Chapter 12 #2
“You need more vegetables,” she said, scooping some onto my plate without waiting. “Teenagers think they’re invincible.”
“I eat vegetables,” I said.
“I’m sure it feels like you have a lot, but you need more than you think.”
My dad cleared his throat. “She’s fine, Hil.”
Hilary smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I know. I’m just looking out for her.”
The words sat there, smug, like she hadn’t helped blow my entire life apart. Like she hadn’t looked my dad in the eye and decided that whatever she wanted mattered more than my mum, more than us, more than the way things had been before she showed up.
I was fifteen, not five. I remembered appointments, deadlines, which nights my mum worked late and which mornings my dad forgot to set his alarm.
I packed my own bag. I made my own excuses.
I managed two households that refused to speak to each other.
And somehow this woman—this woman who was barely old enough to have gone to my high school at the same time as my babysitters—thought she got to supervise me.
I stabbed a noodle and chewed it hard. Hilary reached across the table and nudged my plate, angling it toward me. “You should eat a little more.”
I looked at my dad. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“I’m full,” I said, pushing the plate back toward her.
Hilary’s smile tightened, like she didn’t love being told no. “You barely touched it.”
“I ate enough.”
There was a beat of silence as she stared at me, her face frozen in a smile. Clearly, she wasn’t interested in talking to a teenager who had her own mind and thoughts.
“If she’s full, she’s full,” Dad said.
Hilary let out a small laugh like she’d been joking the whole time. “Okay, okay. I just worry.”
You don’t get to worry about me. Not after you ruined my family.
The conversation lurched forward again, awkward and forced.
My dad asked about school, and I answered him, deliberately not looking at Hilary.
When she jumped in anyway to correct, I felt something cold and steady settle in my chest. She talked like she’d earned a place at this table.
Like she hadn’t crawled into it through the wreckage of someone else’s marriage.
When I reached for my water, she slid a coaster under my glass before I could stop her.
“Careful,” she said. “It’ll leave a ring.”
I stared at the coaster. “So?”
She blinked. “So it’s rude to not use a coaster at someone else’s table.”
My dad frowned. “It’s an old table that we’re going to swap out soon, Hil.”
Hilary laughed again, too quick. “I just like to take care of things.”
I set my glass down anyway, deliberately half on, half off the coaster. She noticed. I saw it in the way her eyes flicked down and back up. I finished eating and leaned back, folding my arms. My appetite was gone, replaced by that familiar, buzzing anger.
I told myself she wouldn’t always be here. I could survive her until she wasn’t—because I wasn’t letting go of my plan for my parents to get back together. And Hilary didn’t fit anywhere into that picture.
Two hours later, we were all on the couch.
Dad was sitting on the far end of the couch, with Hilary cuddled up into his side, with a blanket covering both their legs.
I sat on the opposite end of the couch with my phone face-down in my lap since Hilary commented about how teens have no attention spans anymore every time I pick it up to do anything.
She acted like she was middle-aged instead of in her mid-twenties, and I wondered if she was constantly trying to prove to my dad how mature she was.
She was just in the middle of a lecture about why it’s important that I drink more water when my phone buzzed. I flipped it over, my stomach dropping when I saw the name.
“I’m gonna take this,” I said, already getting up from the couch.
“Everything okay?” my dad asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I stepped into the hallway, pulling the door most of the way shut behind me—not all the way, because it never felt like I was allowed to—one of Hilary’s lovely rules.
I leaned against the wall, lowering my voice automatically. “Hello?”
“Wow, you actually picked up,” Mitch said, but his tone was more mocking than surprised.
“Don’t take it as a compliment, I was just bored out of my mind.” I studied my nails, picking at small remnants of the orange polish from Sunday. “Are you calling about the little scene in the coffee shop earlier?”
“I just need you to know that I would have fought that guy if you wanted me to,” Mitch said. Even though I couldn’t see him, I could imagine him puffing up his chest. Easy to be brave when Cole wasn’t standing in front of him anymore.
“Uh huh.”
“And the only reason I didn’t was because I didn’t want him to get in trouble at his job. Like, I’m sure he needs the money. So really it was noble of me.”
“Yeah,” I said, the word coming out more as a sigh than anything. “It really was.”
He didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “So you agree then—we should go out.”
I snorted. “Nice try.”
“Come on, Imogen!” His tone came close to a whine, which would have immediately convinced me to turn him down if I’d been at all interested in the first place. “What’s it going to take for you to say yes?”
“Hmm…” I pretend to give it some thought. “Hell freezing over would probably be a prerequisite.”
“If there’s some other guy—”
“There’s not another guy,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear his jealousy spiral. “I’m just not interested. Take a hint.”
I hung up before he could respond. A little rude, sure, but he would get over it. Or he wouldn’t and he’d stop asking me out. Either way it was a win.
I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and stood there for a moment, debating what I wanted to do now.
The whole point of coming over here was to spend time with Dad, but Hilary had been getting in the way of that all evening.
Did I really feel like sitting out there watching her shows while Dad and I didn’t even get a chance to speak?
But then again, it was a little early to say I was going to bed and that could open up a whole other can of worms.
At least Dad said we could spend tomorrow together.
I was going to hold out hope that he meant without Hilary, like how we’d gone out just the two of us on Saturday.
She’d been slowly encroaching further and further on our time together, like she thought I was visiting her as well as him, but she couldn’t take everything.
I took a deep breath and with one longing look at the bed, walked back out into the living room.
Dad and Hilary were sitting exactly as they were before, but looked like they were having a conversation in low tones despite the show still playing on the TV.
I paused partway down the hall, wondering if I could go back into my room and fake being on the phone for a while longer instead of being in the middle of this, but then Hilary spotted me.
She immediately sat up straight, her eyes brightening.
“So who was that?” she asked giddily. It was the reaction I might have expected from one of my school friends, but it felt just bizarre coming from her.
I shrugged. “Just someone from school.”
My dad glanced over. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said again. “It was nothing.”
Hilary tilted her head. “Nothing-nothing, or boy-nothing?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but apparently my silence was answer enough.
“A boy!” she exclaimed. She grabbed the remote from Dad and paused the TV. “I knew it.”
My jaw tightened. “It’s not a big deal.”
“What did he want?” she asked.
I sat back down on the couch, picking at a loose thread on the cushion. “He asked me out.”
Hilary’s face lit up. “Oh my gosh. And?”
I shrugged and dropped back into the spot I’d been in before. “I said no.”
She stared at me like I’d told her I didn’t believe in gravity. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to go out with him?” I said slowly, the words raising more like a question. What other reason was there to say no to a date?
She laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “Okay, but why?”
“I just don’t,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t like him like that. Actually, he’s kind of annoying.”
Hilary turned toward my dad. “Did you hear this?”
He sighed. “Hil—”
“No, this is important,” she said, cutting him off. She looked back at me. “You can’t just say no to things like that.”
I felt heat crawl up my neck. “I can, actually.”
She waved a hand. “I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t. This stuff matters. Socialization matters. Especially at your age.”
I stared at her. “I’m not unsocialized.”