Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (31 page)

A sound interfered. Neither of us reacted fast enough.
We couldn’t. Mom popped out of the foyer, finding us entwined and shirtless.

“Oh my God!” she shrieked. “Oh my God, I
’m so sorry.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot as if she’d landed on a hot beach, then she bolted back to the hall.

Boone stayed right where he was, frozen
, with one hand in mid-caress on my chest. The blood drained from his face. He looked down at me, pale and mortified. I stared back up at him, shocked into stupidity.

Everything had been ruined.

“Shit,” he finally said. He reached down beside the couch for my shirt and turned it right side out for me before grabbing his from the table. I wanted to kill somebody when he lifted his body away from mine. His finger traced a spot low on my stomach. The tickle made me inhale sharply.

“Sorry about that,” he whispered. I
did a crunch so I could see the imprint of his belt buckle below my belly button.

“I’m not,” I said brazenly.
Embarrassment damaged our perfection and, sure, I wish my Mom had stayed at the newspaper another hour or two. But I wasn’t sorry about anything we’d done. Even with the shock of Mom’s interruption, need for him still simmered in my background. I liked his mark on me, however temporary, and wished I could somehow stamp him, too.

He sat down on the edge of the couch to pull his shirt on
, and I did the same.

“Umm, can I come out now?” Mom called.

“Can you give us a chance to leave and never come back first?” I yelled. Boone stiffened to perfect ninety-degree angles, like one of Grandma’s ladder-back dining room chairs. He put his hands on his knees.

Mom
peeked around the wall. “Hey, I’m really, really sorry.” She watched Boone as she would a skittish puppy she hoped to reassure. “I know if you two were at school, you’d have privacy and no one would say a word.”

“No, I’m
the one who should apologize, Mrs. Perch,” Boone said, rising to his feet. “I’m a guest in your home. I shouldn’t act like this with your daughter. I—I lost my head for a minute but you can promise Mr. Perch it won’t happen again.”

I dropped my head into my hands. I’d been demoted from “hot Biker-girl” to “your daughter
.”

“Look, I was surprised,” Mom said. “But
, hear me out. I would have screamed if I’d walked in on
anybody
, okay? And I’m not saying I’m encouraging you two to be physical, because I’m not. I’m also not going to make this worse by telling Dad. You two are young, and you’re sort of stuck here with all of us and we’re figuring out how to make that work.”

She clenched white-knuckled hands
together at her waist.

“Yes, ma’am,” Boone said. He looked
over at me.

“Boone,” I whispered. His frown, his drenching remorse, silenced whatever
inadequate plea I was going to make.

He
walked gingerly past Mom. The guest room door closed with a reserved click.

I flung myself back on the couch
. I’d forgotten the back cushions were off and slammed my head into the frame. “Ouch!”

Mom put her hand over her mouth to try to hide her smile.

“That’s just perfect, Mom. Thanks a lot. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. And Boone….” How could I explain to her Boone would probably never look at me again? That I’d had to cajole and seduce him past his Dudley Do Right-ness?

“I know, sweetie,
but you need to think about what you’re doing. And where. I mean, really. On the couch? At two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon?”

“We
didn’t plan this. We were watching a movie. And boys aren’t allowed upstairs.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I got angrier. At almost twenty years old, I’d been scooped from the freedom of the ocean and returned to my nursery aquarium. “Never mind,” I bit out. “I’m sure Boone Ramer won’t put a hand on me here or anywhere else, ever, day or night.”

Mom tried
to soothe me. “Sweetie, I doubt —″ The house phone jangled, making us both jump. Dad had dug out an old fashioned wired set that would still work without electricity. Its strident ringer insisted on immediate attention. Mom sighed as she walked to it.

“Hello? Oh,
hi, Herb.”

My mom called her in-laws by their first names, Herb and Bittie
, a nickname for Betsy.

“What happened?” she asked
sharply. “Well, is she all right?”

I rose to go to he
r. The guest room door creaked open, too. “Okay, I’m on my way, and Violet and Boone. We’ll be right there. Get her to stay in the living room, and we’ll clean up when we get there.”

Mom explained in a rush as I pulled on my sneakers and Boone laced up his hikers. “Grandma cann
ed some tomatoes this morning, but she must have fallen asleep during the last batch. Herb says she hasn’t been sleeping well, so she took quite a nap. The canner bath must have boiled off all the water and a jar of the tomatoes exploded. He said it sounded like a bomb, even from the garage. Grandma ran into the kitchen and cut her foot. It won’t stop bleeding.”

When we hurried into their living room, an obvious fact smacked me in the face. My
grandparents were old. For my whole life, they’d aged in lockstep with my growing up, so I’d never thought of them as
looking
old. They just
were
. Until today. Poor Grandma sat with her veiny foot on a bloody bath towel, ankle swollen, yellow toenails curved into dry skin. Bimonthly permanents on rollers the size of toothpicks forced her hair into painfully tight curls all over her head. Overall, uncharacteristic weariness combined with gravity to tug her cheeks into sagging folds.

She
avoided our eyes like a chastised child. Grampa hovered over her, wielding a roll of white gauze in one hand and a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the other.

“Everything’s fine,” Grandma said
. “We can take care of it. I don’t know why Herb dragged you down here.”

“It’s no
trouble, Bittie,” Mom said. “Violet, why don’t you and Boone go see what’s what in the kitchen?”

I was guiltily happy to escape
Grandma’s resistant helplessness, though less so when I saw the disaster, with horror movie tomato gore splattered on half the room. Shards of glass sparkled amidst the red.

Mom
’s calm questions interjected with Grandma’s resentful responses in the living room. Grampa came up behind us.

“She says to use the old mop, not the good mop, and the
re are old rags in the laundry room, and to wrap the glass good and tight so it doesn’t cut through the garbage bag.” A thin sheen of sweat covered Grampa’s upper lip.

“
Will do.” I hoped my all-business attitude would help him through this.

Grampa
pointed out all the supplies with a shaky hand before I urged him into his recliner. Mom already had Grandma’s foot wrapped into a bulky white ball. She sat on the couch chatting with her.

When I
returned to the kitchen, I told Boone I’d clean the stove and ceiling, since they seemed to be the worst.

Boone nodded.

I wiped the top of the stove so I could warm some water. Inside the canning pot waited a mafia meal gone horribly wrong. Tomatoes, whole and exploded, mingled with wrist-slitting fangs of glass. Three of the jars survived the blast. They stood like ancient immortals holding their bulbous cargo in a polluted sea.

Boone
gathered glass and tomato guts in a cardboard box. I tackled the unenviable job of scrubbing the ceiling while he mopped.

My neck
soon cramped at the awkward angle. “Life with the Perches gets better for you every minute,” I joked.

He smiled politely
.

The
vinyl floor revived to normal and the teakettle wallpaper hid the worst of the stains, but the creamy ceiling would sport pink clouds like a Dr. Seuss landscape until it was repainted.

With the kitchen
as restored as possible and dinnertime upon us, Mom tried to convince Grandma and Grampa to come home with us for the night. Grandma flat out refused. She promised she would keep her foot up on the ottoman and call Mom if it started to bleed or bothered her at all.

“Violet,” Grandma said. “I’ve got a dozen chickens ordered for next Thursday. Mabel said if we help pluck and clean them she’ll charge a little less. Good lesson for a girl like you. And Sara, too. Thursday.”
 

 

I bathed as best I could with water I’d heated on the old camping stove Grampa had loaned us then flopped on my bed with a candle flickering on my nightstand. Boone had maintained a hushed five-foot perimeter since our discovery. I wanted to close the distance between us again, and not just in the physical sense. I wanted him to talk to me, but every sentence this evening rang with the politeness of a store clerk to a new customer.

A
soft knock tapped on my door. “Come in.”

Mom eased into the room,
her candle’s flame accentuating the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. “What a day, huh?” She sat sideways at the foot of the bed. “Dad called. The company wants this x-ray sale so bad they’re delivering the equipment tomorrow. He’s going to stay down there. He couldn’t find a hotel. The doctor is letting him sleep in the waiting room.” She rubbed at one eye and laughed. “He says they have power, and the water is on from 8AM to 8PM. Seems like a good system, doesn’t it?”

“Better than trying to wash
your hair in a sink,” I said. “Did you tell him about Grandma?”

She nodded. “He
’s worried. We knew the time was coming when they wouldn’t be able to stay alone but, well, I guess no one expects independence to end today.”

“Grandma won’t like the sound of that.”

“No, she won’t. Maybe she’ll listen to your dad. It makes more sense to have everybody in one household where we can share resources. And for protection. All the looting….” Her voice drifted to silence as we both imagined a mob beating down our door.

My shoulders slumped.
“They’ll need the downstairs bedroom,” I said. I dreaded the excuse their moving in would give Boone to leave.

“Yes,” she admitted, reaching out to touch my foot. “If it comes to that, we’ll figure something out, Violet. About this afternoon —″

“Aw, Mom, I don’t want to talk about that again.”

She paused
, and I thought, for once, she might actually shut up. Wrong.

“It’s important to me you understand. I meant what I said. I realize if you were at college
, you’d have the freedom to do what you think is best for you.” She focused on my eyes. I knew she was trying to make an impression on me with her words, and that, if I wanted to be treated like an adult, I had to be able to handle an adult conversation. “I trust you to make good choices. You’re sensible, and Boone seems a level-headed guy. Heck, I met Matt Perch when I wasn’t much older than you so I know this—whatever you’re discovering with Boone—has the potential to be a real, lifelong relationship for you.”

“
Okay,” I said.

“However
…”

I groaned.

“…you need to use protection.”

“Mom
.”

“Look at how much our lives have changed since
Yellowstone started. We have no idea what this winter, or the next year, or the next decade is going to bring. As willing as you and Boone seem to be to meet the challenge, believe me when I say you don’t want an infant in this situation, especially by accident.”

“I’m sure it won’t be an issue
. He probably won’t even hold my hand after today.”

She
rolled her eyes. “If a little interruption sets him back that far then you’re better off without him.”

“
Easy for you to say. I’ve been trying to date him for a year, and when things start to go well, a freaking apocalypse happens. He’s already worried about obeying the household rules, half of which he’s making up for himself, and then we get caught making out like two kids.”