“Adam.”
“In that case, thanks, Adam.” When his reddish-brown eyebrows drew together, I elaborated, “You told Shelly not to call my mom ‘queen bitch.’ That was nice of you.”
His eyebrows smoothed out. “Figured she might not be impartial.”
I laughed. Then I did it again. It took a lot of effort not to go for a third. “That would be a no. I mean, my mom is awful, but so’s my dad and his teenage girlfriend.”
“Wait, she’s not—”
“She was close to it when I first met her.” I mentally and physically shook myself away from that chain of thought.
Adam made a face that echoed my sentiments.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Is she for real?”
“Everything but her boobs. I’m pretty sure my dad bought those two—or was it three?—Christmases ago. I can’t remember. Wait, it was three. We couldn’t afford braces for me that year, but obviously my dad enjoys those more, so it was the right call.” I smiled, revealing the slight gap between my front teeth. In hindsight, I liked my gap, but my dad was still a tool. “Hey, do you smoke?” I held up my cigarette.
Adam shook his head.
“That’s too bad.” I lowered it without taking a drag.
He flushed a little more. “Maybe you shouldn’t either.”
He was cute. “I don’t.” I flicked off the ash. “Shelly says the smell makes her sick and forbade me to smoke, so.” I shrugged.
“But you don’t smoke?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I tried, but I felt like throwing up afterward, and the smoke messed with my shots.” She nodded at her camera. “Now I just let them burn and enjoy the results. Still, it’d be a lot easier if you smoked. All the stink in half the time, you know? It’s not exactly warm out here.” He surprised me then by swinging his leg over and jumping into my balcony, sending the two pigeons flying off. Very cute, I decided. He lifted the cigarette from my hand and took several long drags without hacking and coughing like I had. “Thought you didn’t smoke.”
It was his turn to shrug. “My mom used to. She caught me one time sneaking a cigarette from her purse, so I promised to quit if she did.”
My fingers itched to pick up my camera, but that might make him stop. When he hit the filter, he presented it to me like the diamond it was.
“And did she?”
“Yeah.”
Such a simple answer, yet the concept completely eluded me. “I’m guessing that means you won’t be my smoking buddy from now on?”
“Sorry,” he said, like he really meant it. “Onetime thing.”
The problem with cute boys who valiantly smoke cigarettes for you is that they tend to be distracting. In my head I was shooting the scene of him leaping to my balcony with the fading glow of daylight outlining him. I would focus on his hands clutching the railing and zoom in to show how the rust would still be stuck in patches to his fingers when he picked up my cigarette. I was leaning forward to check the angles and was therefore completely oblivious to the fact that we were about to be invaded until the balcony door slid open.
“Jolene, I—” Shelley’s nose wrinkled and her gaze dropped to the cigarette butt in my hand. “Seriously? It’s like you deliberately do the things I tell you not to.”
Scene forgotten, I refrained from tapping my nose and making a bell noise, but only just. “When the sweet, seductive lure of nicotine calls, you have to answer.”
Shelly snatched up my pack and plucked the butt from my unprotesting fingers. “It makes it a lot easier not to sugarcoat things for you when pull this shi—” She broke off when she noticed Adam. “Where did you come from?” Her eyes went wide and her gaze shot to the balcony next door. “Are you out of your mind? You could have died!”
A thoroughly frigid breeze raked over us, and Shelly shivered. I looked at Adam to see if he was noticing what the cold air was doing to my dad’s not-so-little gifts. He glanced but didn’t linger. Cuter by the minute.
“Are you okay?” Shelly moved forward as if to hug him, but Adam stepped back.
“Yeah, I’d really rather you didn’t touch me.”
I grinned at him. “I’m going to like you, aren’t I?”
Shelly made a distressed noise.
“Calm down, Shelly. He’s fine. We’re fine. Feel free to go back inside where it’s warm before you put someone’s eye out with one of those things.”
Shelly did a decent Adam impersonation by going red and wrapping her arms across her chest. She took a step back. “I need you both inside right now.” I didn’t move and, much to my pleasure, Adam didn’t either.
“That’s gonna be a pass, Shel, but thanks.”
Shelly sucked her upper lip into her mouth and glanced upward. “Jolene, I thought we had an agreement.”
“And what agreement was that? The one where you break into my room whenever you want?”
“I knocked. You didn’t answer. And our agreement was that you were not going to smoke here.” She made an exasperated noise. “And to think I was going to talk to your dad about that summer film school—”
All my muscles tightened. “What are you talking about?” But I knew. I just didn’t know how Shelly knew. I didn’t go around sharing huge personal dreams with anyone, let alone my dad’s prepubescent girlfriend.
“The film program in California. They sent this huge info packet. Honestly, I almost threw it away because you never mentioned that you were expecting anything, but then I saw your name when I opened it and...”
Shelly kept going but most of me shut down so that I could silently scream in my head without externally moving a single muscle. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Adam sucking in a breath. It helped, however slightly, to have someone else register the line Shelly had crossed without even thinking about it.
“...I thought you just liked watching old movies. Is that what you’re filming all the time?” She reached for my camera, and I snatched it away with a barely repressed snarl.
I guessed, to Shelly, movies from the ’80s were old. I preferred them, because they showed me a time before my parents met and lost their minds long enough to get married and have me. You know, the good old days. But I didn’t watch only “old” movies.
“Maybe if you didn’t hide every single aspect of your life from me, I wouldn’t have to go through your mail or barge onto your balcony to know anything. I’m just—” She gritted her teeth. “I’m sick of it. I can’t control what you do at your mother’s, but over here you need to follow your dad’s rules.”