Reclaimed (14 page)

He was standing on a ledge at the base of the Point, and I put my feet down as he turned my back to the rock and leaned in toward me. Water lapped at my waist, the rock rough through my wet clothes. I wondered if Luke could hear my heart beating against my skin. I could—it was so loud in my ears that it drowned out every other sound.

He reached up and traced his fingers down the side of my face, and I shivered as they trailed across my throat.

“Aren’t you going to ask if you can kiss me?” I whispered. I couldn’t help remembering that Ian had.

His answer had no words but said everything. I couldn’t think about Ian when Luke’s lips moved against mine. I put my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, feeling more reckless than I had when I’d thrown myself off the Point. When he ran his fingers down the side of my neck, I couldn’t think at all.

Luke pulled away, and I felt his whisper on my skin. “I never ask permission.”

The world was a different place when Jenna spoke. Her words revealed the box where I’d hidden pieces of myself. Her kiss broke the lock. Her voice coaxed the ragged shards out of the dark. I started to come back together, finding what I thought had been lost forever. We talked, and the water sighed against the shore. We talked, and the sky changed from black to purple. Blue hinted at the horizon. We were going to have to get back. My mom would be home from work soon. We needed to slink back under cover of darkness. If I wasn’t there when she got in, there would be hell to pay. But it would be worth it.

I reached out and brushed the hair away from Jenna’s face. She looked up at me, her eyes wide and trusting, and in that moment, I didn’t care what happened. I would risk everything just to stay there. I wanted to tether the sun to the earth, keep it from coming up and ending the perfect night. Instead, I sat up and reached for my shirt.

“Where did you get that scar?” Jenna asked. She reached across the space between us, her fingers trembling just a little bit, like she was afraid to touch me. To be honest, I was afraid of her touching me, like it was some line we were about to cross. It was ridiculous. I’d crossed that line when I’d shown up at her house. And that kiss had been more like running across a bridge and setting it ablaze. I knew now that, no matter what happened, we couldn’t go back. And I hated myself for it. Because if she got hurt, it would be all my fault. And there was no way she wouldn’t get hurt at this point. No matter what happened, it was going to be painful.

I caught my breath as her fingers lightly stroked the scar that ran along my right side. Her fingers were cool, and I brought her hand to my lips and kissed her palm. I wanted to bury my hands in her hair and forget everything else, but I answered her question instead.

“When Ian and I were twelve, he had appendicitis. Emergency, so they had to cut him open to take it out. He has a scar too, except his isn’t as rough.” I was the one with all the jagged edges. “I hated that he had a mark I didn’t, something to tell us apart. We were really close when we were little, and it felt like that scar had separated us.” I’d been so young then. Naïve. That scar hadn’t separated us. I had. “One night, I got out of bed and snuck down to the kitchen. I took a kitchen knife and sliced into my stomach.”

Jenna flinched and pulled away. “You must have been out of your mind. You could have died.”

“I didn’t cut that deep,” I told her. “Just a few stitches, good as new, and Ian and I were identical again.”

She shook her head. It was a pretty gruesome story. “What happened?” she asked.

I knew what she was talking about. And I wasn’t ready to tell her everything just yet. I wanted a little more time with her. I’d always been a selfish bastard.

“We grew up.” I slid on my shirt. “We’d better go.”

She nodded and helped me carry the stuff back to the truck.

“You probably shouldn’t mention this to Ian,” I said. I had enough problems already.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

I grinned. “I believe I’ve been a bad influence on you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She climbed in the passenger side of the truck and slammed the door.

I knew I should feel bad about wanting to see her again. Ian was the better brother, the one more deserving of Jenna, but I couldn’t help but hope she would pick me, as impossible and improbable as I knew that was.

I started the truck. “You know, I really don’t mind a little competition.” Hell, I’d been competing with my brother my whole life. In school, in sports, for our parents’ attention. He always won.

“Who said it would be a competition?” she asked, arching her eyebrow.

Ouch.

I didn’t know what to do, so I avoided them both. I worked. I took down and dusted all the books, making sure they were organized correctly and that none had fallen to the back of the shelves. I went through numerous boxes from the back, pricing and displaying whatever was inside. I filled my mind with stories, creating lives for the remnants I found—a single chopstick with mother-of-pearl inlay, a Scooby Doo lunchbox, two handfuls of costume jewelry. When my stories gained characters similar to either Ian or Luke, I found something else to do.

At night I ran, trying to outdistance the demons. But sometimes the absurdity of the whole thing caught up with me, overtook me on the trails and shouldered its way next to me, matching me stride for stride. Who was I to think I even got to choose? They weren’t outfits—I couldn’t just put Ian on one day and Luke the next. And who said either one of them was interested in me anyway? They sure hadn’t called.

Becca sent me an email from Italy with a picture of her sitting on the edge of a fountain, laughing. She had her arms around two dark-haired boys. She ended her note with “sorry your summer sucks.” And even though I knew she hadn’t meant anything by it, I was even more determined to prove her wrong.

And while working at Repete’s wasn’t the kind of adventure I was looking for, at least taking orders and making pizzas kept my mind occupied enough that it didn’t wander to Ian or Luke. I prayed they wouldn’t come in, and they didn’t, and then I hated myself for wanting them to—and for not knowing which one I wanted to see.

“Everything okay at home?” Pete asked. It was Monday afternoon and we were both in the kitchen working on a to-go order for a birthday party.

I shrugged. Nothing was okay, but Pete didn’t need the gory details.

“I lost both my parents before I was twenty-five,” Pete told me, “and I drank to try and get through some of the worst of it, especially after I lost my football scholarship. It didn’t help.”

I hadn’t heard this story—I didn’t even know he’d gone to college.

He nodded, answering my unasked question, and continued layering pepperoni. “My dad died in the spring of my freshman year at the university. I came home to help my mom settle a few things, and when a few things turned into way more than we could handle and I couldn’t get back for summer workouts, they cut me loose.”

“That’s awful,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than finally making it out only to be pulled back in again, like drowning, getting a gulp of air, then being pulled farther and farther under until that lungful of air was replaced by a mouthful of water.

Pete turned and slid the pizza in the oven. “I couldn’t control it. Mom died a few years later, but it was too late for me to go back. But your mom,” he said, bringing the conversation back around, “she’ll pull through.” But that wasn’t something he could promise. No one could.

A familiar truck was parked against the curb when I pulled into my driveway after work, and a dark figure was sitting on my top step. I analyzed his clothes and hair and the way he was looking at me, but I wasn’t sure until he stood up and smiled. He stood straight, not slouched, and there was nothing mocking or taunting in that smile. Ian. My heart pulled in opposite directions, equally split between relief and disappointment. And guilt for feeling both.

Ian waited for me on the porch, his back against the railing. He gave me a half-wave and a sheepish grin.

“Hey,” I said, slamming the car door.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “For not calling.”

“Which time?” I asked. It had been almost a week since his last text or missed call. Two weeks since the party. But I hadn’t exactly been sitting by the phone either.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “All of them,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.” I unlocked the front door.

He stood just outside, looking guilty and uncertain. “I hope I haven’t messed things up.” He said what I should have been saying.

“You want to stay for dinner?” I asked.

His answering smile was so honest and unmasked that it nearly took my breath away.

Mom came home an hour later. Ian and I were facing one another on the couch playing a made-up trivia game; he was winning.

“Jenna! You didn’t tell me you had a date.” Mom smiled at Ian and batted her eyelashes, a move she’d probably perfected by the time she was five. “I’m Vivian Oliver,” she said.

Ian stood up. “Ian McAlister.” He shook her hand.

Mom’s eyebrows went up about three inches. “Ah,” she said, as if she had solved some great mystery. “You just moved in.” Her voice caught, and she smiled wider, playing it off. “Nice to meet you.”

“I invited him for dinner.”

“Great!” Mom was practically floating. “Hope you like frozen lasagna.”

“Well, I prefer it cooked, but whatever,” he said.

A woman who looked like my mother threw back her head and laughed. “If you insist.”

We sat in the kitchen while the lasagna was in the oven, Mom at the bar, Ian and I in the chairs underneath the window. Mom recycled some of Pops’s old jokes, and I couldn’t tell if she was pretending or if she was finding pieces of her old self. A flash of a smile, eyes that were alert—memories of who she’d been surfaced in her face, but I wasn’t sure I trusted them. She was drinking out of her tumbler, and when she stepped out of the room, I sniffed it. It smelled like Diet Coke, but I couldn’t be sure, so I took a sip. Diet Coke. Usually it was more vodka than anything else, but tonight, she was just herself. Mom without the high-octane. I was more comfortable with her that way—when she was just my mom. When she was someone I had to babysit—protect from herself—then I was tensed muscles and nausea. Drinking Mom said hurtful things and made me ashamed of who she was and who I wasn’t. I couldn’t settle when she was like that.

But Ian settled us both. He wasn’t barbs and nettles; his edges were water, not rock. He helped me make the salad and set the table. He reminded me what normal felt like. For the first time in months, it felt like home rather than rehab.

I knew she was behaving because we had company. Tomorrow, or even after Ian left, she’d probably be right back where she’d been for the past several months. But it was nice, being reminded of what it had been like before.

“Has Jenna given you the grand tour of Solitude?” Mom asked. She had actually eaten her lasagna rather than deconstructing it and pushing it around her plate.

I rolled my eyes. “Ian has seen all Solitude has to offer—the lake and Repete’s. There’s not much else.”

“So what did you think?” Mom pressed. “You like it here?”

“It’s nice,” Ian said.

“You don’t have to lie,” I told him.

He smiled at me, his expression transparent. He looked incapable of lying at all. “Really,” he assured me. “It’s different from any other place I’ve ever lived.”

That I believed.

“I saw your picture on the table at Repete’s,” Ian told Mom. “It’s like you’re a celebrity.”

It was all I could do not to groan out loud. She smiled so wide I was afraid she was going to dislocate her cheek. And then I had to hear the story about the championship game and her cheerleading fame. I’d heard it all I needed to.

What I didn’t understand about the story was the way she talked about my father. I’d never once heard her say anything bad about him. It didn’t make any sense. He’d left her, pregnant and scared, and gone off to fulfill his dreams. He didn’t call. He didn’t send money. His parents moved off when he got married so that they could be closer to their real grandchildren. The ones they claimed. I never knew them, either. And Mom didn’t seem the least bit resentful. I knew she’d loved him—anyone could hear it in her voice. But she never once blamed him. She was way more forgiving than I ever would have been. Then again, I would never have been in that position. I would never let a guy destroy my future.

Mom offered to clean the kitchen and sent Ian and me outside. We wandered out to the back porch and sat on the swing. The shadows grew longer as the sun fell, and the tiniest of breezes kicked up, enough to keep the mosquitos from landing for too long. I leaned my head against the back of the swing, closed my eyes, and listened to myself breathe.

“Tell me a memory,” Ian said.

I turned my head and opened my eyes. He was leaning against the back of the swing, staring at me, a lazy smile on his face. I couldn’t help smiling back.

“What kind of memory?” I asked.

“Something happy.”

“Why?”

His smile was sad and a bit hopeful. “I’m collecting memories.”

I closed my eyes again and told him about Pops. Since Ian was living in Pops’s house, I wanted him to have those memories. That way, a piece of Pops was still in the house. I only told Ian the good parts. I skipped over the time that Mops and I were in the kitchen cooking dinner when Pops stumbled in drunk. He’d sat down to take off his boots and just slid into the middle of the floor, out cold. I stuck to the happy memories—like when Pops took me fishing or picking strawberries. I told him about all the meals we’d had in the kitchen that was now his. I told him about the time Pops and I had sat on the back porch and watched a storm roll in, staying outside until the rain blew across the boards and stung our faces. I gave him more than one memory, because I just couldn’t pick the best one.

Ian didn’t say anything, not even when I ran out of words. I turned my head to look at him. He was studying my face.

“What are you looking at?” I asked, self-conscious. I never knew if my reflection was the real me or not. Maybe the person everyone else saw wasn’t the one I really thought I was.