CHAPTER 31 JACKSON
JACKSON
“Did you get a haircut?”
“No.”
“Botox?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Where would I get Botox in the mountai—”
“New glasses?”
“I told you,” I say, scraping scrambled eggs out of the pan and onto the three plates lined up on the kitchen island. “I have made no cosmetic changes in the past week.”
“Then why do you look like someone shoved a glow stick up your ass?” Adeline says, munching the crust off a piece of toast, eyeballing me from her perch on the barstool directly across from me. She’s wearing tie-dye sweatpants and a Heartstrings sweatshirt she stole from my closet.
I stare at her. “I left you with Aiden for too long.”
Her eyes narrow with her grin. “He does have a very interesting vocabulary.”
I woke up in Delilah’s bed this morning to her sprawled across my chest, her cheeks still splotchy from her crying.
I traced the bridge of her nose with my thumb while the word friend friend friend trudged a mad loop along my brain stem, then I slid out from beneath her.
I debated collecting my car from the corner of the street, but decided on the news van instead, slowly winding my way through the city to Aiden and Lucie’s.
I thought the girls might want to stay, but they had both been ecstatic when I knocked on the door.
There had been screaming involved. Hugs. Demands for selfies in the news van.
Now they’ve launched an inquisition in our kitchen while I make our snow day special of scrambled eggs, toast, and chocolate chip pancakes.
“Something is different about you,” Penelope says, eyes narrowed.
“I think it’s his hair,” Addie insists.
“I think it’s his secret kisses with Delilah Stewart.” Penelope makes an obnoxious kissy face, pushing her cheeks together with her hands. Adeline immediately descends into bright, cackling laughter.
I turn back to the stove.
“Oh, come on! You wouldn’t tell us anything while you were out there. You kept saying you would when you got home.”
I shrug. “There’s nothing to say. We kissed a couple of times to distract me from my broadcast nerves. We’re friends now. That’s all.”
That is decidedly not all. Not from my perspective anyway.
I pour some pancake batter on the hot pan, watching the edges bubble up.
“So that’s something friends do?” Adeline asks. “Kiss each other?”
I turn around so fast, I get a crick in my neck. “No.” I point at her with the spatula. “That is not a thing friends do.”
She blinks at me. “So you’re not friends with Delilah?”
“I am.”
“Friends who kiss.”
“Friends who are . . . just friends,” I say. “Friends who kissed once. As a . . . team-building exercise.”
“You kissed at least twice, according to the timeline constructed on Reddit.”
I rub my knuckles across my forehead. “Timeline,” I repeat, equal parts confused and horrified. “On Reddit.”
Penelope takes a dainty bite off the end of her bacon, chewing thoughtfully. “She doesn’t look at you like she wants to be your friend.”
I hate the way my heart leaps to attention. “How does she look at me?”
“Like you have a glow stick shoved up your ass,” Adeline deadpans.
I roll my eyes.
Adeline slams her fists down against the countertop. “What are you hiding, Jackson?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” I say wearily. But I don’t have an explanation either. I drag my hand down my face and peer at my sisters through my fingers. Both of them are watching me with a combination of thinly veiled suspicion and intrigue, a look only two teenagers can perfect.
“Just ask it,” I sigh, wanting this part over. “Whatever it is.”
They share a brief, conspiratorial look, and then, breathless, Penelope asks:
“Do you have a crush on Delilah Stewart?”
Inexplicably, heat climbs my cheeks. A crush is exactly what I have.
A big, stupid, all-encompassing crush on Delilah Stewart and her too-big smiles and the way her nose wrinkles and the way she breathes my name, both of her hands fisted in my hair.
Her chaos and her charm. The small, broken bits she hides from everyone else but hands over to me.
My face must answer the question because they both launch off their stools, screaming at the top of their lungs.
“I knew it!” Adeline bellows, pointing at me. “I could tell, you loser!”
“Stop it.” I throw a kitchen towel at her face. “That’s enough.”
She rips it away. “It will never be enough. This is the highlight of my life. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Okay, that’s a little dramatic—”
Penelope launches herself across the room, both of her arms wrapped around my waist. “I’m so happy for you. Your first crush.”
I sigh, defeated. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Technically, you didn’t say anything.” Penelope tips her chin against my chest, staring up at me with wide, wet eyes. Christ. “But that’s okay, Jackie. We’re gonna get you through this. We’re gonna help you get the girl.”
Adeline barrels over the kitchen counter, knocking over the box of pancake mix and the bag of chocolate chips.
They scatter across the floor, probably sticking to the bottom of her smiley-face slippers as she collides with my side, wrapping her gangly arms around the both of us.
I remain squished in the world’s most uncomfortable group hug.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment,” Penelope whispers.
Adeline nods. “You finally get to use your spiral notebook,” she tells her.
“Do I want to know what’s in the spiral notebook?”
“It’s a fifteen-step plan to get you a girlfriend.” Penelope’s voice is muffled, her face buried directly into my shirt. “I’ve been working on it for a while. The time has come.”
“All right. Let’s . . . stick a pin in that.” I pat both of their heads. “I actually needed to talk to you about something else.”
Adeline gasps. “Are you finally asking us for a makeover?”
“What? No.” I lift my hand to my hair. “Why?”
“No reason,” they answer. Quickly. In unison.
I frown. “Is it the glasses?”
“It’s not not the glasses,” Adeline says, somewhere around my armpit.
Penelope pulls back with a sharp look at her twin. “What did you have to talk to us about?” she asks, deftly changing the subject.
I lean against the counter at my back and pick up my coffee mug. I’ve been back and forth over it, but I think it’s time. They’re old enough to make their own decisions.
“Camille insists she wants to come for a visit. She’s been texting me for the last week.” I watch them carefully for a reaction. Penelope’s face blanks. Adeline grows cautiously hopeful. “She says she’s eager to have a relationship with the two of you.”
They exchange a searching look. “What about you?” Penelope asks. “Does she want a relationship with you too?”
I buy some time by taking a long pull from my mug, considering the question.
“That’s not on the table,” I finally say. My relationship with Camille is set in stone. I’m not willing to revisit it. But I could be convinced to make an effort . . . for the girls. “This conversation is about the two of you and what you want.”
“Will you be mad?” Adeline asks quietly, toying with the mood ring on her thumb. Hers is a burnt orange. The matching one on her sister’s ring finger is a pale pink. “If we talk to her?”
I shake my head, feeling her question like a baseball bat to the solar plexus. “Of course not,” I tell her.
She glances up at me before her attention skirts away again. Up to the window above the sink. Down to her slipper-clad feet. Reluctantly, back to me. “Do you promise?”
Penelope reaches for her sister’s hand. “We don’t want you to think we’re not Team Jackson,” she adds.
I scrub my hand through my hair, then set my coffee mug on the kitchen counter.
“There are no teams. Having a relationship with her won’t impact your relationship with me.
” Shame grips me by the back of my neck.
I can’t believe I ever made them feel like they had to make a choice.
That I wouldn’t support whatever they needed.
Lighten up, Jackson. “There’s nothing you could do that would change the way I feel about you short of, I don’t know, creating a catfishing cult.
And even then, I’d probably find some way to defend you. ”
I grip Adeline’s shoulders so she can’t look away. “Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” She and Penelope exchange a look. Penelope gives her a small, encouraging nod. “We need to think about it. Do you need an answer today?”
“I don’t need an answer at all. Take your time.
It’s the same deal as usual. You guys let me know what you need and I’ll make sure it happens.
” They nod again and I reclaim my coffee mug with a sigh and a roll of my shoulders.
This feels like the right thing to do, but I’m still struggling with it.
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?”
“Can we go back to the fifteen-step plan?” Penelope straightens her stool at the kitchen island, climbing back onto it. Her face is way too eager for my comfort. “I think you’ve progressed past steps one through six, so we’ll need to make some adjustments. Maybe start at phase two.”
“There are phases?” I ask.
She slams her palm against her forehead. “Wait, what am I doing? I need the notebook. Addie, clear off the dry-erase board on the fridge. We’ll need that too.”
She scampers off. A second later, I hear her feet pounding up the stairs.
I sigh and drop my head back with a groan. “What are the chances I can wiggle my way out of this?”
“Impossible,” Adeline says. “She’s been planning it for a while.”
She’s still staring at her slippers. “Hey.” I nudge her shoulder. “You okay?”
She nods, silent. I let her work through whatever it is. She’s always been good at coming to me when she needs me. I just need to give her the space to do it.
There’s a crash from upstairs, paired with a muffled I’m okay!
“What happens in phase two?” I ask, staring at the ceiling. “Do you know?”
“I think it’s asking the girl you like to lunch.”
I hum. “What if the girl you like just wants to be friends?”
“Then you use lunch to convince her that something more is better,” Adeline says, somber and serious. “You’ll have to wait for the full presentation. Penelope has a flow she likes to work through.”
I try to mentally prepare myself. I’m a strange combination of pleased, proud, and terrified. I know what I’m like with a PowerPoint deck and a stack of note cards. I can only imagine the teenage-girl version.
“Jackson?”
Adeline’s hand slips against mine. She presses our palms together and squeezes. I stop staring at the hallway and stare at the top of her head instead. Her honey blond hair, darker at the roots, with a cowlick that matches mine.
“Yeah, Addie?”
“I love you.”
I shake my hand out of her grip and curl my arm around her shoulder instead, dragging her into me.
“Yeah.” I press a kiss to the side of her head and ignore the part of me that wants to take back everything I just offered, hoping I haven’t made a mistake. Hoping that for once in her life, Camille will be able to keep her promise. “I love you too.”