“Hey,” she said softly as she inched the door open. “You okay?”
“I guess,” I said. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I freaked out. I just want to be normal, you know? But I can’t, and it makes me so mad sometimes . . .”
“Hey, hey.” She sat down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I upset everyone.”
She rubbed my shoulder. “No, you didn’t. We’re all just . . . feeling this out. It’s going to take a little time, and there are going to be some bumps. But don’t you ever blame yourself, you got it?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“You know you can talk to me anytime, about anything, right?” she said. “I don’t want to push, but I’m always here.”
“I know,” I said.
She smiled and nudged my leg. “And don’t let Nicholas get to you, okay? I love him to death, but he’s an idiot sometimes.”
I cracked a smile.
“Aww, there’s my baby brother!” she said, ruffling my hair. “Come on, how about we go do some shopping? It’ll be fun.”
We climbed into Lex’s car and headed into town to buy me the essentials I was missing. It turned out my definition of “essential” was pretty different from hers. For hours we went from store to store, buying clothes and toiletries and shoes and a cell phone and a laptop, everything charged to the shiny platinum credit card Lex produced from her wallet. If I liked something, she bought two of it and never looked at a single price tag. It shouldn’t have surprised me after seeing the house or climbing into Lex’s tricked out BMW, but there was something almost magical about how she could trade a swipe of plastic for anything she wanted.
“We’ll go to the bank on Monday and get you your own card,” she said as we ate a late lunch. “We all have one for the family account. For emergencies.”
I guess our definition of “emergency” was different too. For me it was not having any money for a bus ticket out of town when I needed to disappear. For her it was seeing some shiny thing in a store window that she wanted.
I preferred her definition.
“I’ve always loved this color on you,” Lex said as she brushed the sleeve of the new blue button-down I was wearing. I looked down at the shirt. I had always understood the lack of money; growing up poor etched it into your bones. But in the clothes Lex had pushed into my arms to try on, in this fine cotton shirt, I was getting a glimpse of what life was like with money. It was easy to sit up straight and take up space when everything that touched your skin was clean and soft and expensive. “Makes your eyes look almost green.”
The glow in her face as she smiled at me was so full of warmth and affection that I felt something move inside my chest. The lurch of a dormant heart trying to wake up.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and headed for the restroom. Somehow I kept finding myself hiding in bathrooms. I washed my hands and then stared in the mirror until my face stopped being something I recognized and morphed into nothing but a collection of shapes and shadows. I blinked at the shapes and took deep breaths until they became a face again.
When I returned to the table, Lex was throwing back a pill with the glass of wine she’d ordered with lunch. When she spotted me, she gave a little shrug.
“Headache,” she said, stuffing the bottle back into her bag. “Are you ready to go?”
I nodded, and with another swipe of her magical plastic, lunch was paid for, and we left the restaurant.
“So,” she said as we climbed back into her car, “I think you have everything you need now, right? I gotta say, I much prefer shopping to class.”
“Is that where you’d usually be?” I asked.
“Yep! I’m the loser who’s still in college at twenty-four.” Her smile was bitter around the edges. “I haven’t exactly been a model student.”
“I guess that’s my fault, huh?” I said, angling an air-conditioning vent away from me.
“Please,” she said. “That was all me. But I’ve been getting it together, and I should graduate next semester. And I’ve got my own place now, out in Century City. It’s a dump, but at least it’s mine.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought you lived—”
She shook her head. “No, I’m just crashing in my old room for a while. Patrick and I thought it would be better for everyone if I was around while you got settled in.”
I was suddenly nervous. What constituted “settling in”? If Lex left, I’d be stuck practically alone in that house with Jessica and Nicholas, the two members of the family I was on the least stable ground with.
That is, if I decided to stay.
“How long will that be?” I asked.
She glanced over at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, you’re not getting rid of me for a good long time. We even let Mia’s nanny go, since I’m going to be around for a while.”
Slowly, I smiled back.
? ? ?
On our way back to Hidden Hills, Lex stopped at a Starbucks. The backseat of her car, which was otherwise pretty neat, was littered with discarded coffee cups, and as she parked, she tossed the empty one in her cup holder back onto the pile.
I followed her inside, surprised again at the gust of cold air that hit me as I stepped in. I guess Southern California had to manufacture its own winter. Lex joined the line, drawing her phone out of her bag and immediately typing out a message. I was amazed at how quickly her thumbs moved. I’d never had a smartphone before, just a shitty pay-as-you-go flip phone that quit going pretty quickly since I quit paying.
With Lex occupied, I looked around the coffee shop. This was one thing that wasn’t different from my old life at all. Starbucks was Starbucks whether you were a homeless guy in Canada or a rich teenager in California. It was strangely comforting. And also irritating. Like it was trying to remind me who I really was.
I looked at the array of pastries in the case by the register and then at the customers in the seating area. An old Hispanic man with a paper, probably a widower just trying to fill his day. A bored white woman in yoga pants and expensive sunglasses—a reluctant stay-at-home mom—who talked on the phone while her toddler dismantled a muffin. An Asian girl a little younger than me working at a laptop in one of the leather chairs against the wall, her legs folded underneath her in a way that looked extremely uncomfortable. I watched her a little longer than the others, trying to figure out her deal, like I automatically did with everyone, so of course she looked up and caught me. I immediately looked away.
“Do you want anything, Danny?” Lex asked.
I shook my head, and Lex gave her order and handed over her credit card. I flipped through the CDs at the cash register while Lex waited for her receipt, but I found my gaze drifting to the girl in the chair again.
For the second time she looked up and caught me. Dammit. I turned my head away. But when my eyes slid back to her a third time, she was still looking at me.
She crossed her eyes.
I laughed.