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“She had an affair.” Gabe keeps his voice soft and even.
“With Jack Daniels.” My knees Jell-O, and I open my eyes. “After cutting him out of her life for an entire summer, he somehow snuck his way back in. On the weekends at first. Then evenings. Afternoons. Early mornings. But the day she brought him to work”—I clutch Gabe’s arms—“that’s the day everything blew up.” I’m shaking so hard already, and we haven’t even hit the bad parts.
“You don’t have to tell me.” Gabe’s sets his tone to careful, like I’m one wrong word away from splintering like fine China.
I take a deep breath and let it out. “I need to tell someone. I want it to be you.” No one else would understand.
“I want it to be me too,” he whispers.
“Mom started teaching math at my school that fall. It was the last day before Thanksgiving break, and we stopped to pick up donuts for her first-period math class, my math class, and she grabbed a large coffee for herself. But... she hated coffee.” I can still taste the powdered donut that got stuck in my throat and smell sharpened lead and pencil shavings. Part of me is still stuck in that classroom with the dull navy carpet, scuffed-up walls, and harsh fluorescent lights.
Gabe shifts his chin from my head to my shoulder and waits, like he’s set aside the rest of the day for me to keep going.
The only way I can is to pretend it’s happening to someone else. Pretend it’s a story I wrote, not one I lived. “Mom stood by the whiteboard, coffee in one hand, red dry-erase marker in the other. I was tapping out a message on my phone to my friends about ordering a new pair of cowboy boots. By the time I noticed the lack of usual, covert conversations and looked up, Mom was scribbling Pythagorean’s theorem across the board and the mural of the Last Supper hanging beside it. That’s when I figured out she never wanted the coffee, she just needed the cup.”
Gabe rubs my arms like he’s trying to warm me up.
“One of the other teachers must have seen and alerted the principal—Mom always kept the door open because the A/C never worked in her room. He tried to talk her outside. But when she got like that...” I shrug. The times I tried to reason with her, the helplessness that bottomed me out when I failed, the crippling fear my friends would figure out her dirty secret spin through me until I’m dizzy.
Breathing faster, Gabe goes back to being my anchor, holding me up, whispering soft things in my ear that I can’t even really hear.
“She kept mumbling that he was crazy and she was fine. He finally told everyone to leave the room. No one moved but her and I. She threw her empty cup at him, stumbling so far forward she had to hang onto his neck to keep from falling down. And I backed into the corner and told myself this wasn’t happening. All my friends weren’t really watching everything I’d worked so hard to hide.” Shame bleeds from my pores the same as it did that day. “That wasn’t even the worst part. It should’ve been, but it wasn’t.”
The grip Gabe has on me tightens.
“Dad showed up and bulldozed her down the hall.” A sinkhole opens inside my chest. “I ran after her. She yelled at me to leave her alone. I hugged her instead.” That pressure behind my eyes borders on unbearable. “Stupid, right? She humiliated me, and I kept hanging on.”
“Not stupid,” Gabe says. “She’s your mom.”
“She shoved me away.” The mouth of that sinkhole widens and threatens to swallow me whole. My nails dig into his arm. “Only I was standing at the top of the stairs.” My voice breaks. “The scar you think is so cute came with four stitches, a sprained wrist, bruised ribs, and a concussion.”
“Jess.” Gabe softly smooths his fingers over my scar, my name breathed like an apology for everything my mom ever did.
“The English teacher drove her home so Dad could take me to the emergency room. That was the last time I saw her. When we got home, she was gone. I found out later Dad told her to leave. The next day he filed for divorce, full custody, and got the restraining order.”My eyes flood with tears that hurt too much to hold in. “She didn’t mean to push me. She didn’t know what she was doing.” For the first time, the words I’ve been telling myself for two years sound... wrong. She could’ve called. Could’ve made sure I was okay. Could’ve fought to stay in my life.
But she didn’t.
“Hey.” Spinning me around, Gabe leans down and places his mouth over my scar again, his careful kiss even sweeter than the first time. “I’ve got you.” And he does. The guy I never expected would understand me when no one else could, knights up and dons the shiny armor.
Centuries later, after the Noah’s-ark flood ceases and my eyes are all-the-way swollen, he backs me against the Mustang and rubs his thumbs over my damp cheeks. “I didn’t finish my list of all the awesomeness I’m into that is you.”
“There is no awesomeness that is me.” I hang my head and let my hair fall over my face. “I’m a freaking mess.” Who no one wants.
He tilts my chin up and brushes my hair back. “You’re the only person I know who went to Jesus school. Which is probably why you do that cute cringey thing when I swear.”
“Some things are ingrained for life.”
He smiles. “You hate high heels and caving to Vi.” Shooting me a naughty smirk, he skims a finger down my throat to the top of the open V in my shirt. “You wear tiny tank tops to bed. Which I’m totally onboard with by the way. Now let’s talk about the awesomeness you’re into that is me. My dimples.” He taps his face, then starts to lift his shirt. “And my—”
“Stop.” I slap his hand away from his hem, biting my lip against a frown that’s thinking about defecting into the land of smiles.
“But since you’re anicegirl, you won’t let yourself look. At least not when you think I’ll notice.” His gaze is loaded with a silent dare to deny my not-so-clandestine fascination with him out of a shirt. “Tell me you’re not into my abs.”
“I can’t.” Cheeks burning, I open my car door and slide in.
He gets in his side with a husky laugh that tumbles through the Mustang to tug up the corners of my mouth into a semi-smile that holds halfway back to the hotel.
Until his cell lights up in the console with his costar’s face.
