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“I could get the same degree as I would at some expensive university. Or at least take my basic courses there. If you would look at the school’s website—”
“Your head all in the clouds. Well guess what, Destelle?” She let her agitation show, her chest rising and falling faster. “Reality is coming. And if you keep clinging to these notions of staying home, accepting the bare minimum, not doing anything with your life, reality is going tohurt.”
Sometimes when Mom said things like that, it felt like we were strangers. We’d lived in the same house for nearly eighteen years, yet she knew nothing about me. “Notions of staying home”? If she knew me, she’d know that I dreamed of getting as far away from Fenton County as possible, to live in the world outside from what I knew.
Online college courses wouldn’t be the perfect lifestyle if I wanted to stay home—they’d be perfect for when I wanted to leave. With online courses, I wouldn’t be tied down to one place. I wanted to travel, to see what the world had to offer, to befree. I didn’t have to worry about keeping Stella under wraps, didn’t have to worry about my parents breathing down my neck. I could live whatever life I wanted.
Mom cleared her throat expectantly.
She pulled into our driveway and the fire in me went out, leaving nothing but devastation. “I understand, Mother.”
My cell phone rang as Mom shut the car off, the garage door closing behind us. I looked at the caller ID, and the unfamiliar number had the sadness shaking off in a heartbeat, overwhelmed by a swarm of nervous butterflies.
“Who’s calling you?” Mom demanded to know, just as she demanded control of every other thing in my life.
“Margot,” I answered immediately, a lie falling so expertly from my lips that it surprised me. “She texted me at brunch, and I told her I’d call her back.”
Her interest lost, Mom climbed out of the car. “I’ll see you inside,” she said, and shut the car door behind her.
The call reached the fourth ring when Mom went into the house, leaving me alone. Hurriedly, I pressed the accept button, raising the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s tomorrow,” a familiar low voice murmured directly into my ear. “And not like I was dying to call you or anything, but that was the longest night of my life.”
I looked down at my tights, at the way my pink skirt folded over my legs. I could feel my curls brushing along my neck. It felt wrong to be talking to him as Destelle, but I tried to channel Stella as best I could. “Seems a little dramatic.”
“I was hoping forromantic,” he returned, a chuckle drifting through the phone. “But the real question is, when can I see you again?”
If he only knew that he’d seen me less than an hour ago.
I pressed my feet into the all-weather floor mat of Mom’s car, the heat from the interior ebbing away as cold crept in. Even so, I didn’t want to move. “I’m such a busy girl,” I mused, tipping my head against the seat.Ooh, that was good. Very Stella.“So many things to do, so little time.”
“Too busy for a mediocre band that plays on weekend nights?”
“You are not mediocre,” I objected at once. “I…I just don’t know if I can make it to the gig tonight.” With that tiff with Mom, I wasn’t sure she’d be charitable enough to let me “go to Margot’s.”
“Well, what about tomorrow?”
I stuck my free hand in my coat pocket, running my fingers along the soft lining. “Did you forget you don’t play on Sundays?”
“You ever heard of Dial and Dine?”
I had. Dial and Dine was a food delivery service in the Fenton County area. Margot and I frequently ordered from them whenever we had our sleepovers, placing our order from our cell phones and getting the food within the hour.
“I’m delivering food tomorrow night. I pick up shifts a few nights a week. Since it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, there’s typically a bonus in payment since it’s a holiday.”
I’d always wondered what it’d be like, delivering food and getting paid for it. Margot said she’d hate a job like that—she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from stealing fries.
When I didn’t respond, Harry added, “You should come with me.”
“Come…come with you?” I stammered, sure I’d heard him wrong.
“I know it’s not as fun as getting coffee or anything,” he hurried to say, and for the first time since we’d started talking, I could hear nervousness leak into his voice. “It’d probably be pretty boring to sit there, actually, but—”
“I thought you weren’t looking to date right now,” I said playfully, throwing his words back at him. “And now you’re asking me out for Valentine’s Day? I’m getting mixed signals here.”
I could hear Harry’s smile in his voice. “This is a classic case of a guy eating his words.”
Yes, eat them, I’m totally okay with that.
