Chapter 18
Shay
I couldn’t sleep that night. The alarm clock sat on my dresser, the red lights displaying the time, mocking me and my exhaustion. Dad hadn’t come home. Mom was still crying in her bedroom, and Mima wasn’t here. The house felt emptied of its light, and it made it impossible for me to sleep.
I glanced at the alarm clock once more.
Too late to call him, I told myself. Plus, why would I even try?
If I woke him up, I’d feel bad for interrupting his sleep, seeing as how I knew he struggled to fall asleep on his own.
But if he was up . . . if the night was keeping him awake, I wanted to hear his voice on the other end of the line.
I dialed Landon’s number. As it rang, my heart sat in my throat, and I tried my best to swallow it down.
“You OK?” were the first words to leave his mouth as he answered. His voice had its normal smokiness without any hint of just waking up.
My heart, which still sat in my throat, began racing even more. I placed my collar into my mouth and chewed on it lightly. “Why would those be your first words?”
“Because it’s past midnight, and most calls past midnight are with upsetting news or booty calls. If this is a booty call, then by all means . . .”
I could imagine the smirk on his face. “It’s not a booty call.”
“Damn. So back to my original question . . . you OK?”
“Define ‘OK.’” I laughed, grinding my teeth against the fabric. “My grandmother moved out today. Or, well, my mother pretty much kicked her out after one too many arguments about my father.”
“What?” His voice was alert. “Where is she? Is she OK? Where will she stay?”
I’d almost forgotten how much a part of Landon’s life Mima had been. The concern in his voice made me wish he was there with me so we could worry about my grandmother together.
“Is she OK?” he asked again.
“She has an apartment she’s renting for the time being.
It’s hard to tell if she’s OK, really. She has a hard shell and acts like nothing gets to her, even though I know it does.
She doesn’t show weakness ever, and when she’s broken, I don’t think I’d even notice.
She’s been our family’s rock from day one.
I don’t know who she leans on when she’s hurting, because we’ve all spent so much time leaning on her.
I just worry she’s struggling with all of this and she’ll never admit it.
She doesn’t show her emotions like that. ”
“The people who show the least emotions are normally the ones who hurt the most,” he stated.
My chest tightened. “Personal experience?”
“Something like that.” The tone of his voice made it clear he didn’t want to dive deeper into the subject. “Maria means a lot to me. Even though she’s my housekeeper, she’s been there for me through some of the hardest days.”
“Housekeeper?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah. She comes over every Sunday. She has for the past forever years.”
“Landon, my grandmother hasn’t been a housekeeper for years. She opened her yoga studio about four years ago . . .” My heart skipped as I thought about Mima and what she always said she was doing on Sunday afternoons. “She said her Sundays were meant for a dear friend of hers.”
Landon went quiet on the line. I imagined his bushy brows pushed together and the confusion swirling in his mind as the silence stretched across the call.
“She isn’t a housekeeper anymore?”
“No. Not for a long time now.”
More silence. Then, “I don’t get it . . .” he confessed. “I don’t get how she’s such a good person.”
“Yeah, neither do I.”
“Is that why you can’t sleep? Because you’re worried about Maria?”
“Yes.” I shifted around in my bed. “Why are you up?”
“Kind of what I do.”
“You need sleep, Landon.”
“I know, but just because you need something doesn’t mean it comes easily.”
True.
“I can stay on the phone with you until you fall asleep if that helps.”
“I don’t know if it will, but it’s worth a try. And Chick?”
“Yes?”
“Stop chewing on your shirt.”
I dropped the fabric from between my lips and shifted around. “What should we talk about?”
“Anything you want . . . everything.”
So that was exactly what we did. We talked about stupid things. Favorite things. Sports. I didn’t have much to say about sports, but he shared his favorite teams. Even though he was from Illinois, he loved the Green Bay Packers.
I called him a traitor even if I knew nothing about football. He called me beautiful just because.
His favorite candy was Reese’s Cups. His favorite soda was Mountain Dew. If he could visit any state, he’d want to go to California. He was afraid of snakes and loved dogs. His favorite movie was Home Alone.
“I love the part when he plays the movie clip and it says, ‘Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.’ I swear, when I was ten, I said that to anyone and everyone for a year straight. I still think it’s the funniest shit,” he explained, snickering to himself. I loved his laugh the most.
I gave him facts about me, too. How my goal in life was to see one of my screenplays made into a film or television series. How I dreamed of achieving the EGOT—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Sure, it seemed like a far-fetched dream, but if Audrey Hepburn could do it, maybe I could, too.
Even though I was nowhere near as talented as Audrey.
I told him she was my favorite actress. Her romantic comedies were some of the best in the world and the reason I’d fallen in love with writing romances. I told him about other writers I loved, too.
I told him so many things others probably found boring, but he listened and asked me questions about my dreams, my wishes, and my hopes.
“You can do it all, Chick. You will do it all,” he promised. “You’re too damn stubborn not to.”
That wasn’t a lie. Even if I didn’t do it all, I was going to fight like hell to get as close to my dreams as possible.
“What about you?” I asked. “What do you want to do?”
“I hate that question,” he muttered. “It always feels loaded.”
“Loaded with what?”
“Pressure.” He grumbled a little through the receiver and then cleared his throat.
“Everyone has an idea of what they want to do. Hank and Raine want to open that bakery and café shop. Grey is a shoo-in for taking over his family’s whiskey company.
Reggie has it locked down to be a dick begging people for money so he can get a ticket back home to Kentucky.
Everyone has their stuff figured out, while I’m walking around lost as fuck like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
” He paused. “That’s another favorite movie. Home Alone, then Pulp Fiction.”
“I’ve never seen that movie.”
“And to think you were just starting to grow on me.”
I snickered. “You’ve been growing on me, too, actually.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. Like a disgusting fungus between my toes.”
He laughed out loud, and my stomach fluttered with butterflies from the sound. I liked that. I liked that I made him laugh.
“You don’t have to have it all figured out right now, Landon. So many people go to school undecided. Some people take a year off to figure out what they really want to do. Some people don’t go to school at all. None of those are wrong choices. None of those choices are better than others.”
“I wish my dad understood that.”
“I’m beginning to think parents aren’t meant to understand us kids.”
“And we aren’t meant to understand them,” he added. “I want to be better than mine, though. If I ever had kids, I’d want to be there for them, unlike mine.”
I wanted to be better than mine, too.
My phone dinged as I received a message from Tracey. She and Raine had been texting me all night about a party at Reggie’s house—which was the last thing I wanted to be a part of.
Tracey: You were right about Reggie. He’s a jerk, and I’m done with him forever.
The following messages were about how he was caught hooking up with Monica. Even though it sucked, there was some relief I felt when I read Tracey’s messages. I’d listened to Tracey cry too many tears over that guy. As long as he was out of the picture, I was happy for my friend.
“It seems Tracey is officially over the Reggie infatuation,” I yawned into the phone receiver.
“Good. He’s a fucking asshole.”
“Rumor has it he hooked up with Monica.”
Landon groaned. “She’s been a mess lately. I worry about her sometimes. I know she drives me up a wall, but I also know her life is shit.”
He wasn’t wrong. Every time I saw Monica, she looked less and less like herself. She hardly even showed up to school anymore, either. “So her being involved with Reggie probably isn’t a good thing.”
“Probably the worst thing,” he replied.
I yawned again, trying my best to stay awake.
“You’re yawning,” Landon noted. “Go to sleep.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the sleepiness to fade. “I’m still here. I’m good.”
I yawned again.
“Hang up,” he said.
“Not until you’re asleep.”
“You’ll be asleep before me,” he explained.
“But stay on the line until you fall asleep, too.”
“OK.”
I yawned once more, my eyes feeling heavy. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
I didn’t know if he was a boy who broke his promises, but I was hoping he wasn’t.
As I was falling asleep, I gently spoke, “You could be an actor, Landon. You know that, right? You’re so good at it. You could be the greatest actor in the world.”
“That’s sleepiness talking. You’re delusional.” He yawned next. Perfect. “Good night, Chick. I hate you.”
“I hate you, too, Satan.”
“Yeah, but I hate you the most.”
If his hate felt this good, I couldn’t help but wonder how special his love felt.