The Lateral

Chapter 12

“N o, I won’t.” Meadow met my eyes steadily from across the room. “I won’t tell him! I swear. I haven’t done it yet, and I won’t.”

“There’s no reason to keep this a secret,” Calandra called. She took a step to approach the bed but I waved her off.

“No, don’t get too close,” I ordered. I didn’t want to make them sick, too. Meadow couldn’t miss school and Calandra had to work. What if she passed it on to her baby and her mom? I had looked up my medication and the opinions on when it would cure me seemed a little mixed, so I’d decided that I needed another twelve hours before I wasn’t infectious anymore.

They called it “walking pneumonia” and it was true that I had been walking around with it for several weeks. Because I hadn’t slowed down too much, it hadn’t gotten better, so now I was supposed to rest and I was currently doing that in my bed at Jake’s. Calandra and Meadow had tag-teamed to make me stay there and I had folded under their pressure. I didn’t mind much, though, because I also felt pretty terrible. It hadn’t just been the emotionality of the problems with Christal that had affected my well-being—I was actually sick, too.

But no one, meaning Jake, needed to be told about it. He’d had his surgery and no one, meaning Meadow and Calandra this time, was allowed to mention my little illness to him. He had enough on his mind and anyway, I was going to be fine. Plenty of people got this kind of pneumonia and from what the nurse practitioner at the walk-in clinic had said, this wasn’t the scary type that my grandmother had died from. Still, since I wasn’t feeling great and because of the leftover problems from the concussion and the damage to my rib area, the nurse had told me to rest.

And that really was ok. I just wasn’t myself, and I was also a bundle of nerves. I had the volume turned all the way up on my phone so I could hear when Jake texted, in case anything was going wrong. In fact, he was just coming back from a post-op appointment—

The notification was so loud that the three of us jumped, but that was also ok, because it was from him. “He’s still doing well,” I said and another wave of relief swept over me. By this point, Calandra and the rest of the state were also aware of the surgery, so I was free to share the news in front of her. “He’s saying that the appointment was positive and the doctor is pleased about how the operation went.”

“Good,” Meadow said, smiling. “I’m really glad.”

“Me too,” Calandra agreed. Jake had posted on his social media that he felt great and the Woodsmen PR department had put that out, too, but it was different to hear it personally from the source.

“Does he say when he’ll come home?” Meadow asked.

“It’s not going to be for a while,” I reminded her. I thought I understood her feelings right now, and it wasn’t just that she missed him. Without anything legal tying me to him and therefore her to him, her position must have seemed precarious. “You know, if anything ever happened to me, Calandra would help you,” I said, to reassure her. “She would stay here until Jake could come home. You have people to watch over you.”

“What? What’s going to happen to you?” she asked, her voice higher. The dog picked up her head and whined, so Meadow bent to hug her.

“Nothing,” I assured everyone. “Nothing will happen. I’m only saying that you have backups, now. You have more than just me.”

“Let’s go help my mom make dinner,” Calandra said, and frowned at me. She put her arm around Meadow’s shoulders and the three of them, dog included, went downstairs. Calandra’s mom and son were visiting too, and had been here since I’d nearly fainted in the gym. In a panic, Meadow had called Petrise, who had put her grandson in his seat in her little truck and come on over. I had been fine by that point, but Petrise had insisted that I go to a clinic and that was when I’d gotten diagnosed.

Then she’d told me that they were staying until I was feeling better, and Calandra had also arrived after her shift at the club. Petrise was loving the kitchen after the cramped quarters of their trailer, and there were delicious aromas coming from that room of Jake’s house. I didn’t want to eat much, but it did smell good. I was so glad they were here for Meadow and I felt lucky to have them. Very.

But I also felt that this pneumonia thing represented a setback for me. I’d had those plans to better myself somehow, in a way I hadn’t yet determined, and lying around wasn’t the way to accomplish any bettering. I’d also been texting Jake, saying how happy we all were that he was ok, informing him that Calandra and her family were here for a temporary visit, that Chip and the rest of the animals were doing well, and that everything was fine. I was muddying the truth and that didn’t feel great, either.

I had told him not to bother writing back because he needed to focus on recovering but he always did. When I texted now to ask if he was in pain, he responded again. “It’s uncomfortable but not too bad,” he said. “I didn’t get your answers yet.”

My answers? I’d been watching my phone constantly and replying…oh, he meant my response to the big document he’d sent, his position paper on life. “You gave me a lot to read and it took a while to get through the small print,” I explained, without mentioning the extra sleeping I’d been doing while I didn’t feel so wonderful.

“You must have worn your glasses. I like them,” he wrote back, and I looked at those statements, not totally understanding. Of course, I liked my glasses too, since they helped me to see. That had been an issue when I’d been in school but I hadn’t known that there was a problem with my vision. It really was so much easier to read when you could make out the difference between all the letters.

But I didn’t think he meant that he appreciated their usefulness. “Thank you,” I wrote. He said he was wiped out and was going to nap, and I agreed that he needed his rest. I yawned, too, but then took out the papers that Meadow had printed for me. “Important,” it stated at the top, and under that in italics, it said, “Life Issues.” I’d read this a few times already and the words were becoming familiar.

A few minutes later, Calandra put her head in through the door. “We could hear you coughing from downstairs and my mom wants you to eat another spoonful of honey,” she said.

“I was only coughing because I was laughing,” I explained. “Jake wrote something funny.” It was very serious in parts, but it also made me smile. Who would have thought that he was so particular about such weird things? I liked that.

“Eat the honey anyway,” she insisted, and put the glass bottle and a spoon on the end of the bed. I did, before I returned to reading.

“There can be no ketchup on hot dogs, ever. I don’t want it in in my line of sight if there are hot dogs present,” he’d said. He talked about other condiments (and various dips) and more about his food choices in general. It seemed as if he liked everything except jelly beans. Those made him sick, he’d written, but things like steak tartare (I looked it up, and that was raw meat with sauce) were fine. He liked to have options, too, so there were six different kinds of hot sauce in the refrigerator, all of them with only a few drops used. He said that he’d finish those, eventually. He didn’t like to waste things, which was why the refrigerator also still held a big container of the soup that Kellen Karma had made for Meadow’s birthday party. Maybe I could toss that now, he suggested.

Jake used headphones to listen to music, because he didn’t want to stick things in his ears. He’d written about his music, too. His taste was varied and he liked to dance, he said, but he was terrible at that. “I have no sense of rhythm,” he explained. “I don’t even think my heart beats right. But I don’t need surgery on it, ok?” Another thing? He never wore flip-flops, because he didn’t enjoy having the rubber piece between his toes. All other footwear was all right by him, though, including cowboy boots. He’d had a pair custom-made when he’d played for the Rustlers, and he said that they added “a little height.” I couldn’t imagine him even taller.

But there were also serious things. He got into what I’d been thinking about, the topic of splitting expenses for the house and dealing with expenses in general. He said that what was his was mine…and I thought he was crazy. Crazy! Of course, Jake hadn’t witnessed the shenanigans of my brother Zephyr and how he’d destroyed the finances of several girlfriends and one very unfortunate wife. Weren’t Jake’s own parents divorced, though? They must have fought about money, since everyone that I had ever known argued over that issue. And he was just going to open his bank accounts to me? Like I’d said, crazy.

I kept reading through his ideas on the division of labor, such as the chores around his ranch. He talked about how busy he was during the season, and that sounded almost overwhelming. It sounded practically all-consuming, like there was stuff happening for the team nearly all the time, but he still wanted to be present in the house. He had a lot of help to keep everything going, and he reiterated that he didn’t want me to classify myself as someone there only to work or “serve.” That was how he’d thought I was describing my future role when I’d tried to bring it up with him, but that wasn’t right. I was just searching for how I would contribute, and I still didn’t exactly see it.

I’d keep looking, I figured, and I kept rereading, too. He talked about retiring from football (one day, and he hoped it was far away). He wanted to stay in this house and on his land, but he also talked about traveling during school vacations…which led him to children. Jake had written about his friends starting families, in particular Noah Boone. It was a struggle, he said, because Noah worried about missing important milestones and also missing the little, everyday things that made parenthood special. He was worried about his wife Audrey being alone and having to do too much by herself. Jake had ideas about it, but he wondered about mine, about night feedings, trading diaper changes, schooling, sports participation, and so much more.

“I know how much you’d love them,” he wrote in reference to our future children. “I know how well you’d take care of them.” It was because of Meadow, he said. He could see in everything I did how I’d be a great mother to other kids, someday.

“What’s wrong?”Meadow herself stood at my door.“Are you in pain or something?”

“No.” I used the soft bed sheet to pat tears off my cheeks. The one side of my face was still sore, so I was careful. “Maybe the antibiotics are bringing out emotions,” I suggested. I was laughing and crying over pieces of paper and this was serious business. It wasn’t a time for me to fall apart over references to hot sauce; I needed to buckle down.

She was pushing dinner at me, so I accepted the tray although I didn’t want to eat much off it. “I guess I should do my homework,” she mentioned.

She’d brought me dinner and had offered to do her homework without prodding…

“Ember! Why the hell would that make you more upset? Those antibiotics are weird.”

“They really are,” I agreed. “Please don’t swear. It’s also maybe related to how Jake and I have been talking about the marriage thing.”

“That’s making you upset?” She sounded wary. “Why?”

“It’s not making me upset. It’s just giving me a lot to think about, since it will change our lives.”

“Isn’t that why you’d do it? To change our lives? Don’t you want that?” she asked, and now she was definitely upset, too. “Are you backing out on him because you still don’t think he’s good enough for you? What makes you think you’ll find someone better?”

“I never said that he’s not good enough!” I defended myself. “And I’m not backing out on anybody. I never planned to get married and—”

“Yeah, I get it,” she interrupted me. “You think he’s stupid because he’s nice. There’s nothing wrong with someone treating you right! Don’t ruin it!”

“I’m not—”

“You just want guys who hit you in the face! You’re exactly like my mom,” she accused before she stomped away, and I heard her bedroom door slam. I sat there with the cooling dinner and tried to think of good things. I’d entered a drawing for a tractor and while I didn’t personally have a lot of use for that machine, it could help Jake. Wouldn’t that have been nice?

By the next morning, I was back to normal—at least, I was back to normal enough to get up, make breakfast, and tell Calandra and her family that I had everything under control.

“Thank you, but we’re fine,” I assured them while still keeping a bit of distance between us. Petrise was taking Meadow to school today but it was for the last time. With all the antibiotics now under my belt, I didn’t need them to help anymore, I explained.

“Those pills make her crazy,” Meadow muttered and even from my distance, I could hear her. She eyed me and waved goodbye when Petrise reminded her to, but her anger was clear, and she was still eyeing me distrustfully as she got into my car at the end of the day when school was over. I’d spent some of our hours apart sleeping and I really was feeling much better. I must have looked better, too. When one of the guys who was helping out in the barn knocked on the kitchen door to ask me a question, he didn’t freak out when he saw my face.

“Hi,” I greeted her as she opened the car door and got in out of the rain. “Did you remember to return that library book?”

She didn’t answer except with a shrug, and I decided to tackle the problem head-on. “Please stop being mad at me. I’m not trying to ruin anything,” I told her. “I’m not backing out, unless Jake does.”

“He won’t. He’s not that type.” She turned to stare at me, and I understood that she thought I was exactly that type.

“When have I ever gone back on something for you? When haven’t I followed through?” I asked, and she shrugged. She had her mom as her primary example for adult behavior, so it made sense that she’d doubt me as well—but it was also hard to hear. I had done my best, I really had.

“I’m not acting like…” No, I wasn’t going to bring up Christal, not directly. “I’m not purposely seeking a boyfriend who treats me badly,” I amended. “I’m not interested in that and no one should be, even if she really wants companionship or…” No, I wasn’t going to bring up anyone’s insatiable appetite for drugs, either.

“Sure,” Meadow said. “Whatever.”

“I had an idea. What if we drive downstate?”

“What?” Now she was looking at me with interest rather than disdain.

“Yeah, what if we drive down to see Jake? I have his address.” He’d given it to me in case there was an emergency, just like he’d given me the name and contact information for his doctor, his attorney, and his mother. She was his next of kin, he’d stated, and that had made me upset.

“Like we would surprise him?” she asked.

“I think he’ll be glad to see us,” I said. I hoped he would. “We could check for ourselves that he’s really doing ok and that he’s taking care of himself.” And, I’d thought, this would demonstrate to her that I was serious about my intentions—and I would try to determine if he was really serious about his. Now that he was recovering well after this surgery, he might want to back out himself, and I would let him. It would be hard to explain to Meadow, but it would also be a lesson about trusting…

“Damn, are you crying again?” she asked me. “I’ll never take antibiotics!”

She would, if she needed them. I thought the medicine was helping me a lot; it had made me feel good enough to spend time today responding (finally) to the document that Jake had sent about himself and about his hopes for the future.

I’d had a hard time, though. Like, where was I supposed to start? “I don’t mind jelly beans,” I’d typed finally. “I don’t seek them out or anything, and if there’s chocolate available instead, I’d choose that. Flip-flops are also ok with me. I wear them a lot in the summer and when I give myself pedicures, which I do frequently for work. Maybe I’ll do those less now that I’m not dancing but I have to get a job. I feel really weird and...” Scared. I felt scared without having an income.

“I feel really weird without working,” I’d finished, then moved on to some issues he’d raised regarding hypothetical children. “After so many years at the clubs, I got used to being a night owl. I would expect to be up with a baby, or babies, and I don’t have much trouble functioning during the day on little sleep. I’ve changed a lot of diapers, too, and I have a strong stomach. Right now, I’m on the pill,” I added, “but I bet I’d get pregnant pretty quick.” Fertility had never been a problem in my family—more like we were way, way too good at having kids and then not very good at taking care of them.

I’d reviewed what I’d written and realized that I wasn’t covering everything like he had. I’d read his long, detailed statement again and again, and I had laughed and cried every time. Mine wasn’t like that. There wasn’t a lot of emotion and I was struggling with what to say. How much should I have included? There were things that I could have told him, but the past was the past.

The past would effect educational stuff, though, so I added a new section. “I would need someone else to help kids with homework/tests, since I’m not qualified,” I typed with my thumbs. Meadow had taken her tablet to school, so I had worked on this on my phone. What else? “I don’t use much hot sauce but I don’t mind spice. I lived near a Nigerian restaurant once and I ate a lot of their goat pepper soup and that was pretty fiery.”

Then I hadn’t been sure of what else to tell him. I did feel like I knew him better after reading what he’d written about his quirks and his plans, and that felt reassuring. I didn’t think what I’d sent in return would have the same effect, but if I told too much…again, there was a limit on what was important.

“So we should do it? Should we go see Jake?” I asked Meadow now.

“Yeah, let’s do it. I don’t need to bring anything,” she said, and leaned forward like she had when we were driving to the Woodsmen game. “Let’s go see him right now.”

We did need to pack a few things, though, before we left for real. “Are you going to text him? What if he’s not there when we come?” she asked me, and I hesitated. Usually, I didn’t like to give people the chance to say no.

“Um…”

“I will,” Meadow said. “It’s ok. He has a whole house and he told me we were welcome.”

He had said the same thing to me and when I’d heard it, I had thought that I needed to give him space. Now, however, I felt an almost feverish desire to see him—but I didn’t actually have a fever, and I checked again to make sure before we left. I also checked my hair, which probably needed a trim, and I curled it. I fixed my makeup, adding more than just the bruise coverage.

“Why did you dress up?” Meadow wondered as we met at my car.

“I wanted to make a good impression,” I answered, which was true although she stared at me like I was crazy. I figured that I should look my best, since I hadn’t yet thought of anything else that I would be able to contribute to our relationship, and my responses to his “Important Life Issues” had been boring and uninformative. He sure wasn’t sitting there reading what I wrote and crying over it. “Did he get back to you about us coming?”

“Yeah, he said you shouldn’t drive so far since you hit your head so recently. He said that he wrote to you, too, and you should answer him.”

I did read what he’d written, mostly the same concerns she’d just expressed, and I texted back that I was ok, really. I also asked if it was ok for us to show up. “Do you care?” I typed.

“No, but I was going to fly you down,” he responded. “Are you sure about this?”

I was, but he had raised some valid points. It wasn’t a short jaunt to Ann Arbor, more like four hours, and I thought that I might have misjudged my stamina a little. Maybe an extended trip behind the wheel wasn’t the best idea, as someone with a recent concussion and bruised ribs…oh, and I also had the pneumonia thing, too. I wasn’t at my best, in other words, but we were doing it. Our adventure began in the rainy dusk on narrow, mostly empty roads, in a car that I also had been doubting the stamina of.

“Ember?” Meadow asked after a while.

“I’m doing fine,” I told her.

“Ok, but I was going to say that I have to pee again, and I’m also hungry.”

We stopped at the next gas station and got one thing each, which was financially prudent. My choice was a high-octane caffeine drink that didn’t have the same effect I was hoping for: wakefulness. In fact, I was getting pretty tired by the time we got to Saginaw, and when Flint rolled around, I was drooping a lot.

“We’re almost there,” I said to encourage myself, and then, finally, we were on a residential street and my phone announced that we had arrived. There was a vehicle I didn’t recognize in the driveway, one that I guessed Jake might have rented since he’d flown down here in the Woodsmen plane. He came to the door, opening it as soon as we pulled up to the curb. His one arm was in a sling but other than that, he looked like the same person, with the same strength of movement and with the same handsome face. He really was just so good looking, and it was such a relief to see him whole and healthy.

And upset, it appeared. He was frowning like he wasn’t very happy to see us and I swallowed down fear that rose in my throat.

But Meadow was glad to see him, and didn’t seem to notice his mood. “Hi!” she called eagerly, and he walked out of the rented house to meet us. It wasn’t slippery with ice anymore since the temperatures had risen, but I looked for obstructions in his path. It would have been terrible if he’d fallen, because he would have tried to catch himself and brace with the arm in the sling, and then he could have hurt that shoulder more and other parts of himself as well. All in all, it could have been a disaster—

“What happened?” he asked me. “Why did you suddenly decide to drive down here?”

“I thought you said it was ok,” Meadow told him. She looked toward me. “Weren’t we invited?”

“Yeah, you were, but I didn’t expect you two so soon,” he answered her. “And I don’t think that you should have been driving that distance,” he told me.

“No, don’t worry. Her pneumonia is just the walking kind, and the medication is getting her better except it also makes her cry all the time,” Meadow said.

He turned to me. “What? What pneumonia?”

“Oh,” she said, looking at me guiltily. “Sorry for telling him.”

“It’s ok. I thought I had a cold,” I started to explain, but then I stopped. A figure now stood in the doorway of the house from which Jake had just exited. A woman?

She waved, too, and called, “Hello.” Meadow froze with her bag over her shoulder and then turned to me again, and I was just as surprised. I waved back with the arm on the side that wasn’t bothered by movement.

“What the hell is this about pneumonia? Why were you crying?” Jake asked me. He tried to take my bag from me with his own good arm and we had a brief tug-of-war before I told him he better let go or one of us would get hurt, and that it was walking pneumonia and very different from what he was thinking.

“I’m fine,” I reassured him.

Meadow had already approached the porch, where the woman waited. It felt like we were walking up to her home, in fact. “Hello,” she repeated to us. “I’m Araceli.”

Oh. I’d been trying to remember the pretty name of Jake’s ex-girlfriend, and now I knew for sure what it was.

“Ok,” Meadow told her, staring. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m an old friend of Jake’s,” she said, smiling. Holy cannoli, she was pretty, and she seemed so friendly. And I already knew that she was smart, because she’d gone off to follow a career path that she had established for herself.

Araceli turned to me. “Hi…oh, are you all right? What happened?” She was staring at the side of my face, which must have been very visible due to the light fixture above us.

My hand went to cover the bruises there, which were fading and I’d thought had looked a lot better. “Hi,” I also greeted her. “I’m Ember and this is Meadow.”

“Ember’s marrying Jake,” Meadow put in loudly.

“What?” the other woman gasped, and all three of us turned to look at him. “You’re getting marred?” she asked.

“He sure as shit is,” Meadow shot back, and for once, I didn’t feel the need to ask her not to swear.

“Go inside,” he told us all, and we did. It was a pretty house, not as nice as the one up north, but not many were going to be. We entered a living room that held a seating area with chairs, a couch, and coffee table in front of that. There was a glass of wine on the table and a bottle of beer, as if two people had been sitting together.

“You’re getting married?” Araceli was asking him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, because I knew exactly what was happening. Maybe she had heard about his surgery and been worried, so she’d gotten in touch and that had led her here. Maybe he’d felt so much better about the positive prognosis that he’d told her about the operation himself, and when he had, he’d also said that they should talk.

“It matters,” she said and Jake wanted us to sit down.

I found a chair and Araceli sat on the couch in the spot nearest the wine glass. Jake took the other end of the cushion closest to the beer, and Meadow? She put herself directly between them, which was a bit of a squeeze.

“I’m just surprised,” the other woman said to us all. “Jake didn’t mention a fiancée.”

“It didn’t come up,” he answered, and she laughed. Strangely, she didn’t seem very disturbed by the information.

“That’s so typical,” she told him. “Well, Ember, it’s nice to meet you! I’m happy he found someone.”

What was her game plan here? I looked at her, wondering. I wasn’t going to roll around and fight, for one thing because I really didn’t feel up to it, and for another? I wanted him to be happy. If it meant that the love of his life had come back to him, then I was glad…at least, I tried to be.

“Araceli texted that she was in Detroit until tomorrow morning,” he explained to us. “I said she should come over to say hello.”

“I wouldn’t have driven down here and interrupted,” I said, and the other woman shook her head.

“What? No, I feel like I’m the one interrupting,” she told us.

“You are,” Meadow answered.

“You and I will carry the bags upstairs,” Jake said. He pointed at Meadow and got carefully to his feet. “Now. Let’s go.”

She gave both me and Araceli a glare and she took our bags herself. “You just had your stupid surgery,” she told him grumpily. “Let me do it.”

“I’m sorry for my reaction,” Araceli told me as they thumped away. “It’s not so surprising that Jake would fail to mention how he’s involved in a serious relationship, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I stated. “I don’t know him very well, besides some stuff he wrote out and sent to me.”

“What…” She trailed off, staring, and I shrugged. She frowned like she didn’t understand, and she opened her mouth a few times but then closed it.

“Meadow’s staying upstairs for a little while,” Jake announced as he rejoined us. He glanced from her to me as he sat on the couch again. “What’s this about pneumonia?”

“I’m sorry, but what do you mean that you don’t know him?” Araceli asked me. “You’re marrying him. You must know each other.”

“I think I know the important things about him, like that he’s a generous, kind person,” I said. “I know that he’s worried about his future and about Meadow’s, and he thinks that our marriage will help her and somehow help him, too. But I don’t know a lot of stuff. I didn’t notice his collection of hot sauce in the fridge until he told me about it, for example.”

Her face relaxed out of the worried expression she’d assumed. “Oh, I thought you meant that you’d just met him, or something totally weird. His hot sauce obsession is no big deal.” She looked at both of us. “How long have you two been together?”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Jake responded.

“Hardly any time,” I chimed in. “He knows practically nothing about me. I told him that I don’t mind jelly beans, but not a lot else.”

“He hates them,” she agreed, “but that’s—”

“I was scared to say most of it,” I went on. “Like, I didn’t tell you about what happened when I dropped out of school and ran away,” I said, addressing him directly. “I think I mentioned that my mom kicked me out because she moved in with her boyfriend.”

“No, you didn’t say that you were kicked out,” he said slowly. “You said you quit school when you were fourteen. You also ran away from home?”

“She was moving and there was no room for me, so I was supposed to go live with my brother Tycho and his kids. But we never got along, so I just left. I stayed in Detroit by myself for two years until I saved enough to take off again.”

“When you were fourteen?” Araceli said. She sounded horrified.

“You can imagine how I got by, right? I mean, the stuff I…” I looked out the window into the darkness. “And after I left Michigan, I wasn’t in a much better situation, so I did whatever I had to. I’m on much firmer ground now,” I assured them, “except that I don’t currently have a job since I got fired from the strip club for looking too beat-up. Of course, if I needed to for Meadow, I would still always do whatever was necessary.”

“Holy shit,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to get into all this, at least not with me. It’s your business and not mine.” She looked at Jake. “And yours, I guess.”

“I’m not ashamed of my past. But you’re right that Jake should know,” I told her. “Like, it’s important for him to be aware that I had to get tested for a lot of diseases. I had a few, but I’m ok now. I was very lucky.”

He rubbed his eyes with his hand.

“You should understand what you’re getting into, and you know what the worst would be? My family,” I answered myself. “You met Christal and she’s a fair representative of everyone else. It’s hard to tell who’s the most terrible, but you’ll probably be able to judge for yourself because you’ll meet the rest of them, too. As soon as they find out about you, they’ll show up to beg for money or with tools to break in and rob your house.”

Jake moved his hand to look at me. “Your mother let you leave when you were fourteen?” he asked. “You lived on your own?”

“When I was fourteen, I was getting my braces off,” Araceli murmured, and I had been right that she had nice parents. They’d even cared about her teeth.

“Didn’t you hear what I said about my family?” I asked Jake in return.

“I want to talk about what happened when you ran away,” he said, and Araceli stood up.

“So, I’ll head out,” she announced. “It was nice to meet you, Ember, and, um, I hope this all…uh…I hope…I hope for the best,” she concluded, and she practically ran for the door.

“Hold on,” Jake called to her. It took him a lot longer than usual to get to his feet and he moved stiffly and like it might have pained him. He followed her out to her car, and I waved and then stood even more slowly.

When he came back, I was in the same place. He closed the door behind himself and stared at me.

“I embarrassed you again,” I said, holding up my hands and then letting them drop in defeat. “I did it again. At the stadium all those weeks ago, I made it seem like you were the one who’d beat me up and it made you ashamed in front of the cheerleaders, the ones who were being nice to Meadow. And just now, I embarrassed you in front of Araceli, and you care about her opinion so much.”

He was quiet, but he did shake his head. I was pretty sure he’d done it in disgust.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I don’t know why I started talking like that! The whole way down here—no, ever since you left, I’ve been thinking about the two of us being together. It’s just crazy. I know that I should be running after you with a lasso or grappling hooks or superglue, but all I can think is that you’re making such a mistake. I’m going to let you make that mistake, too, because of Meadow. I want the best stuff for her, so I’ll let you ruin your life, but I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Jake.”

I expected him to be angry—more like furious. I could have just tanked his chances with the woman he missed and wanted back. Meadow and I had busted right into their date, stomping up and ruining the moment. I’d definitely seen him mad before, like about the truck defacement and when I’d gotten into the scuffle with Christal. I waited for him to speak and thought that I deserved whatever he was going to dish out.

“Ember, mother of all fucks.” He walked across the room to me, but he really didn’t seem angry. He seemed more sad, I thought, which I didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. I hope he believed me.

“Come here,” he said, and he put his good arm around me as we faced each other.

“What do you want—”

“Right here,” he directed, and he hugged me, tugging me against his chest on the other side from the sling.

Shucks, this was wonderful. “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “Thank you for not being mad. I didn’t mean to show up and cause a scene.”

“I know that. Stop thanking me for everything,” he said gruffly. “I’m glad you came.”

“You are?”

“I needed someone to lean against.”

“You can,” I told him quickly. “You can lean on me. Do you want to sit down?”

“We will in a minute. Stay here for now.”

I did and it was better than I could have imagined. I tried to capture the feeling in my memory to keep for always, for when he was just a memory, too.