Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(66)

On how, when I asked Mom if she’d seen him, she said no, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes, and then she went all falsely cheerful like she gets when she’s lying to me.

I’m not supposed to be worrying whether Caroline’s having any fun in the Caribbean, thinking about when I’m going to be able to steal twenty minutes to call her, if there’s some way to get her alone behind a locked door when the house is empty so I can talk dirty to her, unzip my jeans, take myself in my hand.

“Let me see,” Mom says.

“No.”

But Frankie’s coming up behind me, her fingers dipping into my back pocket for my phone, and I’m not fast enough to stop her. I grab her, tickle her, reach for the phone while I pinch her ribs just hard enough to make her squirm away, saying, “Ow!” even as she’s laughing.

“Catch, Mom!”

She tosses the phone, and I get a glimpse of the screen with my text app open before the case hits the floor and skates across it. Then I’m down on my knees, scrambling with my mom, Frankie at the periphery, and it’s the weirdest thing, because they’re both laughing, but when Mom puts her hand out and pushes me away, she pushes hard. When she gets the phone and vaults to her feet—runs across the kitchen, saying, “Keep him off me, Frankie!”—it doesn’t feel like a game.

It’s not funny.

I dodge around Frankie effortlessly, grab my mom’s wrist, wrench the phone out of her hand. My chest is heaving. I’m hot, out of control, full of misdirected rage, thwarted fury.

“Christ, West, lighten up,” Mom says. But her eyes are glittering, offended and prideful, and when I look at Frankie she flinches.

I want to storm out of the house. Take a long walk out to the highway and along the road in the gathering dark. I want to fume, but I’ve got nothing to be pissed off about except my own failure to make the lines in my life black enough, dark enough to keep this kind of shit from happening.

I take a deep breath and let it out.

This is my family. My place.

These are my people, and this is where I belong.

If it doesn’t feel that way, I’m doing it wrong. Closing myself off. And I can’t do that, because if I lose this, who am I?

I thumb through a couple of screens on the phone and hand it back to my mom, whose expression softens at the peace offering. “The one on the right, or … ?”

“The pretty one,” I hear myself say. “Her name’s Caroline.”



What r you doing?

She texts back right away. Nothing.



What kind of nothing?

Laying on couch watching a movie.

What movie?

Breakfast Club. I’ve seen 400 Molly Ringwald movies today.

Why?

They were my mom’s. I watch them sometimes.

A pause. My dad’s at work. I’m bored. Break sucks.



Yeah.

Another pause. I’m calling you.

I’m on the couch, alone in the house. New Year’s has come and gone, and Franks is back in school. Bo’s on days again. He and Mom are both working, and the house is quiet for the first time since I got here.

I’m hard before she even picks up.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

Then silence, and she laughs this breathy sort of laugh. “This is weird.”

“Which part?”

I can imagine her biting her lip. Looking away from me.

I can imagine her throat turning red and blotchy. The way her breasts are rising with each quick intake of breath.

“You know the part of the movie where Judd Nelson is in the closet, and Molly Ringwald locks herself in there with him?” she asks.

“Which one’s Judd Nelson?”

“The guy with the long hair and the flannel shirt.”

“The bad boy.”

“Yeah. And Molly Ringwald’s the one—”

“I know who she is.”

Caroline laughs. Kind of nervous. “That part’s on right now.”

“And?”

“And that’s the best part. Molly’s got her pink silk shirt on and her hair all perfect, because she’s such a good girl, only now they’re in the closet together …”

I start to laugh, realizing where this is going. “I thought you’d be into that other guy.”

“Who? Anthony Michael Hall?”

“The wrestler one.”

“Emilio Estevez? Ew.”

“He looks like Nate, but not as blond.”

Silence for a few beats. “God. He does. You’re right.”

She sounds so horrified, I start to laugh.

“But I always liked Judd best,” she says. “Even when he spits in the air and swallows it.”

“Got kind of a bad-boy thing, don’t you?”

“No.”

I can hear the smile in her voice, though. “It’s all right. Maybe I’m into poor little rich girls.”

“Maybe you are.”

“What are you wearing, rich girl?”

She exhales a laugh again. There’s this shift I can almost feel, a click on the line, digital signals rearranging themselves from one stream to another. What are you wearing? The phone-sex starter pistol firing, and I’m on the block, ready for it. Jeans unzipped. Hand outside my briefs, because I can’t go inside until I know she’s playing along. Not this time.