Reminders of Him(84)
“It’s after nine. You slept more than an hour.”
Kenna sits up. “What? I thought the sun just came up.” She tosses the covers aside. “I was supposed to be at work by nine.”
“Oh, shit. I’ll give you a ride.” I search for my clothes. I find my shirt, but Kenna’s kitten is curled up asleep inside of it. I lift her and set her on the couch and then start to pull on my jeans. Kenna is in the bathroom brushing her teeth. The door is open, and she’s completely naked, so I freeze in the middle of getting dressed because she’s got a perfect ass.
She sees me staring in the mirror and laughs, then kicks the bathroom door shut with her foot. “Get dressed!”
I finish getting dressed, but then I join her in the bathroom because I want some of her toothpaste. She scoots aside as she’s rinsing, and I start to squeeze some toothpaste on my finger, but she opens a drawer and pulls out a package that has a toothbrush in it.
“I bought a double pack.” She hands me the extra toothbrush and then leaves the bathroom.
We eventually meet at the front door. “What time do you get off work?” I pull her to me. She smells like fresh mint.
“Five.” We kiss. “Unless I get fired.” We kiss some more. “Ledger, I have to go,” she mutters against my mouth. But we kiss again.
We make it to the grocery store by a quarter to ten. She’s forty-five minutes late, but by the time we stop saying goodbye, she’s fifty minutes late.
“I’ll be here at five,” I say as she goes to close her door.
She smiles. “Just because I put out now doesn’t mean you have to be my chauffeur.”
“I was your chauffeur before you put out.”
She closes the door but then comes around to my side of the truck. I already have my window down, and she leans in and gives me one final kiss. When she pulls back, she pauses for a moment. It looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. She just stares silently for a few seconds, like something is on the tip of her tongue, but then she backs away and runs into the store.
I’m a mile from my house when I realize I’ve had a ridiculous smile on my face during the whole drive. I wipe it away, but it’s the kind of smile that reappears with every thought I have about her. And all my thoughts this morning have been about her.
My parents’ RV is occupying the entire driveway, so I park in front of the house.
Grace and Patrick are back already. He’s out front watering his yard, and Diem is sitting in their driveway with a bucket of chalk.
I force the smile off my face. Not that a simple smile would give away everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, but Patrick knows me well enough that he might think my behavior is due to a girl. Then he’ll ask questions. Then I’ll have to lie to him even more than I have been.
Diem turns around when I close my truck door. “Ledger!” she looks both ways before meeting me in the middle of the street. I scoop her up and give her a big hug.
“Did you have fun at Grandma NoNo’s house?”
“Yeah, we found a turtle, and NoNo let me keep it. It’s in my room in a glass thing.”
“I want to see.” I put her back down, and she grabs my hand, but before we even reach the grass, Patrick and I make eye contact.
My heart immediately sinks.
His face is hard. There’s no hello. It’s the most resigned I’ve ever seen him.
His eyes fall to Diem, and he says, “You can show him your turtle in a minute. I need to talk to Ledger.”
Diem can’t feel the tension radiating from him, which is why she skips into the house while I’m frozen at the edge of the grass Patrick has been mindlessly watering. When the front door closes, he doesn’t say anything. He just continues to water the grass, like he’s waiting for me to admit my fuckup.
I’m worried for more reasons than one. His demeanor is making it obvious something is wrong, but if I say something first, I could be off the mark. Anything could be wrong. Maybe his mother is ill, or they received bad news he doesn’t want Diem to hear.
The way he’s acting could be completely unrelated to Kenna, so I wait for him to say whatever it is that seems so hard for him to say.
He releases the nozzle and drops the water hose. He walks closer to me, and each of his deliberate steps is aligned with the pounding of my heartbeat. He stops walking about three feet from me, but my heartbeats just keep pounding. I don’t like how silent it is between us. I can tell he’s about to confront me, and Patrick is not a confrontational person. The fact that he’s not circling around what he wants to say with a Welp has me more than concerned.
Something is bothering him, and it’s serious. I attempt to alleviate the tension by casually saying, “When did you guys get back?”
“This morning,” he says. “Where were you?” He asks it like he’s my father and he’s pissed I snuck out in the middle of the night.
I don’t even know what to say. I’m searching for whatever lie would fit this moment the best, but none of them seem to fit. I can’t say I was parked in my garage, because my parents’ RV is in the way. I can’t say I was home, because obviously my truck hasn’t been here.
Patrick shakes his head. His face is filled with galaxy-size disappointment.
“He was your best friend, Ledger.”