6. Then
I haven’t asked Donna for a single thing during the eighteen months I’ve spent under her roof, but one afternoon before the boys get home, when we’ve got a dinner guest coming and she’s still only making enough food for four of us, not six, I can’t stay silent.
“Luke’s hungry,” I tell her, my gaze focused hard on the potatoes I’m peeling as if what I’m saying doesn’t matter.
“What’s that?” she asks, distractedly, peering into a cookbook.
“Luke’s hungry. He’s a lot bigger than everyone else. He needs more food.”
She glances up, blinking rapidly, slow to understand my meaning. “I’m sure he’d say something.”
I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. Of course he’s not going to fucking say anything, Donna. He’s your guest. What’s he going to say?
I straighten, setting the paring knife down to face her. “No. He wouldn’t.”
She studies me for a moment while I silently will her to see the situation as it is, not how she wishes it was.
She bites her lip. “I don’t know how the pastor will feel about that. I’ll need more money for the food budget.”
I suspected as much. The church rents this house for them, but they don’t have a lot beyond that. I see Donna sitting at the table every morning clipping coupons, fretting when a recipe calls for a half-teaspoon of some expensive ingredient. I should have been helping out all along, I guess.
“I’ll start chipping in,” I tell her. I’m saving so I can get my own place after graduation, but Luke’s only here for the summer and I’ve got another year to go. It won’t kill me.
She shakes her head. “Juliet, no. You work so hard. I don’t want to do that to you.”
I know she doesn’t, but she’s between a rock and a hard place.
The pastor doesn’t actually want me or Luke here.
He’s bearing us, nothing more, which is why she has me on my feet whenever he’s coming home but begs me to relax anytime he’s not around.
If she mentions the issue to him, it could make things worse for all of us.
“Donna, it’s fine. It’s the only way.”
She wants to argue. I know she does. Her mouth opens, then closes. “That’s very kind of you,” she says quietly.
Our guest, Mrs. Poffsteader’s nephew, arrives a short time later with his shirt buttoned to the top and his thin brown hair neatly combed.
Grady’s in his last year of Bible school and will be able to work as a pastor once he’s completed a one-year mentorship.
He looks like a kid pretending to be an adult, and I can’t imagine who the hell would spend an hour on Sunday listening to the thoughts of a twenty-two-year-old.
Especially this twenty-two-year-old.
The pastor shares some interminable story about indulgence, based on hearing a father tell his daughter she can’t have ice cream, and Grady’s eyes shine like he’s sitting at the Dalai Lama’s feet.
“What an amazing revelation,” Grady says when he concludes. “Your thoughts fascinate me. I can’t wait to hear you preach.”
When the pastor foists him off on us, suggesting we take Grady with us to the bonfire, I wonder if Grady’s sucking up is too obvious, even for him.
“We’d love to have you along,” Danny says politely, and my stomach sinks.
It’s bad enough spending a night being looked down on by Luke.
I’m not spending the night being looked down on by Grady as well, especially not a night when the pastor and Donna will be gone and I could get the whole house to myself.
“I’ve got to stay home,” I tell them. “I’ve got some summer reading to do.”
I sound convincingly apologetic, but when I glance up, Luke’s gaze is on mine with a hint of a smirk behind it. Somehow, he knows it’s a lie. How? How does he know these things when my boyfriend of two years doesn’t have a clue?
I clean up dinner alone and then go to the backyard with my brother’s ancient guitar, the one thing my stepbrothers never managed to take from me.
I’ve got this new chord progression I can’t get out of my head. I don’t know where it would fit into a song, but I play it again and again, humming along. When I get too frustrated, I revert to “Homecoming”, the one song I feel is truly completed.
Danny—the only person I’ve ever played it for—was unimpressed.
“Why don’t you try writing a happy song?
” he’d asked. He praises me over the smallest of things: the way I fold shirts, and brownies I made from a mix.
Hearing him say this song I wrote, created, and performed was “sad”, felt like his gentle way of telling me I should find a more realistic dream.
That was last winter, and I’ve barely played it since. But tonight, I’m listening to it, and I just think he was wrong. Yeah, it’s a sad fucking song. But life can be sad too. There’s just as much room for sad songs as happy ones in the world, isn’t there?
I play it from start to finish without a hitch, pleasure that borders on euphoria rushing through my veins.
It’s not like I’m Taylor Swift or something, but it’s just a good freaking song…
the longing in the lyrics, the guitar, and even my voice.
None of them are perfect on their own, but they come together in a way that just hits this sweet spot inside me, that makes me marvel a little at myself. I did this. Me.
The final notes die off at last, and it feels like all my joy—all my everything —goes with it.
Maybe this is why Luke doesn’t trust me. Maybe when he peers into my soul, all he sees is empty space.
* * *
If I thought I’d escaped Grady with my little lie about summer reading, I could not have been more wrong.
Soon, he’s dating Libby and with us nearly every night, though I can’t imagine why he’d want to be when he doesn’t drink or surf.
He seems to resent everyone but Danny—but it’s me he hates, and the feeling is mutual.
“Grady was suggesting we hang out someplace else tonight,” Danny tells Luke over dinner. “He’s tired of the beach.”
Luke raises a brow, his thoughts clear: then Grady doesn’t need to come .
For once, Luke and I agree on something.
Last night, Grady ridiculed me for using the word misogynistic .
“What big words you’re using. Remind me what grade you’re in again, Juliet?
” He smirked as he said it, with this gross little gleam of triumph in his eyes, so I countered by asking if Bible school even has grades, since it’s not really college.
And Danny said, “be nice . ” He didn’t say a word to Grady but I got scolded. So, on a night when the pastor and Donna will be out of the house, I’ll be damned if I’m giving up a night to myself for any of them.
“I’m going to stay in and do some more of my work for school,” I lie. He won’t understand why I need time alone and he also doesn’t understand why I’ve got a problem with Grady.
Luke’s head jerks toward mine—he says nothing but I can almost feel it coming…the day when he will. The day when he starts saying, “Use your head, Dan. Does what she’s saying even make sense?”
I wait until they’re long gone before I go to the backyard with my guitar. I’ve been working out the new song in my head for the past two weeks and I think I might have it.
I try two variations and they’re okay, but they’re not quite right.
Eventually, I give up and just play “Homecoming” again.
It sounds, on the surface, like it’s about a school dance gone wrong, but really it’s about walking into your home and knowing you’re no safer there than you are anywhere else.
I wrote it about my mom’s house, but I sometimes wonder if applies here too.
Nearly two years into this arrangement, I still feel like I’m walking on eggshells, like I’m one mistake away from being out in the cold.
The last notes float away, and I’m about to start something else when I hear movement near the back door and freeze.
“That’s good.” Luke steps into the light, staring like he’s seeing me for the first time. “That was really fucking good.”
My heart rate spikes, anxiety pinging in my chest. “Why are you home?”
“Why are you lying to Danny about schoolwork?” His voice is soft enough to take the edge from his words. “You shouldn’t have to hide this. You should perform.”
“I sing at church.” There’s a hint of resignation in my voice. As if I’m still trying to convince myself it’s enough.
His cheek sucks in as his jaw shifts. I picture tracing the hollow with my index finger. “No, I mean alone, on stage somewhere, and not just so the pastor can have everyone pat him on the back. I’ve never heard that song before. Who’s it by?”
“I…uh, it’s mine,” I say, looking away. “I wrote it.”
When I dare to glance up at him, his mouth is open. “Bullshit.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” I snap.
His eyes lock with mine. “Are you claiming you aren’t one?”
I say nothing. I lied about what I was doing tonight. I lie about being happy with the situation I’m in, and I’ve lied about way more than that. Whatever he doesn’t know about me yet, whatever he suspects…it’s probably right.
“That song is good,” he says, reaching for the door. “But it’s a little fucked up that you lied just to get a chance to play it. Don’t you ever get tired of being treated like an indentured servant?”
I stiffen. “I’m not. Being part of the family means pitching in.”
His eyes are flat. “Oh, yeah? How many times has Danny been asked to unload the dryer or help with dinner?”
I rise. “What exactly is your problem?”
He looks at me for a long moment, his eyes nearly black in the dim light. “You aren’t cut out for this, Juliet.”
I swallow hard and march toward the door. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He steps backward to let me pass. “I think you do. And the longer this goes on, the more you’re going to fuck him up when he loses you.”
I round on him as my jaw drops. “He’s never going to lose me.”
His eyes fall, for a moment, to my mouth. “He’s already lost you, believe me.”
I stumble away. It’s a ridiculous thing to say. And yet…there’s some tiny voice in the back of my head wondering if he’s right. Maybe I’m fake, maybe I’m here for the wrong reasons. Maybe I’m not pulling myself up to Danny’s level, but instead dragging him down to mine.
Maybe this isn’t something I can stick with for the long haul.