Chapter 14 #2
Noting the pitcher already on the counter, I said, “Iced tea would be great, thank you.”
Grace poured, and we sat on the stools tucked under the counter. Emma grabbed her cutting board, the knife, and a bag of red grapes and set up facing us. They looked at me expectantly.
“Um,” I said, my gaze darting from Emma to Grace and back again.
“Not to be all high school about it, but Cecily said she saw you and Jeremiah all wrapped up in each other outside Sundown.” Emma sliced grapes in half as she talked. “Is that true?”
“We might have kissed,” I admitted.
Emma set down the knife and stared at me with a dumbfounded expression. “Wow.”
“Wow,” Grace echoed, shaking her head.
“Wow,” Blair said behind us. When we looked at her, she shrugged. “I’ve never seen Jay show any interest in a girl before. Or a man.” She plucked a grape from the bunch and popped it into her mouth. “I was starting to think he was a eunuch.”
The memory of him hard between my legs as he pressed me to the wall came flooding back. “Definitely not a eunuch,” I muttered.
Emma pointed her knife at me. “I’m going to need to know how you know that.” She pointed the knife at her daughter. “And I need you to tell me how you know that word.”
“What, eunuch?” Blair asked, helping herself to another grape. “It was in Dogma. That’s a movie from the nineteen hundreds. My friends and I are really into vintage stuff right now.”
“Careful, kid,” Emma warned, but her lips twitched with laughter. “I was born in the nineties.”
Blair smirked, completely unrepentant. “Yeah, Mom. You’re vintage.”
“That’s it! You’re grounded for a thousand years.”
Blair snorted and grabbed one last grape. “How about instead, I go to my room so you can talk all about how Jay isn’t a eunuch because I really don’t want to be here for that. Call me when lunch is ready. Byeeeee.” She twirled out of the room, leaving us laughing behind her.
“Nothing like a thirteen-year-old girl to keep you humble,” Emma said. “Now. About that kiss. I’m thinking it was a really good one if it told you Jeremiah isn’t a eunuch.”
I took a nonchalant sip of my iced tea. “It was all right.”
“All right?” Grace smacked my arm playfully. “Then why do you have the goofy grin on your face?”
“Fine, fine.” I nibbled my lip. This was uncharted territory for me.
I didn’t gossip with girlfriends about my love life, and I shut it down quick any time one of my subs asked something too personal.
In fact, I steered clear of talking about myself at all.
Most people didn’t even notice. People loved to talk about themselves.
But Emma and Grace were staring at me, waiting for my answer. They weren’t going to let me off the hook.
“It was the best kiss of my life,” I admitted. “But that’s all it was. A vacation fling.”
Pretty green eyes hovered an inch from mine. I sat on the floor with my back propped against the couch. Blair knelt next to me, scrutinizing every inch of my face.
“You have, like, zero pores,” she announced. She rocked back on her heels. “That’s kind of boring.”
“Sorry,” I laughed.
Blair tilted her head, still studying me. Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Hey, can I make you ugly?”
I blinked rapidly. “What?”
“Like, old.”
“I think you mean vintage,” Emma said drily. She was curled up on the far end of the couch, watching us as she knitted a blanket.
Blair was already rummaging through her makeup kit.
“It would be good practice. I’m already great at making people pretty.
And sometimes my friends let me do their makeup for Halloween.
But they all want to be pretty things, like elves and fairies.
No one ever lets me make them ugly. I practice on myself sometimes, though.
I’ve got some liquid latex that’s great for making lines and wrinkles. ”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not.” I eyed her kit. “All your stuff is clean and sanitized, right?”
Blair nodded solemnly. “I gave Uncle Liam pink eye once, and he was mad. I’m really careful now. Anyway, next year I’ll be fourteen and I’m going to start charging people to do their makeup for, like, prom and weddings. No one will hire me if I’m gross.”
“Very true.” I leaned back and closed my eyes while she dabbed moisturizer onto my cheeks, forehead, and chin. “I respect the hustle.”
“Hang on, I’m going to go get my spa headband to keep your hair out of my way.” Blair jumped to her feet and dashed to the stairs.
“Hey, toss me that mascara, will you, Lennon?” Grace asked from her chair across the room. “I need to take a photo so I know what to buy. It’s really good.”
I looked down at the pile of tubes. At least two looked to be mascara. I held one up, glancing at the label. “This one? Lux?”
Grace shook her head. “No, it was something XL. I can’t remember the brand, but I remember that.”
Emma leaned forward and peered over my shoulder. “That’s it. See? XL.” She tapped the letters.
I blinked and looked again. “Oh. I don’t know why I thought it said Lux. Letters moving around on me again, I guess.” I tossed Grace the tube.
She caught it with both hands and sent me a curious look. “Dyslexia?”
I forced a light laugh. “No, I just suck at reading.” Are you lazy, Lennon? Or just stupid? I pushed the voices down and kept smiling.
“Because letters move around?” Grace snapped a photo of the mascara with her phone and then tossed it back to me. “And maybe your brain hallucinates letters and words that aren’t there, filling in the gaps to make sense of it?”
Like changing XL to Lux. I stared at the tube in my hands. “Sometimes,” I said.
She nodded. “I’ve had a few students with dyslexia. That’s how they describe it.”
“Or maybe I’m just stupid.”
I meant it as a self-deprecating joke, but Grace shot up from her chair and stormed toward me. She squatted down, putting us eye to eye. “We don’t use that word. You are not stupid. There are learning difficulties, and there is willfully ignorant. Stupid doesn’t exist.”
My eyes burned. “There are people who have known me my whole life who would disagree.”
“Then tell them to call me.” Grace’s face turned red with fury.
“Do it,” Emma said. “She’s vicious.”
Grace patted my knee. “You should get tested for dyslexia. It’s missed a lot in kids. Plenty of people don’t get diagnosed until adulthood.”
I chewed my lip. “Can they fix it?”
“No, it doesn’t work like that. But specialists can help you find ways to manage the challenges.”
Blair came bounding back into the room with a white terry headband in one hand and her phone in the other. “Uncle Liam wants to know why no one is picking up their phone.”
Grace smirked at her sister. “He means you.”
Emma rolled to her feet. “I left my phone in the kitchen. What’s going on?”
“Dunno,” Blair said. “Something about Jeremiah leaving with Grandpa.”
My body jolted at the sound of his name. Jeremiah hadn’t been at the lodge this morning, or at the stables. I had assumed he was…I don’t know, doing cowboy shit with cows or something…but from the anxious look on Emma’s face, something else was going on.
“He’s with Dad?” Emma’s brow pinched. She exchanged a look with her sister before bolting to the kitchen.
“What?” I scrambled to my feet. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing good if he’s with our dad,” Grace said. “Dad is the sheriff.”