“I get it.”
“You do?”
I nodded. “I know what you mean about feeling cut loose from everything. I feel the same. Adrift.”
“Because your parents died so early?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Shiloh stopped and faced me. “I never said I was sorry about that. When you told me on the day we met, I was too busy being defensive. But I am. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not for him. For her maybe…” My throat tightened.
“What happened?” Shiloh asked gently.
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“I do. But if you don’t want to tell it, I understand. Talking about the past can suck. How about the future, instead? What do you want to do after we graduate? College?”
“Doubt it. I’m just trying to get through this year. It’s kind of like a reset, to leave a lot of bad shit behind. Try to be better.”
Mitch Dowd lurking in my apartment clouded my thoughts.
Trying and failing.
“I just want a normal life,” I said. It seemed like it wasn’t too much to ask and yet it was everything.
“Normal. Like…having a family?” Shiloh asked. “Kids?”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t have the best role model either.”
Understatement of the fucking year.
Shiloh was watching me, wanting to know more. Willing to listen. But telling her about my parents wasn’t like telling Holden or Miller. The three of us were fucked up in our own ways. Telling Shiloh would be like smearing mud over a beautiful painting.
We started to walk again, and the cardigan slipped off her waist and hit the ground. I made a grab for it and shook it out. Night had fallen, and she shivered under a streetlight. I wanted to wrap the sweater around her, protect her from the cold. From anything that would hurt her.
Remember who you are.
I thrust it at her. “Here.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She looked away as she slipped it over her slender arms. The yellow Tony’s sign blaring above us. “Aaand, we’re here.”
Tony’s BBQ had a line out the door. We waited in it, neither saying a word. When it came time to order, I tried to pay but Shiloh waved me off.
“It was my idea.”
“Shiloh…”
“Your money’s no good here, Wentz. I got this. I insist.”
I scowled. “I’ll get the next one.”
“The next one?”
Shit.
We walked back to her place, and Bibi—moving like a sighted person—set the table and dumped a pile of napkins in the center.
“If it’s Tony’s, we’ll need every single one,” she said, beaming in my direction.
I was going to be eating dinner with them…at their table. Like a normal person. But now that I was about to have a taste of normal, I didn’t know what to do. I was going to fuck it up. Say or do something and embarrass the shit out of myself.
“I could just take mine out back and keep working,” I said and turned to Shiloh. “Maybe I could take a look at your History notes later.”
Shiloh glared. “What?”
“Absolutely not,” Bibi said. “Come. Sit.”
There was no getting out of it. I took a seat opposite Shiloh while Bibi sat at the head of the table. The barbeque was better than anything I’d eaten in a long time, the sauce spicy and sweet.
Like the girl sitting across from me.
Bibi asked me harmless questions and made small talk until I no longer felt like an intruder. It snuck up on me, that feeling of belonging. Mostly because I didn’t recognize it. Shiloh and her grandmother teased each other, finishing each other’s sentences, and sharing their inside jokes.
Bibi was in the middle of telling me how five-year-old Shiloh once caught a tadpole in the pond up the road and had plans to raise it in the toilet, when a hard pounding on the door jolted all of us. The cats darted off the couch and disappeared down the hall.
The warm feeling of belonging evaporated, and for an instant, I had the crazy thought that I’d brought my own bloody past right to the Barrera’s doorstep.
Mitch Dowd…
“Sakes alive,” Bibi said, her hand on her throat. “Who could that be?”
The pounding came again, and I got up and strode to the door. I threw it open to a bored-looking delivery guy in a brown uniform, a package in his hand.
“I need a signature,” he said. “Mrs. Bibi Barrera.”
“You gotta pound the door like that?”
“Hey, man, this is my last delivery of the night.” He glanced up to see me looming over him and took a step back. “You don’t look like a Mrs. Barrera.”
“I’m here,” Bibi said, pushing me gently aside. “Thank you, Ronan, I got this.”
I went back to the table, grabbed my denim jacket and threw it on. “Thanks for dinner.”
Shiloh stood up. “You’re leaving? What about the History notes? The paper is due in a week.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“I don’t need your help, Shiloh,” I said and gestured at the remnants of dinner. “I don’t need…any of this.”
My stomach was full, but the hunger had returned, gnawing with sharp teeth. This wasn’t my house. Wasn’t my life.
Bibi had returned to the dining table with a package in her hands. “Well! I hope this is worth scaring us out of our wits…” She cocked her head, sensing tension. “Everything all right?”
“Fine,” I said, taking the sharp edge out of my tone for her sake. “I’ll be back Monday to work on the shed.”
I shot a glance at Shiloh. And that’s all.
Shiloh’s soft expression hardened, and she tilted her chin up. “Great,” she snapped. Fine by me.
I mumbled more thanks to Bibi and headed out, into the night that was cold and dark.
Chapter Nine
For the next week, instead of going home where Ronan was working every day in my backyard, I holed up in the school library with my History paper that was due that Friday. I pored over Romanov facts, thoughts of Ronan breaking my concentration every other minute. I wondered—worried—how he was doing on his paper and then reminded myself for the millionth time he didn’t want my help.
I made progress, but I felt like a coward. I never hid. I faced things head on and dealt with them quickly. Always.
Like you do with Mama? a voice whispered.
That was a whole other galaxy of pain. It was unbearable enough that she hated me. Knowing why might wreck me altogether. Ronan Wentz, I told myself, was merely a distraction. The best way to deal with him was to…not.
Ronan must’ve had the same idea. I didn’t see him except for History class, and he wasn’t talking either. Hell, he barely made eye contact.
Good, I thought, ignoring the twinge in my chest…and the memory of us standing on the sidewalk outside the old laundromat. How his gray eyes weren’t hard like stone but soft like smoke as he looked down at me, his gaze lingering on my mouth. Close enough I could smell the campfire scent of him. For a split second, I thought he was going to kiss me. Not just kiss but devour…