Love Songs & Other Lies(51)

“Ten minutes.” She’s standing in the archway between the living room and dining area.

“Come in here.”

She’s smiling as she walks toward me. “I’m not making out with you again.” She pretends to think about it. She’s adorable. “Well, I will, but I can’t stay late tonight.” Vee falls asleep here some nights, waking up before the sun’s up, to get home before her mom does. I sleep strangely well with her next to me. I haven’t had a nightmare with her beside me, since that first night. For the most part, we’ve swapped our nights lying on the beach talking, for nights lying on my bed talking.

“I don’t want to make out.”

Her expression falls as I say it, and I can’t help but laugh at her pouty face. I grab her hand and pull her over to me. “Not now, I mean.” I keep her hand in mine, placing the other on my shoulder. I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her obscenely close to me.

One corner of her mouth turns up in amusement. “We’re not going to make out, huh?”

I kiss her forehead and leave my lips there, brushing her skin as I speak. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I feel her tense for just a second as I say it, a moment of hesitation in her step. “Don’t panic.”

“I’m not,” she says, as if the idea of her jumping to the worst-case scenario was absurd, rather than expected.

I can tell, just from the tone of those two words, that she is. “I need you to know I don’t really want to talk about it … or get into details … but I do want you to know.”

“Okay…”

We continue to sway back and forth. Maybe I don’t have to say anything. She’ll forget the empty bedroom eventually, or maybe she won’t even ask about it. That’s ridiculous, though, because she’s not an idiot. I know it’s only a matter of time before she starts to ask questions. And my hesitation is just making this all worse. “My parents…”

She looks up at me, a question on her lips that I’m not going to answer.

“You’ve probably noticed they’re not around.”

She nods.

“They … don’t actually live here.” I don’t say anything else and she nods again, then rests her head on my shoulder. It’s not what I needed to say, but it’s all I can say.

“I just wanted you to know.” Liar. If she’d never gone into that room, I never would have had to tell her.





VIRGINIA


With Cam’s arms wrapped around me, I feel safe. I want him to know that he’s safe too—he can tell me anything. “Can I be Dakota? Just for a minute?” We’re still swaying, still pressed up against each other.

“Always,” he says. “For as long as you need.”

“Do you still want to know something no one else knows?”

He nods, urging me to go on.

“Sometimes I hate my mother.”

In truth, I hate my father, too, but he’s never around. It’s harder, somehow, to hate him. But my mom—even though she isn’t physically there most of the time, she still is. Her voice sits in that house. In the living room, where she told me we moved because of money issues. In the kitchen, where she makes my breakfast every morning. We tell pretty lies, talking about upcoming family vacations and weekend outings that won’t ever happen.

“I found a key last week.” I pull it from my pocket and dangle it from my finger.

Cam wraps his hand back around mine, crushing the cold metal in my palm.

“What does it open?”

“My old house.” It’s my mother’s old key ring, a silver music note charm I gave her for Mother’s Day when I was nine or ten. I found it in a drawer in the kitchen. “It made me think about the house, so I went by there. Mostly, I just wanted to see if it looked any different.”

“Did it?” Cam asks.

“Not really,” I say. “I walked around, looked in the windows, like some sort of burglar. I was curious what it looked like now, with another family’s things.” I try to swallow down the emotion that’s rising up out of my chest, choking me. “I didn’t expect it to be empty.” My eyes are fixed on the poster hanging on the wall behind Cam. I’m staring it down, like I’m waiting for it to leap off the wall. “Except there was one room full of stuff.”

Cam kisses my forehead, his breath hot against my skin. “What kind of stuff?”

“Her old comforter, Nonni’s old vintage dresser,” I say. “It’s my parents’ old room, and it’s still full of her stuff.”

“I thought your parents sold that house.”

“She’s a liar. I hate her.” It feels good when Dakota says it. When I say it, I feel guilty. “How can someone who’s supposed to love me more than anything think it’s okay to lie to me like that?” Cam tightens his arms around me, and I lay my face against his chest. My silent tears soak through his shirt, and I feel like I’m marking him with my pain. Like we’re sharing this secret now. I should have told him last week, when I found the key, because I feel better now that I’ve told him.

I don’t tell him I used the key to go into the house. Or that I curled up on the floor of my empty bedroom. And I don’t tell him that before I left, I sat in the three seasons room, looking out at the lake, until the sun finally set and I had to go to band practice. I don’t tell him that I’m questioning everything now.