The Vow (16 page)

That could mean he doesn’t usually cook for girls or they all react differently.

“The only girl I’ve cooked for regularly would be my last girlfriend. She turned out to be less than sincere about a lot of things.”

“Less than sincere,” I repeat. “That sounds like code for something.”

He just looks at me, the smallest hint of pain in his face. It makes me feel a little sick, the thought that someone hurt him.

“Dessert?” he asks.

I nod.

Reed pulls vanilla bean ice cream from the freezer while I clear plates. “What, no fancy homemade dessert?” I ask.

“No. Unless you feel the need to request a chocolate soufflé or something.”

“I was kidding. Ice cream is perfect.” I take the bowl he hands me and follow him to the couch. It’s an unholy shade of brownish green, but I ignore the color and settle into the corner, folding my legs beneath me and curling my toes into the worn velour.

I let the first spoonful melt in my mouth, contemplating the idea of ordering whatever dessert I want and actually having someone do my bidding. “Wait, would you seriously be making me, say, a cheesecake right now if I asked for one?”

“I’d have to run to Kroger for cream cheese and graham cracker crumbs. And you’d have to wait an hour for it to bake, and then another hour for it to set up.”

“But I’d be eating my own cheesecake,” I say.

“At midnight. Yeah.”

I take another bite of ice cream. “With you.”

He laughs. “I would hope so. Are we still talking hypothetically here, or should I be on my way to the store?”

“Hypothetically. I’ve got to be home by eleven.” I glance over my shoulder at the microwave clock. “Sorry.”

“Why do you always apologize for that?”

The question catches me off guard. “Because I know it’s annoying. And not normal. And I used to go out with a guy who hated it.”

Reed shrugs. “It’s not like you can do anything about your parents.”

Now would be the time to tell him. I’ve always known that Lena would have to make her way into us, Reed and me. It would be natural to do it now, and he’d understand my parents and their craziness, and maybe why I really work at Mr. Twister.

Or maybe I’d be instantly transformed into the tragic younger sister.

I take a huge bite of ice cream.

“So, how’s the mural?”

I pound my forehead with my fist and gasp.
“Brain freeze.”

“You okay?”

“Give me a minute.”

I take a few deep breaths and wait for the pain to release me. But first I feel his hand on the back of my head, squeezing the base of my neck. It lifts.

“Better?”

“Yeah.” I fight the urge to shudder. He’s rubbing slow circles on both sides of my neck, and I could melt if I let myself. “The mural is good. I’m knee-deep in coral, but it’s coming.”

“Done before I leave?”

“Before you leave?” The words are out of my mouth, full of confusion, before I remember that I’m not supposed to be surprised by this thing that I already know. I’ve been letting myself fall, pretending there isn’t an endpoint. Fall. School.

“Before I go back to Nashville in August,” he says. He’s still kneading my neck, and the muscle feels like it’s sighing beneath his fingers.

“Hopefully,” I say. But I don’t feel the least bit hopeful now. “Maybe not, though.”

“I may have to come back up and see it over Labor Day weekend.”

I give him a skeptical glance. He’s not really going to drive three hours to visit a high school girl with an iron curfew.

“You don’t believe me? Nashville’s not that far. Not too far to drive to see my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend.”

He stops rubbing, but keeps his hand on the back of my neck.

“Is that what I am?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Is that what you want to be?”

“I don’t know. Is that what you want me to be?”

He smiles. “You’re not making this easy.”

“Just answer the question.”

“Of course that’s what I want you to be.”

“Good.” I feel warm. My skin, from feet to hands to cheeks, is turning pink, but I’m not embarrassed.

“Besides,” he adds, “we’ve made out in your room, the freezer, the parking lot, the break room. If you’re not my girlfriend, that means—”

“You’re a man slut,” I break in.

“Exactly what I was going to say. And I’d hate to get a name like that in place as small as Elizabethtown.”

He leans back and looks at me. Something about the set of his mouth and the way his eyes narrow when he does that, I feel like he’s seeing right through me. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Your friend Mo—is he gay?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He scratches the back of his neck, where the hair looks so soft and shiny I want to reach out and rub it between my fingers. “So did you guys used to go out?”

“No. He’s like my brother.”

“Yeah, you said that before. I just thought maybe he was like your gay brother.”

“Mo is definitely not gay. Or if he is, he has both of us pretty well fooled, because he’s been genuinely lusting after the same girl for years.”

“But you guys haven’t hooked up, not even once?”

I make a face. “Not even once? No. And I don’t hook up
just once
with people.”

“That’s not what I meant. Remember,
I’m
the man slut.”

“Right.” I put my empty bowl on the faux-wood coffee table and search for words to clear the muddiness. “He’s . . . he’s
Mo
.”

“I believe you when you say you’re just not attracted to him. There are plenty of girls I’m not ever going to be into that way. But . . .”

“But what?” I push. I’m not nearly as stupid as I must sound to Reed, but I’ve heard this explanation before. It’s lame. Mo being male can’t be the reason we can’t be just friends.

“But he’s a guy.”

“Yeah. Like you. And you just said you weren’t attracted to every female in the world.”

“But he’s a guy and you’re
you
,” he continues. “I mean, I’m trying not to sound creepy here, but I can pretty much guarantee that any straight guy who spends any amount of time with you is not going to be thinking about you like you’re his sister.”

I sigh. “That is creepy.”

“But true. Sorry.”

I’m not sure how to respond, so I don’t. Grass wallpaper the shade of creamed honey covers all four of Reed’s walls, and the effect transports me. I’m in a wheat field. Not so different from the whirlpool of my mural at all. But from my wheat field I can still hear Reed, and what he’s saying is wrong. It’s sort of a compliment, but it’s wrong. Mo doesn’t think of me that way. Reed just doesn’t know him, doesn’t know us.

“I’m not trying to make you mad,” he says.

“I’m not mad.”

“I’m just being honest. At first I thought you were talking about him all the time so I’d know you weren’t interested.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah, but then I started to think you were interested,” Reed says, “and you were still talking about him, so I just assumed he was gay. No, assumed is the wrong word. Hoped?”

“Is it that big of a deal?” I ask, feeling that same frustrated, desperate feeling I have every time this conversation happens.

“Having a straight guy as a best friend? I guess not.” He reaches out and traces the pomegranate stains on my arm. “Don’t be upset. I just don’t understand your dynamic or whatever, but I . . .” He trails off and pulls his hand away. “I should probably be totally honest with you.”

I turn to face him, bracing for pain. Nothing good has ever followed that phrase.

“I came here this summer to sort of get away from things. To work. To help my grandma. Definitely not to get into something with someone.”

“Oh.” I’m watching his face, but he’s staring a hole in the wall behind me. I can’t think of anything else to say.

“My last girlfriend cheated on me, and it was sort of recent.” He pauses, but not long enough for me to speak. “It’s why I tried not to notice you at first.”

The way he wouldn’t look at me, that slight annoyance at having to show me things, those details seem so far away now, I’d forgotten I’d even had to forget them. “But . . .”

“But then Rachel and Clara and the other girls were just too much. Too flirty and annoying.”

I picture the college girls with their cigarettes and cleavage, telling stories about getting wasted with some professor—I’d seen so little of them after the first week or two. They worked the days I had off. Come to think of it, the baby shower was the first time in a while that I’d seen any of them.

“So I had Soup change the schedule so I could work with you and Flora instead. And then I was seeing you every day, and you’re so different from anyone else, I couldn’t not . . . notice you. And want to be with you.”

He looks embarrassed, and I want to reach out and stroke his prickly cheek because I’ve never felt so flattered.

“So I’m trying not to be weird or possessive, and I know I probably came across that way just then. I didn’t used to be that kind of guy, the jealous type, I guess, but it’s hard not to assume the worst now. Anyway, I’m sorry. Being friends with Mo makes you happy. I don’t want you and Mo to be anything different than what you are.”

I’ve eaten too much. I didn’t realize it until this moment, but the spice is pressing up into my throat, burning.

What we are.
Husband and wife.

The mashed-up chiles and pork and creamy walnut sauce roll around inside of me, pushing me closer to nausea, and I have the sudden horrific thought that I might be vomiting the perfect meal into that Ice-Age single-basin sink.

I remember to breathe, and it helps. I’m not going to throw up, and I’m not ashamed of what I did. Marrying Mo was the right thing to do. Loyalty. That’s real. Friendship and love. Those are the things people live and die for. They’re more real than borders and passports and lame laws will ever be. I did it for Mo.

Reed’s staring at me. I need to say something, but I can’t think of the words to reassure him. His eyes are that faultless chocolate brown, and it’s easier just to get lost in them. But he’s waiting.

“I’m so sorry,” I say softly.

He shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t want you to be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m okay. It’s okay now.”

I nod and look away because it doesn’t seem like he wants me watching him. His embarrassment is sitting between us on the couch now.

“Mo and I really are just friends.”

He doesn’t hear the way the words catch in my throat, the muscles constricting over them in a sudden panicky spasm. He takes their meaning at face value, my smile as proof that I won’t hurt him. I’m trustworthy.

And I feel a little better because he feels better. Maybe I should tell him the truth or break it off or just leave, but I don’t. None of those things is the right thing either. I’m pretty sure there no longer is a right thing, if there ever was.

There’s only what feels right. I don’t stop him as he lifts me from my corner of the couch and pulls me onto his lap.

Chapter 18

Mo

I
pull Satan’s Cat from her corner of the couch onto my lap. Mistake. Painful mistake. Her Highness makes the same feral scream she did the last time I dared to touch her and digs a new set of gashes down my left forearm with both claws.

I scream swear words in English, Spanish, and Arabic (covering all my bases), and she scampers away.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not sure why I keep trying. She is, after all, Satan’s Cat, and has been since the day I took over as her guardian, the day she proved herself totally unworthy of being called Duchess by crapping on my pillow.

My arm kills. I inspect the fresh red lines branding me as her property. Droplets of blood bubble up along the deepest one, but I don’t wipe them away. I stare at the blood, focusing on the pain, trying to harness it to fuel my revenge. Because I think it’s finally time for revenge.

I’ve been trying all weekend to make friends with Satan’s Cat—yes, actually trying to forge an emotional bond with the most sinister feline the animal kingdom has ever produced—but she’s still giving me the hiss-and-fang show. As if lying on the couch crying off and on for the last forty-eight hours hasn’t been emasculating enough, I’m now being rejected by a puffball formerly known as Duchess.

I spent the first few hours in this apartment wandering around baby-talking to Duchess, looking for Duchess’ bunny toy, scooping Duchess’ piss puddles out of the litter box. When I found the diarrhea on my pillow, it was almost a relief, as if she was giving me permission to let the charade go. We were to be mortal enemies. We
are
mortal enemies. For ever and ever. I should probably eat something—I feel light-headed.

Hopefully Sarina doesn’t mind that her cherished pet is my new nemesis. Not that she’ll know. I promised to keep the animal alive, not sing her songs and braid her hair. The only redeeming aspect of the cat situation is that she’s distracted me from the torn and ragged feeling in my chest every time I think about my family.

I look over at Satan’s Cat in the corner, and of course she starts it again. She widens her eyes. I sigh loudly, but not enough to deter her. Another staring contest. This is probably somewhere around our fifteenth in two days. It goes like this. Satan’s Cat stares into my eyes. I stare into Satan’s Cat’s eyes. After a few minutes I get freaked out and jump off the couch, usually screaming the same string of trilingual curse words as before because she has the most terrifying eyes in the world. They’re amber with long black flecks in them that look like slivers, and I swear after about thirty seconds they start spinning like pinwheels and she’s actually grinning at me the whole time—EVEN THOUGH CATS CAN’T GRIN!—probably because she knows she’s stretching her evil out and into my brain. Demonic ocular poisoning. I’d Google it if I weren’t so afraid of what I’d see. Whatever. Maybe this time I’ll win.

The nasal apartment buzzer—the auditory equivalent of a rusty nail probing the softest part of my brain—sends Satan’s Cat scrambling off the couch. She’s jumpy. Probably related to a guilty conscience.

I drag myself up and off the couch and stumble through the cloud of dizziness swirling my field of vision around like a psychedelic glow stick. Is this the first time I’ve stood up today? Yeah. Maybe. I can’t really remember when yesterday ended and today started, and I must’ve gotten up to pee at some point. I shuffle my way over to the intercom and hold the wall-mounted box for a moment to steady myself. When things look relatively solid, I depress the red button. “Yeah?” My voice is gravel, tar, and a cheese grater.

“Let me up.”

“Who is this?”

“Very funny, Mo. Let me up.”

“This sounds like a girl I used to know. Annabelle, I believe her name was.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. The weekend’s been a little crazy.”

“For you, too? I’ve been wrestling with a possessed feline and contemplating whether a toaster in the bathtub would actually do the job.”

“You’d better be talking about killing the cat.”

“Actually, I was referring to both of us. We’ve made a murder-suicide pact.”

“You can’t make a
murder
-suicide pact. It’s just a suicide pact, and you don’t make one with a cat.”

“I’m not even sure she’s a cat,” I explain. “She could be, like, I don’t know, the devil incarnate.”

“Let me up.”

“If it’s not a murder-suicide pact, what do you call it when she promised to kill me if I don’t kill myself ?”

“Mo!”

“Fine.”

I press the gray button, look around, and realize too late that I’ve made a mistake. She’s going to go nuts. I’ve got three days’ worth of dirty dishes on the coffee table and half a box of used tissue from when I may have shed a few manly tears about being abandoned, all scattered around the permanent body imprint I’ve left on the couch. Four empty bottles of Mountain Dew on the end table, and oh yeah, and a family-size box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch on its side beside the couch with about two hundred tiny cinnamon toasts sprinkled across the carpet, which I may have accidentally kicked over and trudged through on my way to the intercom. And the boxes I was supposed to unpack—my clothes, my books, some dishes and kitchen crap that I don’t even know how to use, some decorating stuff my mom insisted I keep—are all still stacked in a tower in the corner, unopened. Satan’s Cat is perched stone-like, glaring down at me from the top one. Hell’s gargoyle.

Annie doesn’t knock. The door opens and she takes a few cautious steps into the cave, looking around without a word. She’s wearing another one of those sundress things that she doesn’t seem to realize make her look like she’s a five-year-old time traveler from the 1950s. There’s something else different about her too, but it takes me a moment to figure it out. Her hair is curled. She hasn’t curled her hair since Chris Dorsey. Great.

She places her purse oh-so-gingerly on an open patch of carpet, then turns a slow circle. She saw the place last week after we’d just moved the boxes in, before my family left, so she knows what it’s supposed to look like. I brace for impact. I’m predicting the words “disgusting,” “pig,” and “health inspector” in any order.

What I’m not predicting is for her to turn, put her hand on my arm, and say, “Oh.”

Just oh.

I underestimated her. The way she looks at me, eyes bigger than gumballs, it’s clear I’m not the revolting, unshowered mess of a human being I’ve morphed into over the last forty-eight hours. We’re not even at Wisper Pines. We’re at the Louisville Children’s Science Center, I’ve got piss running down both of my legs, and she’s the only one in the world who sees me.

I swallow and turn away. She doesn’t try to hug me, and for that alone, I will love her forever.

She starts with the food, scooping handfuls of cereal into an empty grocery bag she finds in the kitchen. I watch for a few numb seconds, then go off to find the vacuum cleaner.

When I get back she’s holding an empty Mountain Dew bottle in each hand. “Recycling bin?”

“Can’t do it. Global warming conspiracy theory is way too mainstream.”

She doesn’t even roll her eyes, just tosses them into the trash.

I gather the tissues and chuck them too. “I had a cold,” I mutter, in case she’s wondering, but she doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.

Satan’s Cat watches it all from her perch until Annie opens up a can of cat food and scoops it into a bowl. For this, the beast hops down from her roost, slinks and weaves her way through Annie’s legs, then begins taking dainty little bites.

I glare at the beast. When I feed her, she pounces on it, stopping to hiss every few seconds to let me know her feelings for me haven’t changed just because I’m keeping her alive.

“No offense,” Annie says after a few minutes of cleaning, “but how long has it been since you showered?”

“Uh . . .” I can’t even remember what day I took them to the airport. Friday? And today’s Sunday? No, Monday. Maybe.

“Go shower.”

I obey, relieved to be bossed around, relieved to not be having another staring contest with Satan’s Cat, relieved someone is offended by my stench. And my obedience leads to the discovery of Wisper Pines’s finest amenity: the showerhead. They really should have included it in the brochure. I mean, the tennis and basketball courts plus community gardens are lovely features, but this showerhead is way better because it feels like I’m being pelted by skin-melting lasers, and it’s something I’m going to use every day. Well, theoretically. If I’d known, I would’ve spent the last two or three or four days in here instead of lying on the couch.

Facing the nozzle, I lean into the pressure wash of scalding water and steam until the grime shell is gone. I don’t turn it off until my skin is too sore for one more second. I’m raw all over. But transformed too, because I feel seventeen again—not seventy or seven—too young to be dying, too old to be homesick. Or family-sick. For now it’s all scalded away.

I shave, put on fresh clothes, and leave the bathroom to find Annie digging through my life. Basketball trophies, report cards, immunization records, a badge-covered shirt from my ill-advised foray into the world of the Boy Scouts of America. She sifts through it without taking it out of the box, then moves on to the next one.

“My clothes,” I say. “I’ll do them.” I reach down and take the box from her. She doesn’t protest or ask me why I’m such a lazy piece of crap for just letting them sit here instead of unpacking like a normal human being.

From my room I can hear her taking out the contents of the next box, and I know it’s the one I don’t want unpacked because I can hear the clinking of candlesticks.

The apartment came furnished, but my mom insisted on leaving a few things to make it like home. I know exactly what’s in there because I saw her pack it up. Family portraits in matching silver frames. Her favorite candlesticks, like I’m ever in a million years going to light candles. A hand-woven silk table runner that belonged to her mother. This ancient anthology of children’s stories she read to Sarina and me when we were little. Stuff I don’t want to see right now.

“Just leave that stuff in the box,” I call from the room.

“But some of it’s really pretty. Don’t you at least want the family pictures out? And what’s this old book?”

“I don’t want to see it right now,” I yell, too loudly, and instantly regret the blatant desperation. “Please,” I try again, softer. “Just leave it.”

Silence. I stick my head out the door and I see her small body bent over the candlesticks. She’s rewrapping them in the table runner, placing them gently back into the box like she’s afraid they’ll detonate.

By the time I’ve found drawer space for all my clothes, Annie’s long done with the living room and nearly finished unpacking the kitchen boxes too.

“Thank you,” I say, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. I know I’m alone in believing this, but people overuse those words so they mean almost nothing at a time like this, when I need them to mean everything. I can only think of a few times in my whole life I’ve ever been more grateful. She deserves a million thank-yous.

“It’s nothing. I should’ve come by sooner.”

“No. I really mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything this nice for you.”

“A couple of hours of cleaning? You spent at least twenty hours tutoring me for chemistry last semester. I bombed the final, by the way.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s embarrassing.”

“How bad?”

She tucks her hair behind her ears and squeezes her eyes shut like that’ll help her forget. “You don’t want to know. And it was algebra the semester before that, and biology the semester before that, so you do nice things for me all the time.”

I let it go. But this wasn’t nice. This was heroic. Life-altering.

“So, what’s going on with you?” I ask.

“Nothing. Sorry I haven’t called. I knew you were spending every second with your family, and then this weekend has just been kind of busy.”

“You hooked up with that guy.”

“What guy?”

“The one with the plant name. Weed.”

“Reed.”

“Yeah, whatever. Him.”

She bites her lower lip in classic Annie concentration. Her face says: formulating lie, formulating lie, formulating lie, crap,
can’t
formulate a lie, change the subject. “I hate the term hooked up.”

“Noted.”

“No really. Can we not say hung out with?”

“We can, but it means something different. And it’s obvious you and the Weed have done both.”

“Why is that obvious?”

“Because otherwise you would have just answered the question.”

“Hmm.” She taps her fingers on the countertop. Her nails are pink. This is serious.

“So when do I get to meet him?” I ask.

“Never.”

“What? How is that even possible? As your husband, I demand to meet the dude you’re making out with. ”

“And as your wife, I demand you let it go. When do we meet with the lawyer?”

“If today is actually Monday, then tomorrow at nine in the morning. And he’s just a law student. Supposedly, I don’t need a real lawyer, just some know-it-all with legal tendencies to tell me which forms to fill out.”

“I’m kind of surprised you actually made the call.”

“I didn’t,” I admit. “I kept putting it off until my dad freaked out and at the last minute called for me. It’s in Louisville, but you don’t have to go if you’ve got work or hookup plans that interfere.”

“I’ll go with you,” she says, but I can tell she doesn’t want to. From the way she grimaced under the word “wife,” it’s clear she’s experiencing buyer’s remorse. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight?”

“Sure.”

“And do I have to know anything or say anything?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t even see the point of it. I think we just show up and smile.”

“I can do that.” She exhales and her shoulders drop a little. She looks worried. “Are you going to be okay?”

I glance around me. Okay. Am I going to be okay? “Yeah?”

“Really?”

I have no idea. I don’t even know if I want to be okay. Up until an hour ago, dedicating myself to winning the love of Satan’s Cat or killing her was actually starting to sound like a viable life plan.