When August Ends(11)

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, we don’t have anything else to talk about at the moment.”

She let out a deep breath. “He’s my ex. I wasn’t expecting him to show up tonight. I didn’t even know he was in town for the summer.”

“He doesn’t live here?”

“No. He moved to Boston. We broke up shortly after he left for Boston University a couple of years ago. We were supposed to go to BU together, actually. And then things got really bad with my mother, so I never went. He went without me. We thought we could make it work long-distance, but he decided he didn’t want to be tied down.”

Shit.

“You were supposed to go away to school?”

“Yeah. I was enrolled in their nursing program.”

I shook my head. This girl had given up the most important time in her life to be a full-time caretaker at twenty years old. I thought about where I’d been at her age: away at college with all of the freedom in the world. I’d taken it all for granted.

“I’m sorry to hear that—that you couldn’t go.”

“It’s okay. I’ve gotten used to the idea. Anyway, I really wasn’t prepared for him to show up here tonight.”

“Listen, I know you’re too polite to suggest this, but we can do this another time if your mom isn’t feeling well. I can jus—”

“No! I invited you over. This is my night off. I don’t want to waste it. Besides…” She looked down at my hands. “You brought…bread.”

I’d practically forgotten. “Yeah. Ugh…I didn’t have much time to decide what to bring. I had a bottle of wine but then remembered you can’t drink.”

“Well, legally I can’t, but I can certainly drink if I—”

“No, you can’t. Not with me giving you the alcohol.”

She looked up at the ceiling. “Okay, then.” Waving her hand, she said, “Please, come into my kitchen, grumpy.” She took the bread. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I stuck my thumbs in the loops of my jeans, feeling uneasy about this so-called dinner for two. “Sure. Anything is fine.”

“Seltzer okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She popped open a can of cranberry-lime sparkling water from the fridge and handed it to me.

She stood across from me and watched me take my first sip. “Thank you for the bread.” Her face looked flushed. “God, you make me nervous, Noah,” she added. “And the fact that this night has turned into a clusterfuck is really not helping. On top of that, you won’t even let me have a drink to calm down.”

No one could ever accuse this girl of not saying what was on her mind. She was honest to a fault.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t have a drink. I said I wasn’t going to be the one to give it to you.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “I was half-joking anyway. But I could use one right about now.”

Ironic that she claimed I made her nervous, because she made me downright uncomfortable. She stood across from me in a tight black shirt with her tits squeezed together. Her long, blond hair, which she typically wore up, was loose and cascading down her back, and her legs were on full display in a tiny denim skirt. I most definitely wasn’t supposed to be noticing those things—thus, the discomfort.

“Why do I make you nervous?” I asked. “You shouldn’t let anyone have power over you like that. There’s no reason I should be making you nervous. I’m just standing here.”

“It’s not what you’re doing. It’s who you are. From the moment we met, you’ve intimidated me. This dinner was supposed to be an attempt to get over that, but so far no luck.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like that I made her nervous, but maybe it was better this way. The alternative—me being overly nice to her and leading her on—wouldn’t be good, either.

“You know….” I said. “You shouldn’t let people see you sweat. It doesn’t matter what I think about you. My opinion is meaningless in the scope of your life.”

“Oh, I know that. But I want to get to know you, and it would be nice to do that without constantly fucking things up.” She looked back toward the bedroom. “I’m gonna go in and ask my mother to come out one more time, okay?”

“You don’t need to do that. Let her be.”

She wouldn’t listen to me. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

After Heather disappeared upstairs, I wandered around the living room, expecting to find some photos to look at. There weren’t any, not a single one. Fathead—that was the name I’d made up for the dog—stared at me.

There was a large collection of figurines on a shelf, mostly children.

Her voice startled me. “I see you’ve found my Hummels.”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“Yes. I collect them.”

“I was wrong about you,” I teased. “You’re not a teenager. You’re eighty.”

She chuckled. “Don’t make fun of my Hummels.”

“I’m joking.”

She moved closer to me. “There’s a cool story behind them, actually.”