“Chocolate chip please,” I said, and was rewarded with her smile. “’Bye, Kennedy.”
I ran into her a few more times over the next few weeks, and I never said a word to Jewel about those early morning encounters when I went over to her house in the evenings. Not even when Kennedy would ask me how my day was. I’d only say, “I had a great jog, then a great day.”
Right in front of her mom.
“What about you?” I asked her.
“I had a great bike ride, and then a great day,” she said, and our eyes said everything. We had the start of a secret, and we knew how to keep it.
Chapter Eleven
Kennedy
The peaceful, easy feeling from staying at my dad’s quiet home doesn’t last long.
The next night I’m back at my mom’s and I’m falling down the black hole of noise again. I pull the pillow over my ears when I hear my mom and Warren screwing.
Loudly.
The sounds try to strangle me, and I want to slam the moans out of the world, send the perpetrators of them far into orbit. The noises worm their way into me, even as I grip the pillow harder and firmer, over my head. I can barely take it. I grab my phone, jam earbuds in, and blast Chess. My fingers dig into the side of the screen, like claws that somehow hold me back from writing to Noah, reaching for him, like I want to. He saved me from this. In every way possible, he was my escape, and he freed me. My fingers burn with the need to reach out to him, to seek that comfort, that blissful oblivion. But then I remember the pained look in his eyes from the other night, and I can’t keep racing to him when everything around me hurts.
At some point the music takes over and loosens the stranglehold. It’s enough for me to resist my lifeline.
I think I was his lifeline too. We were both adrift in New York City. We were both surrounded by so many people, but ultimately we were terribly alone. Until we found each other.
Maybe I’m still his lifeline because soon I can feel my phone vibrating under the sheets. I grab it, slide my thumb across the screen, and find a photo of a deer with a white heart on its butt.
I laugh out loud, a deep laugh that rumbles through my body.
Someday, we’re gonna find that deer.
Then, I turn to the folders on my phone and scroll through all my pictures of hearts in nature. Someday, I will go on a treasure hunt around the world and find them all. Someday, I will believe in love again.
*
“I wish I didn’t know what my mom sounds like having sex,” I tell Caroline as soon as the door to her office closes the next day.
She brushes her tawny brown hair from her face and gives me a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure. I’m sure you wish you didn’t know what that sounded like at all.”
“I wish I could erase all the memories of those sounds,” I say, because it’s not just her new beau, Warren, it’s Catey’s dad and Mr. Lipshitz and so very many others. “I mean, I guess you’re supposed to overhear your parents, right? But instead, I overhear my mom screwing other guys. And it’s not like I want to know what she sounds like with my dad, because that is completely disgusting as well,” I stop and look away. “But this is worse.”
“It’s the sort of thing you aren’t supposed to know about your parents. And the reason it feels so off, the reason it’s got you all out of sorts, is that it’s outside the typical boundaries.” Caroline draws a square in the air, cordoning it off with her hands. “There are boundaries in any relationship, and the things your mom did and the things she is still doing are out here.” She points outside the imaginary box.
But it’s hard for me to process her comments about my mom, even if she’s right. Maybe especially because she’s right. I press my hands against my belly, and wince. “My stomach hurts.”
“Does it?”
I move my palm to my forehead. “My head hurts.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I love my mom,” I say, because it’s true, and I need Caroline to know that.
“I know you do.”
“You think I should hate her, don’t you?”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think that at all.”
“Well, I don’t hate her,” I say, leaning farther back into the leather couch, suddenly defensive. “I love her. She was the one who was home all the time. My dad was traveling for business. Isn’t this all his fault? If he’d been around more, maybe she never would have started cheating.”
“Do you believe that?” Caroline asks me carefully.
“Maybe,” I mutter as I look away.
“Truly? Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he should have been home more. She had so many opportunities. So many chances. Maybe he wasn’t there for her.”
“Maybe he wasn’t,” she offers, ever the pragmatist, always waiting for me to figure out the crap of my life for myself. Today, it irks me. Today, it feels like an itch in my chest that I can’t scratch but don’t even want to touch. It’s a headache. It’s a bellyache. It’s everything that hurts in my life.
“I miss Catey,” I say as I play with the three charms on my necklace, dropping them against my shirt over and over. “I learned how to love coffee because of Catey. I became addicted to lattes and espressos and Diet Cokes thanks to her,” I say, then laugh once. I know caffeine dependency is not the barometer for a friendship. But the remnants of the time we spent together still exist in my life, even though she doesn’t. “I became a vegetarian because of her.”