So Totally (19 page)

Only instead, it was dinnertime and I had to face Mom and her friend, Vino.

Mom had started early—the empty bottle on the counter was a testament to her mood. I noticed her wineglass had been replaced with a drinking glass. Fantastic.

“Your father called this afternoon,” she told me.

That figured. “What did he have to say?”

“He wants you to be in the wedding.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I think you should do it.”

“That’s the wine talking, Mom.”

“What did you just say?” Her eyes bugged out, and she sat up from her chair, knocking her glass over. “What kind of way is that to talk to your mother?” she asked, even as she tried to sop up the mess with her napkin.

Probably, I should have let it go there. Most likely, it wasn’t my place to tell her how to live her life. But I was so tired. Not just from lack of sleep, which I’m sure didn’t help, but my life in general drained the will to carry this charade on any longer.

“Mom, you drink too much. It’s not like a huge secret.”

She flopped back into her chair, flabbergasted at my gall or something. “I like wine with dinner. When you are an adult, feel free to indulge. Hopefully you won’t have an ungrateful daughter passing judgment on you for it.”

“I’m not ungrateful. But I guess maybe I am judging you. I just wonder what it would be like if you dealt with life instead of drinking so you don’t have to.”

“Is that what you think I do? Not deal with life? I get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other so I can keep us afloat. That’s dealing with life.” She stood up. “I want to fall apart, and every day I wish I could. But I don’t because you need me, so I keep going.”

“I know how hard you work, and I appreciate it. But the wine—”

“Fine!” She stalked over to the sink, where she poured out the rest the last few dribbles left from the empty bottle. She knit her brow in confusion, probably thinking there should have been more in there to dump out. She stepped backward until she bumped into the fridge, and then she yanked open the door and grabbed out two more bottles.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Living up to your expectations!” she yelled, opening one bottle and pouring it down the drain.

“Mom, stop.” I joined her in the kitchen.

They all had screw caps now. It used to be she looked for specific harvest years and only certain high-end wineries. Now she had screw caps on her bottles.

She poured the other bottle out and then rooted around the wine rack like a crazy woman. Her jerky movements frightened me, as did the crazed look in her eye and the way her hair had escaped its shellacked mom bob. One bottle after another. The kitchen filled with the gagging smell of too much wine. Then she opened up the baking cupboard, moved the flour canister out of the way, and pulled down yet another bottle. A hidden one.

That was when we both started crying.

When she finished draining the bottle, she slumped to floor, dazed and crying.

“Mom?”

“Oh God, now I really need a glass of wine.”

Just so you know, life didn’t magically get better after Mom’s wigging-out session. But it did magically inch toward not quite as sucky.

The next night, she twitched and bitched enough that even she didn’t want to be in the same room with her. She called an old friend of hers (who, thank God wasn’t someone I knew from high school) who came over with some brochures and the phone number of an AA sponsor. A month later, she started smoking and drinking coffee like it was her second job, but I hadn’t seen wine in the house since.

As the months went by, we worked on finding a balance. Compromise pushed us in the right direction most times. I opted out of being in my dad’s wedding party but did actually
attend
—at my mother’s insistence. I stopped hanging out with “Hannah,” and Mom loosened up on the license issue.

Having been there the night that Sissy/Sarah wrecked and died, I understood where the fear came from. Having witnessed Heather’s actions while she got blitzed made it easier to understand Mom’s fear of teenagers and their irrational actions. Because she had been a completely irrational teenager. Basically, I tried on her shoes, walked the required mile, and was able to discuss my own issues with her better for it. We compromised. I earned my license, but I had stricter rules than most of my friends. That wasn’t so bad. I still couldn’t drive on Friday and Saturday nights, but I wasn’t really concerned with going out those nights anyway.

For one thing, I knew the town was crawling with paranormal yuckies. I can assure you that all dogs were suspect during a full moon, and I proudly wore a cross necklace 24-7. I didn’t know how to protect myself from zombies, and I was afraid to Google it. I didn’t fear the answers so much as whether I’d be able to stop there. Temptation lured me in the form of the World Wide Web. I didn’t trust myself or my fingers to stay away from typing “Nate Berliss” into a search engine.

Months after my return, I was no closer to moving on than I had been the first night. My heart still longed pitifully for Nate. Lost cause or no, I still felt the pull of what could have been. Sometimes, I dreamed so vividly of him that I wondered if maybe we actually were connecting in dreams in ways we couldn’t now.

He was out there somewhere.

I did read more about the paranormal and parallel realm theories. I brought home a stack of books, some of them from an occult shop, which freaked my mom out a little; some of them from the library, which freaked my friends out a lot more. Nobody knew what to make of me anymore. I’d changed.

I’d run into other people I’d met in 1986 and none of them recognized me. If it weren’t for the sketch, I’d have assumed I hallucinated the whole trip in time. The only tangible souvenirs I brought back were that piece of paper and scar tissue on my heart.

One chilly Sunday in October, almost a year since the ‘80s dance, I window-shopped while I waited for Mom to get done with her AA meeting. Most stores were closed on Sunday—downtown Serendipity Falls wasn’t really a shopping Mecca. I stopped in front of a window to adjust my scarf (Mom was on perm-a-knit mode lately. I had seven scarves now, and she’d made a toilet cozy, for God’s sake).

It was a comic book store. How long had that been there? It wasn’t the Pipeline and I didn’t see any “paraphernalia” when I peered farther in. Just as I finished rewrapping the ends of my scarf, I glanced at an easel set up in the window. A chill no scarf could protect me from raced up and down my spine. I staggered, pulling the ends of my scarf until it choked me.

The sketch I kept hidden in my underwear drawer had been blown up onto poster board with Nate’s sharp signature in the corner.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but it was long enough to get the attention of the guy behind the counter. He glanced up and my legs turned to rubber.

Nate.

H
E flinched at our eye contact and I took two steps backward.

Okay, it wasn’t Nate. It couldn’t be Nate. It had to be…his son?

My heart raced, punishing my rib cage with the strength of its rhythm. I didn’t know how I felt about Nate having a son. Okay, I knew how I felt. Squicky. And that he looked exactly like him was wrong on every level of wrongness ever created. Still, I pressed my nose to the glass trying to get another look at him.

Where did he go?

“Are you coming in?” he asked, standing in the open doorway of the shop.

God, he sounded like him too.

I turned slowly toward him, trying to gather any stray wits that might have escaped. They were long gone, though. I stood there in far too much turmoil to answer him. He probably thought I’d gotten off the short bus at the wrong stop the way I just stared at him. There wasn’t much I could do about it. The fuzzy static in my stomach started again, just like it always did around Nate. And my head was losing patience trying to explain to my heart that it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Nate.

It sure looked like him, though.

He took a step toward me, but I backed up. Something happened to my lungs. Like someone squeezed all the air out and I forgot what I was supposed to do to fill them back up.

“It’s okay.” His hands came up to show me he wasn’t holding a weapon. That he wasn’t dangerous. I knew better. I knew he had his finger on the button of my own personal nuclear bomb detonator. Whatever happened next was going to blow up my world.

“I know you.” He squinted as he looked harder at me, and then his eyes went to the poster board. He paled visibly. “How?” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I never met you, but I know you.”

I bit my lip. None of this made sense.

“I’ve had some crazy dreams about you. I even drew you.” He pointed to the easel. “Last year. I woke up from a sound sleep and I couldn’t do anything else until it was done. But the rest of the story never came to me. Just the one sketch.”

“You drew that?” He was Nate? Not Nate’s offspring?

“I have the original here.” He pulled it out of his pocket, unfolded it, and showed me. “Someday I’ll have the story that goes with it.”

“You carry it everywhere with you?” I asked, stepping closer to get a look at it. How could he have the original if I had the original?

Nate blushed. “I—yeah. I guess I do. The dreams are—I just feel like I need to keep it with me.”

He squinted at me, assessing me. I caught sight of the rough stubble shadowing his cheek and my mouth went completely dry. I had to play it cool, but it was killing me. Was he really
my
Nate?

I couldn’t afford to have my heart ripped out again. I sort of needed it. But he looked so good. His shaggy haircut hadn’t changed, and I guess guys wore Levi’s and t-shirts in every decade. He hadn’t changed at all.

But I had. I had changed so much in the year since that night with the mirror.

“Can you come in?” Nate pointed to the shop. “I can close up in an hour. Can you hang out and talk? It should be quiet. Nobody ever comes in on Sunday afternoon.” His eyes looked a little desperate. “I’m not sure what’s going on…but I think we need to talk it through.” He must have taken my inability to answer as hesitance. There’s coffee,” he added hopefully.

“What if I don’t like coffee?”

He raised the one eyebrow and nodded, “Oh, you like coffee.” Then he bunched his brows together again. “I’m not sure what it is about you…but I feel like…”

“Yeah. Me too.” Times one hundred.

“I’m Nate, by the way.”

It had been a long, difficult year. Being handed exactly what I wanted, yearned for, scared the crap out of me. I’d pined for him, ached for him, and needed him. Now that he was standing right here, I didn’t know what to do with him.

But wild whores couldn’t have dragged me away. “Coffee sounds nice, Nate. My name is Carri.”

He held the door open for me and then directed me to a stool on the counter. He poured my coffee and prepared it exactly the way I like it without asking. As he handed it to me, he said, “This isn’t how I usually meet girls, you know. Drawing them into life, I mean.”

“You could have fooled me,” I answered, since that seemed to be standard operating procedure for us.

“I must have seen you around or something, you know? And then I drew a picture of you.”

“Sure.” That conveniently didn’t explain how he knew things about me, but if it made him feel better for now, a little denial was probably healthy. “Do you go to Serendipity High?”

“No. I live outside city limits. I go to Columbia High.”

I almost forgot to listen to his answer; I was too busy drowning in those steel-blue eyes. A slow smile spread across his face—an overly confident smile that said,
“I have this girl exactly where I want her.”

And that cocky attitude got me right back in the game.

I looked at my watch. “Listen, I have to meet my mother in an hour. If you’re going to sell me on why I should date you over this cup of coffee, you’d better get a move on.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “What makes you think I want to date you?”

“Dude, you carry of picture of me wherever you go. You want some of this.” I smiled over the rim of my coffee cup.

Nate leaned over the counter, bringing his face close to mine. “
This
, whatever it is, scares the hell out of me, dream girl.”