15. Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
Then
I had snuck around with boys before, but whatever thrill I got from that was nothing compared to sneaking around with Theo.
It was jarring, the change from thinking of Theo as unattainable to craving his next kiss. My mind wandered to him constantly—especially at the store, where I often felt his eyes on me. I never had to wait too long: whenever he had the chance, he was tugging me out the back door, into the alcove by the office, even down behind the counter with a customer standing ten feet away.
The first time I turned the tables by shoving him into the single-stall employee bathroom, he leaned back against the sink and beamed at me. “I like you like this, Sass,” he said as I plastered myself against him.
“Me too,” I murmured, tugging his face down to mine. It wasn’t just the new side of my relationship with Theo that had me feeling so giddy; it was that the rebellious urge that had always been inside of me, trying to claw its way out, was now unleashed.
I was the one who was intent on keeping things under wraps. Theo’s parents were the opposite of mine: they trusted him, had no interest in micromanaging his life. “They wouldn’t care,” he’d told me. “And if they did, they’d just be excited.”
The problem was my mother, who absolutely would have an issue with us being together. The conversation where she told me to impress the right kind of boys stuck permanently in the back of my mind . Mom would have been thrilled if I were dating someone like Vince Redding. In fact, if she had been at the party that night, she probably would have chastised me for turning him down and running off with Theo instead. The fact that Vince was a jerk wouldn’t have mattered: his family had money, connections, and power that our family didn’t.
It had been about a week of kissing in secret when I showed up to work earlier than I ever had. I was notorious for rushing through the door minutes before—or after—my shift began, breathless with an excuse about my old beater of a car not wanting to cooperate. That day, I arrived a full thirty minutes early. Theo was opening with me, and we were supposed to be alone until noon.
I practically skipped into the store from the back, then came to an abrupt halt. Theo was there, standing behind the cash register with his palms flat on the counter. Across from him, as if they were customers checking out, were both of our dads. Cecil was wringing his worn baseball cap in his hands. My dad had his arms crossed, tension tight in his shoulders.
The chime of the front door stopped the group in mid-conversation, and in uncanny unison, they all turned to look at me. Theo ducked his head, wincing; my dad sighed, and Cecil turned his eyes to the ceiling.
“You're early,” Dad said. “Come here.”
I glanced at Theo. He didn’t say a word, but I could see it in his apologetic eyes: they knew something.
I slipped behind the counter, pausing to shove my bag in one of the cabinets. Then I stepped up to Theo’s side to face our dads. Too late, I realized that this probably wasn’t the best move. Too late—I was already there, because standing beside Theo was second nature to me.
I swallowed my nerves, fought to seem casual. “What’s going on?”
Dad and Cecil exchanged a look, and then my dad spoke. “The Reddings,” he said. “They own this whole stretch of storefronts, Nina Lynn, you know that?”
My heart plummeted to my feet. I did know that, but I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. Not even when I was pissing off their son and getting him punched in the face. “Yes, sir.”
“They’ve raised our rent,” he said bluntly. “By a lot. And I was talking to Julie next door at the salon, and she said she hasn’t heard anything about a rent increase. Then I went to the hardware store to ask Keith, and his rent isn’t getting raised, either, but he heard there was some incident between you two and Vince Redding at a party last week.”
“We’re just asking for the truth,” said Cecil. “We’re going to fight them on targeting us for a rent increase, but—”
“We might fight them on it,” Dad interrupted, “but we might not have the means to. This store is hanging on by a thread, and you two might have just cut it completely.”
My mouth was so dry, I didn’t think I could have spoken even if I had words. Theo cleared his throat. “I got into a thing with Vince,” he said, shifting his body so he was standing just slightly in front of me. “This is my fault, not Nina’s.”
“What happened?” Cecil asked Theo, seeming more concerned than upset.
I glanced at Theo, which I immediately regretted when I caught him doing the same thing. We made eye contact and promptly looked away, but it was too late: my dad drew in a deep breath, and I knew we were toast.
“Over Nina?” Dad demanded. “You risked our livelihood over a girl , Theo?”
Cecil opened his mouth, but Theo cut him off. “I defended your daughter from a guy who was physically preventing her from getting away from him,” he said. He stood tall, shoulders squared, and it wasn’t until that moment that I truly realized Theo was no longer the boy I’d grown up with: he was a man , a capable, confident one whose hands I wanted on me that very instant. “I understand this has caused a problem, and I’ll work for free if that’s what it takes to help us make rent. But I won’t apologize for punching that jackass.”
Cecil looked like he was fighting a smile, and even my dad’s eyes softened around the edges.
"Are you okay?” Dad asked me.
Nice of you to finally ask, I thought, but saying that to my dad would have invited a whole new host of problems. “I’m fine.”
“He touched you?”
“No, he was just standing in front of me.”
Dad nodded, his jaw working. “Stay away from him,” he told us. “Stay away from that farm and from Vince, alright?”
“Yes, sir,” I said at the same time Theo said, “We will.”
He studied us, and we stared back at him. I kept my face carefully blank, silently urging him to believe that we had nothing left to share.
It was Cecil—always the gentler one, the good cop to my dad’s bad cop—who stepped away first, giving my dad a light smack on the shoulder. “Let’s bring out that stock so the kids can run it."
Dad nodded and walked off with him. I heard the murmur of their voices, low and serious, but couldn’t make out their words.
They disappeared down an aisle, and I looked at Theo. “Oh my god,” I hissed.
“I know.”
“I completely forgot they owned the store.”
“I thought about it,” he admitted. “Afterward. I hoped it wouldn’t cause a problem.”
Guilt clawed at me. I sank into the chair behind the counter, the same one that had hosted my many time-outs as a kid, and pulled my knees to my chest. “You didn’t say anything.”
He leaned back against the counter, crossing his feet at the ankles. “There was no reason for both of us to worry about it.”
Picking at a loose thread on my jeans, I glanced around us. It was the backdrop of my life, even more of a home to me than our house. The Hoyts were here. Theo was here. The idea of the store being gone was incomprehensible to me. “What if we have to close because of this?” I asked quietly. “What have we done?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Vince was harassing you.”
“You should have let it go.”
“No,” Theo said. His tone wasn’t sharp, exactly, but it left no room for argument. “I couldn’t listen to him talk to you like that and let it go. Hell, maybe next time Kelly comes after you, I’ll tell her to shove it, too.”
I couldn’t help my laughter, even as I told him, “Don’t. That won’t help anything.”
He reached over to chuck my chin. “I know it won’t.”
I leaned my head back against the wall and looked up at him. “You can’t work here for free.”
Theo shrugged with nonchalance that I saw through immediately. “Sure I can,” he said. “I live with my parents. I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t you want to save up and move out?”
He hesitated for a second before he replied. “Yeah. Eventually.”
“Maybe in the fall, you could go to UNC after all,” I said. “You can take out loans.”
He shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and looked away, staring out the glass doors to the parking lot. “Nah.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. I heard Dad and Cecil come out of the back room, probably setting out the stock they wanted us to take care of. I caught a few words of their conversation and relaxed a little when I realized they were talking about football, not our massive screwup with Vince. Their footsteps and voices faded, leaving us in quiet once again.
There was some sort of tension between Theo and I that had appeared when I brought up college, and I didn’t like that. I scratched at the skin beneath my birthmark. “Remember the other day, when we both said we’d never lied to each other?” I asked, and waited for Theo to nod in the affirmative. “I feel like you’re lying to me about this.”
“I’m not lying,” he said. “I’m choosing to keep some things to myself. Like I did when you were into Lyle—”
“Kyle,” I interrupted, knowing full well that Theo messed up his name on purpose.
“—and instead of telling you that I really wished you’d forget him and be with me instead, I kept that to myself because it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Is it because of the money?” I asked. “I know student loans suck, but there probably isn’t going to be a business for us to take over, Theo. I really think you should—”
“Nina.” Theo let out a heavy sigh. “Stop.”
I did.
He glanced behind him, making sure we were truly alone. There weren’t cameras in the store, since it was a small town and we knew most of our customers. When he saw that the coast was clear, he closed the gap between us. His hands came up to cradle my face, and all I could do was stare at him, transfixed by the way he was looking at me.
“I have a reason for staying here,” he said quietly. “It’s not anything bad. The acceptance is still good; I just deferred for a year. I’ll tell you why, but I’m not ready right now. Okay?”
And even though that did nothing to assuage my curiosity, he looked so intent and sincere that I nodded, my head bobbing up and down in his grasp. If there was anyone in this world I trusted, it was Theo. “Okay.”
He kissed my mouth, and I melted into him, reaching up to hold onto one of his wrists.
Then the bell above the front door jingled.
Theo practically leapt backwards, trying to put distance between us. Dread settled in my belly as I glanced over, because I knew it wasn’t time to open yet, and I knew there were only three people in the world who could be walking through that door right now: Randi, Brock, and my mom.
I looked over, bracing myself, and let out a breath when I realized that it wasn’t my mom. The relief wasn’t as big as it could have been, though, because standing inside the door was Brock—and from the look on his face, he’d seen everything.
“Huh,” he said, as if he’d just learned a mildly interesting fact about bumblebees. “Who knew.”