so far, leaving out the whole creepy vibe thing. For all I knew, I was just imagining that. She visibly relaxed when I mentioned that he didn’t drink.

“Well,” she said, hauling the turkey out of the oven. “Let’s hope this one’s a winner.”

Nolan returned with the milk, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed
.
His hair was sticking up and he wore torn sweatpants and a black T-shirt that claimed I SEE DUMB PEOPLE. He attempted to shove the carton of milk in the fridge and leave, Malcolm-style, but I ordered him to stay and help me with the veggies. I was slowly training him to be well-rounded husband material for the future Mrs. Nolan Bruce.

An hour later, the five us were seated around the kitchen table, plates loaded with turkey and all the trimmings. Hugo wove his fat body around our chair legs, hoping for scraps, while Malcolm and his youngest son discussed the upcoming NHL playoffs, Nolan yawned into his mashed potatoes, and I enjoyed the first peaceful moments I’d had all week. Usually, during Sunday sit-down dinners, Teresa would spend the entire time asking me questions about school and my life in general, but she seemed distracted. In fact, she barely even looked at me, focusing instead on her food and glass of chardonnay. I had the distinct feeling I was missing something.