Where the Stars Still Shine(21)
“That’s what you do?”
The butcher returns with a bottle of beer and a can of soda. “Pizza’ll be ready soon.”
“It’s a family business,” Alex says. “It used to be me and my dad, but my mom got sick, so now it’s just me. I don’t mind doing it, but—never mind. Not important. Why’d you come back?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why?”
“My mom got sick, too.” I’m skirting the truth, but this is as close as I want to come with a guy I barely know. “So I had to come live with my dad.”
Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t put the pieces together. How many teenage girls named Callie come home to Tarpon Springs to live with their dads after living everywhere with their sick moms? Especially when Kat claims I am a local legend. But if Alex has figured it out, nothing in his face gives it away. He leans back on his chair. “Tarpon Springs isn’t a bad place.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I can tell how much you love it.”
The corner of his mouth tilts and my stomach does an elevator drop. “I still plan to escape someday,” he says. “But definitely not today.”
Alex takes me to the sponge docks when we’re finished with our pizza. He offers to drive me home, but I don’t want Greg to see me getting out of some strange guy’s truck. Not when he’s already upset with me.
“Thanks for the pizza,” I say, as Alex opens the sticky door for me, its hinges groaning. I’m pretty sure he was lying about it flying open unexpectedly.
“Do you want the leftovers?”
I’d never heard of putting carrots or asparagus or capicola—I didn’t even know what kind of meat that is—on pizza, but it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, so it’s a tempting offer. Except Greg would definitely wonder how I managed to walk to a pizza place that far from Georgia’s house. “You keep them,” I say.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He grins and my whole body goes weak.
I’m not sure what to say next. Thank you for sleeping with me and not treating me like a whore? Thank you for not being ashamed to go somewhere with me in public? Thank you for kissing me as if you meant it? I mean, I had sex with a stranger, followed by pizza. I don’t think there are etiquette rules for that.
“I, um—I’d better go.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
“I’m sure,” I say. “But thanks.”
For a moment, I feel like I’m a character in a book, the girl hoping the boy will tell her he’ll call. Except I’m not sure I want Alex to say it because I don’t want it to be a lie. Turns out I have nothing to worry about because he doesn’t. Instead he says, “I guess I’ll see you around.”
As I walk home, I’m not sure what to make of the afternoon. Maybe Kat is right about Alex. Maybe sex and pizza is his standard operating procedure. Maybe he tells every girl he’ll see her around. Maybe he’s not so different from Danny after all. And maybe that means that I’m not so different, either. I fell for it.
Greg and Phoebe are sitting on the front-porch swing as I come through the gate. I climb the steps and Phoebe stands, giving Greg’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before she goes into the house. She offers me a grim smile, which makes me think maybe this is going to be serious.
“Have a seat,” Greg says.
I sit beside him on the swing.
“Listen,” he says. “I understand that after living with your mom you’re used to having a lot of freedom, but—”
“What if I’m like her?”
He holds up a hand and frustration shadows his face. “Let me finish.”
“No, Greg, this is important,” I say. “What if the reason I take off the way I do is because I have this borderline personality thing, too?”
“Running away when you’re angry or scared isn’t really symptomatic of borderline, Callie,” he says. “If anything, it’s a learned behavior. You run away because that’s what Veronica always did.”
“But how can you be sure I don’t have it?”
“I can’t,” he says. “But by the time your mom was your age, she was already on medication because she was experiencing mood swings that would make her do—”
“Crazy things?”
He sighs. “Impulsive things.”
Having sex with random strangers is not exactly well-thought-out behavior, but under the circumstances I don’t think Greg needs to know about this.
“I loved your mom so damn much,” he says. “We were only married for three years and I didn’t want a divorce. I sure as hell didn’t want to start a custody war, but Veronica was convinced I was going to keep you from her. And the thing is … if she hadn’t taken you when she left, I don’t know if she’d have made it alone.”
We sit for a moment and a car drives past, the tires bumping on the brick-paved street.
“Do you think you have BPD?” he asks.
I consider all the times I was the Greg in my mom’s life, listening to her ramble about grand plans of becoming a chef—when she couldn’t even cook—and being dragged along when she decided to go to New York City. We slept in the car for the two days we were there and she almost lost me in Times Square when she let go of my hand, distracted by a rare Sonic Youth album in a record-store window. I remember days when she wouldn’t get out of bed and I’d eat cereal for every meal. I don’t act the way she acts, but I can’t shed the fear that the things I do are my own brand of crazy.