“Yes.”
As he drives through Tarpon Springs, I check my phone for messages. Greg is not happy I ran off, so I send him a text that I’m getting something to eat and will be home right after. He replies that this is not how grounding works, but I don’t respond. Kat’s message informs me that I missed the arrival of Nick and Connor at the party, and that I should come back. I don’t answer that one, either.
The pizza place is inside a small Italian grocery with two small aisles of pasta, sauces, cookies, sweets, and Italian wines, and a deli counter filled with meats and cheeses. The walls are covered with New York memorabilia—sports team pennants, autographed photos of various celebrities, framed newspaper clippings about 9/11, and a large framed photo of the New York City skyline at night. Our table is one of only three and it has a candle in the middle, but with the deli counter three-deep with takeaway customers, it’s not a romantic candle.
A beefy guy wearing a white apron smeared with dried blood comes out from behind the counter to take our order. “You want the usual?”
“Yeah,” Alex says. “And a pitcher?”
The waiter-slash-butcher looks at me with one eyebrow raised. “You got ID?”
Mom taught me how to drive, but I never tested for a license, so I don’t have any identification at all. For all practical purposes, I’m nobody. I shake my head. “A Coke is fine.”
“How old are you anyway?” Alex asks, after the guy shuffles away.
“Seventeen.”
“Really?” His eyebrows hitch up a little. “Huh.”
When Matt found out I was only fifteen, he rolled away from me, called me jailbait, and told me to get the hell out. The trailer park where Mom and I were living was about two miles from his apartment, so I walked to the diner where she worked. When she asked what I was doing wandering around town in the middle of the night, I lied and said I couldn’t sleep. I’m not sure she believed me. Not when I could still smell his sweat and cologne on my skin and hair.
“I’m not going to tell anyone.” I focus on the fork he taps against the tabletop. “It doesn’t have to be an issue.”
“It’s not an issue.” He shrugs. “I’m a little surprised is all. You look older.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-two in April.”
“My birthday’s in May.”
On the wall behind him is a photo of the restaurant owner—I’m guessing, but it seems likely because he appears in other pictures as well—shaking hands with one of the New York Yankees.
“Have you ever been to New York?” I change the subject.
Alex picks up and puts down the glass shaker of grated parmesan cheese and shakes his head. He’s got one curl that’s all askew and I tuck my fingers into my palm to keep from reaching out to smooth it down. “I’ve never really been anywhere but here.”
“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?”
“Australia, Polynesia, Central America, the Caribbean, the Galapagos—” He ticks them off on his fingers easily, as if this is a list he’s had plenty of time to think about. “Hell, I’ll even go to the Keys if it means diving that doesn’t involve me cutting sponges off the ocean floor.”
“That’s what you do?”
The butcher returns with a bottle of beer and a can of soda. “Pizza’ll be ready soon.”
“It’s a family business,” Alex says. “It used to be me and my dad, but my mom got sick, so now it’s just me. I don’t mind doing it, but—never mind. Not important. Why’d you come back?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why?”
“My mom got sick, too.” I’m skirting the truth, but this is as close as I want to come with a guy I barely know. “So I had to come live with my dad.”
Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t put the pieces together. How many teenage girls named Callie come home to Tarpon Springs to live with their dads after living everywhere with their sick moms? Especially when Kat claims I am a local legend. But if Alex has figured it out, nothing in his face gives it away. He leans back on his chair. “Tarpon Springs isn’t a bad place.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I can tell how much you love it.”
The corner of his mouth tilts and my stomach does an elevator drop. “I still plan to escape someday,” he says. “But definitely not today.”
Alex takes me to the sponge docks when we’re finished with our pizza. He offers to drive me home, but I don’t want Greg to see me getting out of some strange guy’s truck. Not when he’s already upset with me.
“Thanks for the pizza,” I say, as Alex opens the sticky door for me, its hinges groaning. I’m pretty sure he was lying about it flying open unexpectedly.
“Do you want the leftovers?”
I’d never heard of putting carrots or asparagus or capicola—I didn’t even know what kind of meat that is—on pizza, but it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, so it’s a tempting offer. Except Greg would definitely wonder how I managed to walk to a pizza place that far from Georgia’s house. “You keep them,” I say.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He grins and my whole body goes weak.
I’m not sure what to say next. Thank you for sleeping with me and not treating me like a whore? Thank you for not being ashamed to go somewhere with me in public? Thank you for kissing me as if you meant it? I mean, I had sex with a stranger, followed by pizza. I don’t think there are etiquette rules for that.
“I, um—I’d better go.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
“I’m sure,” I say. “But thanks.”
For a moment, I feel like I’m a character in a book, the girl hoping the boy will tell her he’ll call. Except I’m not sure I want Alex to say it because I don’t want it to be a lie. Turns out I have nothing to worry about because he doesn’t. Instead he says, “I guess I’ll see you around.”
As I walk home, I’m not sure what to make of the afternoon. Maybe Kat is right about Alex. Maybe sex and pizza is his standard operating procedure. Maybe he tells every girl he’ll see her around. Maybe he’s not so different from Danny after all. And maybe that means that I’m not so different, either. I fell for it.
Greg and Phoebe are sitting on the front-porch swing as I come through the gate. I climb the steps and Phoebe stands, giving Greg’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before she goes into the house. She offers me a grim smile, which makes me think maybe this is going to be serious.
“Have a seat,” Greg says.
I sit beside him on the swing.
“Listen,” he says. “I understand that after living with your mom you’re used to having a lot of freedom, but—”
“What if I’m like her?”
He holds up a hand and frustration shadows his face. “Let me finish.”
“No, Greg, this is important,” I say. “What if the reason I take off the way I do is because I have this borderline personality thing, too?”
“Running away when you’re angry or scared isn’t really symptomatic of borderline, Callie,” he says. “If anything, it’s a learned behavior. You run away because that’s what Veronica always did.”
“But how can you be sure I don’t have it?”
“I can’t,” he says. “But by the time your mom was your age, she was already on medication because she was experiencing mood swings that would make her do—”
“Crazy things?”
He sighs. “Impulsive things.”
Having sex with random strangers is not exactly well-thought-out behavior, but under the circumstances I don’t think Greg needs to know about this.
“I loved your mom so damn much,” he says. “We were only married for three years and I didn’t want a divorce. I sure as hell didn’t want to start a custody war, but Veronica was convinced I was going to keep you from her. And the thing is … if she hadn’t taken you when she left, I don’t know if she’d have made it alone.”
We sit for a moment and a car drives past, the tires bumping on the brick-paved street.