Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(80)
“Wow, Mother, whatever do you mean?” Keira pulled her guitar off the foot of the bed and began to strum slowly. She did it specifically to annoy her mother. Just looking at her father’s guitar made the older woman’s face scrunch up in irritation.
“You know damn good and well what I mean. You are not to see boys like that. You are not to see boys that aren’t like us.”
Keira stopped strumming. “You mean you don’t want me hooking up with Spanish boys or Asian boys or Black boys or, like Kona, Hawaiian boys? Is that what you’re trying to say, Mother?” She gripped the neck of her Gibson to hide the trembling of her fingers. “Or is it not just the color of their skin? Do you mean I should just date boys like Mark, rich boys, privileged boys, boys in our social circle? Or, since you’re so hell bent on making sure I stay all, what? Aryan?” At this her mother’s mouth fell open. “Please clarify this for me, Mother. So you wouldn’t have a problem with me dating a boy who grew up in a trailer park as long as he was lily white?”
“Keira Nicole that is not what I mean at all.”
Keira let one tight laugh leave her mouth before she started finger picking her strings with her nails. “Then just what is it that you do mean? Oh, Mother, you’re a racist. Just admit it. We’re at home. No one is listening. If you’re going to have those opinions, then at least have nerve enough to admit you have them.”
“That is not the point.” Her mother stood from the bed and brushed one manicured hand over her pants. “I just want you to make smart decisions about who you associate with in college.” The woman had to speak over the strum of Keira’s fingers as she played faster. “Mistakes you make today will have adverse repercussions on you tomorrow. Try to remember that.”
“Yes, Mein Führer!”
Her mother’s face screwed up into another sneer, something ugly and insulted and Keira wasn’t surprised when she lunged forward, slapping Keira, once, twice, so hard her guitar fell off her lap. She could smell the wine on her mother’s breath, and she focused on that smell, pulling back on her anger, trying not to retaliate. It wouldn’t do any good, her mother would fight back and she didn’t care if she left evidence or not. Keira didn’t have the energy to make excuses for weeks about the marks on her face or how they got there.
She licked the corner of her mouth, relieved when there was no cut, no trickle of blood; she was almost happy that the pain radiated for her cheek and not her mouth. A slap mark would fade faster than a cut lip. It usually did.
Out of breath, her mother stepped back, pulled her knit top down from where it had ridden up over her thin hips, and brushed her perfectly styled hair out of her face, daring Keira with a stare to say something smart again. The girl knew better. “Mistakes,” her mother intoned coolly, for emphasis, in order to have the last word, “can last a lifetime, especially the ones you make when you’re young.”
Keira wondered if her mother was talking about her own mistakes. She wondered if loving her father felt like the biggest mistake of the woman’s life. If it did, that didn’t say much about Keira. If it did, that meant her mother had regretted having her as much as she regretted falling in love with a man who struggled to live out his passion. “Are you taking your birth control pills? Making sure you’re not missing?” When Keira nodded, her mother walked to the door, holding it open in one hand as she looked over her shoulder. “I know you think I’m backwards and stupid, Keira, but I really am looking out for you.”
Somehow, Keira doubted that her mother looked out for anyone but herself.
By three that afternoon, Keira was finally alone and her face had stopped throbbing. Steven and her mother swarmed out of the house, brief waves and longer warnings falling behind them as they loaded their car and headed for the airport. It was only then that Keira could breathe.
That is, until four o’clock when her mother was already on a plane and the heater broke. The weather had turned chilly, colder than it had been at the game the weekend before but it wasn’t the cold she had to deal with. The heater managed to get stuck on high, at least 80 degrees, and Keira didn’t know how to turn it off.
So she spent much of the afternoon on her balcony, guitar on her lap as she tried to find that elusive hook. She poured all her thoughts, all those bitter, angry emotions she felt toward Kona into each chord, every word she wove together. But then, as if even nature were against her, dark clouds emerged, the skies opened up, and Keira was stuck in the sauna-like house while a cold rain fell outside.
The shower Keira took should have left icicles on her skin it was so cold, but as soon as she left the bathroom and dug in her dresser, her cold skin warmed and sweat began to pool down her back. She plucked an old Black Crowes tee that was grey and slightly threadbare from her drawer and decided she’d forgo any sleep shorts. She knew she’d likely be naked before the end of the night anyway. The room was stifling and Keira needed a distraction, so she turned on her stereo, skipping through the CDs already loaded and stopped when she came across a worn, overplayed track.
Dave Matthews. “Crash Into Me.” Keira loved the quick tap of the cymbals, right on the bell top and the slow rap against the low register of the guitar. It was a song that haunted, seduced in such an intense way, and most of the time she jumped the track back to the beginning to hear that intro again and again. But Dave Matthew’s lyrics, his hypnotizing voice also filtered into her skin, had the hairs on her arms rising. She’d always wanted someone to crash into her like that, to pay tribute to her body, to touch her with that much passion. Now she did. Or she had, past tense. Her chest felt tight, emotion clotting in her throat at the thought of anyone else but Kona touching her like that.