“I want to.”
He yawned about five times on our thirty-yard trek. At the doorstep, he shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“You wanna play explorers out on the rocks?”
“That’s kind of a kids’ game, don’t you think, Jax?”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Well, you wanna go read by the river? My mom picked up some new books from the library for me.”
“Maybe. I have to see how I feel.”
“Of course,” he said through a yawn.
“I better go.” I searched his eyes for a sign.
He just smiled, unaware. Jax wasn’t where I was emotionally or physically, and I was too young for Brian. Damn. “Night, Em.”
“Night, Jax.”
My house was dark, and my father and Susan were passed out in their underwear on the living room floor. I had a bag of granola bars, some Fruit Roll-Ups, a package of maxi pads, and a worn-out copy of Tuck Everlasting. I went into my bedroom and stared at myself in the mirror behind my door.
For the first time, I noticed that my hips were wider and my breasts were finally larger than peanuts. I was a woman. That was the moment I started hating my mother. Even though it had been a couple of years since she’d left, the pain of her absence was searing. I had never felt her abandonment as sharply as I did the day I became a woman. Maybe it was Leila’s flawed attempt at kindness that made me miss the tenderness of a mother. My own had been kind and gentle when she was around, but she couldn’t handle the life she’d been given. Burned bread in the oven would send her into a fit of tears. I didn’t know where she’d gone, and I didn’t know any of her extended family or if she even had family. She had just vanished one day, and there was little impression of her left in our home . . . almost like she had never existed.
3. I’m Running
By one p.m., I had to stop reading. Frankly, I was drunk, emotional, and torn.
It was strange how Jase knew how I had felt toward my mother. Then again, he had been my best friend. I had told him everything. And he’d used all of that to create an emotional landscape that was strangely true to everything I remembered. The only difference was that Emerson was introspective at a young age, and I wasn’t so much. Things were happening to me back then, but only now, after reading a few chapters of Jase’s book, did I realize how I had really felt as a kid. He must have been so tuned in to me to realize I had a crush on his brother. He’d just sat there watching, taking it all in.
If I felt a tiny bit of forgiveness toward Jase, it vanished the moment I remembered that here he was making money off this story. My story. He had beaten me to the punch.
I curled up on my bed, too emotionally drained to do anything else, and fell asleep.
I WOKE UP later that evening to the sounds of Trevor and Cara making small talk in the kitchen. I put on my running gear, left my bedroom, and headed for the front door, ignoring Trevor as he stared me down from behind the kitchen counter.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“For a run,” I replied. “Want to join?”
I noticed Cara sneak off to her bedroom behind me without saying a word. Trevor and I had fallen into the habit of making people around us feel uncomfortable. I knew we were giving off weird vibes.
“I just had PT and my arm is killing me,” he said.
“You don’t use your arms to run.” I stood near the door with my hand on the knob.
“Yeah, actually, you do. Hey, will you turn around and look at me?”
I turned and leaned against the door. “What, Trevor?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing is going on. I just want to go for a run.”
He laughed drily. “You have no idea how typical this is of you.”
“Do you want to start tossing insults at each other the moment we’re in a room together? Didn’t you just get here? I didn’t even know you were coming over.” He shook his head as if I were an awful person. I took a deep breath and softened my voice. “Isn’t there a game on? I’ll go for a run and get takeout and be back in a bit. You can hang out here. When I get back, we can eat and watch the game together. How does that sound?” Was it weird that I had never told him I didn’t enjoy watching football, even when he was the quarterback?
“That’s fine,” he said. He plopped down on the couch and turned the TV on.
I ran to the cove. The children’s pool, as they called it, was formed by a wall that was originally built to break the waves and create a safe swimming environment for small children. But it was roped off halfway up the beach because about two hundred seals had made it their home. I sat on the steps going down to the pool, letting the cold breeze whip through my hair. There were no people here, only seals loafing on the sand. It was exactly what I needed.