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I curl up on my bed.
He knows he was my first kiss. He can guess the rest. That I’m seventeen and never had a boyfriend. Never had a date. He knows about Mom too. I got naked with him today without ever losing my clothes.
The last few days tumble through my head like a snowball plowing down the side of a mountain, gaining size and speed and momentum with every roll. I flop face-first onto the bed. Cry into my pillow. Tell myself everything’s fine. Try to believe I’ll be fine. But nothing feels right. Nothing takes the edge off.
Rolling over, I try to distract myself by scrolling through social media on my phone. And end up on Mom’s site. My fingers typed in her name on autopilot.
Eleven minutes ago, she posted a picture—not of her dog, her house, the roses she grows out back, but of a green AA chip. The hashtag reads—six months sober. The last time her eyes looked this clear, she’d taken the teaching job at my school. And didn’t make it three months.
Maybe this time it’s different. She looks different. Happier. Relaxed. Dad doesn’t know she’s sober. Hope lightens something inside me. What if all this time he’s been waiting for her to get herself together? What if she’s been waiting for him to reach out? That all they need is a solid second chance?
I pull up Dad’s number. Bouncing my leg, I stare at the screen. Reaching out to him when he’s shut me down every time I mention Mom goes against every instinct I have, yet I press the dial icon anyway.
He picks up on what feels like the last ring. “On deadline, Jess.” Classical music blares in the background. Only Dad would jam to Bach. When I don’t speak, his music drops to a decibel that doesn’t threaten to blow my eardrums. “This better be important.”
His I-don’t-have-time-for-you tone strips away the lightness along with everything I wanted to say. “It’s not.” I’m not. It was stupid of me to forget. I power off my phone so I don’t wait for a call he’ll never make and go fetal, tugging the bottom corner of the comforter over me.
Reaching for the remote, I flip through the channels looking for a loud enough distraction to drown the chaos inside me. I skip overSupernatural. I need something with car chases, explosions, gun fights, alien invasions. What I get when I hit the up arrow is aPackmarathon. And a bare-chested Jax sprinting through the woods. I don’t know whether to laugh or chuck the remote.
I do neither. I get lost in the fantasy of Gabe’s show the way I used to get lost in the fantasy of Sara and Dante. Caught by curiosity, hooked by my desperation for an escape, I binge onscreen Gabe all night.
At the end of the first episode, I’m sucked into the plot. After the second, I’m in love with the way he brings Jax to life. By the third, I have a momentary lapse and fangirl over the way the moonlight dances over his muscles.
But it’s not until the credits roll on the eighth episode that I realize two disturbing things. One, I’m totally into TV’s Hottest Hairball. And two, every time he and Kim kiss onscreen, I can’t breathe.
chapter 32
Gabe
“Bribery: A valuable life skill.”
~ Meredith Morgan
(played by the award-winning Meredith Wade)
Raising Ryder: Episode70
Totally not above bribing my way into Jess’s room, I tap the adjoining door with my bare foot, armed with a cup of mint tea and a Starbucks bag. Lame. But my 7 a.m. suck-up options are limited.
She pulls open the door, pushing soft brown curls out of her face. A purple tank kisses the waistband of her plaid pink-and-purple shorts, cueing mental images I don’t need right now.
She stretches her shorts until they cover an inch more of her thighs. Then her fingers fly up to cover her scar.
“Why do you do that?” I gently tug them away, frustrated that I must be giving off some vibe that makes her so self-conscious.
Pulling her hand away, she tucks it behind her back. “What do you want, Gabe?”
You. I hate the edginess in her voice, the way she won’t meet my gaze, and the weirdness hovering between us like an invisible wall. “I have breakfast.” I shake the bag. “No donuts. I promise.”
The silence stretches out between us until I feel like I’m on the west coast and she’s on the east. “Jess—”
“I saw the first picture that went up yesterday.” Her humiliation rolls over me the same way her restless gaze moves past me. “I’m afraid to look at the rest.”
“Then don’t.” Relief pours over me. She doesn’t know what I did after I put her on the elevator. I don’t want her to know yet. Since she didn’t bite on the breakfast, I extend the tea. “Mint.”
Biting her lip, she accepts my offering with a sigh and breathes in the steam from the slit in the cover. “Thanks.”
Leaning against the doorframe, I search for an icebreaker. “Vi and your dad, huh?” It’s really too bad I went with the first thing that popped into my head. The instant the words are out, I’m punching myself.
