Faking Perfect (25 page)

Tears rolled down our faces. I’d come to get his side of the story, and now that I had it, I realized how skewed and incomplete the other side actually was. On the outside, my father’s life looked perfect. Normal. But on the inside, underneath the thriving business and expensive house and beautiful family, was a rotting core of guilt, shame, and regret. I knew because I had the same rotting core inside me, and the same layer of armor on the outside, hiding it from view.

“Why didn’t you come back to Alton?” I asked him a while later after we were sufficiently cried out and he was once again plucking on his guitar. The air between us felt clear, lighter. “After rehab, I mean. Why did you stay away?”

He glanced up at me, his fingers still and resting against the strings. “People, places, and things. It’s a recovery thing. Avoid people and places and things you associate with drugs and drinking. Alton was my place.”

“But you came back to run the business.”

He started strumming again. “Yes, and it wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. There are a lot of people in this town who remember the old me very clearly, and some of them assume I’m still the same troublemaking punk I was back then.”

I looked over at his picture wall and caught another glimpse of the younger, much thinner Eric. “Obviously you’re not,” I said, turning back to him. “I mean, they should be able to tell that just by looking at you.”

“True,” he said with a shrug. “But I guess I understand where they’re coming from. Sometimes you get an image of someone stuck in your head and then you can’t let go of it, even after they show you they’ve changed. All you can see is that one side of them.”

I nodded. I was guilty of that very thing myself. As a child, I’d known only one version of him, only a part of the story. But now I saw the full picture. There were two sides to everything and everyone, and somewhere in the middle was the truth.

Chapter Twenty-three

T
he sky was just starting to turn light as I stood in the driveway next to my father’s truck, my suitcase sitting upright at my feet. Eric picked it up and stowed it in the back of the truck while I gazed up at the dark, quiet house. Renee, Willow, and Jonah were still sound asleep inside, having said their good-byes the night before.

“Ready?” Eric asked me. “We’d better get on the road if we’re going to make it to the airport by eight.”

“Yeah,” I said, and climbed into the truck. When I was buckled in, I looked at the house one last time. When I first got here a week ago, I’d been so sure leaving would be easy. But the ache in my chest when we pulled away suggested otherwise.

Before we hit the highway, Eric pulled into a gas station on Alton’s main street and got out to fill the tank. While he was inside paying, I gazed out my window at the various storefronts, thinking about my mother and Teresa and how they’d hung out together on this very street once, so many years ago. I pictured the two of them as teenagers, girls my age. Best friends on diverging paths in life, one leading east and one beginning and ending right in Alton. Then meeting again in Oakfield a few years later, only to split apart even wider.

“How did you and my mother meet?” I asked Eric once we’d left the town behind. Mom never shared any of her happy memories of my father. Their good times, however few, would have to be recounted by him.

He accelerated, gradually inching over the speed limit. “She was waitressing at Ziggy’s Diner, that grease pit on the corner of Pike Street,” he said, eyes on the road. “Back then, the band always rehearsed in our buddy Lyle’s garage, and afterward we’d all go to Ziggy’s. It was the only place open at three or four in the morning and the food tasted damn good when you’d been drunk since the night before.” He smiled, remembering. “Your mom did the night shift, so she was usually the one who had the unfortunate experience of waiting on us. All the guys tried to date her, of course, but it was me she ended up choosing. I knew she was too good for me, but I couldn’t help myself. She was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t just that. She was smart and funny and feisty as hell.”

Feisty, I could see. And she’d been undeniably beautiful back then, before time and misfortune had hardened her features. But smart? Funny? Those qualities had gotten lost along the way, drowned in a bottle of wine or trampled by men like Keith Langley. The only quality she’d held on to, it seemed, was her weakness for guys like Keith and Jesse and, initially, my father. Guys with easy charm and killer smiles and an irresistible element of danger. It was the same weakness that infected me and ultimately drew me to Tyler. Hopefully, our relationship, wherever it stood, wouldn’t turn out like any of hers.

We arrived at the airport with little time to spare. Eric and I didn’t speak as we maneuvered through the crowds, both of us intent on getting me through security as soon as possible. My flight left in less than an hour and the lineup was long.

“Well,” Eric said, stopping near the security area and placing my suitcase on the floor. We stood there looking at each other much as we’d done the same time a week ago, after I’d first stepped out of the gate. We weren’t the same, though. Not even close. “I guess you should get going before the plane takes off without you.”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. Panic flared in my chest. I needed to say so much more, but all I could manage was, “I’m glad I came.” It wasn’t enough, but it would have to be.

“I’m glad too,” he said, and the next thing I knew my face was pressed into his shoulder as he hugged the breath out of me. “Thank you for coming here, Lexi. For giving me a second chance. I’ll never let you go again, okay? That’s a promise.”

He said those words with so much gratitude and sincerity, I couldn’t help but believe them. The panic faded and I hugged him back, breathing in the scent of Irish Spring and motor oil that would always remind me of this trip. Of him. “I’ll come back,” I promised him.

“You’re welcome anytime. We’ll always have a room for you. Remember that.”

He let me go and I shifted my attention to gathering my suitcase, giving us each time to blink the moisture out of our eyes before facing each other again. “I should go,” I said, giving him a tremulous smile.

“Text me when you land, okay?” He leaned down and kissed my forehead, a fatherly gesture I’d never experienced. “I love you, Lexi.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and then quickly got in line before I changed my mind and went back to Alton with him. By the time both pieces of my luggage had passed through the scanner, he was gone.

Teresa and Nolan were waiting for me when I landed, just as I knew they would be. Just as they’d done almost fourteen years ago, when Mom and I arrived at this very airport, tired but hopeful. It must have been scary for us, leaving everything we knew and starting over in a strange, unfamiliar place. Now, in spite of what had brought us here, it was home.

“Lexi!” Teresa folded me in her arms and squeezed. “Oh, sweetie, I know you were only gone for a week, but we missed you!”

As we hugged, I looked over her shoulder at Nolan, who grinned back at me. Would he sketch my face like this? Lit up with the sheer joy of being near them again? We didn’t share the same blood, but they’d always been my family.

“So how’d it go?” he asked as we left baggage claim and rounded the corner to the exit.

I glanced up at him, unsure of what he meant. The trip? The flight? The good-bye with my father? So I answered for all three. “Better than I’d expected.”

When we pulled into the Bruces’ driveway an hour later, I glanced across the street at my house. It was dark and quiet, our Ford nowhere to be seen. Either Mom was working until nine or she was avoiding my homecoming.

“Um, I have a few things to take care of,” I told Nolan, who was unloading my luggage from the trunk. “I’ll be over later on.”

“Sure,” he said, eyes teasing. On the way home, he’d caught me sending a quick text to Tyler, alerting him to my return. He knew exactly why I wanted to go over to my house. “See you later.”

The house was warm and slightly stuffy when I walked in. Instead of turning on the central air, I cracked open all the windows, letting in the humid breeze. The kitchen and living room looked as neat as they did the day I left, as if they hadn’t even been used. The only thing different about the kitchen was that the note I’d written Mom had disappeared from the counter.

Downstairs, the first thing I did was check on Trevor. My bedroom was as dark and stuffy as the rest of the house, but Trevor liked the dark. I wasn’t sure if it was possible for snakes to miss people, but he seemed extra lively when I lifted him out of his tank. He twisted his body around my wrist as I wandered around my room, opening the window and unpacking my suitcase. As I was separating dirty clothes from clean, my phone dinged with a text.

i’m here

I dropped my phone and the bra I was holding, put Trevor back in his tank, and went to the window.

Within seconds, Tyler dropped to his stomach on the grass, his face suddenly inches from mine. “Hi.” His smile, which was somehow still bright after several years of smoking, looked even more brilliant against his sun-bronzed skin.

My entire body fluttered, like the butterflies weren’t satisfied with just my stomach and decided to branch out.

Just as I was about to pop my screen and yank him inside, a car door slammed out front. We both looked toward the sound.
Shit
. My mother. Tyler rolled away from my window and disappeared, just in case she decided to venture around the corner of the house. I listened as she walked up the driveway and entered the house, her footsteps heavy in the thick, comfortable shoes she wore for work.

“She’s inside,” I whispered out the window, and Tyler appeared again, crouching this time. “You probably shouldn’t come in right now.”

“So you come out.”

I glanced up at the ceiling. Mom was plodding around the kitchen, presumably noticing the open windows and my house keys on the table.
I’m not ready
, I thought.
I can’t face her right now. Not yet.
Tyler, recognizing the anxious, deer-in-headlights look on my face, gestured for me to crawl out the window.

“I haven’t done this since I was fourteen,” I told him, removing the screen and tossing my flip-flops outside.

“Well, I’ve been doing it for the last ten months. It’s not too bad.”

Backing up a few feet, I made a running start toward the window, using the wall and the grip of my bare feet for leverage as I hoisted myself up and out.

“Easy, right?” Tyler said when I landed beside him on the grass, panting. He grabbed my hands and pulled me to standing. As I slipped into my flip-flops, he said, “We have to check and make sure none of the neighbors are looking, then we haul ass to the street and walk at a normal pace, like we’re taking a leisurely stroll.”

I laughed. “You really have done this a lot.”

He took my hand again and led me to the edge of the house. When the coast was clear, we crossed the front lawn and turned left.

“Where are we going?” I asked, amused by how proficient he was at making a clean getaway. I’d never done anything like this with him. Our relationship had always been confined to the four walls of my bedroom. We’d never walked together, down my street or anywhere else in public, and I liked it. I liked seeing a different side of him.

“For a drive. My car is parked at the store.”

Sure enough, it was. We got in and Tyler started the engine, then squealed out of the parking lot like we were still eluding detection. I scrambled for my seatbelt and clicked it in. Sitting with him in his car felt even stranger than walking with him, and not in a bad way. His old Impala was surprisingly comfortable, and despite the fact that he drove like a maniac, being there seemed
right
, somehow. I thought about Ben’s brand new Acura, how carefully he drove it and how proud I’d been to finally claim its coveted passenger seat. But nice as that car was, I’d always felt like an imposter sitting in it. Like I didn’t belong. Not once had I ever relaxed against the seat, feet up on the dash and right arm out the window, slicing through the wind. Not once had I thrown my head back and laughed or watched the muscles flex in the forearm of the boy next to me as he shifted gears. Not once had I felt like me.

After driving for fifteen minutes, Tyler turned down the road that ran alongside Donovan Lake and parked against the curb. Without a word, we got out of the car and made our way toward one of the weathered picnic tables that sat along the edge of the lake. We sat down, facing the water with our backs against the table. Donovan Lake was huge, and just looking at it gave me a sense of peace.

“You mentioned once that you missed the water,” Tyler said, picking a rock off the ground and lobbing it into the lake. “When you were gone.”

I
had
missed it—the only body of water I’d encountered in Alton was the chlorinated one in my father’s backyard. But I didn’t recall ever mentioning this to Tyler, unless it was during one of our dreamy, semiconscious conversations in the dark. Now that I was next to him, those moments no longer felt real.

But this one did. I shifted closer, taking my place against the perfect fit of his body. “I did miss it. I missed it a lot.”

Our hands collided and then joined, the movement fluid and effortless. It felt good to be home.

Chapter Twenty-four

I
had yet to lay eyes on my mother since I got home, and she’d certainly never swallow her pride and walk over to the Bruces’ house to talk to me. She nursed grudges like bottles of wine and never owned up to her mistakes. After everything Eric told me about her, the phone calls she’d ignored and the cards I’d never received, plus everything she’d said in the kitchen after the altercation with Jesse, I was holding a bit of a grudge myself. She’d have to make the first move.

On Saturday, I put all that aside for a couple hours and went to visit Shelby. She and Piper had been home for a few days, but between my trip and everything else going on, I still hadn’t seen them. So that afternoon, I borrowed Teresa’s car and drove across town to her house.