My phone buzzes in my pocket.
MITCH: what are you doing tonight? wanna grab some tacos? watch a movie?
I exit out of my messages.
“Who’s that?” asks Bo.
“No one,” I say. “Just my mom.”
We study for the next few hours until it’s time to turn his bedside lamp on. We’ve both slid from sitting positions and are slumped against pillows in a sea of papers.
When he drives me home, I find myself addicted to the comfort of him. I’ve spent an entire day being so myself. Not a daughter, or a niece, or a token fat girl. Just Willowdean. The feeling of it makes me miss El. But I’m tired of other people making me feel this way. I’m ready to make myself feel this way.
“I like Loraine,” I tell him.
“She has a way of making people do that. Infectious, my dad says. I tried really hard not to like her. But the harder I tried, the more I wanted to like her. She doesn’t try to be my mom. Not like some other ladies would. She’s something else to me, though. Not a friend, but not a mom. I don’t know.”
And that—right there in those handful of words—is how I feel about Lucy. But there’s no real term for it, and I sometimes think that makes the pain of losing her that much harder to reconcile.
He parks in front of my house. “So is that what you normally do on Saturdays? Study at home?” I want to know everything about every minute of his life.
“Yeah,” he says. “Unless my dad needs me.”
“What about Sundays?” We’re off every Sunday, which means it’s this one day a week where Bo is a complete mystery to me.
“I go to church. Mass. I go to mass.”
“Wait, you’re actually Catholic?”
He doodles designs on his steering wheel with his finger. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
The streetlight reflects off the silver chain peeking out from his collar. “Coach used to always have us go to mass during the season, and I guess I got in the habit.”
“How punny.”
His lips form an uneven smile. “I like the tradition of it.”
“Does your family go, too?”
He laughs. “Not a chance.”
The quiet of my street seeps in through the cracks of his truck.
“I better go,” I whisper.
He leans toward me and hooks his hands behind my ears, pulling me to him. Our lips brush, so light it tickles. But it’s not quite a kiss. “I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you very soon.” His words spill right into my mouth. “But I’m not going to mess us up this time.”
I have so many questions, but I think I’ve got enough for today.
He drops his hands, letting his fingers trail down my cheeks.
“Come to mass with me tomorrow.”
I bite in on my lips. “Okay.”
FORTY-EIGHT
The minute I walk inside, reality crashes down around me. Mom is working on my dress and watching some Lifetime movie with the volume turned up too high.
I want more than anything to call El and tell her about every inch of these last two days. Lee Wei, Dale, Bo, Loraine. All of it. I slump down into a chair at the kitchen table and swipe through my phone until I find our last texts from almost two months ago. I hit compose.
ME: I spent the day at Private School Bo’s house. He likes me a lot. We talked about everything and nothing. He almost kissed me and it was the most amazing non-kiss ever. I’m trying not to think about Mitch. I’ve ignored his texts all weekend. How can having such an incredible day make me feel like such a shitty person? I miss Lucy. And I miss you so fucking much. I apologize. I apologize for everything I have ever done wrong. A blanket apology.
I stare at the words, wondering what might happen if I hit send. I press the delete button because the fear of her not responding is too great for me to risk it.
Bo texts me when he arrives, which is perfectly timed because my mom is getting in the shower.
“I’ll be back later!” I call to her.