Games of the Heart (The 'Burg #4)(43)

She hoped when she got married she had a room just like that. And she kinda hoped when she got married, she’d get married to a guy who looked a lot like Finley Holliday.

As she started shoving her Dad’s socks in his sock drawer she heard the vacuum closer and knew No had moved to vacuum the stairs.

That’s when she found them. Two books with girlie covers shoved in the back.

Her brows drew together. First, her Dad wasn’t girlie in any way. He and No were both total guys, through and through. Second, she’d put socks away in that drawer more than once and she’d never seen those books before.

Biting her lip and listening to the vacuum coming up the stairs, she looked to the opened double doors that led from her father’s room to the hall.

Then quickly, she snatched up one of the books. She opened it to a random page and froze, staring at a pretty picture drawn in pastel pencils across both pages. She’d never seen anything like it. It was colorful and she liked the swirly pattern. If it was bigger, to replace the vampire posters, she’d like all sorts of pictures like that framed and put up on the walls in her room.

Still, it was weird. Was her Dad drawing pretty, swirly pictures? That couldn’t be right.

She flipped to the front of the book and froze again.

There was a name and a date on the inside front cover.

Dusty Holliday and the year was years and years and years before.

Dusty.

Dusty Holliday. Holliday.

Dad’s babe.

Dad’s babe was a Holliday.

Clarisse cocked her head to the side as she felt something funny fluttering around her heart. Her Dad’s babe had given him her diaries from when she had to be a girl. Clarisse didn’t know what to think of this but it felt like she thought that was kind of sweet.

The vacuum went off and Clarisse knew that meant No was unplugging it downstairs so he could plug it in upstairs.

Quickly, she shoved the book back in the drawer and finished with his clothes. Then she hung out in her room while No finished vacuuming upstairs.

She knew he was done when he stuck his head in her door and asked, “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” she replied.

He did a hand gesture that was rude and if Dad saw it, he’d not be happy but he did it grinning so Clarisse knew No was just being a dork which No could be (often). Then he disappeared.

When he did, Clarisse immediately went to her door and listened. If No was in his room, even if he was doing his homework, he listened to music. If he wasn’t doing his homework, he’d be playing keyboard, guitar, banging on his drums or talking to one of his crew or one of his babes. She didn’t hear that. Just the TV coming from downstairs. This meant No was downstairs.

So, racing, she ran to her Dad’s room and grabbed the books in his drawer. Closing it carefully, she ran back to her room and closed the door.

Then, lying on her bed with her back to the door so if her brother walked in he wouldn’t see what she was doing, she started with the book that had the earliest date.

And she couldn’t believe what she read.

And she also had absolutely no clue what to think about it.

Her Dad came home before she could finish. Working quickly, she shoved the books between her mattress and box springs and went downstairs to glory in his approval that she and No had his back while he worked. As usual, since Dad noticed everything, he noticed and he was surprised. He was also pleased. This meant he gave her some loving. No didn’t get any, Dad just threw him a grin. But she got loving before he went to get a beer.

So it was all worth it.

*

Between cleaning the bathrooms, doing her homework, making dinner, keeping the kitchen tidy, doing the ironing, hanging with her Dad on the weekend and trying to hide the fact she wanted to be holed up in her room with the diaries by hanging with No and Dad in front of the TV, it took five nights for Clarisse Haines to finish Dusty Holliday’s teenage girl journals.

She read every single word. Sometimes, she read whole passages over and over again. And she studied the drawings closely. And more than once, she kinda cried.

And when she was done with the last one, she knew three things.

One, Dusty Holliday loved her Dad, like, a lot. And she’d loved him that way for years and years and years.

Two, Clarisse thought it was beyond awesome that after all these years they were finally together. She liked that for her Dad, someone loving him like that when he’d had so long of the way her mother treated him. And she liked that for the woman called Dusty because, after that creep (and Clarisse knew him, everyone knew about Dennis Lowe) did what he did to her, she needed a good guy like Clarisse’s dad. Her Dad would look out for Dusty. Her Dad would never let anything like that happen again. Her Dad would make Dusty happy.

And three, Dusty Holliday, when she was a kid, thought a lot like Clarisse. Sure, Clarisse didn’t have her talent. She couldn’t draw. But she liked to write stories and used to do it all the time. She stopped and she didn’t know why. Maybe it was because No was so good with his music, everyone talked about it, Dad, even Mom, their grandparents and all the kids at school went on and on about it. She knew her stories weren’t as good as the way No was with music. Though, she’d never shown them to anyone. Not No, definitely not her Mom, not even her Gran who she knew liked reading and she knew even more that her Gran loved Clarisse. And not her Dad. But Dusty didn’t think anyone “got her” and Clarisse felt the same way. No one got her, these days, not even her Dad.