I nodded. I could do that. “I’ll leave,” I agreed.
“Thank you, again.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Bye.” I went back to my car.
After a few minutes, Shane opened his front door. “Molly? Are you sitting out here in the dark?” he called.
I opened my own door to answer. “Yes. I’m just thinking.”
“Want to do that inside?”
I got out and went in. I didn’t ask him more questions, but I got to be close to him and I was glad for that.
Chapter 8
My sister rolled her eyes and I wanted to shake her, because now I totally understood the reactions I’d received when I had done that same thing as a thirteen-year-old. Back then, I had also worn T-shirts with the logos of various bands whose music I had never listened to. I had thought they made me look provocative and interesting, but I’d had to mumble “I don’t know” when people had asked me which was my favorite song or album.
“You’re not answering my question,” Morgan told me. “Why are you always at Shane’s house?”
“I’m not.” I had visited him when he wasn’t traveling, but it wasn’t like I was shirking my other responsibilities—and I suddenly got furious when I realized that she was accusing me of not doing my part. “How dare you!”
“How dare I?” she echoed. “Are you going to slap me with a glove or something?” She actually rolled her eyes again! “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t need me around. Everything is fine at Walter’s,” I informed her. It was as fine as a place running on a shoestring, in need of repairs, and with hardly any customers could be. The Junior Woodsmen season had ended because spring was here, and now we had to face a few months of empty tables before the real Woodsmen summer practices would begin in the nearby facility. The lack of diners was obviously bad for the bottom line, but it also meant that fewer people needed to be on-site and working. Because of that, I had been spending my time at other places. Admittedly, I hadn’t looked for another job or prepared for my exams as much as I should have. I wasn’t doing the things that I knew I should have focused on…
Instead, I had been hanging out with Shane. He had gotten some more furniture for his house and it was a very nice spot for me because I liked the company so much. We cooked, watched movies, binged on shows, read, and talked. I enjoyed all of it and my sister’s opinion meant literally nothing. After all, one of us, only one, had clean sheets (that was me because I was being more careful about it). The other one of us probably had dirty sheets and was also pretending to have a glamorous European boyfriend—maybe not “glamorous” because she reported that he spent most of his day just as she did, closed up in a room to play games.
At least she was still helping at the restaurant. At this point, in fact, she was there even more than I was. My exams were close upon me and then I’d graduate. Finally! Then the future loomed, uncertain and terrifying…
Anyway, I was going to graduate and I was busy, and that was why she had knocked on my door right now, in order to berate me about spending so much time at Shane’s house. He was in…I checked. He was in Illinois again, south of Chicago in the middle part of the state, so I hadn’t headed over to visit him today. Maybe it was strange, but it made me less anxious when I was there. Ever since he had told me about losing his vision, I had been worried about him being by himself. I was also worried about him traveling alone but I didn’t say any of that to him.
My whereabouts were none of Morgan’s—wait a minute! “How do you know that I’ve been at his house?” I demanded. “I don’t report on my movements to you. I could be anywhere.”
“No, because you only know one other person. None of us have any friends because we’re such sad outcasts,” she answered. “Also, I can see your location on my phone.”
I grabbed mine out of my pocket to turn off anything to do with my geographic position and then I put it in my desk drawer and locked that, so she wouldn’t be able to get at it for a while. “Iam not an outcast,” I told her, emphasizing the “I” so she knew that I was excluding myself from that group but that others (her) were firmly in it. “And why do you care about my location?”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
Most definitely not. We were friends, only friends, which was perfectly clear in the way we treated each other. There was no touching of body parts, none at all. Once, he had mistakenly brushed my hand while we were cleaning up the dishes after dinner and he had immediately apologized.
I didn’t think he needed to. I was ok with that, and I would have been ok with more as well. Like, if he had wanted to hold hands? Fine by me. Rest his arm around my shoulders, lie with his head in my lap? I would have been ok with those things, too. But Shane clearly wasn’t, so I didn’t push.
I was consciously not-pushing. I was also consciously not asking questions about his vision, because he didn’t want to talk about that. I had a lot more that I wanted to know, even after doing all the research that I could, but I also didn’t want to pester him and make him think about it. But wasn’t he thinking about it all the time? Every time he opened his eyes, he was reminded and it must have been scary. If I was worried about the future, how must he have felt about it? He might have wanted to discuss that.
It wasn’t my role, though. We weren’t having late-night texting sessions to share secrets, like good friends, and we weren’t making out like we were dating. We had fun being together and that was it.
Morgan was still going on about relationships. “You don’t want to neglect other things because you’re so focused on Shane,” she informed me.
“I’m not going to discuss the restaurant with you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean Walter’s. I remember how you used to act about Max.”
“Our brother? What are you talking about?”
“You worshiped him and you stuck yourself to his side. Like a zebra mussel,” she stated.
“How dare you compare me to an invasive species?” I asked angrily. “You were always jealous because we got along so well.”
