What Happens Now(33)

It would have been an epically Satina Galt thing to do. I could have made it an Ari Logan thing to do, claimed it with a single step forward from the spot where I stood getting drenched.

But before I had a chance to make that happen, thunder rumbled again, and the car started driving away.

“Ah,” said Mom when I walked in the door. “I had a feeling you’d be home earlier than planned, with the rain and all. You were at the lake?”

“Yes,” I said. The house was cool and dark, the shades drawn. I could hear the TV in the family room. I slipped off my wet boots, noticed a single green leaf stuck to one of them and didn’t take it off. Thought maybe I would never, ever, ever take it off.

“Don’t worry,” added Mom without even looking up from her computer, pointing a thumb toward the family room. “I’m listening to what she’s watching.”

“Okay,” I said, when I really meant Good for you, but that still doesn’t count as spending time with her.

I walked to the fridge, opened the door. “What are we doing about dinner?”

“Richard’s bringing home a pizza. Who were you at the lake with?”

“Some friends,” I said. “I can cut up some carrots.”

“No, I’ll make a salad. With actual green things in it.” Mom turned from her computer to look at me now. “Which friends?”

I closed the fridge quickly, as if everything I wanted to tell my mother about Camden and Eliza and Max and the creek were about to burst out of it before I was ready.

“Some friends from school,” I lied. Then, without really thinking about what it might lead to, I asked, “Hey, Mom, do you remember the Silver Arrow episode called ‘Do No Good’?”

Mom’s expression changed. Something sparked in her eyes and a few of her lines disappeared for a second.

“Of course,” she said softly. “Why do you ask?”

Dani rushed into the kitchen just then. “Ari!” she cried, and wrapped her arms around my waist as if I’d been gone a week. It sort of felt like I’d been gone a week.

Mom stared at us for a moment, then shut her laptop like she was slamming a door. “I’m going to go fold some laundry,” she said, then went downstairs.

“Did you have fun with Mom?” I asked Dani.

“I had to go with her to her stupid gy-con-ologist appointment. I have more fun with you.”

“Gynecologist,” I corrected her.

I watched TV with Dani while the rain beat down against the windows, playing the half kiss over and over in my head. Looking at it from every possible angle, revisiting myself the moment we put our lips on each other. Wondering how something can be so wanted, then take you by dazzling surprise.

Later, when Richard came home with the pizza, Mom chirped, “Let’s all eat together at the table!”

Mom rarely chirped. We rarely ate together at the table. Which meant something bad was about to happen; I could feel it.

If Richard sensed it, too, he didn’t let on. I watched him and Mom, maneuvering around each other in the kitchen, grabbing forks and plates and cans of club soda. At one point, they bumped into each other and Richard said, “Oops! Excuse me,” as if they were two strangers at a buffet.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them touch. How pathetic was that?

Once we were all sitting down and eating, Mom said, “I have some news.”

“Good or bad?” asked Dani.

“All good. Really good.”

“I could use some really good today,” said Richard.

Mom took a deep breath and beamed at us. “I got offered a new job. I didn’t plan to apply for anything, but this opportunity came up. It’s a day shift and it pays more, and I start in two weeks.”

“Honey!” exclaimed Richard. “That’s fantastic!”

“And it’s in White Plains,” added Mom.

“What?” he said, dropping his pizza slice so it landed half on, half off the plate.

It was quiet for a moment. Dani looked back and forth between all of us, trying to figure out why this was a pizza-dropping detail.

“Mom,” I said, “that’s like, ninety minutes away.”

“I know.”

“How can you—”

She held out her hand in that way I hated, hated, hated. “It’s not ideal. But it’s a better job and a promotion, and we need the money.”

“Not ideal?” spit Richard. “You’d be spending three hours in the car every day!”

“It’s a better job, and we need the money,” Mom repeated like a mantra. Then she leveled her gaze at Richard. “It’s really slow at Millie’s. We can’t ignore that fact.”

Richard looked up and away, at something on the wall maybe. His jaw squared, which meant he was gritting his teeth. It was so obvious because he did it so seldomly.

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, honey,” said Mom. “I’m just laying it straight out.”

“That’s straight all right,” he said.

Mom looked at him guiltily. “I can’t work the night shift anymore,” she said, more softly now. “It’s killing me.”

Richard met her glance and something in him softened, too, but also guiltily. Sometimes it seemed like guilt was the only thread that connected them anymore. Guilt, and its incredibly unromantic relatives: obligation, habit, and regret.