10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
“ W hy do you look like you want to throw a rock through that window?” Chelsea says, snapping me out of my trance.
“Huh?” I shake my head a couple of times, trying to bring my brain back around.
“You look super pissed,” she says.
“I’m fine. I was just thinking about something.”
I was staring out the window, at Dawson and Robin walking together toward his car to go to lunch. I wish I could have snapped a picture for Hannah, since she doesn’t believe me about them being together. I could have had the perfect proof. Robin saying something and Dawson laughing. A big ole guffaw kind of laugh. Head thrown back and everything. Then he put his arm around her and gave her a very cozy side hug. The kind where they rested their heads together.
And here I sit, watching the front desk, like a loser.
That’s it. I’m firing Robin.
Except that I can’t do that. Because it would be wrong. And Robin is really good at her job. I just wish she was a little bit … not so attractive. Or funny. I mean, I haven’t actually heard her say anything funny, but clearly Dawson has.
Dang you, Robin, and your stupid humor and pretty face.
I even tested out my theory today, to look outside myself more. I was extra nice to her and told her how pretty she looked. It didn’t make me feel any better. Not one bit. So I guess I’m done with that. Back to my regular inward-looking self.
“Is it June?”
“What?”
“Our neighbor? Coming to the party with Dad?” Chelsea furrows her brow at me, a mix of confusion and concern on her face.
“Yeah,” I say, taking a split second to decide that this is the path I should go down. I don’t want to explain this whole thing to Chelsea. She doesn’t even know about my Dawson crush to begin with. Besides, it’s a moot point.
And anyway, I am kind of annoyed by my dad bringing June to the party.
Chelsea turns so we’re face-to-face over the high-top desk. She’s got her I’m-the-big-sister face on. Oh, fun.
“Maggie, Dad is a grown man. We need to be okay with however he finds happiness.” She gives me a closed-mouth smile and a quick dip of her chin.
I see right through it. “That was well rehearsed. Good job, you.”
Chelsea lets her shoulders slouch. “I’m trying. I don’t like it either.”
“I know. But Dad said they were going as friends,” I say confidently.
Chelsea eyes me wearily. “You fell for that?”
It’s my turn to furrow my brow at her. “Well … didn’t you?”
“No,” Chelsea says, her voice almost sounding shrill. “After some thought, I think that’s Dad’s way of gently letting us in on this thing.”
“You’re lying.”
She just gives me a shrug of her shoulders in response .
“Who’s lying?” Devon asks, walking up to us, the glass front door swinging behind him as he enters the lobby of the shop. He comes to stand by Chelsea, both of them now looking at me.
“Chelsea thinks Dad and June aren’t just friends,” I say, reaching up and tugging on the pendant on my necklace.
“Yeah,” he says, like he can’t believe I hadn’t figured that out.
“You too?” I ask, my eyes wide.
“I think he’s just trying to tell us in that Dad way like he always does,” Devon says, and Chelsea turns her face toward him, giving him a nod of approval. Since when did these two bond? I’m supposed to be the glue that holds the two of them together. I’m the middle child; it’s my job.
I feel my stomach sink as the realization settles on me. Dad … and June?
“I don’t like it either,” Devon says in response to my scrunched-up facial expression. “I’ve caught him twice now texting on his phone and smiling at it.” He shakes his head.
“Is that who you think he’s been texting?” Chelsea asks, letting her jaw fall.
My mind flashes back to the jump—or the attempted jump—when I noticed my dad texting rapidly on his phone. At the time, I was doing my own rapid texting to my mom, so I didn’t think much of it. But now that I think of it, there have been other times I’ve caught him doing the same. I just wrote it off as no big deal. Could he have been texting June? And that long ago?
“What do we do?” Chelsea asks.
Devon lifts his shoulders briefly. “Not much we can do.”
“I’m suddenly feeling offended that he’s been texting June so much, when all I ever get from him is one-word replies to my texts,” Chelsea says. “I thought he was just bad at texting.”
Of course Chelsea would make this about her.
“I think we’re making a lot of assumptions here,” I say.
“How can we find out?” Devon asks.
I twist my lips to the side. “Well …”
“Well, what?” He squints his blue eyes at me.
“He’s in the shop right now, trying to help your friend Chad learn how to wrap a door properly. No one seems to be able to teach him.” I give my best look of disapproval to my brother.
Devon doesn’t respond. He doesn’t seem to care at all that Chad has probably cost us more money than he’s made us.
“So what?” Chelsea says, her impatience starting to show.
Devon snaps his fingers and points at me. “His phone—”
“Is probably in the top drawer of his desk,” I finish.
“Oh,” Chelsea says, her eyes bright with understanding.
Without words, I set the main phone to go to voicemail and the three of us walk quietly to our dad’s office, watching our backs as we go.
Sure enough, once we get there, there’s no sign of our dad, and like the predictable man he is, the phone is sitting in his top drawer.
Chelsea is the one who grabs it. She holds it in her hand and looks at it like it’s a foreign object she’s never seen before. Then she holds the phone out to me.
“I don’t think we should do this,” she says.
“You mean you don’t want to do this but you want me to,” I say, giving her a knowing look.
“Yes,” she says.
I take it from her and press the button on the older phone—the one we’ve been bothering our dad to upgrade—and watch the screen light up. No passcode, because passcodes are for people who can remember numbers, and our dad is not one of those people.
I go to the texting app and open it up, holding the phone out in front of me as we all gather around. Devon stands in a position so he can see the door in case Dad walks in and catches us.
This all seems so familiar. Like we’ve done this before. But I don’t recall snooping on our parents like this. Not the three of us. What I do recall is me and Devon sneaking into Chelsea’s room and reading her diary, which was such a waste of snooping—it was so boring and all about boys.
I click on June’s name, and there’s definitely been some texting going on. The first few texts seem benign. Just chitchat, not a big deal. I feel my heart lighten a bit. Chelsea and Devon have it all wrong. Dad really is just friends with June.
Using my thumb, I scroll down, watching as older texts populate on the screen. I’m a mix of emotions—worry that we might get caught, anxiety about what we might find, and a dash of shame for snooping like this.
“Good hell, they use a lot of emojis,” Devon says, pointing at the phone. He’s right; it’s mostly smiley faces and a few heart eyes sprinkled in. There’s nothing of interest in actual wordage, though. Just June asking my dad to lunch and my dad sending back an emoji thumbs-up. Then my dad asking if her power went out, to which she sends back a thumbs-down emoji.
This is stupid. This is definitely like finding Chelsea’s diary.
I scroll down again, watching some new texts populate.
My stomach does a little bobbing thing as these texts fill the screen. There’s one with just a kissy-face emoji. And another text from my dad asking when she’s coming over .
When I scroll down again, there’s a text from June calling him “Babe,” and then there’s another one that’s just the fire emoji, and next to it, it says “our song.” To which my dad has sent back a fire emoji. There really are so many emojis going on here.
“ Our song?” Chelsea reads the text out loud.
“What song is that?” Devon asks. “And why would they have a song?”
“Is there a fire song?” I ask, looking from Chelsea to Devon.
Chelsea pulls her phone from her back pocket and, pulling up her music app, does a search.
“There’s a song called ‘Fire,’” she says. “By … the Pointer Sisters?”
“Play it,” Devon says.
She hits play and then turns up the volume.
We all gather in tighter, listening to the song as it begins, the chords of an electric guitar playing a catchy rhythm with a strong bass line.
Chelsea lifts the phone up higher so we can hear it better through her tiny speaker. The singer starts out and we listen to the words, taking turns glancing at each other. I wonder if we got this right. Maybe June meant a different song.
The words are benign enough. Something about the car radio and someone’s saying they’re a liar. But then all of our eyes go wide as the opening verse moves to three-part harmony and suddenly they’re singing about kissing and fire and, oh my gosh, this song is … well, it’s sexy and a little dirty and I kind of wish we never did this.
Chelsea, also looking a little green, stops the song and the three of us just stand there, staring at each other.
“What the hell?” Devon finally says .
I look down at the phone in my hand, my dad’s phone. The screen has now timed out and gone black.
“Put it back,” Chelsea says, almost in a panic. “Just, put it back now.”
I do as she says, and then without words the three of us walk down the hall to my office.
“So this is bigger than we thought,” I say as soon as the door is shut.
“What do we do?” Devon asks.
“What can we do?” says Chelsea.
We all look at each other.
You can tell when the answer hits all of us. There’s nothing. We can do nothing.
Chelsea lets out a breath. “We could be supportive?”
“No,” Devon says, shaking his head.
“Dev,” she chides. “He’s our dad. Don’t we want him to be happy?”
“But what about the dog idea?” I offer.
She shakes her head at me. “If this is what Dad wants …”
“Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” Devon says. “This could just be dating. Or maybe … you know … other stuff .”
“Gross!” I say loudly. Chelsea covers her mouth with her hand.
“No,” I say after a few seconds of silence. “Devon is right. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
“But they have a song,” Chelsea says. “That sounds more serious to me.”
“That’s true,” I say.
Silence lands on the room again.
“I think it’s crazy,” Devon says. “Mom’s only been gone four months. ”
“I know,” Chelsea says, putting a hand on his arm. “But I read an article the other day that said widowed men who were in good relationships get remarried really fast. I didn’t think it was true in our case, but now …”
“You guys, he’s bringing a date to the party. Not a wife,” I say. “And as far as we’re supposed to know, she’s only a friend.”
We really are getting ahead of ourselves.
Devon runs his fingers through his thick brown hair. “I guess I don’t even want him bringing a date.”
We all nod solemnly at each other.
“I think we should just wait and see what happens,” Chelsea says.