Glimmer (12 page)

Forgetting to be stealthy, I turned the faucet off in a hurry and hopped into bed, excited to read what Avery had written to me.

Hey Zellie,

Claire told me to write you and where to hide the note, so I guess if you’re reading this then everything went the way it was supposed to.

Are you okay?  Your dad was so pissed, I was kinda afraid for you. I hated it that I couldn’t do anything.  I was massively lame. Please forgive me.  So sorry about my Mom and her plan or whatever.  What can I say?  She’s still crazy.

Every night I’ve thought about coming to get you, about running away.  I would if you would, but I know you wouldn’t.:)  What am I even saying?  It’s pretty much killing me to be away from you.  I can’t wait until Sunday to just see you, y’know.  Stupid?

Find the loophole, Zel.  Two years of this crap is too much.  I LOVE YOU!!!

I don’t know what else to write - wish I knew what your note was going to say.  Oh, I’m glad your mom’s okay and that you get to stay with her.  Melody told me that she has to stay in the cabin until the baby is born.  Mel also said you got your license.  Look out, Rosedell!  Ha.  Lookout - good thing you’ve got one. :)

All right, I’m basically just talking out of my ass.  My life is boring and I miss you and I’m so glad we at least went out with a bang. (almost :))

Love,

Avery

P.S. I mentioned to my mom that I got you a Christmas present and what the hell was I supposed to do with it now and she said I could give it to you at church.  Too bad it’s porn.  Ha!  Just kidding.:)  I have an excessive smiley problem, I know.

I lay back on my pillow, swooning.   Holy Christ on a cracker, Avery Adams was like a perfect storm of hotness and dorkiness, and he was
mine
.  If having to wait two days to see him was driving me this crazy, there was no way I was going to be able to stay away from him for two years.

On Saturday, Frank and Ben arrived to babysit Mom about three minutes before I was scheduled to pick up Melody.  I was out the door the instant I heard their car coming up the driveway.

“Bye, Mom!” I called over my shoulder.

“Bye Zellie, kiss Melody for me!” Mom called back from her nest of blankets and books she’d made on the couch.

Ben met me at my car door.  “Sorry we’re late. Your aunt was supposed to come with us but we couldn’t track her down anywhere and she’s not answering her phone.”

I threw my purse onto the passenger seat.  “Really?  That’s weird.  When was the last time you saw her?”

“Last night,” Frank said, walking up behind Ben, “she and I had dinner at the See-Saw around 5:30 or so and parted ways back at the lodge with plans to meet up again at nine o’clock this morning.”

“Huh,” I said, not really knowing what to think.  On one hand Aunt Hazel was not the type to blow off a meeting, on the other she did get called away by The Society often and maybe she didn’t have time to tell us. “Why don’t you all keep trying to get in touch with her -  see if she left a message on Mom’s phone?  She forgets to check all the time.” I looked back at the cabin, wondering if I should be investigating Aunt Hazel’s “disappearance” myself instead of leaving it to non-family members while I went off to eat cake.

Ben softly touched my chin and turned my head to look at him, “I got this.  Go have fun with Claire and Melody.  I’ll call Claire if anything’s the matter.”

I took his hand from my face and squeezed it “thank you.” “Okay, I’ll be back this afternoon.”

“Get a doggie bag if you can,” Ben said, smiling.

“Will do,” I said, climbing into the car.  Even though I was gonna be way late picking up the girls, I paused just a second to watch Frank and Ben walk into the cabin. I never would have imagined six months ago that I would be so thankful to have them in my life. They’d both really stepped up and proven themselves worthy of all of our trust.

 As if he could feel my stare on him, Ben flipped his hair out of his eyes and then looked back at me over his shoulder and winked.

I gave him a weak smile and started the car.  Everything would be fine with Aunt Hazel, I was sure of it, but me?  Nothing was going to be fine with me until I saw my sister and my BFF for some serious girl/cake time.  There were many things for us all to chat about and the enigma that was Ben was at the tippy top of my list.

After swinging by the old homestead to pick up Melody, we hurried over to Claire’s house.  I started honking the horn at the beginning of the block, windows down and stereo blaring, sure she’d be waiting outside.  When I pulled up in front of her house and she wasn’t there, I was only moderately humiliated by the dirty looks from two of her neighbors out walking their fancy dog. 

“You go get her,” I said to Melody, nudging her in the ribs as I sank down in my seat, putting up the automatic windows. “If I get out of this car they might sic their dog on me.”

Melody huffed. “Since when are you so dramatic about everything?  Jesus, who gives a crap what those hoity-toity buttwipes think.”

I bust out laughing. “Man, you have changed!”  Melody glared at me.  “For the better! For the better I meant!” I sat up. “I’ll go get Claire.”

“You don’t need to,” she said, pointing to the opening front door, “here she comes.”

With a sly grin, I started up the car, rolling the windows back down, cranking the Black Eyed Peas.

Claire got in the back seat. “Hey!  I love this song, especially since I think it’s pissing off the Millers and their designer bitch.” She put her seatbelt on.  “So, I just talked to Ben and he said that Aunt Hazel had left a message on your mom’s phone.  There was a top secret Society emergency as per usual, but she’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

“Excellent. I’m glad everything’s okay.” Thank God. None of us needed anymore drama in our lives at the moment.  “Shall we commence to eating eleventy billion calories?”

“Dude, this girl didn’t wear stretchy jeans for nothin’,” Claire said, clapping her hands. “To the bakery, Jeeves!”

Melody scoped the bakery tasting room.  Satisfied that no one besides Claire and I were watching her, she unbuttoned her pants. “I’m gonna barf.”

Claire pushed her plate away from her. “Yeah, I think even the Golden Girls would be disgusted by the amount of cake I just ate.  Yuck.  Do you guys even remember which ones you liked?”

“All of them,” Melody and I said in unison.

“Great.  Super helpful, ladies.”  Claire stood up and went to the cake table, going through the identification tags in front of each cake.  “Hmm.  Definitely chocolate with raspberry filling and chocolate buttercream, don’t you think?”

We nodded our heads, the sugar coma taking us down.

“Okay, and how about the...carrot cake?  Too niche?”

“It’s your birthday. Do you like carrot cake?” I said.

“I do. So, one tier chocolate, one carrot cake, and one white cake with champagne filling?  Yeah.  That’s what I’m going to do.” She sank back down into her chair. “All right, where’s the order lady?  She needs to get the rest of this cake away from me before I inhale any more.”

“Oh!” I said, remembering Ben’s request. “Can I take the rest of the cake to Ben and Frank?  They wanted a doggie bag if I could have one.”

“Please, it would be doing me a favor.” Claire eyed me. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Ben, how’s that going?”

“Fine, I guess.” I could feel the red heat of embarrassment climbing up my neck toward my face.  “They’re at the house a lot, it’s not like Ben and I have tons of one-on-one time or anything.”

Melody smirked. “You know it is okay to think he’s cute, Zel.  Because he is.  You’re not betraying Avery or anything.”

My eyes got wide and then I quickly tried to counteract by squinting them. “I know,” I scoffed.

Claire and Melody exchanged a look.

“What? Did Ben say something to you all?” Panic pounded in my chest.  “‘Cause he’s lying if he said anything happened between us.  Nothing...well, almost nothing happened.”

“I knew it!” Claire said, slapping me on the arm. “You are all he ever talks about! Spill
now
.”

Melody leaned toward me, reviving a little of her former gossip girl self. “Yes, spill, I will live vicariously.”

This is what I’d wanted from the day, wasn’t it?  Girl time? “Don’t say anything to either of them about this okay?”

“Please,” Melody said.

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Zel.” Claire scooted her chair closer to mine.

“Okay, it’s not a big deal, but Ben and I
have
been getting pretty close.  He told me about his trigger, which was just heartbreaking and awful. And then we shared that glimpse of Mom and he was so...heroic and good to her.” I looked at Melody; she nodded her head at me to keep going. “And then he made a move on me.”

Claire gasped and grabbed my leg.

“It was nothing! Really.” I took her hand from my leg and put it on her own. “He’s got it in his head that if my being with Avery is futile, it would make more sense for the two of us to, I mean, not even be together, but maybe
be together
? That’s the feeling I get from him.  But then he helped me get in contact with Avery.  Ugh!  I don’t know.”

“Do you want to be with him?” Melody asked, point blank.

“No.  Not the way I want to be with Avery.  I love Avery more than I can say, but being with Avery is dangerous and complicated and Ben, well, he’s not very complicated and I
am
attracted to him.” I buried my face in my hands, starting to tear up. “I let him kiss me and, uh,” I made a circular motion over my chest area.  Melody and Claire nodded like they knew exactly what I was talking about. 

“Meanwhile, I’ve been watching Avery’s dreams and he’s all about me and how in love he is.  What kind of sucky girlfriend does that make me?  I may not have intended for anything to happen with Ben, but when he put the moves on me I folded, like making out with him was out of my control. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I totally checked out his butt when he was walking into the cabin today! Why? Why would I do that?  Avery’s butt is the only one I want to check out.  I swear, you guys!”

Claire and Melody closed in on me and began rubbing my back.

“Aw, Zellie, you’re being too hard on yourself, girl,” Claire said.

“Yeah, you’ve had like the worst week ever, I’m sorry for being such a whiner the other night.”

“You’re not a whiner, Mel,” I said, between taking little gulps of air, trying to stop crying. “I am.  I’m just a big whiner and a mind whore.”

“Oh, honey, that’s not a thing to be.  No one knows what a mind whore is,” Claire pushed me back into an upright position and pulled my hands from my face. “You are confronting a dilemma that has happened to many a girl not named Claire Vargas.” She put a finger to her temple, “‘Which hot guy do I choose?’ Well, you’re in luck my friend, because I know way down deep in my heart that you’re meant to be with Avery.”

“Thanks, Claire.”

“And I’m meant to manipulate Ben into making out with
me
.”

I snorted a snotty snort. “You’d do that for me?” I asked, some semblance of a smile crossing my mouth.

“BFF’s for life, I’d do anything for you, you know that.”

“Um, Claire,” Melody chimed in, “the second F in BFF kinda implies ‘for life.’“

“Shut up Melody,” we said in unison, giggling.

“Don’t you worry about a thing. Just ignore whatever irrational feelings for Ben you’re having and I will put Operation Get With This in full effect, okay?” Claire said, brushing my hair back from my face.

I didn’t know how well Claire’s plan was going to work, but I did feel better getting some of my Ben guilt off my chest.  If he knew what was good for him he’d stop confusing me and really get with Claire.  With somebody, anybody, that didn’t have a kick-butt boyfriend already.

The lady that was running the cake tasting returned from the front of the store, ready to take Claire’s order. “Have you made a decision, Miss Vargas?”

“I have and is it possible to get the rest of this cake wrapped up to-go? I’ve got a guy friend in need of a little sugar.”

I got myself busy brewing Mom a cup of tea while she talked with Melody. Claire was making an awesome spectacle of herself feeding Ben cake with her hands.  All was right with the world.  Tomorrow was Sunday and I would finally get to see Avery.

Frank offered to drive Mel and Claire home, so after we all said our goodbyes I spent the rest of the day going over my GED study materials.  Not killing my brain difficult, but not the easiest concepts either.  I was gonna actually have to study pretty hard to pass the tests.

That evening, after re-reading Avery’s note for the hundredth time, I decided that I would bring his Christmas present to church with me the next day.  I pulled the vintage Mickey Mouse t-shirt from its shopping bag I’d stowed beneath my bed.  Claire had taken me to a cool thrift store in Bend and as soon as I saw it I knew it was the perfect gift.  Now we would be a matching dorky set, me in my Minnie Mouse nightshirt and him in his Mickey tee.

Christopher attempted to shut the door to Pastor Paul’s basement office with his elbow while balancing fifteen bibles in his arms.  Before he dropped the whole lot, he hurried to the center of the room where the youth group met and dumped the stack of bibles onto the large wooden table.

“Here, Pastor Morris, let me help you with those.” Avery picked up several of the scattered bibles and began placing them at each seat around the table.

“Thanks, Avery.  You’re here early this morning.” Christopher watched him as he walked around the table, feeling the nervous energy rolling off of him.  There was a square shaped lump in Avery’s coat pocket.  Hmm, Christopher hadn’t glimpsed what it was, although he could guess that it was most likely some sort of cubic zirconium trinket in the shape of a heart.