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Eight
When we arrive back at Holden’s house, his mom intercepts me when I step out of the minivan.
“Sweetie, are you going to stay for dinner?” She stands in silhouette in the doorway, darkness stretched out between us.
I really need to talk to Corrine, and the thought of awkwardly eating dinner with Holden’s family certainly has me leaning toward that form of torture over the small talk kind, but then Mama Michaels says it’s taco night and I haven’t had a taco in months because I don’t know how to brown the meat without it drying out and my mom’s as bad as me at cooking and this is how I end up squeezed between Holden and Mara with Mama Michaels and Holden’s stepdad on the other side of the table. It’s all the tacos’ fault.
“So,” I say, cringing before the words even come out of my mouth, “what do you do, Mr....” I swear Holden told me his last name. It’s Mara’s last name. It’s—
“Davis. You can call me Darren,” he says with a wide smile.There’s some taco sauce on his upper lip. “I’m a social worker.”
“Oh, that sounds, um...”
“Depressing,” Mara and Holden say at the same time, giving me that nice surround sound quality. Mara snorts into her taco, some of her hair sticking in the sour cream.
“Selfless,” I finish, pushing some meat back into the hard shell with my fork.
“It’s not always easy,” he says, nodding. Mama Michaels gives him a shy smile.
“So, you both work with kids? Couldn’t get enough of these goofballs at home?” I tilt my head in Mara’s direction to make her laugh again.
“You don’t have to fill the silence, you know,” Holden says, his elbow brushing against mine as he reaches for his glass of water. As a lefty, he should be on my other side—we always had it worked out when we were kids, but it appears that Mara is also a lefty, so their usual seating arrangement typically works. “You can abort interrogator mode.”
“No, it’s okay.” Darren laughs, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Taryn warned me about Saine’s inquisitive nature.”
“Wait,” I choke out. “Taryn and Darren. A coincidence?”
Mama Michaels laughs. “Well, it definitely wasn’t intentional.”
Darren’s pinkie grazes the side of her hand. “We met under unfortunate circumstances at the hospital, but we hit it off and I think things are going pretty well, all things considered.”
Mama Michaels’s smile falters for only a second. “I know you’re heading to the next round,” she says to Holden, “buthow did the competition actually go?”
“Can I go next time?” Mara interjects, crunching into the taco. I notice she covered her hard shell with a soft shell, so I do the same when I assemble my next one. It helps to keep the broken bits contained.
“No, the next one is in New York,” Mama Michaels says. “You’re going with Taj, right?”
Holden pinches my leg underneath the table, because despite our years apart, heknowsme and I was totally going to ask when he planned on telling me this.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” she asks. “I can probably take off work.”
“Yeah, it’s fine. You booked the hotel?”
“Did it as soon as I got your text that you’re advancing.” She smiles fondly at him, her hand tucked around her glass. “Will you be there, too? To film?” she asks me.
“Uh, yeah.” I glance at Holden, then back to her. “I’ll be staying with my dad that weekend.” Holden and I hadn’t gotten this far in our discussion, which was a major oversight on my part and only semi-blamable on my belief in jinxing things.
I’ve never actually gone to see my dad despite him sending money for train tickets along with his child support. My mom doesn’t know that, though. I get on the train and she just assumes I’m going to see him. She doesn’t ask specific questions because she doesn’t want to know. She asks things like: how was your trip, did you have a good time, did you do anything fun? And I can answer those without lying, without mentioning that I have never once stepped foot in my dad’s Park Slope apartment and I have never once done anything but explore thecity by myself, filming whatever struck my fancy. Even though I turned eighteen and he’s not legally bound to send child support, he still does. It almost makes me feel guilty for using his money to go to his city and not see him. Almost. It’s better than spendingmymoney.
I really don’t want to spend that money on a hotel, though. Not with the way things are going at home. Shit’s expensive in the city, so maybe I can crash on the boys’ floor or sucker one of them into letting me sleep in his bed because Chivalry.
“Oh, great. Will you tell him I say hello?” Mama Michaels asks.
“Sure thing,” I lie like a lying liar. My mom has never asked me to say hello to my dad for her, so I think this lie has just been a long time coming.
“You know, Saine, I’ve been curious as to when I’d meet you,” Darren says. “It’s kind of funny to live in a house with photos on the wall of a person you’ve never met.”
A particularly hard bit of shell stabs my esophagus. “What?”
