Father Knows Best (17 page)

Those words, so full of possibility, had intrigued me from the first time I’d read them. They seemed to epitomize promise and excitement, taking that leap and knowing you’ll land in a safety net. In the hot noisy makeup room, the quote got me thinking. Maybe it was okay for me to focus both on obtaining a Broadway job (because no way was I abandoning that plan) and on getting to know a really cute, age-appropriate guy a little better. After all, the path in this life is long and the way unknown, at least according to some Russian dude. I didn’t have to date Joaquin, after all. I could just be his friend. His slice / cuppa friend.

Dig?

*

Lila

Before I knew it, a month of summer had passed, and to say that I loved being an office assistant at the travel agency would be a gross understatement. The positive energy of the employees—Alan, Bonnie, Francesca, and yes, even Chloe—amped me up from the moment I arrived each day. I always wanted to stay longer, do more, learn everything.

Maybe I could be a travel agent after graduation!

Sure, this was the era of Internet travel planning, but you’d be surprised how many people still rely on the professionals—older folks especially. And, thank God, or I’d be wearing a French fry hat right now, probably wanting to face-plant a few of my coworkers—and a bevy of rude customers—into the vat of boiling French fry oil, which I’m pretty sure is felony assault.

Plus I’d have zits.

As it was, my complexion was as clear as a CoverGirl model’s and I’d even dropped a few pounds from all the “go-fering” I’d been doing. And, oh yes, I’d finally caught on to the fact that an office GO-FER was not spelled like a ground-dwelling, uglyish gopher. Color me stupid. Whatever. I still liked my revised job title much better, because (1) FER is not a proper word, despite the globally humiliating fact that America still spells cheese K-R-A-F-T, and (2) mistakes can be easily made, people, when you don’t actually see a word written on paper. GO-FER sounds like gopher, and I’m just not down with a rodent-esque job title. Call me shallow.

But the most shocking news of the summer boiled down to this: I had basically abandoned my “break-up Dad and Chloe” plot. It seemed like a miscalculation, now that I knew her better.

The thing is, Chloe’s really nice. Confident, fun, goofy, independent, laid back and yet totally in charge. And the more time I spent with her (in a capacity other than my boyfriend’s mom), the more I realized she doesn’t act like she’s merely biding time until Dad pops the question so she can quit her job and spend her days painting her toenails and bragging that she is Mrs. Police Chief. On the contrary, she loves her career. She seems just fine with the way things are—dating my dad, raising Dylan, kicking butt at her way-cool job.

I really liked her.

Sure, I still can’t think of her and my dad in any kind of, um, romancey-schmancey way without getting skeeved, and the whole boyfriend / potential stepbrother notion freaked me, but that’s normal if you ask me. In any case, I’d put the break-up plot on my mental back burner and turned down the heat.Wait and see mode felt better for now.

That super-mature (in my book) decision happened on a perfect Colorado July day. Cloudless, turquoise skies, perfectly warm but not sweaty-hot temperature. People smiled at each other on the street, and we all knew that the evening would cool off enough for us to sit on our back patios to watch the spectacular sunset, comfortably decked out in sweatshirts and jeans. All seemed swell in my world.

Chloe had given me a boatload of packages to cart down to the FedEx store, which I dragged along behind me in one of those metal rolly things that cute grandmas use to lug their groceries home. I was fully leaded on java, loving my outdoor task, and looking forward to an evening spent with Dylan after we both got off work.

I’ve never been able to whistle, but I was easing out this lame pseudowhistle-rasp as I hoofed it up the sidewalk toward FedEx, staring up at the endless beauty of the sky. So when I slammed into the other pedestrian, it threw me out of my mellow for a sec. My grandma cart careened to one side and dumped its load on the sidewalk.

“I’m so sorry,” came the voice above me as I bent down to gather up my goods, thankful nothing was breakable.

“It’s okay. My fault. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I was staring up at the sky,” said the voice.

“Yeah, same here.” I peered up at none other than Jennifer Hamilton.

“Oh,” we both said. It had become a pattern with us, that “Oh” thing, as if we were simpletons.

I faltered, but maintained my cool as best I could. My gaze dropped to her tummy, which had started to protrude in an impossible-to-ignore, totally-not-the-normal-skeletor-Jennifer kind of way. She’d even gained a ton of weight in her face. I mean, come on, this was a girl who wouldn’t eat in front of the opposite sex last year. Yet here she stood, all pudgy-like, and seemingly cool with it.

As if she had a choice.

“Are you…um…okay? I didn’t hurt you guys or anything, did I?”

She laid her palm on her abdomen—why do pregnant woman always do that? “No. I’m fine. Or I should say, we’re fine.”

“That’s…good,” I mumbled as I gathered up the rest of my stuff with shaky hands. My heart had started to rev. The thing is, despite my vow not to retch every time I thought of Jennifer, I didn’t exactly know what to say to her in person. This situation was uncomfortable to the max.

Uncomfortable like the whole “how do you end your laugh?” conundrum. You’ve heard of it, right? Once you start thinking about it, you always realize you sound like a dumbass at the end of your laugh, and then it’s hard to (1) laugh, but even more to (2) stop laughing once you’ve started.

Because you don’t want to sound like a dumbass.

Get it?

Okay, my thoughts were making like a grandma cart and veering way off-track—big shocker. Not. It’s just the way my gray matter seems to operate.

“You working?” Jennifer asked, yanking me back to the present.

I shot her a glance. “Uh. Yeah. You?”

“Well, the free kind of work, yes.” She laughed.

She laughed! Like, within the context of a conversation with me. Me, Lila Moreno. Archenemy. She-who-allegedly-stole-Dylan (even though I didn’t). I don’t know why I was so weirded out by this surreal exchange, but there you have it. I was. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen Jennifer—who, incidentally, was rocking the full-on mousy light brown coif by now—in the past month, but we’d always had Meryl as a much-needed buffer and conversation conduit. It freaked me to be one-on-one with Jennifer. I mean, what the heck was I supposed to say now?

Sorry I could’ve hurt your fetus. Smell ya later?

Nothing seemed right.

Come to think of it, nothing had seemed right ever since my friends and I had found out about Jennifer and her baby. In that instant, everything about our carefully planned-out summers subtly (or dramatically, I wasn’t sure which) changed.

Why was that?

With all my loot loaded back into my grandma cart, I stood and brushed my palms against the sides of my jeans. “Okay, well…I have to go to FedEx.”

“Oh. Sure.” She stepped aside, tucking her hair—which, admittedly, was still cut in a cute style—behind her ears. “I guess I’ll…see you around?”

“Uh-huh.” Sure. Whatever. Like she’d want to?

I started to roll my cart up the sidewalk again, away from Jennifer, thank God. I needed to hit the brakes on my racing brain and get back to my happy-day-in-July place, darn quick. Where were those bluebirds on my shoulder when I needed them? Freakin’ fairweather Disney.

“Lila, hang on,” Jennifer called out.

I stopped, but I didn’t turn around. My gut clenched.

“Can I…can we…”

With trepidation, I peered back toward her. She seemed to be struggling with her words. Her skin got blotchy red when she was nervous, I noticed. Not a good look for her. “What?”

“Do you have time for a cup of coffee at Mountain Lion?”

My eyes must have projected my incredulity.

She held up a hand. “I just thought we could talk. Nothing more.”

I turned back toward her then, resting both palms on the cart’s handle. “You don’t have to do this. I’m cool with you hanging out with Meryl. You don’t have to pretend to be my friend, too, okay? I get it.”

“It’s not that.” She uttered a frustrated sound.

“What, then?”

Her face got this pinched look, and she didn’t bother to brush away the strands of hair that the gentle breeze blew across her lips. “You and Meryl…and Reese and Kelly…have been nicer to me than my own group of so-called friends ever since”—she indicated her midsection—“or maybe, nicer to me than they ever were, which makes me an idiot.”

I felt an unwelcome twinge of compassion. “You’re not an idiot. They’re idiots.” Actually evil flying monkey idiots, I thought but, thankfully, didn’t voice.

“Whatever. I guess.” A pause. “Yeah, they are.”

I watched her neck contract with a tight swallow, and it occurred to me that this might be as difficult for her as it was for me, not that she deserved my sympathy, really, after all the bullying she’d inflicted on me and my friends over the years. But I still felt a pang of it.

“I just…owe you guys more than I’ve said.” Jennifer shrugged. “That’s all.”

I squirmed from one foot to the other. “Oh. Well. It’s okay. If that’s all.”

“It’s not all.” She raked her hair away from her face. “See, I’ve been attending these teen AA meetings, and—”

“You’re an alcoholic, too?” I blurted, stunned by this news bomb on top of everything else. Oops, I guess that was thoughtless.

She laughed nervously. “No. Not at all. But my home life totally sucks. My friends are…”

“I know,” I said softly.

“Yeah, I guess we’ve covered that.” She huffed. “It’s weird, me with the whole AA thing. I realize that. But everyone there is so nice and nonjudgmental, and they listen to me. They’re the only people who seem to really…listen. Plus, a lot of what they say makes sense beyond the whole alcoholism thing.”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to wrap my brain around this brownish-haired, Alcoholics Anonymous–attending, makeup-free, chubby, pregnant Jennifer Hamilton.

Like, seriously, who the hell was she?

I gulped. “Are you telling me you’re working the ten steps, but just not in an alcoholic way?”

“Twelve.”

“Huh?”

“There are actually twelve steps.”

“Oh.” Whatever. “So, are you?”

She shrugged. “I’m not ‘working them’ in any formal way. But this whole…baby thing has given me a lot of time to look at myself, and I’m not always happy with what I see.”

I half laughed. “I can understand that.” Oops. “I mean, no offense.”

“None taken.” She twisted her uncharacteristically unglossed lips to the side. “Besides, you’re right and I know it.” She paused. “I guess I just want to make some changes in the way I live my life.”

This intrigued me. “Like what?”

“Come have a cup of coffee and we’ll talk.” She stared at me, a challenge. “My treat.”

I stared back, chewing on the insides of my cheeks.

Finally, she rolled her eyes. “I’m not asking to be your best friend, for God’s sake. You’re not required to confide a single thing in me. It’s just coffee. The brown stuff. Nectar of the Wired Gods.”

I smirked. She had a point, and hadn’t I said I was going to try harder to not actively despise her, in light of her tribulations? This was my chance to walk the talk, as Meryl always touted. I glanced at my grandma cart. “Well, I have to get this stuff shipped first.” I hesitated. “Then I have to call my boss and ask her if I can take a break.”

“That’s cool,” she said mildly. “Look, if you can make it, I’ll be at Mountain Lion. If not, I understand.” And then she turned heel and headed in the opposite direction.

Seriously.

No snit. No snark. No snide remark.

Hey, I think I just made some kind of a poem.

Well, at least it rhymed.

But back to the Jennifer sitch. I swear this summer was getting weirder by the second. I mean, what would she understand if I didn’t show up? That I hated her? Did I hate her? I stood there for probably two minutes, stunned by what had just occurred, replaying it in my mind, trying to get real with how I truly felt. This time last year, if Jennifer and her minions had witnessed me dragging FedEx packages up the street, they would’ve (1) mocked me, or (2) looked past me, as if I were just another pine tree in the whole damn forest.