Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
“Are you having a stroke or something?” Mia asked.
I turned away from the train wreck of a birthday party on the screen. Mia eyed me with suspicion, the blue light of the television flickering over her face. “What are you talking about?”
Kitty sat up and leaned over me. “Do you feel any numbness? Tingling?” She pinched my cheek. “Did you feel that?”
“Ouch! Yes, Kitty, I felt that.”
“I don’t mean a literal stroke,” Mia said.
Kitty dropped back onto the bed. “Oh.”
“If I’m having a literal or figurative stroke, it’s because the people in this episode are even more outrageous than usual.
” I nodded to the screen, where a father and his teenage son interviewed models to jump out of the son’s birthday cake, assigning each one a chili pepper on a ten-pepper hotness scale.
Mia pursed her lips. “I don’t think so. You keep doing this.” She grinned, then furrowed her brow, then dropped her mouth into a frown before springing into a smile again.
Probably an accurate representation of both my face and my inner turmoil.
Since my kisses with Alex in the parking lot, I’d thought of little else.
Except for the part where he and Greyson were leaving.
“Haven’t you ever heard of facial yoga?” I said.
“I do this every night. It’s a natural anti-aging treatment. ”
“Yeah, sure,” Mia said. She set her chin on her hands, and the three of us returned to watching TV.
“There!” she said a few minutes later, jolting upright on the bed. “You’re doing it again!”
“That’s just my face, Mia. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She gnawed on her lip as she studied me, and I tried not to think about Alex, in case she could read my mind. Though she probably wouldn’t need to read my mind with how bad of a liar I was.
“Where did you and Alex go after your song?” she asked. “You were gone for a looooooong time.”
Damn it. “I went outside for some air. It was hot in there.”
“And Alex?”
“May or may not have been there.” There was no use lying about that. They’d seen us come in together.
“And what were you two doing outside?” Mia pressed.
“Talking.” Not a lie. We’d talked.
“Uh-huh, just talking. Really.”
“Yes, really.” The corner of my mouth twitched, and I fought off a smile.
Mia clutched a hand to her chest. “Oh my God! Kitty, something definitely happened.”
Kitty pretended to swoon onto the bed.
“Nothing happened!” I cried.
Mia raised an eyebrow. “Sure, because both of you got your hair messed up on your own.”
“There was a lot of head-banging happening onstage,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure there was a lot of banging,” she replied with a smirk.
I smacked her on the shoulder. “Mia!”
“You kept looking at each other like this all night.” She fluttered her eyelashes and gave me a hurried glance.
“That’s not—”
She gasped. “Did you guys do it in his van? Oh, gross!”
Kitty bolted upright, then swooned onto the bed again.
“We didn’t do anything in his van! Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Third row folds down, just saying.”
I threw a pillow at her face, but she caught it in her hands before it hit her. “I refuse to accept you’re old enough to think about sex in cars.”
“You’ve been deflowered!” Kitty cried, swooning so hard she tumbled from the bed to the floor.
Mia crossed her arms over her chest. “Why not? Mom does. She says it’s important to have open conversations about sex.”
I cursed my sister’s open communication with her daughters. “Yeah, well, she’s your mother. And she probably wants to talk about it because that’s how you got here. Either way, we are not discussing my sex life.”
“So you did do it!” Mia jumped to her feet on the sofa bed. “I don’t know if I should be impressed or throw up in my mouth.” She pointed at her sister. “Kitty, you owe me twenty bucks.”
“No!” I said. “We did not have sex in his van or anywhere else! And will you sit down? You’ll ruin the sofa bed.”
Mia grinned at me. “What? Planning to ruin it some other way when we’re gone?”
“Oh my God, what is wrong with you?” I buried my face in the blanket.
“Then what did you do, huh?” Mia asked. I didn’t answer her. Maybe if I pretended to have a literal stroke, she would leave me alone. Mia jabbed my cheek with her finger. “What did you do, huh? Huh? Tell me!”
“Fine! Fine!” I grabbed her finger, unable to take another jab to the face. Next summer I wouldn’t let her spend so much time with Nina. I turned onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. “We may have kissed, that’s all.”
Mia and Kitty went quiet. I kept my gaze on the ceiling. The quiet only lasted a moment, however, because they began shrieking like the best friends in a rom-com.
“When? Where? How?” Mia said. “Paint a picture for me.”
Kitty climbed back onto the bed, propping her chin in her hands. “Tongue or no tongue? That’s French kissing, right? I saw Mia and this boy from her—”
Mia gave Kitty a dangerous look. “You saw nothing!”
“This is ridiculous,” I said. For all Mia and Kitty’s interest, I was pretty sure they didn’t actually want the nitty-gritty details of their aunt making out with their friend’s dad against the side of his van. “I’m not telling you anything. And it’s a little disturbing you want to know.”
“You’re no fun!” Mia said at the same time Kitty shouted, “Tongue or no tongue?!”
“You know, I’m getting tired of hearing about how un-fun I am.”
“Does this mean Greyson will be related to us?” Kitty asked.
“Don’t be a doofus, Kitty,” Mia said.
I grabbed back the pillow I’d thrown at Mia and hugged it to my chest. “As great as Alex is, I don’t think it will work out.”
Mia stretched out beside me with a grimace. “That bad of a kisser, huh?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yeah, no thanks. I don’t want that visual after all.”
The three of us stared up at the ceiling, the only sound the party music on the TV.
“It’s because they’re leaving, right?” Kitty said.
So they knew. I wondered what Greyson had told them. “Yeah,” I said. Kitty scooted closer to me, and I tucked her head beneath my chin.
“So what?” Mia said. “You could do long-distance or something.”
It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know. That sort of thing only works if there’s an end date in mind.” And if the man in question wasn’t moving to be closer to his ex.
“Bad excuse,” she said. “If you love someone, you don’t give up on them. You try.”
I let out a slow breath, thinking of Beth and Mark. As far as I could tell, the girls knew nothing about their dad moving out. What would they think when Beth and Mark told them? “Sometimes love isn’t enough,” I said.
“Then what is?” Mia asked.
“If you figure it out, let me know.”
“If fighting is reasonably sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting promises not to result in victory, then you must not fight, even at the ruler’s bidding,” Kitty said.
Mia’s eyes darkened. She lunged over me to grab at her sister. “Where’s the book? That quote doesn’t even apply to the situation!”
Kitty squealed and leapt from the bed, racing to hide The Art of War somewhere in the condo.
Mia chased after her, and I paused the TV, trying not to laugh as the girls shouted at each other.
When they finally returned, Kitty having stowed The Art of War safely somewhere in my room, I hit play, and we continued watching our episode.
“How is Greyson taking it, by the way?” I asked.
“You saw her. What do you think?” Mia said.
“It’s sad to think we might never see her again,” Kitty said.
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to think about that.
Poor Greyson. I could sympathize with her.
Even though I’d been angry with my mother for how she’d pulled away from me, I’d wanted nothing more than to have her back.
“It’s . . . complicated. I think she’ll feel differently about it when she’s actually there. ”
Mia and Kitty looked at each other but said nothing.
We returned our attention to the TV, and I watched until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.
Not that I could pay much attention to the show.
I kept running over that kiss with Alex in the parking lot, the words Yes, Jo.
I love you followed by We’re leaving at the end of September on repeat.
My emotions cycled from exhilaration to despair at impressive speed.
Part of me wondered if I should take back what I’d said about keeping our distance.
But getting closer to Alex would only make it worse when he left.
When I said I was off to bed, Mia leaned her head on my shoulder. “Sorry I pushed you at him. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, running a hand over her hair. “I think it would’ve happened anyway. There are worse problems to have.”
On my way to my room I paused at the entrance to the living room, watching Mia and Kitty burrow beneath the blankets and trying not to think about how, in a few short weeks, they’d be leaving me too.
—
That night, I jerked awake to the sound of my phone ringing. I fumbled for it on the nightstand, my heart in my throat when I saw it was almost two in the morning. The memory of my mother calling to tell me about Samson sharpened in my mind, and my hands shook as I answered the unfamiliar number.
“Is this Jo Walker?” The voice was the deep baritone of an older man. I didn’t recognize it. Could this be about Beth? My mother? Had something happened to one of them?
“Yes, that’s me,” I said.
“This is Officer Thomas with security at the Palm Beach Yacht Club and Marina.” My anxieties left my mother and sister and landed on Nina and Captain Xav.
I clutched the phone with both hands, pressing it harder against my ear.
“I have two teenage girls that say they’re your nieces.
Mia and Kitty Taylor. They’re staying with you for the summer? ”
“What?” I flicked on the lamp, wincing as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room.
“Ma’am?”