Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(99)
The Internet-Asshat emails keep flooding into my in-box. I guess they’ve found my phone number, because now I’m getting all these hang-up mouth-breather voice mails and ranting, insane threats. I have to screen all my calls, delete three-quarters of my texts. I decide to suspend my Facebook account and shut down my Twitter altogether.
All of it has to be documented, too. Everything needs to be tracked. I’m already tired of it. I wish I could just switch off the phone, turn off the computer, and ignore the whole river of garbage that my life has become.
And, as if that’s not bad enough, West can’t get his mom on the phone. Frankie hasn’t sent him any texts for a few days. He’s worrying.
There’s nothing I can do.
I’m overwhelmed, weary of being hated, worn out from so much hard work.
There’s nothing he can do.
We stick together like we’ve been glued to each other.
We’re at the bakery when his phone finally rings. I’m mixing up the dill, and he’s slitting open a bag of flour to dump into the bin. Since I’m closer to his phone, I look at the screen. “It’s Bo.”
He drops the blade on the floor. I meet him halfway with the phone. I know he’s been hoping Bo, his mom, someone, will call him back.
“Hey. What’s up?”
I turn my back to adjust the volume on the music, and the ten seconds the job requires is all the time it takes for the color to drain from West’s face.
“How long ago?”
He paces the length of the table as he listens.
“Did you try to talk her out of it? Or … No, I know.… No. All right. And what about Frankie, is she—”
His shoulders sag.
His fingers are white where they curl around the phone.
“All right. Thanks. It was decent of you to call. I’ll … I’ll take it from here.”
When he hangs up, he just stands there.
He stands there for so long, I’m afraid to touch him.
“West?”
“She took him back,” he says.
“Your dad?”
“She f*cking took him back.”
This is the possibility he’s been afraid to name for the past few days.
The worst thing.
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t know. Bo didn’t even—he didn’t kick her out. He came home and all her stuff was gone, with a note saying she was sorry but she had to follow her heart.” He pounds his fist on the table. “Her heart.”
“Did they leave town, or … ?”
“They’re at the trailer park. Her and Frankie. They moved in with my dad.”
“Oh.”
I’m not sure what to say. There aren’t any words that will fix the defeat in his posture. The heavy dead sound of his voice, like someone has ripped all the fight out of him.
I know it’s bad because, when I stand in front of him and try to put my arms around him, he slumps against me hard enough that I have to lock my knees to hold him up.
Not for long. He gives himself ten seconds—surely no longer than that—and then pulls away.
He doesn’t look at me when he says, “I’m going to have to go home.”
“Sure.” He’ll have to make sure they’re safe. Talk to his mom. Check on his sister. “Tell me what I can do to help.”
“I have to fly. Pack up my stuff. Right after this shift’s over.”
“Will you stay for your exam?” He has a midterm at ten tomorrow morning.
“No, there’s no point. Listen, can you look up flights for me? See what’s the earliest I can get out of Des Moines.”
“I will, but maybe you should take the exam, at least. So when you come back—”
It’s how he glances away that stops me.
It’s the pain I see before he turns his face so I can’t see it at all.
“West?”
He grips the tabletop with both hands. I’m looking at him in profile, his braced arms, lowered head, the straight line of his spine.
I know before he tells me.
He’s not coming back.
“It was never going to work out, anyway,” he says quietly. “I never had any business thinking it would.”
“What wasn’t?”
“It’s not something I should have let myself think I could do.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a lot. West?”
When he looks up at me, he’s so far away. He’s in a state I’ve never been to, a place I’ve seen pictures of but can’t imagine, can’t smell. A town by an ocean I’ve never seen.
Oregon. I can’t even pronounce it right. He had to teach me how to say it like a native.
“Come on. Talk to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But she’s my sister, and I have to watch out for her. Nobody else is going to do it, nobody ever has. It’s my fault for thinking … It’s my fault.”
The way he looks at me, it feels like goodbye, but it can’t be. We’re mixing up the bread. We’re going to be here for hours—firing the ovens, slicing into the loaves, venting the steam. After we get through tomorrow, it’s spring break, and I probably won’t see him much for the week, but then we have the rest of the semester. Junior year. Senior year.