Every Other Weekend(94)

I was groggy from the late night with Jolene, and my senses overflowed with thoughts of her. I smiled, hoping they stayed that way until I could see her again, kiss her again.

She’d tasted better than summer. And she’d let me kiss her, hold her. She hadn’t made a single joke about how shaky my hands had been, or the one time I’d accidentally banged our teeth together. It was like she hadn’t noticed any of that.

She’d noticed me.

And I hadn’t noticed anything beyond how right she felt in my arms and how maybe I’d found my way into the heart she pretended not to have. If she didn’t know before last night, she had to know after that she was forever in mine.

I’d had one panicked moment when I’d tasted her tears. I’d thought I’d done something wrong, or she hadn’t wanted me to kiss her, but then she’d given me the most achingly beautiful smile I’d ever seen. She hadn’t been crying because I’d done something wrong, but because I’d done something right.

I’d kissed Jolene.

My stupid/happy smile lingered as I showered and got dressed, and it was still on my face as I sauntered downstairs, replaying the night in my mind.

When I walked into the kitchen, it felt like I’d traveled back in time. Mom, still in her rose-print bathrobe, flipped a pancake onto an already high stack by the stove while Dad manned the toaster. She had only to glance at him before he silently moved closer to her and reached up to grab the powdered sugar shaker from the top shelf for her.

I couldn’t stop my head from snapping to the kitchen table and the spot where Greg always sat. But of course he wasn’t there, and the rush of grief that punched me in the gut told me never to make that mistake again.

Everything else was the same though. It was exactly the same.

Only the longer I stood in the doorway, watching my parents watching each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking, the differences began slamming into me.

Mom was still in her robe, but Dad was dressed, and there was gravel and mud on his boots from the driveway. Faint tracks on the floor from the back door where he’d come in, too. Not to mention the snow that had melted on his head and shoulders, leaving both wet. Mom’s hands didn’t reach out to touch Dad whenever she passed behind him, and he wasn’t whistling some off-key song that he’d insist was perfectly in tune even when Mom played it back for him on the piano in the next room.

Dad also wasn’t yelling to Jeremy to get his butt downstairs, and Greg and I weren’t at the table arguing baseball over glasses of orange juice.

We weren’t laughing. We weren’t happy. We weren’t together anymore.

The old floor creaked when I shifted my weight, and my parents both jumped before turning toward me.

“It’s the birthday boy.” Mom, metal spatula still in hand, hurried over to hug me. “Sixteen. I can’t believe it.”

My gaze slide past her to Dad. “Me either.”

She tugged the sash of her robe tighter. “He called last night,” she said, her hands shaking, along with her voice. “He didn’t want to miss your birthday. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want him to either.” Then she returned to the pancakes, probably needing to stay busy before she started feeling more than she wanted. “I’m making you sixteen, so I hope you’re hungry.”

I told her I was, but I was distracted by the fact that our whole family was apparently about to eat a meal together for the first time in months. He’d called her? Invited himself over? Where the hell was my brother? Not that he’d know any more how to respond to the situation than I did, but he’d talk, say something, which was more than I appeared to be capable of.

I moved all the way into the kitchen and pulled out a chair to sit down.

“Juice? Coffee?” Mom was hovering halfway between the fridge and the coffeepot as she waited for my answer.

“I can get my own drink.” I started to stand up, but she was at my back in a second, her hands urging me back down.

“It’s your birthday and you’re going to let your mother make you breakfast.”

“You’re already making me breakfast.” I plucked a piece of crispy, hot bacon from the plate on the table.

“Juice or coffee?” she repeated, not moving from behind my chair.

“Coffee would be great. Thanks.”

She smiled and a second later a mug was in front of me. “Give me one second to finish this last batch of pancakes, then I’ll grab some syrup and heat it up for you.”

Dad set the toast next to the bacon and eggs and joined me at the table with his own mug, taking the chair next to me instead of the one at the head of the table, where he usually sat.

He stirred his coffee with a spoon to busy himself as though he thought I might forget that he always drank his black, but then he sighed and let the pretense go. My shoulders hunched, because I knew he was waiting for Mom to leave before saying anything to me, and as soon as she disappeared downstairs—our house was old, which meant our kitchen didn’t have a pantry upstairs—I felt his gaze settle on me.

“I should have told you I was coming.”

I didn’t take my coffee black, so I had every excuse in the world to stir mine. Bent over my mug, I said, “Yeah.”

“I was worried you’d tell me not to come.”

My spoon stilled, weighing the statement in my mind. It was sad that I had to consider it, but we’d changed a lot since the last time he’d been in our kitchen.