Where the Stars Still Shine(38)

“That’s okay. What do you have?”

He opens a sliding hatch behind our heads and takes out a short stack of DVD cases. I shuffle through them. “Princess Bride, High Fidelity, Road House, Coyote Ugly, and—” I side-eye him. “Kinky Kittens 6?”

“We can skip that one.” Alex snatches the case and sends it spiraling out through the cabin doorway. It lands with a thump on the deck. “Not much plot.”

“Well, yeah. After Kinky Kittens one through five, what more is left to be said, really?”

He laughs. “Exactly.”

I fan the remaining DVDs like a hand of cards. “Which is your favorite?”

Alex pulls High Fidelity. “Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“You have to.” He pulls a small combination TV/ DVD player out from a storage compartment beneath his bed and plugs it into the orange extension cord that runs out to an outlet on the dock. As the disk is synching up, he props a couple of bed pillows against the bulkhead and settles against them. He pokes my thigh with his toe. “Come here.”

I shift backward between his legs until my back is against the wall of his chest. The brush of his stubbled cheek against my temple makes me shiver and he wraps his arms around me. His hand slides beneath the collar of my shirt, his fingers resting on my collarbone. It strikes me as both an unusual and perfect place for a hand to be.

“All good?” he asks.

I feel as if I’m inhabiting some other girl’s body, as if something this excellent could not actually be happening to me and that at any moment the universe is going to clue me in to the joke. “All good.”

He reaches overhead and switches off the light.

We stay in this position until the delivery driver from the Great Wall arrives. Alex unwraps himself from me and pauses the DVD before going out on deck to pay for the order. He returns with a stack of takeaway containers. “There are a couple of TV trays in the storage locker opposite the head.” He tilts his chin in the direction of the locker.

I unfold the trays in the middle of the cabin and he spreads out the food. I take my wax paper bag of egg roll and sit down again, as Alex opens the foam carton of moo shu chicken and the greasy fried scent takes me back to the hallway of our last apartment and those little Dora the Explorer shoes outside our neighbors’ door. We’d still be living there if Mom hadn’t gotten the stupid itch to leave. She wouldn’t have been arrested. I wouldn’t be here and she wouldn’t have stolen my computer.

“Can I have some of that?” Even though I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be than right here with Alex Kosta, I’m angry. Eating some of his moo shu chicken feels as if it’s a perfect Fuck you, Mom.

“Sure.” His eyebrows pull together as he looks at me. My eyes hurt and I feel as if I’m going to cry. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just—I need to use the bathroom.”

I sit on the closed toilet lid and try to shove my mom out of my head, but it’s hard when it feels as if she’s out there somewhere watching me, judging me. And my head is a jumbled mess because I want to be with her again. I do. But living with Greg is better than I thought it would be. I have a real bed—even if it’s in a trailer—and home-cooked meals, and little boys who touch me with sticky fingers and call me Peach. I enjoy having a job, even though I’m still not sure if I enjoy the job I have. All of it makes me feel as if I’m being disloyal to Mom. As if I don’t care. And that’s not true at all.

“Hey, Callie.” Alex’s voice is on the other side of the thin wooden door. “I forgot to tell you that to flush you need to pump the red handle first.”

“Okay, thanks.” I blow out a breath and look at myself in the dirty mirror on the wall. The eyeliner Kat applied is smudgy, so I run my knuckle beneath my lower lashes to clean it up a little before opening the door.

I can see the concern in his eyes, but I ignore it as I spoon some of his moo shu chicken onto a pancake and pretend I’m totally fine. “So why does Kat hate you?”

“She, um—she had a crush on me for a long time,” he says. “Even back when we were kids. I knew about it, but she’s too young for me.”

“I’m the same age as Kat.”

“That’s different,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate on what the difference is. “A couple of years ago, she asked me to take her to homecoming and I turned her down. I told her I’ve always considered her like my little sister.”

I wince.

“Yeah.” He scrunches up one side of his face. “Didn’t go so well.”

“I can see that,” I say. “She wouldn’t talk to me after she saw me share my lunch with you the other day. I don’t really get that. I mean, if she’s happy with Nick, why does she care what you do?”

Alex shrugs. “She doesn’t want me anymore, but she’s still mad that I didn’t want her. Best I can tell, it’s a girl thing.”

“I have a feeling I’m not very good at being a girl.”

He leans over and his scruffy face tickles my neck, making me squirm. His voice is low as he says, “You—are exceptionally good at being a girl.”

We share all the food. Alex eats half of my egg roll, and I find room for a moo shu pancake filled with chicken and plum sauce, rolled into a little Chinese burrito. And after the empties are stowed in the trash, I settle against him again to finish watching the movie. Except I have a hard time paying attention when his thumb is wandering across my collarbone and his lips keep touching my hair. At least I think they do. It feels that way. When I lift my face to look at him, he kisses me and the movie fades to background noise.