“Positives?!” she shrieks. “There aren’t any positives in this situation.”
“Well, I wasn’t eating your pussy like dessert, for one thing. She could’ve come a couple of seconds earlier and got an eyeful. Plus, we were planning to tell them, anyway. That’s one way to do it.”
“Oh my God,” she says again. “This is real. This is happening.”
“It is, so buckle up, Buttercup, and let’s go tell them the truth.”
Mollie takes a fortifying breath and opens the door.
It’s time to face the music.
Six sets of eyes are on me, each with varying degrees of horror plastered to them. I think Andrew is scarred for life.
“What were you thinking, Mollie?” my mom asks, throwing her hands up.
“I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have done that,” I say.
“Ya think?” my dad says, as if I just informed him that murder is bad.
“Why aren’t you upset about this?” Craig asks Tucker, who looks like he wants to melt into the wall and disappear.
“I, uh…” Tucker trails off, not knowing what to say. “Molls?”
I don’t know how to do this, so I decide ripping the Band-Aid off is the best way to go about it.
“I’m not with Tucker,” I admit, and no one looks surprised except for my parents. My brothers smile, like they knew it all along.
“We never really were,” Tuck chimes in. “I’m sorry. I love you guys like family, and we didn’t mean to lie to you. This whole thing just kind of got out of control. My dad thought we were together, and he started giving me clients at work, talked about making me a partner at Hastings. And then it just kept getting harder to come clean.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Tucker. Why lie to us?”
“I didn’t want you to slip up around my parents. It had to seem real. And it was real, in a way. At least for me. I hoped Mollie would end up feeling the same, but she never did.” Tucker directs the last part of the sentence to me. “We never should’ve dated. We’re better as friends.”
“This is bullshit. I’m going to bed. Merry Christmas, you’re all crazy,” my dad says, before heading upstairs.
“Wait, Dad,” I say, before the courage leaves me completely. “There’s one more thing.”
“Jesus Christ, Mollie. Are you trying to kill your old man?”
“Tucker isn’t the father. Cam is.”
My dad throws his hands up as if to say of course, he is, and then he’s upstairs, hiding from the crazy.
“You guys just assumed—” I start, but my mom cuts me off.
“Because we thought he was your boyfriend!”
“I know, I know. I don’t know what to say, besides I’m sorry.”
We go around and around again, until all of us are yawning and seeing through half-closed eyelids. Mom grills Cam, but Andrew and Craig are pretty much just hyped that they’re essentially going to be related to him now. Tucker is the first to bo
w out. He offers to leave, but my mom insists he stay here. He’s still family.
I can tell she isn’t comfortable with Cam being here, but honestly, I’m not comfortable being without him right now. I only have a few more days in River’s Edge, and I want to get to know him as much as I can. To soak him in and drown in him. So I decide to stay with Cam, leaving her with a promise to come home first thing in the morning, being Christmas and all.
Once we’re back at his house, I’m too tired to function, which is unfortunate for the case of blue balls he’s been nursing since the bathroom incident. Cam curls up behind me in his bed, wrapping an arm around me.
“Why aren’t you in Aspen?” I ask the question that’s been niggling at the back of my mind but kept putting off because there were more pressing matters at hand. Cam exhales harshly.