“I didn’t plan to. I just wanted a day and then I just wanted one more day and then one more after that and that turned into a week, which turned into a month and you get the idea.”
“They just let you stop? They didn’t care?”
“They cared, but it’s not like they could do anything about it. What were they going to do? Shake me? Yell at me and insist? Ground me? I never left the house anyway. They didn’t really have a lot of options. Plus, according to my impressive collection of therapists, it was a very natural response, whatever that means.” Natural response to what, Sunshine? Please keep talking. But she doesn’t. Just another random piece in a puzzle made of all the wrong pieces.
“Wouldn’t lying have been easier than silence?”
“No. I’m crap at it. I don’t believe in doing something if you can’t excel at it.” She’s back to sarcasm and we’re effectively done with this conversation. I know how it works and I wonder how long I’ll let her get away with it.
I start cleaning up and she walks over to crash in the chair while she waits, finally noticing the bag I put there earlier.
“You don’t want my ass on your counters but you’re putting crap on my chair,” she jokes, picking it up to put it on the ground next to her.
“Open it.”
She looks in the bag and pulls out the shoe box, then narrows her eyes at me. I watch because I want to see her face when she opens the box. I know it’s a stupid present, probably not the thing girls want to get. I’m not really an expert on the whole thing.
And then maybe I am, because her face lights up when she sees them.
“You bought me boots?” she says, like I just gave her diamonds.
“I didn’t get to give you anything for your birthday. I hope they fit. I looked at your shoes one day and they said seven so that’s what I got.” I shove my hands in my pockets.
She’s already taking off her running shoes and trying them on.
“Steel-toed?” she asks.
I nod.
“And black.” She smiles and I love that smile more because I think I put it there.
“And black,” I confirm, though I don’t know why.
“You didn’t wrap them,” she scolds.
“Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn’t call me on that.”
“I’m kidding,” she laughs and I could listen to it forever. She stands and examines the boots on her feet. “They’re perfect.”
“Now you can get around the good stuff in shop.”
Her smile fades. “I can’t use any of it.”
“You can use some of it,” I say, because I want the smile back and because it’s true. She can do more than she thinks she can. For some reason, she just won’t try. “And I can be your other hand when you need it.”
She’s walking around the garage and flexing her feet to break them in and I realize that there really is nothing sexier than this girl in black work boots. “You’ll have to bring them to school to change into.”
“Screw that,” she says, and I get the smile back tenfold. “I’m wearing these to school.”
“So I did okay?” I ask, just because I want to hear her say it.
“Almost better than the pennies.” She pushes herself up on her toes and kisses me and she’s salty and sweaty and awesome.
“You didn’t kiss me for the pennies,” I say.
“I didn’t know I was allowed.”
***
She refuses to go inside once she’s got those boots, so we spend another hour in the garage, where she helps me start measuring and marking for a side table she designed for a shop assignment. It’s a really cool design with Queen-Anne-style legs. I wish she could build the whole thing herself but the hand does make some of it impossible and she doesn’t have the expertise for all of it yet, anyway. I’ve been at this for ten years and I still have trouble with a lot things. I do walk her through every step, though. She yells at me if I do something without explaining, because even if she can’t do it herself, she wants to at least know how.
I don’t get nearly as much done as I used to out here, but I think it might be worth it, because there’s something seriously hot about her bossing me around in my garage with a hammer in her hand. I haven’t been bossed around in a while and she’s really cute when she’s determined and pissed, so I don’t mind so much.
I’ve lived and breathed sawdust for as long as I can remember. I think she does now, too.
CHAPTER 43
Josh
Expected. That’s what we’ve become and it’s scarier than anything else.
We’re in the courtyard at lunch every day. We don’t touch each other or laugh, and of course, we don’t talk, but we’re together. No one bothers us. Other than an occasional visit from Clay, the force field stays intact.
I’m trying to finish reading the story Ms. McAllister assigned, because there’s a quiz fifth hour today and I haven’t gotten through it yet. She leans over to see what I’m reading and tilts her head just enough so that it just barely grazes my shoulder and even the slightest contact from her makes me feel home. It’s instinctual. I turn toward her and kiss her hair before I realize what I’ve done in a courtyard full of people. For us, it’s a version of PDA on par with ripping each other’s clothes off and performing a live sex show right here.
I wait for the world to implode, or at least for the looks and comments to start, but there’s nothing. No distinguishable change in the atmosphere at all. And I wonder if the impossible has happened. That this, us, she and I, we have become normal. As soon as the word enters my mind, I know it’s the wrong one. We haven’t become normal, we’ve become expected. And not just by everyone at school. I’ve come to expect us, too. I expect her. I expect her here. I expect her at home. I expect her in my life.
And it’s terrifying.
CHAPTER 44
Nastya
“I like to talk, so I’m just going to imagine our conversation here,” Clay says while he’s drawing me on his back porch after school. I smile and he yells at me to put my face back, which isn’t easy, because Clay yelling at me is even funnier.
“Normally you’d hit all the g*y questions first because that’s what people like to do,” he says while he draws, and I don’t know how he can concentrate on both things at once. I’m a one thing at a time type of person which is why I have so much trouble keeping my mouth shut. Silence takes a serious amount of discipline. Because when you can talk but you just don’t, part of your mind is constantly occupied with concentrating on making sure you don’t open your mouth. Some days I wonder if it would be easier if I physically couldn’t speak because then I wouldn’t have to think about it all the time.