Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Hailey
Jason’s mom, Rhonda, offers me a smile as she watches me follow her son to the kitchen.
She’s probably around my mom’s age, but she looks much better.
Her silver hair shines, falling in loose waves to her shoulders, and even though she’s dressed for comfort, her clothes are nice and fit well.
Her skin is smooth, glowing even, her smile warm and welcoming.
My mom, by contrast, constantly looks pinched. Sad. Her eyes droop, and she has deep furrows around her mouth from over a decade’s worth of grief.
Dad’s not much better.
They used to be happy. I remember them laughing a lot when I was little. But they haven’t found much to laugh about since Hunter.
It’s part of the reason I can’t live there anymore.
It’s just too depressing. It’s not worth the money I’d save on rent.
And it’d basically be a wash anyway with all the gas money I’d have to spend to get to the studio where I teach violin lessons and to and from rehearsals during the symphony season, not to mention the other gigs I do all over the greater Madison area.
Jason stops at a big island in the open plan kitchen, dining, living area and sets the bags of food on the counter.
He pulls out two plates, then begins to take the containers of food out of the bags, opening them up and turning them to face me.
“Help yourself,” he says, picking up a plate and getting a few wings from each of the containers.
He wasn’t lying when he said he’d ordered a lot of food. There’s enough here to feed at least a family of four and maybe have some left over. I glance around, wondering if his mom’s coming out.
Jerking his head at the food, he licks his fingers and raises his eyebrows. “Seriously. Dig in. There’s plenty. Unless …” His brow furrows. “I mean, if you’re not hungry, of course—”
My stomach betrays me by rumbling loudly. One of the suckiest parts of being broke and delivering food is that so much of it smells delicious, and I can’t have any of it.
Grinning, he sets his plate down, picks up the other plate, and practically forces it into my hands. “Eat. Sit. Tell me what’s going on with you. Oh, and find a tow place to call. Or do you want me to do it for you?”
I have to blink back tears again. What am I gonna do without my car?
“Hailey,” he says softly, his face earnest, his clear blue eyes meeting mine. He’s always looked striking with those blue eyes contrasting with his black hair. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
I have to fight back the hysterical laughter trying to rise at that.
It’ll be okay? He promises? Ha. Not likely.
I needed fifty more bucks to make my rent, and without my car, I have no way to get that.
And I can’t pay to fix my car or for a new (to me) car, and I can’t afford a rental either.
Without a car, I can’t make money. But I don’t have the money to get my car working.
I don’t even know who to call for a tow truck, much less how I’m going to pay for that.
My credit card’s supposed to be for emergencies, and I guess this qualifies, but ughhh.
At least I can get some free food …
Dipping my chin in a nod, I take the plate and stare at the open containers of wings on the counter.
“The one on the left’s Buffalo,” he says, “then there’s honey garlic in the middle, and traditional barbecue wings on the end.”
It’s cute that he thinks my inability to function is because I don’t know what the food is. I picked it up, after all. The app told me what I was getting—not that I memorized it or something. Still.
With a deep breath, I load up my plate with honey garlic and barbecue wings. I’ve never been a big fan of Buffalo sauce.
He’s sitting at the end of the table, already eating, two bones on his plate next to the pile of wings waiting to be eaten, one still in his hand. When I turn toward the table, he grins at me, then takes another bite, thumping the spot adjacent to his to encourage me to sit there.
Almost reluctantly, I do as he indicates. I was planning on sitting farther down, but he’s feeding me and letting me hang out for a second, and … “Can I use the bathroom?” I ask, setting my plate down.
He almost jumps out of his chair. “Of course! It’s down that hall over there”—he points to the other side of the room—“first door past where the hall branches off.”
“Thanks.” I offer a polite smile, then make a beeline across the living room to where he indicated. I hesitate for a second once I’m in the hall, but then I make sense of what he said, find the bathroom and hurry inside.
Letting out a sigh of relief at finally getting to pee, I take my time looking around at what’s obviously a guest bathroom while I wash my hands.
I’m stalling more than I should. My wings’ll be ice cold at this rate.
I had ‘em in my insulated bag in my car of course, but they sat on his doorstep for several minutes while my car decided to give up the ghost, and then we had our whole back and forth about me eating.
I’m not sure why I’m so hesitant … I guess I’m just not used to being taken care of very much. But this is a much nicer bathroom and much better food than I’d get at the gas station down the road.
Pulling out my phone, which I’d already set to pause my orders after I finished this delivery, I say I’m done for the night and close the app, swallowing the lump that rises when I once again take note that I’m short fifty bucks for rent.
I was already pushing things by being a few days late to get rent to Whitney, my thirty-seven-year-old roommate, who rented me the room after her second divorce.
I’m not sure how much she needs the money, but she definitely likes it.
She’s not the worst roommate ever, but I know she’s getting annoyed by me being a few days after the first of the month the last few months.
And now I’m going to have to ask for grace for the last fifty bucks, and I don’t know how I’m going to scrape it together anyway. Try selling my panties on Craigslist?
I’m not sure how quick of a turnaround that would be, though …
Not wanting things to get weird, I emerge from the bathroom and sit down at the table. Jason’s nearly done with his wings already. He must’ve been hungry.
He grins at me again when I sit down, finishes up with his last wing, sets the bone down, and wipes his hands on a napkin as I pick up my first wing and take a bite. “So tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time I saw you.”
I cover my mouth and snicker. “When even was that?”
Screwing up his face, he leans his elbows on the table on either side of his plate, his hands clasped above it. “Ummm … I wanna say you were in the eighth grade.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “You want a rundown on everything that’s happened since I was fourteen?”
He shrugs. “You can give me the tl;dr version.”
Still snickering, I shake my head again, trying to figure out where to start. “Well, I finished the eighth grade and went to high school, where I did most of the normal high school things—”
“Went to wild parties and got hammered every weekend?”
Jerking my head back, I let out a shocked laugh. “Is that what you and Hunter did in high school?”
His grin turns wistful, and he shakes his head, sitting back in his chair, his hands in his lap.
“No. We were good boys who did all the right things. We went to practice, we ate what our coaches told us we should, we slept enough so our bodies could recover and meet the demands we placed upon them. We wanted to be the best at our sports. We were both gonna go pro, you know.” The last is said so softly, it’s almost a whisper.
“Well, that seems to have worked out well for you,” I say after a moment, needing to fill the silence, not wanting to let the sadness win. I don’t have it in me to relive Hunter with him. Nor to think about how ironic it was that doing all the right things didn’t save my brother’s life.
Clearing my throat, I look down at my plate, pushing the wings around, suddenly not so hungry anymore.
“No,” I say softly. “I didn’t go to wild parties or get hammered.
” Well, only that one time. I was so desperate for my parents to pay attention to me while simultaneously convinced I was as much a ghost to them as my brother that I deliberately went to a party and got drunk one weekend my junior year just to see if they’d notice.
They didn’t. Not really. After I puked my guts out the next morning, my mom glanced up when I came out to the kitchen to get some water and asked if I had a stomach bug. I just nodded and went back to bed.
But I learned that hangovers suck. I hate throwing up with a burning passion. Deliberately choosing to do something that ends with me with my head in a toilet and everything in my stomach making a violent exit through its entry route wasn’t something I wanted to experience again. Or regularly.
Plus, being drunk wasn’t as great as everyone seemed to make it out to be. I felt dizzy and stupid, and I couldn’t control my mouth, and I ended up ugly crying on some random guy for like an hour. It was embarrassing and awful and just made me feel worse in every way.
“I don’t know if you remember,” I continue, trying to force myself to sound a lot more chipper than I feel, “but I started playing the violin when I was a kid.”
“Oh, yeah,” he nods. “I remember when you were first starting and listening to you practice ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ like every day for months.”
Grinning, I take another bite of my wing. “Well, first it was because I wanted to get good at it. Then it was because I was so proud of being able to play something I actually recognized, that I kept playing it all the time even when I’d moved on to other songs with my lessons.”
“That’s adorable,” he murmurs, and I blush a little, looking away again.
I remember thinking that Jason was really cute when I was eleven or twelve, though I knew that as a high schooler and my brother’s friend, he only saw me as a little kid. He’s grown into a very attractive man, and his obvious workout regimen as a pro hockey player certainly doesn’t hurt anything.
I feel a little dumpy and pudgy by comparison, suddenly self-conscious of the way my stomach sort of rolls when I’m sitting—especially when I’m slouching—and I sit up straighter.
My no-money diet has made me lose a few pounds, but I never lost the freshman fifteen I gained in college, so I’m not supermodel skinny by any stretch.
“Anyway,” I gesture with the wing in my hand, “I kept up with it. I went to the conservatory at Lawrence University, then started auditioning for orchestras.”
His face lights up at that news. “Wow! That’s so cool! Where do you play?”
Shrugging, I shake my head. “Nowhere fancy. I play with the chamber orchestra here in the area. It pays a little, which is nice, but isn’t anything like enough to live off of.
I teach, too, but summers are tough for that.
Kids—and parents—flake during the summer or take lots of time off.
So …” I spread my hands, doing my best to resist the urge to squirm.
Admitting that I haven’t managed to land a higher-paying orchestra gig stings and makes me feel like a failure.
Sure, I’m only twenty-five. I have plenty of time to apply and audition as often as I want.
But it costs money to travel to auditions, to work with audition coaches, to constantly grind for this, and it’s not like most of the orchestras pay all that well, either, so I wouldn’t be a whole lot better off even if I did land a better gig.
I’d still need to teach and gig outside of that to make enough money to live.
Or the other non-music work I do for money.
“I do food delivery to help make ends meet. It’s more flexible than getting a part-time job, which means I’m available for gigs any time of day, any day of the week, and I can practice on my own schedule.
” Within reason, of course. I try to practice at my teaching studio or when Whitney’s at work because she gets annoyed if I practice too long in my room.
She can hear it in the living room, and it makes it hard for her to doomscroll TikTok or hear whichever Real Housewives series she’s binge-watching.
“And how’s that going?” he asks, his tone neutral.
I shrug. “It’s … well, it’d be going better if my car hadn’t just died.” I try to keep my tone wry, on the lighter side, but from the look he gives me, I don’t think I manage it.
“And the ends. Are they meeting?”
It takes a second for me to catch his meaning, and this time I do squirm, looking down at my plate and setting down the bone I’m holding before I pick through the others as though I don’t know which flavor to eat next. “Well, again. It would’ve been fine, but …”
“Your car died,” he fills in, and I risk a glance up at him to find him studying me.
Sighing, I push back from the table. “Look, I really appreciate the food and the use of your bathroom. But I should probably call a tow, like you said, and get this figured out.”
His eyes narrow, and in this moment, he seems so familiar to me, it’s almost like time is folding over on itself and his teenage self is being superimposed over him now as a grown man.
He’s gotta be about thirty now? He’s the same age as Hunter, and Hunter’s five years older than me. He’d’ve been thirty in March.
“And do you have the cash to pay for that?” he asks, his voice almost accusatory, like he’s asking if I’m the one who took the last cookie out of the package he bought at the convenience store on his way home from school.
“Cash?” I shake my head, then plant my elbows on the table, my hands spread in front of me, palms up. “But I have an emergency credit card, and what is this if not an emergency?”
His jaw clenches, and he juts out his chin like he’s ready to fight me about something. “I don’t like this,” he says. “I don’t like it at all.”
I can’t help the laugh that pops out at that. “Uh, okay? And why exactly does your opinion matter?”