“Aha!” she says. “I had a feeling after he helped Teddy get you to the party. And from the way you were making eyes at him.”
“I was not,” I protest, but even I can’t keep the smile from bursting on my face.
“He was making eyes, too,” she teases.
Even though I’m fully aware Oliver likes me now—him saying so, and the kissing every few blocks on the way back home pretty much cleared that right up—I still feel my cheeks burn.
“Speaking of—I didn’t get a chance to give you these last night.” She turns off the stove, peering at the bubbling sauce for a moment before reaching under the counter for a box. “And, well—I know your birthday’s technically not until Monday, but I thought you might want them for class this weekend.”
I take the box from her and unwrap it carefully, recognizing the iconic LaDuca label on the box before I even see the shoes. I pull the top off, and there they are: flawless two-and-a-half-inch-heel T-strap beige character shoes with a hard sole, the same ones I’ve been salivating over with every other theater kid I know for years. The kind of shoe that says you’re not just in this, but all the way in it.
Heather pulls the tissue paper out of the way so I can get a better look at them, because I’ve completely frozen in awe.
“Farrah helped me pick them out,” she says, a little cautiously. “Said these soles were best for dancers who were stronger singers and actors.”
They’re beautiful. They feel like some kind of talisman, like a slice of the future I can’t see yet. These shoes built to last so long that they might not just see a college stage, but a Broadway one. I graze the leather with the tips of my fingers and feel the energy of everything yet to come: the auditions I’ll nail and the ones I’ll blow; the roles I’ll play and the ones I’ll miss; the path that will twist and turn whether or not I’m ready to twist and turn with it.
“They take so long to break in that I thought, you know. You’d have senior year to get them ready for college,” says Heather. “But now I guess you’ll have them for college.”
“Thanks, Heather,” I say. These shoes run in the mid-two-hundred-dollar range, so I know they weren’t an easy purchase to make, but it’s not just that. It’s the faith she has in me. That she always had, before I had a lick of talent to back it up.
She pulls them out of the box, tapping their soles on the counter. “Try ’em on. Give ’em a whirl.”
I want to, but there’s something else I want to do more. By the time I look up and meet Heather’s eyes, I can tell she feels it, too—the unresolved conversation from the stairwell last night. The apology that is understood but still unsaid. The biggest regret I have in all this, more even than going behind my dad’s back: hurting Heather in the process.
“I wanted to … talk to you about the whole … finding-my-mom thing.”
Heather nods. The apartment feels very quiet without my dad here, even though he’s the quietest of all three of us. Like there’s so much space to fill to try to explain what happened, but there will also never quite be enough.
“First of all, I’m—I’m really sorry,” I say. “For not telling you guys what I was doing, and for…”
I’m not even sure how to say it, because there’s so much to be said. But Heather just smiles and tweaks me on the cheek.
“I know. And I am, too,” she says. “For the way I reacted, mostly. What you did may have been … not ideal. But I don’t really know what it’s like to have a question like that. I’ve never had to wonder.”
The truth is, I haven’t really, either. I wonder if it weren’t for the precollege if I’d have ever bothered looking at all.
But I dismiss the thought as soon as I have it. It’s like Georgie said. It was inevitable, in its own way. But it was a matter of time, not a matter of anything else. I can be uncertain about everything else in my life, but never uncertain about the love in it.
“We started it and it all kind of got ahead of us too fast,” I say, trying to explain. “Finding Beth, and then Farrah, and…”
“I know. Your dad told me.”
This is unsurprising, considering I don’t think I’ve ever said one thing to either of them in my life that wasn’t immediately repeated to the other.
“And I guess I can’t complain, since I did get a girlfriend out of it.”
She looks over at me hesitantly, like I might have some objection to it. I just smirk back. “Girlfriend, huh?”
“Yeah.” She busies herself with a dirty dish on the counter, but I can still see the pink in her cheeks. “And yes, she has seen me attempt to dance and is somehow still into me.”
“The Cooper woman curse. Flawless in every way but our two left feet.” Before she can ask, I say, “I’m glad that some good came out of this.”
Heather sticks her tongue out at me. “Maybe more than some, if this Beth thing works out with your dad.” She frowns at the dish in her hands, a different kind of quiet settling over the room. “But I’m still not sure how you found these women.”
“Teddy helped. But Dad’s LiveJournal page started it,” I say, only because I know it’ll make her laugh.
“His LiveJournal?”
“From, uh, 2003.” I guess I didn’t keep the email fresh on her browser. Probably for the best, because the last thing she needed was Jade distracting her mid-courtship with Farrah. “It was … predictably angsty.”
“Oh boy. Well.” She bites her lip, but that doesn’t stop the laugh from coming through. “Maybe we don’t mention that to him.”
“Yeah, maybe not.”
We’re quiet for a few moments again, the two of us retreating back into our own thoughts. It occurs to me that this must have been one hell of a two weeks for her, too, with all the changes. Dad being gone, me going rogue, Farrah dancing into her life. And Heather caught in the middle of all of it, whether she wanted to be or not.
“Listen, Millie,” she says, coming back before I do. “I know it’s a tough subject. But I also know you. Well enough to know you were sneaking around auditioning for the precollege long before you got in.”
This is surprising but probably shouldn’t be. Heather has been able to see right through me since my very first lie, which I’m told was when at the age of four I claimed my imaginary friend changed the channel from a Star Wars marathon to our DVD of Enchanted while my dad was in the bathroom.
“And you’ve never asked about this before.” She leans into the counter, watching me carefully. “You’ve really never seemed to care. And I don’t think precollege changed that. I think something else did.”
I pull my lips into my teeth. If I’m ever going to tell the truth to someone, it’s Heather. And if I’m ever going to properly do it, it’s right now.
“I’ve always been … dramatic.”
“Expressive,” says Heather.
“A handful,” I concede. “And I guess—sometimes I just feel things differently. Loudly. The Millie Moods. I wondered maybe if … finding my mom might … explain it. Because sometimes I feel like it just comes out of nowhere. It’s not from you, or from Dad, so I thought maybe … I don’t know.”