“Come downstairs. I’ll let you have coffee and I’ll tell you ev-er-re-y-thing your father told me, and also what I saw this morning before he left for work.”
I yanked a tank top over my head and shoved my feet into slippers hightailing it for the bathroom. My mom stayed behind picking up the clothes that I’d dropped carelessly all over the floor since this became my new room. A few minutes later I was downstairs and ready to face my humiliation.
“How many can you eat?” Mom hovered over me with the spatula balancing a stack of eight little pancakes.
“A hundred and fifty,” I told her. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, fingers under the blue frames of my glasses. The pancakes I drowned in syrup, the coffee, I abused with too much sugar and heavy cream. Feelings, I’d found, could be eaten when you were no longer allowed to cut them out of your skin and let them bleed into oblivion.
“I know this is a new town, new school and people. It’s a major adjustment. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about. That green-eyed mystery man across the street might not be a dragon, but really a prince charming.”
“Green-eyed mystery man? Hmmppff!” I said, taking a forkful that’s at least a quarter of the stack. The syrup ran down the fork and hit my fingers before I could get the bite into my mouth. I licked the sweetness off the tips of my fingers as soon as I was done chewing.
“With Harry Styles hair,” my mom said. She looked really smug.
“What do you know about hair. Dad was born bald, I swear! Even in his police academy graduation photos, his hairline is receding.”
She took a sip of her coffee, both hands wrapped tightly around the warm mug. She’s still giving me that look and desperately trying to pull off aloofness.
“Most people are born pretty bald, El, but his hair is dreamy. I watch the Today show, I know who all the cute guys are.”
“Oh my God, Mom! Spill it before I pee my pants! Did I go over there and ask him out? Hit my head on the coffee table when I had an episode in front of his whole freaking family?” Why can’t I just be normal? He was never going to ask me out because how’s he going to date a girl who couldn’t be around him without falling on her face?
“El, it wasn’t Calvin who made you seize. It was a traumatic memory and all the stress of this week. Your dad isn’t too happy about the neighbors.”
“What?” I had no idea where she was going with this. Why would I run to the neighbors if I heard something traumatizing? And I begged to differ. I could feel the blood rushing to my head whenever I even so much as looked at Calvin.
“It seems your father bought a house which happens to be across the street from the local Harley dealer. Not only that, but he’s the President of a motorcycle club, whatever that means.” She made air quotes around the word “president.”
“Holy shit! He must be so pissed.” I was stunned into silence with my jaw hanging slack. My whole family hated motorcycles, but nobody more than my dad.
Mom got a plate from the cupboard and shuffled two pancakes onto it. She sprinkled on powdered sugar and spooned some strawberries. She didn’t eat syrup because it’s too unhealthy. More for me. I poured a shot of it into my coffee and stirred.
“But that boy, sweetie. I don’t know but I think he might be a keeper. He carried you back across the street, all by himself. Of course, your father pulled his gun on him—”
“What?” I put my forehead on the table. Ruined. I was ruined before we even got going.
“He didn’t have his shirt on and that boy is absolutely covered in tattoos. What kind of parents let a sixteen-year-old get tatted up?”
“Um, I dunno, maybe parents who are in a motorcycle gang,” I said, my lips smooshed into the tabletop. I’m never lifting my head up. I’m never leaving the house. I would go gray, become an old maid, raise a whole litter of cats before I ever showed my face to this town. Might as well throw my contacts in the garbage now. “Besides, Adler had tattoos. Nowadays, it’s like more people do than don’t.”
“Adler had three tattoos he got starting at the age of eighteen all against the advice of his father and his mother’s wishes, thank you very much.”
“So he carried me, Dad threatened to kill him, he has tattoos. Any more damage? Did I say crazy stuff? Cry, puke, or pee on him?”
Mom shook her head no. She still had a super smug look on her face, hands wrapped around the cup as she blew the steam away from her mug.