Twelve
IFIND HIM ON THE LAWN, PLAYING CORNHOLE WITH A GROUP OF children.
I pause a few feet away. He’s shed his jacket, his sleeves rolled up in the afternoon light. The sun catches his curls in ways I really wish it didn’t. I’ve had enough of admiring him, enough for a lifetime. Like the saying, an embarrassment of riches—I’ve had an embarrassment of Jackson Roese.
One year into our friendship, I was, quite honestly, infatuated with him. It felt good. I know it’s not supposed to. Infatuation is supposed to vex me with prickling questions or make me fumble to get words out.
Instead, falling in love with Jackson made me feel normal, like I was who I’m supposed to be. With my dad, I’m the unsatisfying heiress, the child who has recently replaced her reverence of him with pesky outgrowths like a conscience. With Mom, I’m racked with guilt for the efforts she makes for me.
With Jackson, I was none of those things. I was just a sixteen-year-old girl with a huge, wonderful crush.
He points to the cornhole board, drawing his young charges’ observation. “See, if you hit my bag off the board, then I’ll lose points—yes, just like that. Exactly. Wow, I’m really losing,” he comments, as if the development delights him. I chew my lip. His familiar speech pattern makes my heart pound painfully. “I might have to defer college,” he goes on. “I need to up my cornhole game before I’m a freshman.”
The girl near him giggles. “You don’t need to be good at cornhole for college,” she informs Jackson. “You just need to be good at math.”
He sighs dramatically. “Yes, well, it’s too late for math. Cornhole is all I have now.”
The kids laugh. They’re dolled up in wedding finery, their shoes getting dirty in the grass. The whole scene is miserably perfect.
It feels pulled from the life I’m not living, one where I’m the happy hostess who feels welcome on the lovely grounds. One where he’s my date, where I walk up and entwine my fingers with his, feeling dizzy. It’s funny. I’m glad I’m without them now, this house, Jackson—glad I’ve come to understand they’re no good—yet the feeling that they were stolen hurts me just the same.
I exhale, shaken. I can’t watch this. I can’t let myself remember the sweet, charming Jackson who goes to every one of his sister’s softball games. Who entertains the kids at a wedding. Who, when I was honest with myself, I thought was too good for me. I have to remember the real Jackson, the drop of poison in the honey. The Jackson I didn’t see until it was too late.
I walk forward, heels plunging into the earth. “Jackson,” I say.
He whirls, his features lighting with hope. You have nothing to hope for, I want to say. The reminder wouldn’t entirely be for him. With Jackson, I wish I’d practiced hopelessness earlier. I’m certain it’s preferable to heartbreak.
“Keep working on that toss,” he says to the girl before jogging up to me. Jackson never walks when he can jog. The war of eagerness versus wounded pride is visible on his expressive features, unhidden in his eyes. “Where’s your boyfriend?” He emphasizes the word as if he doesn’t believe Tom’s and my performance.
It pisses me off. Yes, okay, he’s right. Tom isn’t my boyfriend, but there’s no reason he couldn’t be. I’m very capable of rebounding. I mean, I’m capable of planning ingenious heists, of organizing the perfect crew. Rebounding is probably way easier.
I’m too smart to get defensive, though. I ignore him. “I need you to come with me,” I say sternly. My job, I’ve decided, is simple. It’s Heist 101. Get in, get out. Efficient. Easy.
Jackson’s lips curl in what used to be my favorite half smile. “You’ll get no complaints from me.”
I congratulate myself on how little the smirk provokes in me. I say nothing, confident no unfortunate pink is stealing onto my cheeks. Under my impassive regard, Jackson collects his jacket from the nearby lawn chair where he’s draped it.
I lead him across the lawn. Guests congest the deck steps. Mindy Bunowski. Maureen’s Pilates instructor. David Green. Pennsylvania senator. Rose James. Pop-country superstar. I didn’t need to do research on her. I’m honestly really excited to meet her, if heist-timing permits. I’ve loved her music since I was in middle school.
Now is not the moment. Jackson follows me up the steps and inside, where the formal living room is emptying out.
“I forgot to mention earlier,” Jackson says, “but you look really beautiful today, Olivia.”
I turn just enough to glare at him over my shoulder. In the momentary look, I catch—ugh. Genuine adoration in his eyes. No—adoration is a guise, I remind myself. Fake-diamond flash. It’s not real. It’s not real. For whatever reason, Jackson’s whole devoted-heartthrob performance doesn’t falter under my withering glance.
We’re in the living room, continuing past the flawless couches, when Jackson speaks up again. “I’m pretty sure I saw Deonte Jones earlier?”
I falter. I prepared for the possibility, of course, the instant I learned Jackson was still attending the wedding despite our relationship’s unanticipated demise.
Deonte is the only person in my crew Jackson knows. Tom and McCoy come from my Berkshire past. While he could conceivably know Cass, he didn’t react when I dropped her name once, which wasn’t surprising. East Coventry High is huge, with countless nation-states of classmates whose paths never cross on the expansive concrete grounds.
Deonte and Jackson, however, share school athletics—Jackson, soccer; Deonte, football—and the accompanying social community, as well as common interests and innate ease at making friends. I’ve heard them swap strategies for video games on occasion. I planned for the potential of them crossing paths.
Nevertheless, Jackson has me—well, flustered. I need a moment to summon my rehearsed response.
“I—hired him,” I explain. “Or, I mean, I had my dad hire him. I know how much Deonte loves baking. He got to help out on frosting the cakes in exchange for serving drinks during champagne and cocktail hour,” I elaborate, the deception coming easy now.
Jackson just inspires the liar in me, I guess.
“Wow,” Jackson remarks, the resentment fading from his voice. “That’s… really nice of you.”
I say nothing, hating the feeling of him praising me in ways I don’t deserve. He doesn’t even know his admiration of me is fake. If he really knew why Deonte was here, he’d reject me all over again.
Part of me wants him to. It would be easier. Instead of dealing with the new regard in his eyes right now, I could accept how his carelessness for our relationship was inevitable. I could rationalize his rejection, even embrace it, the way I have on the darkest nights of the past few weeks. A guy like you could never love a selfish, manipulative princess like me.
Instead, he’s watching me with the audacity to look lovelorn.
I hate it. I hate the little flicker of false hope in me. He decided I wasn’t worthy of him. I know I’m not worth him. Why can’t we just hold on to what we know?
“It made sense with the wedding,” I say loftily. Jackson knows I give negative one million craps about my father’s wedding, so he should know I’m pushing him away on purpose with the obtuse reply. “Deonte’s good. With his videos, it wasn’t, like, hard to get him the job.”
Jackson evaluates the information. He still looks, infuriatingly, admiring of me. “Hope his grandfather’s doing all right,” Jackson ventures.
“He’s not.” Promptly, I wince, realizing the swiftness of my reply has revealed my attentiveness to Deonte’s life. It’s conspicuous in what I’m pretending is a professional arrangement… and one more reason for Jackson to pretend he considers me caring or nice or whatever shit I’m obviously not, or else he wouldn’t have cheated on me.
Jackson goes solemn. “Damn. I gotta check in with him,” he says, and it hits my heart how his immediate response is to reach out with kindness.
Not like you, you horrible girl, I remind myself. You just wanted to recruit him.
Deonte’s grandfather is in declining health. The whole story is on Deonte’s vlog on his defunct Kickstarter. Wilford Jones inspired his grandson’s love of the culinary arts, although the focus on confections was one-hundred-percent Deonte.
Years ago, Wilford was diagnosed with dementia. The worse his condition got, the harder his family found communicating with him, Deonte explains, with one exception—the recipes they once shared. When Deonte fills the kitchen of his family’s home with the scent of sugar, the light focuses in Wilford Jones’s eyes, and his family gets a few good hours with him.
In such hours, Deonte first ventured the idea of opening his own cake shop, onto which Wilford grasped eagerly and asked after often—a hope changed into a promise. Knowing his grandfather didn’t have long, Deonte launched his ambitious Kickstarter to open the bakery he wants to call Wilford’s.
The final video on Deonte’s Kickstarter is difficult viewing. It’s his farewell, the culmination of his unsuccessful fundraiser. “I want to say I’m grateful for y’all, and it’s not the end,” he chokes out. “I don’t know how—I just know it’s not the end. I’m not going to let this make me a liar to my grandpa.”
Iknew how.
Deonte’s not vengeful. He’s not here for fun, although I doubt his sugar-shaped petals were drudgery for him. He’s just dedicated. Devoted. He’s here in honor of his grandfather’s dying wish.
Which Jackson doesn’t know I know. Or shouldn’t know I know. Needing the precarious conversation over—and the adoration to end—I realize I need to reassert the Olivia he rejected, the heartless little princess. “I’ll have my father add a little extra to his tip,” I say, disaffected, as if it’s the only response I could imagine to a classmate’s hardship.
Now Jackson says nothing.
We head up the main stairs to the second floor, the sounds of the party growing quieter. With each step, I’m returning home from winter formal, feeling grown-up in my dress, ready to debrief with Berkshire friends who, when I switch schools, will stop speaking to me.
Or it’s Christmas morning and I’m carrying department store boxes up from the foyer where I found them under the resplendent tree.
Or I’m helping the movers clear out the pieces of my room I’ll need in my mom’s new house.
I planned for the logistics of every imaginable facet of the day. What I didn’t plan for was fending off memories with every step.
Honestly, I wish this were reflected more in my research, which consisted of reading Wikipedia pages on other heists and watching Ocean’s Eleven repeatedly. I feel like other heist people—heisters? What do we call ourselves?—don’t usually steal stuff from places where they experienced the overwhelming majority of their upbringing.
Jackson’s words interrupt my recollections. “Your new boyfriend is Thomas Pham, right?” he says.
Hearing the edge in his voice, I smile. Looks like my dismissiveness worked as I’d intended. Excellent. Jackson disgruntled is one step closer to Jackson out of my way. “Tracked him down on social media already?” I ask.
“Your relationship looks pretty new,” my ex notes. “No photos or videos with him.”
He wants to play online detective? Okay.Of course, I’ve rehearsed responses to every question I could get regarding Tom. “I didn’t want to rub it in your face,” I say easily.
Upstairs now, we walk side by side past the white railing. Jackson studies me, and I know I’m halfway to selling him on my story. It quickens my pulse.
“How exactly did you get together?” Jackson presses. “You knew him from your old school, right?”
I could offer up every detail of the story I’ve invented of my “relationship” with Tom. However, sometimes overpreparedness is its own red flag. I sigh, opting for authentic impatience instead. “It’s really none of your business,” I say.
Heist notwithstanding, what I’ve said is not untrue. He honestly has no right to probe into my relationship. It’s how I would feel even if I weren’t, put delicately, in the middle of something. He doesn’t get to care.
I quicken my pace to the end of the hall, where I open the door to my dad’s room. Or my dad and Maureen’s room, I realize, cringing. Jackson follows me in, the room’s luxury fortunately distracting him. While he’s come to the house for dinners when we were dating, he’s never seen the second floor.
I won’t say I don’t understand his reaction. The room could probably fit half of my mom’s entire house. The white rug on the hardwood is flawless, the furniture handcrafted. The vast windows frame the water reaching right out to the horizon.
When he glimpses the view of the bay, Jackson lets out a whistle.
I watch him dispassionately, the way his keen eyes rake over everything, the indescribable Jackson jaunt in his stride. I fight down how heartbreakingly right he looks here.
Not in this house. I mean… in my life. He feels right in my life.
No, I remind myself, he doesn’t.
“Undress, please,” I order him.