Chapter 20
BEFORE
December, Twelve years ago
Mr. and Mrs. Delvecchio let me spend the night on Christmas Eve this year since Peter went to go see our mom again. This would be my third Christmas with the Delvecchios, but the first time I ever woke up with them on Christmas morning.
I slept in Julie’s old room, and in the morning, I padded my way down to the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice. When I entered the kitchen, Marie was making a pot of coffee and sniffling. At first I thought she was blowing her nose, until I got closer and realized she was crying.
I stopped in my tracks, and when she noticed me, she plastered on a smile, wiping at her eyes.
“Good morning, honey. How did you sleep?”
“Pretty good.” I put my hair behind my ears nervously. “Are you okay?”
Her smile got wobbly, and her eyes glassy. “Oh, just emotional that my kids are growing up. I miss Sam and Julie. I always braid Julie’s hair on Christmas morning, and she’s not here for me to do it this year.”
Her coffee finished brewing, and she turned around to fill a mug. I grabbed the orange juice from the fridge, and she handed me a glass to fill. I leaned back against the counter as I took a sip.
“You can braid my hair if you want,” I said with a shrug. My mom had never braided my hair—I didn’t even know if she knew how. Nobody had ever even taught me how to do a simple braid before; just last night I was about to watch a tutorial to learn how to do Jackson’s.
Marie smiled. “Yeah?”
I nodded, feeling bashful over how excited I was about the thought of my hair in two French braids.
She guided me to the family room, where she sat on the couch with me on the floor in front of her, my body between her legs. She ran her fingers through my hair to untangle the knots, then divided it into two sections, putting one side over my shoulder to separate it.
“You have such beautiful long hair, Addie,” Marie said as she grabbed three strands and started the process.
“Thank you.” My mom and Peter had brown hair, so I assumed I got my white-blonde hair from my dad. I didn’t even know his name, or what nationality he was. I knew I was half Italian from my mom’s side, but I would never know what the other half was.
I hadn’t seen my mom since I was fourteen, and she had never mothered me like this even when she was here.
She didn’t do the things Marie did with her children.
She’d never given me the type of attention this family gave me.
For the first time since my mom left, I realized how shitty of a mom she had been, and how unfair it was.
Did she even love me? Mr. and Mrs. Delvecchio showed me more affection than my own mom ever did.
When Marie finished braiding my hair she asked, “What do you think?”
I started to cry—I couldn’t help it. How had my mom never embraced me like this? I put my hands over my face to hide my tears, trying to control the sobs.
“Oh Addie . . . What’s wrong, honey?”
Being called honey just sent me over the edge, and I couldn’t hold back the full-on sobs, my entire being shaking with each cry.
Marie pulled me up from the ground and right into her lap, my face buried under her chin.
She wrapped her arms around me and I held onto her like I was a child.
I would be seventeen in just two months, but I was crying like a fucking baby.
“My mom never did anything like that for me.” I didn’t even know if Marie could understand me with how watery my voice sounded. “I barely even have a mom; I don’t even think she loves me.” It was so easy for Mom to leave me, to move away with her boyfriend and abandon me and Peter.
Marie kissed the top of my head, pulling me closer to her chest. Her voice was serious when she said, “Addie, you are such a special girl. You’ve been dealt a shitty hand in this life, but you are growing into such a lovely person.”
It felt so good to hear—to hear how much she cared about me, and that my life mattered.
“You are so important to this family. We all love you, so much,” Marie added.
They loved me? I knew they liked me, but love? My heart felt like it grew one hundred sizes. This family loved me. I loved this family, too. It was the closest thing I’d ever had to an actual family, and it settled something in me to know they felt the same.
“Even Jackson?” I don’t know why I asked, or why I needed the confirmation. He had been my best friend since I was fourteen years old, but we didn’t tell each other that we loved each other. I had never really told anyone, not even Julie.
Marie was rubbing smooth circles on my back that made me want to fall asleep. “Yes, honey, especially Jackson.”
What did that mean? Especially Jackson? I couldn’t think about it for too long, because I heard him say, “Hey.”
I leapt out of Marie’s lap, running my hands under my nose and wiping my eyes with the neckline of my pajama top. “Hey,” I said as I forced a smile. “Merry Christmas!”
Jackson stood in the doorway to the family room, looking from Marie to me with a question in his eyes.
“Your mom braided my hair for me,” I said, trying to steer the conversation away from my crying.
Marie gave me a small smile, seeming to understand how self-conscious I felt about my meltdown.
“What’d she do? Braid it so tight it made you cry?” I could tell he was trying to make a joke to ease the tension, but I was desperate to change the subject.
“Why don’t we open presents, yeah?” Marie asked as she stood from the couch, squeezing my shoulder as she passed me. The woman even knew how to read me.
Jackson walked up to me, his hair still in disarray from sleep. “You good?” he said, quietly enough so that his mom couldn’t hear him from where she was grabbing the gifts under the tree.
“Yep, I’m great.” I gave him two lame thumbs up.
He gave me a wary look, but he left it alone.
Phil came into the family room five minutes later, and Jackson and I opened our presents while sitting on the floor. He got a new pair of drumsticks, clothes, and a pair of high-top black Converse to match mine—although his didn’t have the embroidered pizza slice.
I was gifted two new sweaters that Marie said Julie picked out, a new purse (also courtesy of Julie), and three books that Marie said were trending right now at Barnes he had always been a protector toward me in his own way.
I pretended to fix my hair in the mirror now, too, just so I didn’t have to look directly at him. “Nothing was really wrong. It’s just that your family is really important to me.”
He didn’t even skip a beat when he replied with, “And you’re really important to my family.”
I loved hearing it from his mouth just as much as I’d loved hearing it from Marie’s. I wanted to tell him that his mom said the family loved me—that he especially loved me, too. I wanted to tell him I loved him, and that he was the most important thing to me.
I got that weird feeling in my chest then, as I noticed how much he had changed since freshman year; how much he was turning into a man.
I squished it down quickly though, because Jackson was my best friend.
This family meant everything to me, and I wasn’t going to mess it up just because of how much I wanted their son.
So instead, I said, “Thanks, Jackson. Good night.” Then I walked past him and shut the door to Julie’s room, locking it before crawling into bed.
***
The Delvecchios ended up letting me stay over for the rest of the week, and on New Year’s Eve, Jackson and I stayed home to hang out with his parents instead of going to a party. The holiday always made my stomach feel weird, because it was the first time I watched Jackson kiss someone else.
That evening Marie and Phil let us drink champagne with them, and we spent the night playing Monopoly before Jackson and I dug out the old game of Jeopardy! that Julie made for my sixteenth birthday. This time there wasn’t a single question that got answered wrong.
All of us had flushed cheeks and were a bit tipsy by the end of the night. When “Happy New Year” flashed across the screen and fireworks began exploding outside, Phil and Marie kissed while Jackson and I just stared at each other with awkward smiles while he rolled his eyes at his parents.
There was a split second where Jackson leaned toward me, and I thought he was about to kiss me right then and there in front of his parents.
He hugged me instead, and it was so tight that I could feel his heart beating right against my own heart in a perfect rhythm.
“Happy New Year, Addie,” he whispered into my ear.
I couldn’t help the way my body leaned into him.
“Happy New Year, Jackson,” I said with my mouth pressed against his neck. A strangled sound escaped the back of his throat.
We separated without making eye contact.
Marie gave each of us a hug next, pressing a kiss to my cheek and then his.
“Happy New Year, my lovely children! May this new year bring you adventure, and life-long memories,” Marie announced dramatically. She didn’t drink often, and I could tell she was feeling the champagne by how she accidentally called me her child—but a part of me wondered if it wasn’t an accident.
This would be an important year. We would take the ACTs in the spring, finish junior year, Jackson would turn eighteen, and we would start senior year.
I never planned on it being the year that things started to fall apart.