21. Kelsey
Chapter twenty-one
Kelsey
I was lucky I had an afternoon shift the next day, because when I woke up, I felt like some kind of fantasy monster had eaten me, chewed on me a little, then spat me out again. My head was pounding from Arlene’s fruit punch, and my heart felt like it was still stuck somewhere between the monster’s teeth.
The memories of what had happened between Quentin and me came rushing back and made me wince before I even opened my eyes.
I dragged myself out of bed anyway, took a shower, and rummaged through the fridge, checking the party leftovers for something suitable for breakfast, but my appetite was at a low point, too, so I just made a cup of coffee.
With the cup in hand, I sat down on my couch and stared at the wall I shared with Quentin, wondering what he was up to and how he felt.
He was probably embarrassed by my wanton behavior. No way could I continue our studying sessions, after last night. How could I ever look him in the eyes again, let alone focus on his lectures ?
I considered watching a few episodes of Hope Hospital to take my mind off things, but when I went over to my shelf to pull a DVD out, my eyes landed on the one he’d given me yesterday—such a thoughtful gift. Nobody could blame me for mistaking his intentions. God damn it Quentin, don’t take a woman out for cool dates and give her amazing gifts if you don’t plan on making out with her.
Now that I thought about it, I might’ve started groping him unprovoked, but he had kissed me first, did he not? So what had happened? Was I that bad at kissing?
I needed a second opinion on the matter, so I threw on my uniform and sneakers and went to work about half an hour earlier than necessary.
I knew Leah was working a double shift again, so she would be at the diner, and talking this through with Leah was exactly what I needed right then.
When I arrived at the Liberty Diner, I ran into a very surprised Denise right away. “Kel, you’re early. Is everything alright?”
Behind Denise, I spotted Leah taking an order at table six. “Everything is fine. I just was a little restless at home,” I said, loud enough for Leah to hear.
She got the message. We locked eyes, and Leah quickly tipped her head toward the kitchen, so I said goodbye to Denise and headed for the back door.
Leah followed closely behind, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me toward the storage room.
“I don’t have much time, so talk quickly,” she said, looking unusually excited. “Tell me everything that happened between you and Quentin after I left. Don’t skip the juicy details.”
I let out a deep sigh. “They aren’t any juicy details, I’m afraid. Just a whole lot of confusion.”
Leah furrowed her brows. “So you two didn’t… ”
“No,” I scoffed. “We did kiss, though.”
“Aha! Well, that’s something. How was it?”
“Great at first,” I said. “Like really, really great.”
“At first?”
“And then he suddenly ran away. Bolted out of the room like it was on fire.”
Leah looked at me puzzled. “What?”
“I don’t understand it either,” I said and plopped down on a nearby crate, with a frustrated sigh. “I really thought he liked me.”
“Me too,” Leah said. “Me and every other person who attended that party. He was basically staring at you with hearts in his eyes the entire time. I don’t get it. Give me more details.”
“I have no idea what went wrong. We kissed. Things got hot. Maybe I got a little touchy-feely.” I felt my face flush a little at the memory. “Do you think I came on too strong? I thought men like it when women show initiative.”
Leah crossed her arms and pursed her lips, furrowing her brow thoughtfully. “Have you considered,” she said slowly, “that he might be self-conscious about his body?”
The memory of my fingers meeting gnarly scar tissues when I touched his back reappeared.
“You mean because of his scars?” I asked.
Leah nodded. “I don’t know him as well as you do, but I always was under the impression that he’s pretty sensitive about that topic.”
“But I already know he has scars, and I don’t care. Why would he freak out when I clearly don’t care?”
Leah sighed. “I don’t know, Kelsey. I’m not an expert on the topic. But I think presenting your scars to the world in daily life and showing them to someone you’re into during sex are two very different things.”
I rested my head against the wall. “This is so complicated.”
“You chose a complicated man,” Leah said with a half smile. “You could’ve picked up a random country bumpkin at Dixon’s, but no, you had to go for Quentin Avery, the most cerebral recluse in Brightwater.”
“I don’t want to hook up with a random guy at Dixon’s. I just want Quentin,” I said. Then more quietly, I added, “He’s worth the headache.”
Leah nodded and patted my shoulder sympathetically. “I’m afraid that means you will have to talk to him about what happened between you.”
I buried my face in my hands. “I’m going to die from embarrassment.”
Working kept my mind off Quentin for the most part, but as soon as Leah and I headed home, my thoughts started going in circles again. Leah was right. I had to talk to him. But every fantasy conversation I had with him in my head ended worse than the last.
Leah looked absolutely exhausted, so I held back from bothering her. To my surprise, Leah didn’t get out of the car when we arrived at Sunset Apartments, though.
“You’re not coming?” I asked.
“I have an important appointment,” she said.
Honestly, I was a bit worried about her. She was pale and had dark rings under her eyes already but kept piling more shifts at the diner onto her already full schedule. She needed rest, not appointments after working sixteen hours straight, but every time I brought the topic up, she just brushed me off, so I bit my tongue and wished her a good night before heading upstairs toward my apartment .
I was still climbing the stairs when I heard a strange noise. Thump , thump . It sounded like someone was banging against a door.
A moment later, I realized it was my door, and my mouth fell open when I saw who it was.
“Mom?”
My mother turned around, a big grin on her face that did not reach her eyes.
“Kelsey, baby, there you are!” She dropped her bags, rushed toward me, and pulled me into a hug. I stiffened. I had no desire to cuddle up to my mother, but I was too shocked to push her away.
“I was starting to think I had the wrong address,” my mother said with a laugh that sounded way too tense to be real.
“How did you find out my address in the first place?”
My mother winked. “Mommy’s little secret. Don’t you want to invite me in?”
“I did not ask you to come,” I said, crossing my arms.
Her sweet demeanor quickly dropped. “So what? You’re not going to leave me stranded here, are you?”
I shrugged. “Get a hotel room. Or better yet, get a bus ticket. I don’t have time for you and whatever you think you are doing here.”
“Nonsense. Don’t be difficult. Come on, now. Show me your apartment.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door.
Despite better judgment, I complied and opened the door for her. She waltzed in, dropped her luggage in the middle of the room, and looked around. Her face showed clear distaste. “Oh well, I guess it’s just temporary.”
“I actually quite like it here,” I said.
“The carpet is a choice. And does the smell not bother you?” she asked. “Is that coming from the sink, or what?” She walked into the kitchen and started to inspect the appliances up close. “You need to learn how to clean better, Kelsey.”
“Mom!”
“I’m just saying this to help you, sweetie.”
She sat down on the couch and patted the place beside her. With growing annoyance, I sat down, already having an inkling of what would come next.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re here now?” I asked.
“To talk some sense into you, of course,” she said. “I talked to Ryan. He’s—”
“You did what?”
She shrugged. “He reached out to me. We are both very worried about you. About your... mental health.”
“My what ?”
“Are you feeling depressed?” The concern in her voice sounded incredibly fake.
“No, Mom, I’m not depressed,” I snapped back. “In fact, I’m feeling better than ever.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sheesh, Kel, you are always so dramatic. We get it, okay? Ryan got it. I got it. You can stop your little show now.”
I felt hot anger rising from my stomach to my face. “My... show?”
“Thank God Ryan is more mature than you. He’s willing to take you back in if you apologize for the mess you made.”
“You have no idea what you are talking about. I’m not going back to Ryan. Besides, he already has a new girlfriend.”
She waved the last statement away. “That Sarah girl? Don’t be dense. That was just to make you jealous.”
A knock on the door kept me from responding to that ludicrous statement.
“Are you expecting someone?” she asked .
I ignored the question and walked to the door. It was Quentin.
My feelings changed tracks so fast that it gave me whiplash. Quentin was here, right in front of me, and I was completely unprepared.
“Hello,” he said, sounding unusually cold. “It’s half past six, and I... You didn’t come to our session today. Are we... done?”
Tutoring sessions! We’d scheduled an extra session for today, and I’d completely forgotten about it, too entrenched in my hopeless mission to seduce Quentin. Were we done? He couldn’t even look at me. Staying in the same room together would probably be torture, and yet being in a room with Quentin was the only thing I wanted, especially if it meant getting away from my mother.
What did he want? I searched his face, but he looked so distant I might as well have searched a white wall for clues.
My mother’s chirpy voice in the background broke the silence between us. “Who’s that, honey? Don’t you want to introduce me to the gentleman?”
Quentin looked alarmed, but before either of us could react, my mother shoved her way into the doorframe.
“Hello, I’m Kelsey’s...” The second she got a look at Quentin’s burns, the playful tone disappeared from her voice. “Mother.”
Her face scrunched up in clear disgust. Quentin noticed it. The hurt on his face was obvious. I wanted to scold my mother and tell Quentin not to give a damn. I wanted to tell him he was handsome and wonderful and my mother was stupid and rude and that her opinion about him didn’t matter. But I didn’t say any of it. The words got stuck halfway between my heart and my mouth.
“I’m sorry I interrupted you,” Quentin said quietly. “I didn’t know you had a visitor. Goodbye.”
“Wait, can we...?”
But Quentin was already walking away. I watched his back, wishing I could just run after him, but my feet remained frozen to the ground. My mother closed the door for me.
“Oh my God,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Who was Mr. Monsterface?”
“Do not call him that!” I yelled at her.
She raised her hands in self-defense. “I was just joking. Jesus, Kel. Sheesh, why do you always have to be so sensitive? That’s what I told Ryan too. Don’t take it personally. Kelsey has always been easy to set off. You’ve always been a bit of a drama queen, even as a baby.”
I took a deep breath, trying to get my anger under control. The last thing I needed at that moment was a screaming match with my mother, especially since Quentin would be able to hear every word from his side of the wall. “Let’s order some pizza, Mom.”
She used the time until the pizza arrived to scrutinize every aspect of the life I had built in Brightwater. The apartment was too small, the carpet was too brown, my furniture looked mismatched, the bathroom was too dirty, my job at the diner was a dead end, and my job at the movie theater was for teenagers and embarrassing for a grown woman.
“I’m not sure why you’re wasting your time with this GED nonsense anyway,” she said, taking the pizza from the delivery man and closing the door without giving a tip. “You couldn’t get your high school diploma the first time. What makes you think you can do it now?”
I was already worn down from the tsunami of critique I’d had to endure the past thirty minutes. “Quentin says I’m making good progress. He thinks I’ll do well.”
She scoffed. “How do you pay this man, anyway? I doubt selling tickets at the cinema pays enough to hire a private tutor. You’re not exchanging... services, are you?”
“Mother! ”
“What?”
“No, I’m not prostituting myself so I can get help with high school chemistry, okay?”
She shrugged her shoulders and bit into a piece of pizza. “I doubt he’s helping you out of the goodness of his heart.” Pizza sauce was dripping off her chin. “It’s not like he has many options with a face like that. He’s either paying for it, or he’s not getting any.”
My blood boiled. Criticizing me was one thing—I was used to it—but Quentin was off-limits. “Stop talking about him like this,” I said with barely contained anger.
“Mark my words, he’ll ask for sex soon. You should stop doing these little sessions with him while you still can. This GED thing is a waste of time, anyway. It’s not like you’re going to college. You could get a third job instead. That would put your time to better use.”
I had lost all appetite for the pizza. “What do you know about working three jobs?” I snapped.
She leaned back, looking offended. “Excuse me? Did you suffer for anything growing up?”
“We lived in a trailer park.”
“So?” Her voice sounded high-pitched. “You had clothes on your back and food in your stomach.”
“You spent my lunch money on Farmville more often than not.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. I broke my back, taking care of you. God, you are so ungrateful. Ryan is a saint for even considering taking you back.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not going back.”
She took a heavy breath and closed her eyes like she was trying to find the patience to talk with a crazy person.
“Kelsey, baby, I’m just trying to watch out for you.” She reached over the table to touch my hand, but I pulled away and crossed my arms in front of my chest. She rolled her eyes. “Now, don’t get offended again, okay? I’m just being honest for your own sake.”
Whatever was about to come next, it couldn’t be good. I tried to steel myself against my mother’s next low blow.
“Kelsey, you are not going to make it on your own. You’re just not that kind of person, okay? You need someone to take care of you, and Ryan is willing to do this. You should be grateful for that.”
“He’s not a good man, Mom. I’m better off on my own.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, here are the dramatics again. What has he done that’s so terrible, huh? So he gets angry, so what? All men get angry when you provoke them, Kelsey. And you are very good at provoking people.”
I swallowed hard. My mother didn’t know what she was talking about. I did nothing to provoke Ryan. And even if I did, no one deserved to be treated like he had treated me. And even if she was right and I really was difficult, I still deserved happiness, right?
“I want you to go now, Mom.”
She laughed. “Are you crazy? It’s already dark outside.”
“Then I’m leaving.” I got up from the table abruptly.
“What are you doing, Kelsey?” she asked, her tone dripping with annoyance.
I went into the bathroom and quickly grabbed some things.
“Sleep here if you want. I don’t care. But I’m not going to share the same room with you any longer. Don’t touch my books or any of my stuff while I’m gone, understood?”
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t bother to answer.
My mother got up and went after me. “What? Are you going over to Mr. Monsterface’s place? Are you finally paying him back? ”
It took everything in my power not to slap her straight across the face, but I somehow managed to only throw the door shut behind myself.
Seething with anger, I stomped down the walkway and knocked on Quentin’s door.
After only a moment, he opened up. He looked surprised to see me, especially as he noticed I was holding a toothbrush and some shower gel.
He was wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants. It was the first time I saw him wearing anything else than a long-sleeved button-down shirt, and I understood why. The burns weren’t just on his face and neck—they stretched all the way down to his forearm, and if anything, the scars there looked worse than those on his face.
Quentin raised his eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.
“I need a place to stay for tonight before I beat this woman to death with my mathematics study guide.”