Regretting You(77)

I’m walking into my bedroom when I pause.

I was Clara’s age once. Window screens don’t just fall off on their own. Did she sneak out last night?

I spin and walk straight to her bedroom. I don’t even knock because she’s probably not even inside to answer me. I push at the door, but it’s locked. It’s just one of those hook locks that can easily be lifted and bypassed. I hate that I’m resorting to breaking into her room, but I need to see if she’s actually gone before I get dressed and go find her.

I grab a hanger from my closet, then slip the hanger up the crack in her door until it catches on the lock. When it releases, I push at the door, but it doesn’t open right away. Did she barricade herself in her room?

God, she might be angrier than I thought.

I shove my hip against the door, moving whatever it is she pushed against it. I get the door open a few inches, and I peek inside.

I release a huge sigh of relief. She’s still asleep. She didn’t sneak out. Or if she did, she’s home now, and that’s the most important thing.

I start to pull the door shut, but I pause when I see movement. An arm wraps over Clara’s stomach. An arm that isn’t hers.

I throw my whole body against the door to open it. Clara sits straight up in bed, startled. So does Miller.

“What the hell, Clara?”

Miller is standing now, scrambling to put on his shoes. He reaches to the nightstand and grabs condoms, shoving them in the pocket of his jeans like he’s trying to hide them before I see them, but I definitely saw them, and I’m angry, and I want him out of my damn house right now.

“You need to leave.”

Miller is nodding. He looks at Clara with eyes full of apology.

Clara covers her face. “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing.”

Miller starts to walk around the bed but then pauses and looks at Clara, then me, then Clara, then down at his bare chest. That’s when I realize Clara is wearing his shirt.

Does he expect her to give it back to him? Is he an idiot? He is. She’s dating an idiot. “Get out!”

“Wait, Miller,” Clara says. She snatches the shirt she was wearing yesterday off the floor and walks to her closet. She closes herself inside so she can change shirts. Miller looks like he doesn’t know if he should listen to her and wait for his shirt or run before I murder him. Lucky for him, it only takes Clara a few seconds to change.

She opens the door and hands him his shirt.

Miller pulls on the shirt, so I yell at him again, this time with more force. “Get out!” I look at Clara, wearing just a T-shirt that barely covers her ass. “Get dressed!”

Miller rushes to the window and starts to open it. He really is an idiot. “Just use the front door, Miller! Jesus!”

Clara is wrapped in her bedsheet now, sitting on her bed, full of rage and embarrassment. That makes two of us.

Miller slips past me nervously, looking back at Clara. “See you at school?” He whispers it, as if I’m unable to hear him. Clara nods.

Honestly. She could sneak any guy into her bedroom, and this is the guy she chooses? “Clara won’t be at school today.”

Clara looks at Miller as he reaches the hallway. “Yes, I will.”

I look at Miller. “She won’t be there. Goodbye.”

He spins and leaves. Finally.

Clara tosses the sheet away and reaches to the floor to grab the jeans she wore yesterday. “You can’t ground me from school.”

My worry about whether I have the right to parent her is nonexistent right now thanks to my anger. She isn’t going anywhere today. “You are sixteen years old. I have every right to ground you from whatever the hell I want to ground you from.” I glance around her room, looking for her phone so I can confiscate it.

“Actually, Mother. I’m seventeen.” She slips a leg into her jeans. “But I guess you were too busy with Jonah to remember that today’s my birthday.”

Shit.

I was wrong.

This is rock bottom. I try to recover by muttering, “I didn’t forget,” but it’s obvious I did.

Clara rolls her eyes as she buttons her jeans. She walks to her bathroom and comes back out with her purse.

“You aren’t going to school like that. You wore those clothes yesterday.”

“Watch me,” she says, shoving past me.

I’m pressed against the frame of her bedroom door as I watch her walk down the hall. I should be running after her. This isn’t okay. Sneaking a boy into her bedroom is not okay. Having sex with a guy she just started dating is certainly not okay. There is so much wrong here, but I’m scared it’s beyond my parenting abilities. I don’t even know what to say to her or how to punish her or if I even have the right to at this point.

I hear the front door slam, and I flinch.

I grip my head and slide down to the floor. A tear rolls down my cheek and then another. I hate it because that means a raging headache is going to follow. I’ve had headaches every single day since the accident, thanks to the tears.

This time, I deserve the headache. It’s like my own actions have given permission to her rebellion. They have. She’ll never respect me again. A person can’t learn from someone they don’t respect. It just doesn’t work that way.

I can hear the faint sound of my phone ringing down the hall. I’m sure it’s Jonah, but part of me wonders if it could be Clara, even though she hasn’t even had time to back out of the driveway. I rush to my bedroom, but I don’t recognize the number.