Put Me Back Together(50)

“That Taylor’s so full of herself,” Melissa offered, pushing her basket of fries my way. “I’m sure he doesn’t want her around.”

“She throws herself at everyone,” Sally agreed. Then, in a moment of real clarity, she added, “I should know, so do I.”

“I know he misses you,” Em said.

But it really didn’t seem like it. Later that night Anita accidentally mentioned that she’d seen him at a couple of parties, hanging out with Eric and Oleg. He was out with his old friends, whatever had been holding him back apparently no longer an issue. It occurred to me that maybe what had been keeping him from his other friends was me. Now that I was out of the picture he was free to go back to his real life, the life he fit into just right, the life that had been waiting for him.

I thought bitterly, He’s probably glad to be rid of me.

So then what the heck was in this envelope, and why had he sent it to me?

I still hadn’t opened it when I reached the top of the stairs and found Mariella and Ethan at my door.

“Oh thank God, Katie!” Mariella said as she looked up from her phone. “I’ve been texting you like crazy. Stefano’s totally going to fire me. I’m already thirty minutes late and you know how he gets.” I did know. Mariella was always going on about her Nazi boss at the spa where she worked as a masseuse. She was sure he had it out for her.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I said, glancing nervously at Ethan, who looked back at me with a blank expression of extreme boredom. Count on a five year old to find his mother’s hysteria totally uninteresting.

Mariella hefted her enormous purse back onto her shoulder. I was always wondering what the heck she kept in there to make it so heavy.

“I know it’s a total imposition,” she said, “but my mama’s sick and my stupid brother, Ray, took off on a road trip to the Maritimes—like winter’s the best time to go sightseeing—and if I don’t make it to my shift, Stefano’s going to fire me for sure and give all my shifts to that skinny biatch Cecily. So I’m begging you.”

She looked at me pleadingly as I tried not to show the rising panic I was feeling inside. She hadn’t actually said the words yet but I could see where it was going. I felt my windpipe closing up, my ability to breathe dwindling as I gripped Lucas’s envelope in my fingers, crinkling the paper. Today had been going so well. I might have even called it a raging success. I’d planned on spending the evening sketching and eating cookie batter and maybe, if I felt up to it, calling my mother back. My grand plans shattered at my feet as I looked into Mariella’s pinched and worried face.

Please don’t do this to me.

“Save my life?” she said with a grateful smile as Ethan stepped forward and took my hand. He stuck his tongue through the hole a missing tooth had left in his smile and wiggled it at me as his mother put a bag of toys down at my feet.

His hand felt like a grenade in mine. My palm was so sweaty against his that I was sure his fingers would slip right out of my grip and we’d both be blown to bits.

“I’ll be back at nine thirty, ten o’clock at the latest,” Mariella said, slapping a Post-It on Ethan’s forehead that had her work number on it. “He’ll eat anything you put in front of him and his bedtime’s at eight. Just leave him on your couch or whatever. I can just come and grab him when I get home.”

Before I had fully processed what was happening, she was already going down the stairs, waving goodbye.

“Wait, Mariella,” I cried. “I don’t know if I can—”

I heard the door in the lobby closing behind her with a click and just like that Ethan and I were standing in the hallway, alone. Nine thirty…that was four and a half hours from now.

I swallowed hard and stared at my front door, because it was better than staring at Ethan. Just looking at him made me feel as though I might pass out.

“Did you forget your keys?” Ethan asked, pulling his hand from my grip and reaching for the zipper of my purse. “My mom always finds hers hiding right at the bottom in the same old place, but she swears a lot before she remembers to look there.”

“Right, keys,” I whispered, shakily pawing through my purse until I found them.

I swung the door open and Ethan ran inside with his bag of toys, bouncing onto the couch and turning on the TV. “Do you have Treehouse? Do you have Nickelodeon?” he asked, already clicking the remote, though the screen remained blank.

He gave me a horrified look. No TV?

I grabbed a DVD off my bookcase, thanking Jesus that I had a childish taste in movies, and threw it into his hands. “Here, watch this,” I said as I practically jogged down the hall away from him. “I just have to make a phone call, okay?”

“Okay,” Ethan called back. I heard the opening music to Toy Story drifting down the hallway to my room just before I shoved the door shut.

Throwing my purse onto the bed—where it promptly exploded because I hadn’t zipped it shut—I started pacing with my hands over my face. From his perch on my desk chair, Turner’s eyes followed me around the room. The tips of my fingers were tingling and my stomach was churning, a sure sign I was about to have a panic attack. Though I desperately wanted to keep moving, I shooed the cat off my chair and sat down, putting my head between my knees.