Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Len
A ginormous hunk of steel with a front like a Mack truck looms in front of us. Butterflies erupt in my stomach. Trish told me his parents liked to camp. She said she found it primitive. This is anything but. My God. “I thought you said RV, not space machine.”
Zaiah chuckles, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward it. “Just you wait.”
His father steps out and yells, “All aboard!” then peers around like he’s planning to welcome a ton of visitors. The way his eyes light up when he sees Zaiah, though. “Hey, kid.” He’s not bashful about giving him a hug and neither is his son. It’s not even a bro hug or that weird thing guys do, it’s a straight up hug for several long seconds.
I stand back, a little out of breath from the running, and watch with a pang of jealousy. But then his dad opens his eyes and sees me standing there.
“Oh, who do we have here?” He practically pushes Zaiah away. “You know you never keep a woman waiting, son.”
My cheeks heat at his words. It feels so stupid to admit, really stupid, but the moment Zaiah tucked in my shirt and I walked out of the dorm with these leggings on, I was a new person; a normal human being who could go out into the world and be looked at. I stick out my hand confidently. “I’m Lenore.”
Zaiah says it at the same time, but stops at the shortened version of my name, giving me a curious look when I keep going.
New person, new name. Or should it be new person, old name? My father wanted to call me Lenore. Believe it or not, it’s after a famous hockey player, but I’ll be taking that tidbit of information to the grave.
“What a pretty name,” his father says, grabbing my hand and shaking it. He waves me inside like a butler, complete with a short bow. “Welcome to my humble abode. I’m Tom.”
“Humble, my ass!” Zaiah quips.
His father shrugs. “There was a bigger one.”
I grab hold of the light-up railing and step into the poshest traveling home I’ve ever seen. It looks like a rock star’s bus. Neon rope lights frame the ceiling. White leather adorns everything. I think I’ve actually found something I wouldn’t mind my father spending his money on. “I can’t imagine traveling in this.”
“If you’re going to do something, do it in style,” Zaiah’s father remarks behind me.
“Oh,” a female voice says. I peer toward the sound and see a teenager getting up from one of the plush couches. She eyes me, gaze narrowing. When she reads my shirt, she relaxes a little.
“I’m Lenore,” I introduce myself, walking toward her. I almost put my hand out, but then decide that’s stupid. “You must be Zaiah’s sister.”
“Izzy,” she confirms.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
A little ways back—because let’s face it, it’s still an RV—another female figure appears, sporting an apron that she’s currently wiping her hands on. As if on cue, my other senses open up, and the most delicious smell fills my nostrils.
“Mom, this is Lenore,” Zaiah says, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “My new roommate. Just roommate.”
“Oh, you dear. Thank you so much for getting Isaiah out of that hell hole of a room. God, he was so miserable.”
She pulls me in for a hug, and I stand there in shock for a few seconds before I return it.
“Forgot to warn you,” Zaiah whispers. “Mom’s a hugger.”
“And Dad’s weird,” Izzy echoes in the same inflection.
“Perfect,” I say, smiling, soaking up the attention. I can do affection and weird.
His mother releases me and points at Zaiah. “Keep that smart mouth up and I won’t cook for you today.”
“Sources say that’s a lie,” Izzy monotones.
I like her.
First, Zaiah hugs his mom, then he walks over to Izzy and does the same before picking her up and shaking her.
“Did you get another muscle?” she chokes out. “Damn, Zaiah.”
“I did, and it’s right, oh…” He pretends to point somewhere on his body and then playfully punches his sister in the arm. “How’s field hockey?”
The door in the front shuts, and his father calls out for everyone to take a seat. Without having to stand there looking awkward, Zaiah takes my shoulders and steers me toward the white leather couch opposite his sister.
“Buckle up,” he whispers. “My father’s a terrible driver.”
“I heard that, and just for the hecklers in the back, I’ll hit two curbs.”
Zaiah’s mom rolls her eyes and sits next to Izzy. They reach for their seat belts, so I do the same. Zaiah’s body is so huge that we’re practically touching. When we’re all settled, he lifts his brows at his sister again. “Well?”
“I scored the game winning goal yesterday.”
He raises his hand, and they give each other a long-distance high-five.
“Mom recorded it so you could see.”
“Hopefully, I don’t have a seizure from watching it.” He mimics someone trying to record something on their phone, only the phone rises up and down haphazardly in front of him.
“I was celebrating!” his mom admonishes with a sly smile. She turns toward me. “I hope you treat your parents with more respect than mine do.”
It’s obvious she’s joking, so I laugh along with everyone else. Hell, I wish my family was this cool. It’s just my father and me, and even if I had played a sport, I doubt he would’ve been there, phone in hand to immortalize it. “Alas, I’m not much of an athlete.”
Izzy stares at me, twisting her head. “Not enough people say alas anymore.”
“Izzy,” Zaiah rebuffs.
“No, I mean it. It’s such an old-timey word. Makes you sound smart.”
“Lenore is smart.” He bumps me with his shoulder.
“More like a nerd,” I admit.
He leans down to whisper in my ear conspiratorially, but he says it loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s okay. Izzy’s reformed. You could be, too.”
The motorhome jolts, and I reach out my hands to brace myself. One of them lands on Zaiah’s large thigh. Jesus . His sister was right. Is he constructed of muscle?
His dad shouts, “Curb number one!”
Zaiah places his hand on top of mine. “I was kidding about the driving, by the way. He’s actually really good at it, but this thing is so dang big, the campus streets aren’t set up to accommodate it.”
Relaxing a little, I take a peek outside the windows. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Zaiah enjoys getting off campus when we come down.” His mom peers at him as if he hung the sun and the moon. “We’ll be heading to a campsite on the lake. Hope you like to eat.”
Zaiah turns to smile at me. “My mom’s hobby is cooking and baking. My dad’s hobby is buying expensive toys.”
His mother shrugs as if he’s done an excellent job summing them up.
I glance around, still taking everything in. This isn’t anything like I thought it would be. The few times my dad came to visit, we ended up at one of the fancier restaurants in town and sat around and made the obligatory, strained small talk until we could call it a day, saying we tried when we really hadn’t.
It doesn’t help that he and I disagree about the next step in my life, which is coming sooner rather than later. Despite all my previous objections to his plan, I’m sure it’ll come as a shock to him when I don’t go running home after graduation.
Zaiah hits me with his elbow. “Lenore is a reporter for the school paper.”
His mom and sister look at me expectantly, like I missed a crucial part of the conversation. “Yeah, sorry. I’m a reporter. That’s what I want to do when I graduate in the spring.”
“No wonder you used the word alas .”
I lift my shoulders. “Comes with the territory, I guess.”
“Have you ever used it in an article?”
“Pretty sure.” I grin. “I try to throw in at least one word that will trip up people.” It’s become a sort of running joke in the newsroom now.
“She’s the one who wrote all the articles about the football scandal.”
“Ooh.” His mother’s eyes flash. “He sent them to us. Very nice.”
“Now I see why you like her.” Izzy laughs. “Your grudge with the football team.”
“It’s not a grudge.”
His father laughs from the front. “Now who’s lying?”
Zaiah’s jaw twitches, but he doesn’t respond, and soon, Izzy is giving her brother a play-by-play of her field hockey match yesterday with his parents interjecting every now and then.
The motorhome shakes as it picks up speed. None of them seem to notice, but this is the first time I’ve been in a home on wheels, so every slight shimmy has me peering around to decipher where the noise is coming from and whether we’re going to fall apart on the highway.
Luckily, we get to our destination in no time.
Zaiah’s father situates the RV so that the windows in front of me face a good-sized lake. A small firepit, an ancient charcoal grill, and a rocky beach are the only things visible before the water’s edge.
“This is so pretty,” I muse, stretching in my seat so I can peer out. In the distance, you can see the opposite bank, bare trees painting the landscape.
Zaiah’s father releases his seat belt and steps into the main living space. “Perfect spot, huh?” He pushes a button on the wall, and a mechanical whir starts up. “Floor levelers,” he says above the noise, nodding and smiling.
I didn’t realize we were off kilter, but soon, the noise stops and everyone starts moving about. Mr. James places a hand on my shoulder. “Listen, my house is your house, Lenore. There are beds to take a nap in, my wife will be cooking—you won’t want to miss that,” he adds. “And I’ll probably watch some sports. Go outside. Stay inside. The day is yours.”
A warmth envelops me. “Thank you, sir.”
He puffs his chest out. “Sir? I like her.” Pointing at his own kids, he says, “You two could use some manners.”
Zaiah shakes his head. “Thanks for making us look bad.”
I pat his shoulder. “Pretty sure you do that well enough on your own.”
“Ohhh,” Izzy howls. “I double like her.”
His mom stands. “So this is what it would’ve been like with three kids.”
“You could’ve stopped after me and saved yourself the trouble,” Zaiah calls out after she retreats to the kitchen.
“Ha. Ha,” Izzy overexaggerates. A pillow flies across the RV, but Zaiah easily snatches it out of the air before it hits him.
The day with the Jameses is so fun. I skim stones along the water with Zaiah. Eat his mother’s cooking, which tastes divine. Listen to his father’s dad jokes, and witness true sibling interaction. It doesn’t take long before I feel a part of the gang, not an outsider asked here by Zaiah. His parents include me in everything. Izzy even asks me what I’m currently writing, and among them, who’ve never heard the clock tower lore, the opinion is split down the middle on whether it should be fixed or not.
After the second time we eat—yes, the second—I steal away outside to write some notes on my article about the clock tower. Since people will want to make their own opinions, the fact-only piece will help them decide. I could even poll the newsroom or other specific campus groups for sidebar content. Maybe urge the school administration to let the students decide the clock tower’s fate with a popular vote.
I write down my last note and come up for air. The wind off the lake whips around for a second, and with it, voices filter toward me. It takes me a minute to realize Zaiah and his sister are doing the dishes in the RV above my head.
“I like her.”
“Me too,” Zaiah says. “She’s fun.”
“Would you maybe like her…more?” she pries.
My stomach twists. I definitely shouldn’t listen to this, but I can’t really get up now. They’ll see me.
He groans. “I wish you guys would stop butting into my love life. I’m not interested in being with anyone right now.”
“Listen, Trish was a bitch. It’s normal—”
“It’s not about Trish,” he snaps.
“It is.”
“Okay, fine, it is. She twisted me up inside. Had me thinking one way, then the other. It was like a rollercoaster.”
“And you were in it for the ride.”
“Yeah, except the ending sucked.” He pauses for a few moments as the faucet turns on, and I’m worried I’m going to miss something. Morbid curiosity and all that. But when it turns off, I can hear them perfectly again. “I don’t know if I can trust anyone right now.”
“You have to start sometime.”
Dozens of images flit through my mind. The kind of person I was around Trish. The kind of person she really was, deep down, when she let the monster come out. The way she used me to cheat on Zaiah. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time.
She had all of us played.
When I confronted her about it, she acted like she was some sort of diabolical mastermind instead of someone who truly cared about anyone. I couldn’t stand it. For once, I finally stuck up for myself. I told her no more, that she couldn’t use my name as an excuse to see her side boyfriend, and if she did it again and I found out about it, I’d tell Zaiah myself.
To my knowledge, she never did, but I told Zaiah anyway. Well, sort of. I didn’t go up to him and say, “Hey, I know Trish has been cheating on you.” I sent him an anonymous email with pictures I’d taken of a message thread on her cell phone.
I wasn’t sure he’d even read the email, let alone put much weight into the content, but before I knew it, he’d confronted her. To her only credit, she didn’t lie. She spun tale after tale about how they never said they were exclusive, but she didn’t lie.
If you’ve never heard a manipulator manipulate their way through a situation, it is horrific.
While listening to them argue, I picked out things here and there that sounded so familiar. Things she used to say to me that would make me feel crazy for being upset. She knew how I felt about that. We’d spent countless nights of me talking about my overbearing father, and yet she was manipulating me into submission, too.
The worst part of the whole scenario is that I let her take away my voice.
I wish I’d had the balls to tell Zaiah about her cheating myself. Instead, I made it some sort of espionage mission. Call it immaturity or shyness, I’m not sure which, but sending him that anonymous email sounded like the best option at the time.
Hearing the anger still in his voice, I wish I’d given him that answer respectfully and with sympathy.
I’m glad she moved out. I’m glad she yelled all that awful shit at me and left immediately so I didn’t have the chance to forgive her.
I blow out a breath, and in my stillness of mind, their conversation comes back. “Nothing is going right, so no sense in starting a relationship with anyone. Plus, I’ll be graduating soon. Why begin something when in a few months, everyone will be headed their separate ways?”
“When did you become a nun?”
“I’m being smart. It’s called maturity.”
“I think you’re just scared.”
I close my notebook, my stomach turning over. Zaiah doesn’t want to date, and I don’t even know why I’m reacting like this. I guess there was still a part of me from that night when I was dancing on the table that held out hope…but it’s squashed now.