Clouds That Were (Weathered Hearts) (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tenley

A
s much as
it sucked before to not be allowed to go to homecoming, it sucks more now. I know that I have only known Chase for a day, but I have never wanted to go somewhere more than I want to go to this dance with him. I can picture myself in a gorgeous dress, all the other girls looking at me with envy because the hottest guy in school chose me to take to Homecoming. I want so badly for this to happen. This guy is amazing. He knows I can’t go anywhere, so what did he mean by see you later? Like in the window? Whatever. It’s almost noon now, so I might as well go get my outside stuff done. I need to just let the Homecoming thing go. I know it isn’t going to happen. For whatever reason, though, I feel like he could make it happen if he wanted to.

I decide to dress a little cuter than I normally would just in case Chase sees me. I throw my mousy brown hair up in a messy bun, grab my bikini top and some jean shorts and I am off. It’s gorgeous outside and I’m glad that I have projects that I have to do outside so that I don’t have to be inside all day. Opening the garage door, I pull out the push mower and make sure it has enough gas. Once it’s filled up I am ready to go. I can see out of the corner of my eye that Chase and his dad are in their driveway talking, and I briefly wonder what they are talking about; but I don’t want him to know that I saw him outside, so I quickly turn back to the mower and try to start it.

Of course, this would be one of those times when the damned thing won’t start. I push it back into the shade and go to grab some starter fluid. I jump and yell when I turn back around and see Chase and his dad standing there.

“Hi, I’m Jack. This is my son Chase. We were just outside and noticed you were struggling with the lawnmower. Can we help?”

“I, uh, I…”

“Here: let me help.”

I look at Chase with a concerned and questioning raise of my eyebrow, only to have him wink at me. My mother must’ve heard us talking because she comes out with her overly sweet act that she uses whenever there are people she doesn’t know around.

“Hi guys, is there something wrong?” she asks sweetly.

“No we just noticed your sister here struggling with the lawn mower.” Jack responds.

I roll my eyes at Chase behind her back.

“Oh this isn’t my sister; this is my daughter Tenley. She always struggles with this thing.”

“Well, we just came over to help. I am Jack, and this is my son Chase. Why don’t you just let me take a look?” he says smiling back with an equally sweet smile.

Leaning over and fiddling with the parts, he says, “Ah, I see the problem, looks like it needs a new spark plug. That explains why she can’t get it started.”

At this point I am standing behind her using everything I have not to burst out laughing. She was trying to make me look like an idiot, and he ended up making her look like an idiot. This is priceless.

“Why don’t we have Chase run Tenley here to the store to get a new spark plug, and you and I can have a cup of coffee while we wait for them to get back?”

Haha, she is stuck. If she says no, she looks like a bitch, but if she says yes, I get to leave the house. What is she going to do here? This has never happened before.

“Um well, yes, that sounds like a great idea. Tenley, why don’t you go grab a shirt and I will grab some cash out of my purse for you?”

“Sure mom.” I am so confused, excited and just amused by this turn of events, I just stand there.

“Um Tenley, are you okay?” asks Chase.

“Yeah, sorry, I just, let me go grab a shirt.”

As fast as I can humanly go, I run upstairs, grab my hoodie, and run back downstairs and out of the door.

“Ready?”

“Yep I’m ready,” I stammer.

“Okay, Chase, here is the old spark plug. Just go to the hardware store and tell them you need a new one just like this one. They should be able to help you. This looks like an old one, however, so you may have to go to more than one store.” He winks at Chase and me and turns around to escort my mother back into the house.

Chase and I start walking across the street when he leans over and whispers “Told you I would see you this afternoon.”

I shake my head as he opens the passenger side door for me, and I jump in. He closes the door and walks over to the driver’s side, gets in and starts the engine as he looks over and smiles a very sweet, yet mischievous, smile at me.

“So, did you have that whole thing planned out with your dad? Is that what you two were talking about in your driveway?” I inquire.

“So you did notice us.”

“Yes, stalker boy, I noticed.” I giggle.

“We were in fact talking about you. I was explaining the situation to my dad who happens to be a genius when it comes to rescuing damsels in distress. He was trying to come up with a plan when we saw you struggling to start the lawnmower. It was perfect.”

“Well, thank you. I haven’t been out of the house besides going to school in, well, a long time.”

As I look out of the window, I realize that we are going in the complete opposite direction of the hardware store.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“I just have to make a quick stop before we go to the hardware store,” he says mysteriously as he smiles at me and turns down a dead end street.

“This is your stop?” I ask. He says nothing, but puts the car in park and gets out. “Chase?” He walks around to my side of the car and motions for me to get out. I do, and as soon as my feet are on the ground, he scoops his hand around my neck and pulls my face to his. He leans in, and I can feel his breath on my lips. We still have not broken eye contact as he whispers “I am going to kiss you now because I am afraid that if I don’t do it now, I might not get the chance again.” I nod weakly as he places his soft lips on mine and proceeds to kiss me in a way that can only be described as deliciously.

When he finally pulls away, my breathing is erratic, and I can feel that my face is flushed. All I can do is stand there and look at him in awe. This hot, sweet, unpredictable guy just managed to get me away from my mother and kiss me, all within twenty-four hours of knowing him. He may just be an angel.

“Alright, jump back in the car. We have a spark plug to purchase.” He smiles.

I put my hand up to my lips in the hope that doing so will somehow make the kiss stay there, and I slowly turn and somehow manage to move my weak knees enough to get back in the car. I’m a little embarrassed by how unaffected he seems by the same kiss.

“No one has ever kissed me before,” I say, my voice a little shaky.

“Well, it was my honor to be the first one then.” He smiles. “Has anyone ever held your hand?”

“Um, no. Now you probably think I am a huge dork. What kind of sixteen-year-old has never even had a boy hold her hand, right?”

“Tenley, no I don’t think that. I know you have had a hard life with your mom, and that has prevented you from doing things other sixteen-year-old girls have done.”

“It’s just embarrassing you know?”

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about; none of what has happened is your fault. Do you mind if I hold your hand?”

He holds out his hand, and I take it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t really know what to say, I have never talked to anyone about her before.”

“Where is your dad?”

“He is an alcoholic. I have only met him twice, and I was so young, I don’t really remember him. He and my mom were in high school when she got pregnant, and they just didn’t end up staying together.”

“So it’s just you and your mom?”

“I guess if you could even say that. She was so young when she got pregnant with me, it was actually the first time she had, well, you know. Anyway, when she told my grandparents, she said that she wanted to give the baby up for adoption. My grandpa went nuts and said that he didn’t want anyone with his blood running through his or her veins running around somewhere in the world. If she was going to give the baby up for adoption, then he and my grandma would adopt him or her. My mom has always been somewhat of a control freak, and I think even at seventeen, she knew that she would never be able to watch her child being raised by someone else and having to watch someone else have control. She and my dad talked about it then and decided that she would have an abortion. My dad’s parents offered them the money because they felt like that was the best choice. Once again, though, I think she couldn’t do it because someone else wanted her to. After a few weeks of trying to decide what to do, my dad bought a ring with the abortion money and asked my mom to marry him. My mom’s parents freaked and offered my mom some obscene amount of money to not marry him. He was already an alcoholic, and I guess they were concerned about what kind of life my parents would have. So my mom took the money and they didn’t get married. My dad pretty much walked away because he was so disgusted.”

“So do you still see your grandparents?”

“Well, when I was born, we lived with them until I was about seven. I became very close to them while my mom was out acting her age. Once she figured out that I was closer to them than her, she freaked out. Shortly after that, she met a guy and got married and then moved us out of the house. She tried to keep me away from them as much as possible.”

“And they didn’t fight her?”

“What are they supposed to do? The more they fight with her, the worse she treats me. I am able to call them about once a week from a pay phone at school but that’s about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No! Do not feel sorry for me. I don’t need your pity.” I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes, and I don’t want him to see me cry; so I turn and look out of the window to see that we have pulled into the store.

“We are here.” He says. I can hear in his voice that he didn’t intend to upset me, but he did; and now I don’t know what to say, so I just get out of the car.

We walk into the store, not looking at each other at all. I use my sleeve to wipe the tears from my eyes and put my sunglasses on. Chase gets the new spark plug, and in a few minutes we are back in the car.

He reaches to start the car, stops, runs his hands through his hair, and just sits there.

“Listen, I know you didn’t mean to upset me. I just really hate it when people pity me.”

“Look at me. I don’t pity you. I hate that you have to live this way. I hate that I can’t do something to help you. I hate that it doesn’t seem that anyone else is trying to help either. It is unfair for anyone to have to live like this. You are too beautiful, too smart, too funny, and just too special to be locked in a room all of the time.”

He reaches over and gently takes my sunglasses off to reveal tears welling up in my eyes. I have never let anyone see my cry, and I don’t think I can keep the tears in, so I turn away, slide my sunglasses back down, and watch the road pass underneath us as we head back from heaven to hell.

CHAPTER NINE

Chase

O
kay, how the
hell am I going to pull this off?

I run downstairs, and my dad is in the kitchen.

“Hey bud, want to go shoot some hoops outside?”

“Sure, but I wanted to talk to you too.”

We head outside, and I tell him the situation: her problems with her mom, the comment about being dead, everything I know to this point.

“Wow. That is really messed up. Between the two of us, we should be able to come up with some way to get her out of the house, right?” he smiled.

“Well, I was thinking that if you go over there and flirt with her mom or something, maybe she would let Tenley go somewhere?”

“This woman sounds like a head-case. I don’t want to get involved if I don’t have to.”

“True. I get it. I think Tenley described her as “bat-shit crazy”.

He lets out a big hearty laugh that only my dad can do and says “Bat-shit crazy, I haven’t heard that one before!”

His laugh is contagious, and now we are both just standing in the driveway laughing. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tenley’s garage door open, and she comes out pushing the lawn mower. I catch my dad’s attention, and we both half-watch and half-pretend to be in a very deep conversation. I notice that she barely looks over, but I know she sees us standing there.

She looks absolutely breathtaking without her hood up as it normally is. She isn’t even wearing the hoodie. I can’t pull my eyes away. The cute little jean shorts she has on with a bikini top has me practically drooling. She has her hair pulled up into some kind of mess on the top of her head, and it appears as though she put no effort into it at all, yet it is a look that other women must waste hours trying to achieve.

“Wow, she really is cute, Chase. I can see why she is causing you such a problem.” He smiles. “Oh, hold on, we might have our opportunity right now. Looks like she is having issues getting the lawnmower started.” Before I can argue, he is jogging over to her house. Shit, this could totally backfire.

Right before we get to her, he leans over and whispers “Whatever I say, just go with it.”

She must have gone into the garage to get something and didn’t notice us coming over, so when she turned around, she jumped about a foot in the air and then immediately turned as red as a tomato.

“Hi, I’m Jack. This is my son, Chase. We were just outside and noticed you were struggling with the lawnmower… can we take a look?”

I’m not really sure why he did that; he knows she knows who I am. However, the cute befuddled look on her face almost makes me fall to my knees. As I try to get myself back to planet Earth, her mom comes out and lays on some kind of hideous fake flirty smile. She looks like that black–and–white-haired woman who eats Dalmatian puppies or makes coats out of them whatever. It’s disturbing.

My dad starts fiddling with the lawnmower and pulls out what I can see from two feet away is a perfectly good spark plug. “Ah, I see the problem, looks like it needs a new spark plug; that explains why she can’t ever get it started,” he explains.

He and I both know that this is not the case. I look up at Tenley, and she looks like she is about to burst out laughing. I thought she was beautiful before? Seeing her now with that sassy gleam in her eyes, and holy shit that smile: she really IS going to be the death of me. I feel like I am drowning in her eyes. I have to look away, but I can’t.

I vaguely hear my dad say something about my taking Tenley to the store to get a new spark plug, and I finally realize what he is up to. This has been his plan all along. Tenley suddenly has an extremely confused look on her face, and she is standing there biting her lower lip and looking back and forth between my dad, her mom, and me.

“Um Tenley, are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, sorry, I just, let me go grab a shirt.”

With that, she goes back into the house, and we are left standing in the driveway with her mom.

“Chase, I am sorry that you have to deal with her. She is not nearly responsible enough to have her driver’s license, and she is far too dumb to know how to buy a spark plug, so I really appreciate your taking care of this for me.”

Oh my God, I am going to pick up this lawnmower and bash her fake smile right into her damn skull. Who the hell talks about her daughter like that? I feel myself clench my fists, and it is all that I can do not to snarl some remark to her about apples and trees. My dad must see this happening and quickly jumps to my rescue.

“Oh, I am sure Chase here doesn’t mind having to take a pretty girl like her to the store for a bit.”

“Pretty girl? Are you kidding? She might be pretty if she had a team of professionals working on her, but since she doesn’t, I would describe her as ordinary at best.”

“Well, sometimes even the ordinary is beautiful,” my dad says with a look on his face I am certain I have never seen before. Somewhere between shock and disgust, I think.

That is the moment Tenley rushes back out of the house wearing her famous hoodie. It’s a shame she has to cover up, but she still looks hot. My dad explains again that we will just need to show the old spark plug to the guy. I really am not sure why he is explaining this; I know what I am doing. However, he then adds a bit about its being old and probably having to go to more than one store, and I see where he is headed.

Tenley and I head over to my truck, and I lean over and gloat in her ear about how I told her I would see her this afternoon. All she can do is shake her head and smile, and my God, that smile. I have never wanted to kiss a mouth as badly as I want to kiss hers. This is going to be a very long day.

I help her into her side of the car, rather the passenger side, since it’s not really hers. Oh, who am I kidding? Yes, it is. Anyway, once she is in and buckled, I decide that I cannot spend another minute with her without kissing that mouth.

“I just have to make a quick stop first.” I smile.

She looks at me with a little bit of a confused look on her face, and we continue down the road. I know there is a back road out this way from which I can pull over and get this kiss out of the way before I stop breathing. I find an empty spot on the road and pull over. I can’t even think straight right now, so I put the truck in park and get out. I can hear her yelling something, but I have to just keep moving before I lose my nerve. I open her door and motion for her to get out, and she does. As soon as she is on the ground, I pull her lips as close to mine as I can without touching her and whisper “I am going to kiss you now, because I am afraid that if I don’t do it now, I might not get the chance again.” I lean in the rest of the way and as soon as her lips touch mine, I swear the world stops turning. In that moment, it is just she and I. She tastes like strawberries, and her lips are so soft, I think I could just stay here forever. It takes everything I have to pull away from her.

I stand there and study her face for a minute. She looks adorable with her flushed cheeks, but most of my time is spent on her eyes, which, for at moment, have no trace of sadness in them at all. I joke with her and tell her to get back in the car because I know that if we keep standing here like this, we won’t make it to the store.

We talk about her mom and why she is the way she is, and I just want to turn the car around and drive until we can’t drive anymore. I want to say exactly the right thing so that she knows I am going to be here for her no matter what. I want to pull her into my lap and hold her and let her cry and kiss every one of her tears away until she can’t cry anymore. The only thing I can come up with is, “I’m sorry.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know exactly what she is going to say. When my mom killed herself and people said that, it made me furious. The last thing on earth I wanted was some asshole’s pity. And that is exactly how I just made her feel based on the reaction I just got. Shit.

I retreat to silence for the rest of the ride while I try to think of something to say to dig myself out of this massive hole I have just dug for myself. We both go into the hardware store and get the new spark plug. Once we are back in the car, I put my face in my hands so that I can think; and seconds later she pleads, “Listen, I know you didn’t mean to upset me. I just really hate it when people pity me.”

There is no right thing to say right now, and yet, because I am a professional idiot when it comes to her, I manage to verbally vomit on her what seem like random words that just pop into my head. I can’t read what she is thinking with her damn sunglasses on, so I reach over and slide them up so I can see her eyes, and not only is the sadness back, but there are tears just about to fall. If she is anything like me, the last thing she wants is for someone to see her cry, so when she slides her glasses back down and turns away, I don’t argue with her. The last thing I need to do is make this hole any bigger.