Faking Perfect (14 page)

“Who took this?” I asked.

“If I remember correctly, we asked some guy walking by to take it.” She placed the picture on her knee and ran a finger over it. After studying it for a few moments, she sighed and shook her head. Her eyes shone with tears. “I miss Stacey a lot,” she said when she noticed me watching her.

“I know,” I said, taking the picture and replacing it in the box. “She misses you, too. But you know how she is. Stubborn. She doesn’t like to admit when she’s wrong.”

“Yes,” Teresa said softly. “She’s always been proud, your mom.”

“And pigheaded.”

She didn’t disagree. It would be hard to. “Speaking of proud”—she set her hand, warm from the mug of tea, on my forearm—“did I mention how proud I am of you for sending that email to your father? Sweetie, that took guts.”

I shrugged. “A lot of good it did me.”

“Oh, don’t give up yet. There might be a very good reason why he hasn’t replied.” Teresa sounded like Shelby when she made excuses for her deadbeat baby daddy.

“Or he could just be denying my existence, like usual.”

Teresa deposited her empty mug on the coffee table. “You know, I didn’t really know your father when I lived in Alton, but I knew
of
him. When your mom called to tell me she was dating him, I wasn’t surprised. She always had a thing for those tattooed, wild types.”

I squirmed on the couch. Why, out of all the traits I could have inherited from my mother, did I have to get stuck with that one?

“Anyway,” she went on. “He seemed
nice
, you know? Your mom was happy, really happy, for a long time.”

“Then the drugs,” I cut in.

She gave me a cautious look. “Stacey . . . did some drugs, too. With him. But she stopped when she got pregnant with you.”

“And he didn’t.” I’d heard all this before, my whole life. She was stronger than he was, she grew up, she made sacrifices, she was a better parent, a better person. She saved me from him and for that, I should be grateful.

“He didn’t,” Teresa agreed, idly sliding another picture from the box. A Bruce family picture, circa about fourteen years ago when Landon was a tiny baby. Rocking a shoulder-length, layered hairstyle, she held baby Landon in her arms while four-year-old Nolan stood in front of his father, both of them dressed in suits. Malcolm’s meaty hand rested on his son’s small shoulder. All four of them smiled for the camera, a nice, normal family captured for posterity.

“My point is,” she continued, putting the picture back, “he wasn’t a horrible person, even then. Troubled, yes, but not totally incorrigible. He had good qualities, too, and I’m sure they eventually resurfaced. That’s why I decided to tell you what I knew about him. It’s also why I think he’ll do the right thing and email you back. If he’s as brave as his daughter.”

My eyes felt damp. Like her son, Teresa always knew the right thing to say. I might have inherited the worst of my mother, but Nolan had gotten the best of his.

Chapter Thirteen

I
n the end, like so many other things, the email arrived only after I’d stopped thinking about it.

I definitely wasn’t thinking about it Saturday night, when a bunch of us went out to dinner to celebrate our college acceptance letters, which we’d begun receiving in the past week. I’d gotten into my first choice, Benton, a small college about a six-hour drive from home. Student loans would cover tuition, books, and residence, the last of which I was extremely excited about. Rooming with a perfect stranger would surely be an improvement over living with my mother.

I wasn’t thinking about it Sunday morning either, when I stayed in bed past noon, alternately dozing and thinking about Ben. He’d been accepted into Avery, a prestigious college located several hundred miles away from mine. If I was ever going to gather the courage to let him know how I felt about him, it would have to happen within the next five months. This deadline made me feel even more desperate to get close to him. Tori must have sensed it, the way sharks sense weakness, because she’d been acting incredibly bitchy lately.

I still wasn’t thinking about it on Sunday afternoon—exactly a week to the day since I’d sent the email—when I sat down at the computer and typed in my password like I’d done a million times since then—which was why it took me a few seconds to register that it was there, finally. An answer.

Dear Lexi,

I can’t even put into words how stunned I felt when I read your email yesterday. It was very unexpected.

My wife Renee read it first and called me. I was an hour away, securing a deal on a new cat (the excavating kind, not the furry kind), and I came back as fast as I could. A letter from you was the last thing we were expecting to see in the three pages of emails we’d missed since our emailing system crapped out two weeks ago. We just got back online yesterday, so I apologize for the delay.

Renee is helping me write this email because honestly, I’m finding it hard to express in words how happy I am to hear from you. I’m not much of a writer. Like you, I’m more of a numbers person, which makes me wonder what else we have in common. I knew you had my eyes and blond, curly hair just like your mother’s. She always hated her curls, too.

A lot has changed for me in the past thirteen years. I don’t know what you’ve been told about my past, from your mother or from this Josie person (who for the life of me I can’t place, though Renee tells me she works at our bank), but I spent most of my twenties putting every cent I earned into my arms, up my nose, and down my throat. At present, I am twelve years sober. It hasn’t been easy. Ten years ago I married Renee, who somehow still puts up with me. We have two kids, Willow (8) and Jonah (6).

There’s so much I want to say to you, Lexi, but I’m not sure how much I can get across to you in a letter. Just know that I’m so incredibly pleased that you contacted me. I’d like us to try, if you’re willing, to start building a relationship. I’ll understand if you don’t want to. It’s been almost fourteen years since I’ve been any kind of father to you. Every day, I regret those lost years. I think of you often and I hope it’s not too late for another chance.

The ball is in your court now. I’ll leave you with my home phone number, just in case you ever want to talk. No expectations, no pressure.

Eric

P.S. I’d love to see a current picture of you.

My first reaction was relief. An email system failure, not a lack of interest, was the reason for his week-long delay. He was happy, not dismayed, to hear from me. Great.

My second reaction was rage.
I’m not much of a writer
? This was his excuse as to why he didn’t mention once, not
once
in his entire email,
why
he’d failed to reach out to me all my life?
Start building a relationship
? Why? So he could drop out of my life all over again whenever it suited him? How could I build a relationship with someone who’d basically abandoned me and let me grow up with a crazy woman? How was I supposed to get past that? How did he expect me to ever trust him again?

I let myself fume for a few minutes, then forced myself to calm down and read the email again. Different things popped out: My siblings now had names and ages to go with the images I’d concocted in my head. He was kind of funny, like when he said “the excavating kind, not the furry kind” about the new cat he’d bought. He’d acknowledged his nonexistent parenting and expressed feelings of regret. He hoped for another chance. Okay. So maybe, like Teresa said, he wasn’t
all
bad.

I moved the mouse until the arrow hovered over
REPLY
. The ball was in my court. No expectations, no pressure.
Click
.

My answering email was brief. Partly because I could hear my mother on the other side of the door, banging around the bathroom, and partly because one sentence was all I was able to give him.

Eric,

No promises, but I’m willing to try.

Lexi

When I walked into math class the next morning, Tyler wasn’t in his usual seat at the back of the room. For a second, I wondered if his suspension had been extended, but as I sat down I noticed him sitting at one of the tables in front. The one right beside mine and Emily’s, in fact. Terrific. Cranston must have moved him. Skyler Thomas, still at the back of the room, looked disappointed with the change. It was hard to stare at or flirt with someone who was three tables ahead with his back to you.

Several feet—and Emily—separated us, but it was like Tyler and I were connected by invisible strings. Each time he moved, I noticed. He never so much as glanced at me, as far as I knew, but I still felt warm and self-conscious, like he was aware of my every move, too. I must have been acting weird because Emily shot me a couple confused looks, and at the end of class she asked if I’d had one too many chai lattes this morning.

“You keep fidgeting,” she said, beaming again at her graded test paper. For once, she’d beaten my score.

It was no surprise to me; it was the test we’d written last Monday, the morning after my spur-of-the-moment “study session” with Tyler, minus the books. Between the sex and the fighting, I hadn’t exactly gotten much studying done. “Yeah, caffeine overdose,” I lied as we left the classroom together.

At lunch, we convened in Ms. Hollis’s room, even Emily, who chose to eat instead of douse fires in the newspaper office like she did most days. The April issue was done and ready to go to print. It was the one time of the month she allowed herself to partially relax, if only for a day or two. I wasn’t sure why she still bothered to overachieve. It was senior year, and we’d already been accepted to college. She was going to Avery, like Ben. Apparently, they had a great journalism program there. I could picture her conducting interviews and covering breaking news stories just as easily as I pictured him in politics. The two of them radiated competence.

While we ate, Emily and I discussed college and our plans, topics we’d been understandably stuck on lately. Shelby stayed quiet and focused on her sandwich, ripping the bread off in tiny pieces and popping them in her mouth. I knew she felt excluded whenever college came up. She’d applied with the rest of us back in the fall, when she still thought she and Evan were going to be a happy little family, but since then she’d decided to take a year off. Piper would need her, she reasoned, especially at the infant stage. College could wait. Clearly, listening to us talk about our futures made her all the more aware that hers would be entirely different. While we were surviving freshman orientation and sitting in class, she’d be enduring night feedings and changing poopy diapers. Most likely by herself.

Emily, noticing Shelby’s uncharacteristic silence, changed the subject to something more universal—our contempt for Evan. Recently, he’d started giving Shelby the cold shoulder, ignoring her calls and avoiding her at school. He was like a soap bubble, fragile and erratic, liable to vanish completely with the slightest hint of pressure.

“Did that boy come crawling back to you on his hands and knees yet?” Emily asked.

Shelby tossed her mangled sandwich back into her lunch bag and shrugged. “He’ll come around. He has to, right? I mean, it’s his daughter.”

Right. Like the title of
daughter
or
son
meant anything to some parents. Like the sharing of genes and chromosomes yielded instant connection and love. He might come around, but there was no guarantee he’d stay.

I wasn’t about to deflate Shelby any further, so I agreed. “True.”

“He’d better get his head out of his ass soon,” Emily said, stretching her legs out into the aisle. “Or he’ll miss out on his kid’s life and end up with a boatload of regrets.”

Exactly
, I thought, but I kept my firsthand experiences to myself and ate my chicken wrap.

“He’s acting like Tyler Flynn,” Emily muttered. “Going around knocking girls up and then dodging responsibility.”

I took another huge bite of wrap, knowing better than to refute that stupid rumor. Emily would believe what she wanted to believe.

“Speaking of Tyler Flynn,” Shelby said, desperate for a topic that didn’t involve her flaky boyfriend.

My heart leaped into my throat.

“Did you hear why he and Brody Wilhelm got into that fight?”

“I heard it was over drugs,” Emily said.

I relaxed a little. I’d heard the same. Brody Wilhelm was Tyler’s competition, a fellow dealer who didn’t mind pushing heavier stuff in order to get an edge in the business. Tyler had had more than one run-in with him over the past two years.

“No,” Shelby said, shaking her head. “It was over a
girl
. Apparently, Brody made a comment about some girl and Tyler didn’t like it. So he went nuts and punched Brody in the face.”

“What girl?” Emily asked.

“Don’t know. There were a few witnesses, but none of them heard a name. And Brody’s not talking.”

Emily snorted. “Probably some slut he’s banging.”

Luckily, I’d already swallowed the food in my mouth because my lungs constricted in an involuntary gasp. Before anyone noticed, I covered it up with a cough. Still, I could feel Emily’s eyes on me again, assessing. My skin felt hot, itchy. What if Brody had said something about
me
? I couldn’t imagine what he’d say. We barely knew each other. But a crack about, say, Skyler Thomas wouldn’t have set Tyler off like that. I’d made fun of her plenty when he and I were alone together and he never once got mad. He didn’t care about Skyler. At one point, I would have said he didn’t care about me. But his behavior over the past month or so suggested otherwise.