Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Summer
I don’t want to talk. I want to change into my pajamas, curl up in bed, and be alone with my loneliness.
Even as I think that, I realize how self-sabotaging that is. Alone with my loneliness. This is stupid.
Even Henry is being stupid today, and I don’t know why. I wait for him to tell me, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Well?”
He raises one eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“You want to talk. I don’t. So I guess, it’s—”
“Don’t speak to me like that.” He frowns. “Do I speak to you like that? Ever?”
“No.” Hot embarrassment rolls over me. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you eat at the poetry reading?”
I shake my head.
“Let’s go upstairs. You can eat something and tell me how it was.”
I burst into tears.
He crosses the room and takes me in his arms. “Oh, honey.”
“I don’t know how to talk to people,” I wail, the truth coming out of me. “And I didn’t mean to be rude to you.”
He strokes his hand over the back of my head. “I see you, baby girl. It’s okay. I’m not mad.”
“You looked mad, with your arms crossed like that.”
“Maybe I’m feeling bad myself.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes and look up at him. “About what?”
He turns me around and nudges me up the stairs. “I think I should have gone with you to the poetry reading.”
He says it to my back, and when I try to twist to see him, he gently pushes me, keeping me moving up the stairs.
Why would he feel bad about not going to the coffee shop with me? That doesn’t make any sense.
He makes me a sandwich, then takes me by the hand and sits me at the island to eat.
It’s only when I finish that he leans in, bracing his forearms on the counter next to me, and whispers, “Now tell me about not being able to talk to people.”
All those weird emotions stir up again, and I feel like I’m going to cry. Henry slides his hand up and down my back. Warm, soothing.
“Take a deep breath,” he murmurs.
I nod and do as he tells me. “I thought today was going to be a really good day,” I finally tell him. “I slept so well last night. Like I haven’t in. . .”
Since I arrived.
Henry puts two and two together. “Have you been struggling since you got here?”
“I didn’t know I was, but maybe. Yes.”
“Ah, baby.” He kisses me on the temple. It’s a kind gesture, nothing more, but it makes my pulse jack up.
And it annoys me. “I’m not a little kid,” I mutter.
He pauses. I feel his whole body tense up. “I don’t think you are.”
“You’re treating me—”
“Like a young woman. Which you are. This is your first time away from home, and you’re starting a whole new life. There are going to be bumps along the way. Keep breathing. And stop snapping at me unless you want me to treat you like a child and take you over my knee.”
I gasp, heat twirling wildly and inappropriately inside me. I giggle and shake my head to cover up how much I like that idea. Not the time or the place, Summer. “You wouldn’t.”
“Just because I haven’t done something before doesn’t mean I’m not willing to give it a try.” He grunts and moves away from me. “Finish your sandwich.”
I pick at it as I watch him aggressively change the laundry over, and I try to think about why I’m being so obnoxious. It’s not that people didn’t magically talk to me tonight. I don’t even like people that much, so it’s fine if they don’t talk to me most of the time. Why would I want to—
I stop and mentally count backward.
Then I get out my phone and check my app.
“Oooh. . .” I say loud enough that I get Henry’s attention.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I quickly finish my sandwich.
“Is something wrong?” He sets the laundry basket on top of the washing machine and comes back to where I’m sitting.
I scoot off the stool and rinse my plate at the sink.
He’s right there when I turn around, looking concerned. “You can tell me anything.”
Not this.
He doesn’t look away. A gentle, misplaced understanding settles in his gaze. “Is it that time of the month? It’s fine. If you need anything. . .”
I roll my lower lip through my teeth. “No. The opposite, actually.”
I love the way his brows tug together in confusion. I like that I can shock him.
“I’m ovulating,” I whisper.
He recoils like I’ve hit him, and my glee falls away.
“Oh shit.” I wave my hands in jerky, get-it-off motions. “Ignore I said that. That was weird. Right? I shouldn’t share that?”
“It was unexpected, that’s all.” He clears his throat, trying not to look pained. “How do you know you’re ovulating?”
“My mood was a tip-off, and now that I think about it, I can feel it in my body.” I wrap my arms over my sensitive chest, then think better of sharing that detail. “I, uh, get a cramp in my side.”
“Your mom teach you that?”
“Yeah.”
The corner of his mouth tugs up into a half-smile. “She was always blunt about how our bodies work.”
“With you?”
He exhales roughly. “We had a weird relationship. Your mom never saw me as a love interest, not really. I was her. . . like a girlfriend, I guess. Her confidant.”
“She said you were her first boyfriend.”
“I wanted to be. But she didn’t have those feelings for me. We went out a few times, but we never did more than kiss. She told me when she got her period and when it didn’t show up. Because she was pregnant with you.”
“Oh, wow.” I poke my tongue in the corner of my cheek. A new curiosity drives me forward. “Do you know who my dad is, then?”
He shakes his head. “She never told me.”
“I knew it was a long shot.” I make a face. “I don’t need to know.”
“But it makes sense that you’d want to.”
“I think it’s great you were a good friend to her,” I mumble.
As I try to look away, he catches my chin with his knuckle and gives me another gentle look. “If I can be a friend to you, too, that would make me really happy.”
But I don’t want Henry to be my friend. I don’t understand how my mom could have passed him over for some asshole who would knock her up and then abandon her.
If Henry got me pregnant, he would do the right thing and marry me. I’m sure of it.
Even if he only sees me as his Jennifer’s little girl right now.
Instead of saying any of that, I just shrug.
“Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning,” he finally says. “A good night’s sleep fixes a lot.”
I would have said that this morning, too, but now I’m not so sure. “Then why am I so grumpy now, after having the best sleep of the summer so far?”