He rises to his feet, zips up, and offers me his hand. I take it as reality slowly trickles into my brain. I let the Las Juntas football captain screw me in the woods. If anyone finds out, I’m officially dead. A sudden wave of fear washes over me.
“Tell me you still want to be my friend.” I gnaw at my lower lip.
“I do. I am. I’ve always been your friend, Skull Eyes. Even four years ago.”
“What makes you say that?”
He blinks at me, dead serious. “Because if I weren’t your friend, I’d have fucked you over and made sure you paid for what you did.”
I slip my hand under his black hoodie, over his shirt, searching for the hole I know I’m going to find. It’s there but smaller. His heart is beating so hard against my palm. I know he is feeling this, too.
I blow out imaginary candles and make a wish.
“You know what I feel like?” he asks.
“What?”
He can barely contain his wolfish, twisted grin. “An apple.”
On the drive back home, Penn argues that I need to hear my mom out.
“She’s neurotic as fuck, full of good intentions and bad execution, and she’s shit-scared of you, but she loves you. It’s nauseatingly clear.”
“I’ll think about it.” And for the first time in a long time, I mean those words.
I know that Dad and Bailey would be grateful if we play nice with one another. I haven’t felt this hopeful in years.
We pull up to my house, and Penn slams the passenger door and swaggers his way to the entrance. I follow. He stops at the door and turns around, pulling me to him by the waistline of my skirt.
“FYI, you smell like dirty forest sex.”
“You smell like a cheap beer,” I murmur as his lips find mine, drugging and perfect.
“You smell like my new, steady ride.” His lips move against mine.
“You smell like a lot of really fun nights.” I pretend to sniff his neck, armpits, face. My heart speeds without direction all over my chest. I push Adriana’s memory aside. The other girls in Las Juntas. Blythe.
“You smell like you might be right.”
He smacks another wet kiss on my lips and pushes the door open.
My smile is so big, my cheeks hurt. We saunter in together, but far enough away from each other not to arouse suspicion. Penn stops when we reach the living room, dropping his keys to the floor with a clink.
I sigh, picking them up and handing them to him.
“Marx, Penn! You’re so clumsy.” I laugh breathlessly. “You dropped your—”
“Via?” His voice is thin glass, waiting to be shattered.
I lift my eyes from his stupid keys to the stupid couch where my stupid family—Mel, Dad, and Bailey—are all sitting in one neat line, hands tucked between their thighs, and between them sits a grown-up version of Sylvia Scully. She’s clad in a conservative black dress that ends at her ankles and wears a polite, robotic smile.
She stares at me, not Penn.
“Surprise.”
You came back to me like a tempest
Beautiful and dazzling and destructive
Ripping everything in your wake
Including, but not limited to, my heart
Be careful what you wish for.
For four years, I’ve dreamed of this moment.
In some of my dreams, I punch her square in the nose and tell her she’s a cunt.
In others, I hug her close and fall to my knees, begging her to never leave me again.
In most, I tell her all the things I wanted to share with her while she was away. That Mom became worse after she disappeared, which means that maybe she gave a shit after all. That Rhett got beat up by a bunch of white supremacist drug dealers who tried to get into his territory several times and was hospitalized twice. That he is missing three teeth and half an ear now, adding playfully that his modeling days are over. That I hadn’t lost my virginity to Adriana, like Via said I would, because “Adriana always looks at you like you’re food, and the kind you don’t leave leftovers of.” That I made it as captain. That she was wrong about Kannon, too. He didn’t grow up to be an asshole and is actually surprisingly bearable for a human being.
But now that she is here, I just stand like an idiot and stare at her as though she took a dump on my football gear. I can’t fucking breathe, and it feels like she is pressing on my sternum with her orthopedic shoes.
I’m taking inventory, for whatever the fuck reason, to make sure all the organs are still in place. Even sitting down, I can see that she is still a head and a half shorter than me, only we’re both much taller. She is lithe and athletic, but her long blond hair is now braided into an Amish bun, and she doesn’t have any makeup or the nose ring that she had before. Her dress could belong to a nun.