“Jacob,” I say. “He’s on his way home. Kallie and Ethan are throwing up.”
He grimaces. “Gross.”
I laugh. “Oh, trust me, I know all about you and your queasy stomach.” He walks over and takes out a to-go cup. “Remember when Ethan was a baby, and you thought it was a good idea to throw him in the air?”
“Oh my God.” He puts his hand to his stomach. “He threw up right in my mouth.” I throw my head back and laugh, thinking about it.
“It took you two seconds to hand him over to me, and then you threw up in my flowers.” I can picture it like it was yesterday.
“Be happy I didn’t throw up on you,” he says and closes the lid for his coffee. “I have a meeting with the sanitation department in ten minutes,” he says to me. “Do you want to come to the office for lunch?”
I stretch. “Might as well get it over with.”
“What does that mean?” He takes a sip of his coffee.
“It means that the news of the bar is probably all over town,” I start. “Then the news of my windows was probably all over town even before Grady showed up. Shirley is the town’s gazette.”
He shakes his head. “Fuck ’em.” Pushing off, he comes around the counter and stands right next to me. “See you for lunch,” he says softly. I watch as he leans in, and I wonder if he is going to kiss me. I close my eyes, then I feel his lips right beside my lips. “Call me if you need anything.” My eyes flutter open, and I just nod. There is nothing more that I trust myself to say. Also, my tongue is in my throat, and I feel that any words that might come out are going to be slurs. After I watch him walk out of the house, I get up and walk to the door, seeing his red taillights drive off. I walk upstairs and pull out a pair of white jeans and a pink top. I’m just walking down the stairs when my phone rings, and I see it’s my mother. I roll my eyes, knowing that she already heard the news, and she lives two towns over.
“Hello, Mother,” I answer, putting the phone on speaker while I make the bed.
“Don’t hello me, Savannah,” she says, and I hear her blow out. She’s already smoking. I shake my head. “Why didn’t you call me?”
I roll my eyes. “Why would I call you, Mother?”
“Because I’m your mother,” she huffs out, and I want to laugh. She is more like the annoying big sister. There was nothing motherly about my relationship with her.
“And what were you going to do?” I say.
“Do you know how embarrassing it is to find out news from Mary Ellen?” She blows out again. I sit on the bed and close my eyes. “That my own flesh and blood didn’t tell me but—”
“I get it, Mother,” I say. “I should have called you for you to do nothing and then to tell me that you told me so.”
“I wouldn’t have said that,” she huffs out. “I also heard about the party.”
I close my eyes. Of course, she did. “Shocking,” I say sarcastically. “Who filled you in on that, Mother? Couldn’t have been Mary Ellen.” I know that whoever was in that room at the party would not have called my mother. “So when did he call you?”
“I saw him yesterday,” she says, and my stomach sinks. “He was in the area.”
“I bet,” I mumble. He was in the area a lot when we were living in a tiny trailer on the other side of the town, too.
Of course he would sneak over at night and then leave before the sun came up. I remember the first time I caught him walking out of my mother’s room with his shirt over his arm and carrying his shoes. He looked at me and sneered and then turned back to look at my mother who was walking out in her purple satin kimono tied lightly around her waist and her hair all disheveled. She nodded at him, and he walked out, then she took one look at me and said that what happened in our house was private and to keep it as such. I was nine. I didn’t understand it then, and when I was twelve, I asked her if she even liked Mary Ellen. She gasped and said that she was her best friend. When I asked how she could do this to her, all she said was, “Everyone has needs, Savannah.”
“It doesn’t matter that he was here. What matters is that you make sure it doesn’t get out to anyone else,” she hisses out now. “You signed that paper. Don’t forget,” she reminds me.