Khloe’s mom pulls up. She unthreads the mess I made of her hair as she heads to the car. “I hope you weren’t planning on going to cosmetology school, Greer.”
“Ingrate!”
Soon the others are gone, too, except for Jessa. My dad is picking me up, which means I’ll be waiting for another twelve hours. Jessa’s parents are late, too.
“The only way to get my dad to show up on time is to lie to him about when he’s supposed to be there,” I say.
“Do you do that?”
“No,” I admit. “Mom and I always say we’re going to, but then we worry it will be the one time he’s actually on time.”
“And then he’d be mad.”
“Actually, no. He’d just be early.” I think about this for a minute. Maybe there is no downside to telling my dad that practice ends at five instead of five thirty.
“Too bad you can’t make him run laps if he’s late. That motivates people.”
“I wonder what motivates people who run track? I mean, if you’re going to be running laps anyway . . .”
“Ha!” Jessa likes even my dumbest jokes. For a while I thought her family must be very serious, and that’s why she laughed at everything, but I’ve met the Timmses and I think they’re just people who appreciate the effort.
Jessa hops off the wall and dribbles a volleyball a few times. She sets it up, gently, then gets under it and pops it up again, over and over. When it flails out to the side, she catches it and starts over again.
“Is everybody in your family good at sports?”
“I guess so. Maddie thinks she’s the best.” She tries to twirl the volleyball on one finger. It doesn’t make a single revolution, but she tries again.
“The one in college?” Jess’s big sister plays soccer for Ohio Northern University.
“Yeah. She probably would have been good at anything she played, but she always loved soccer.” She tries to bounce the ball on her knees, like a soccer player, but she can’t get more than two bounces. “I was never into soccer. I’m not that good at running. She’s more like my mom. I’m more like my dad.” Jess goes back to setting the ball to herself.
“How do you mean?”
“She’s fast and skinny. I mean not skinny-skinny. Just on the skinnier side. Which I am not.” I watch Jess carefully as she says this. She is eyeing the ball. There is nothing in her voice that sounds like envy. Nothing in her face that looks like regret. Just facts. “She and my mom are good at speed and endurance, but they don’t have power, you know?” She’s looking straight up at the ball, calculating, moving, getting it right, again and again. She looks happy, like she’s where she’s supposed to be. Like she’s who she’s supposed to be. “My dad and my little sister and me, we’ve got power.” I realize that this is exactly how Jessa understands herself. She doesn’t think of herself as “not skinny.” She thinks of herself as strong. Powerful. And she is exactly right. “Plus, we work our asses off.” The ball arcs wide and comes down eight feet from her. She lunges and dives, getting her fists under it just before it hits the ground. She lands on her knees on the concrete, but the volley is saved.
When Dad finally pulls up twenty minutes late, I offer Jess a ride, since her parents seem to be MIA. “No, thanks. My dad’s here.” She waves at a car at the edge of the parking lot. Mr. Timms leans his head out and waves back, all smiles. I didn’t see him drive in, so he must have been here the whole time. “See you tomorrow!” She jogs to the Highlander, ball under one arm, and climbs in the passenger side.
She wasn’t waiting for a ride. She was waiting with the team.
CHAPTER 61
My dad prefers painting with me.
Tyler is too sloppy. Even when you think you’ve covered every possible surface with a drop cloth, he’ll step in paint and leave a dotted trail of Spring Fawn or Whispering Walnut or whatever other on-trend beige my mother has picked out.
Mom’s an excellent painter—meticulous about taping and prep, never leaves globs, edges like a razor. But she’s too bossy. She considers us her apprentices.
So Dad prefers me. I never swing the roller like a lacrosse stick, and I don’t tell him that he should trim the windows in a counterclockwise direction because the sheen pattern deflects light outward that way. I’m good, but not obsessive. And I like his music.
Mom’s at Pilates and Ty is still in bed, watching old Parks and Rec episodes on the iPad. He says his mouth still hurts too much to brush his teeth. Dad and I are just about to pop open the first gallon of paint when the doorbell rings, which usually means an environmental activist with a petition or a neighborhood kid selling cookie dough.
It’s neither. It’s Maggie with a Vitaminwater.
“We need to talk.” She’s wearing her business face, which could mean she has just found out that our high school uses three hundred thousand gallons of water on the football field or that rich people pay less taxes than their chauffeurs, but I kind of doubt that. I think this one is about me. “And I’d hate for your FaceTime to crap out again.”
Definitely about me.
“Sure, but we were just about to start painting the office upstairs, so . . .”
Helpful/Not Helpful Dad pops in. “You know what? I was thinking I wanted to make a coffee run before we really dive in.” The man can read a room.
“Great.” I try to sound enthusiastic. I love Maggie more than just about anybody, but I’ve done a very good job not having a serious conversation with her for almost four months and I was hoping to keep that going for at least another several years.
Dad takes off, and Maggie and I head down to the family room. She’s only seen pictures of the Lovesac.
“Oh my god. You could fit your whole family in this thing!” She plops herself in the middle and insists I climb in with her, which really means climbing all over her. It’s a lot of elbows and knees before we’re settled, facing each other in a beanbag the size of a dwarf planet.
She hands me her Vitaminwater, watching carefully, like she’s trying to figure out where to start. I realize I’m nervous. About Maggie. This is not how things are supposed to be. “Did I tell you that my mom is getting a client from Hong Kong who has triplets?” I try.
“Jackson Oates,” she replies.
I stop the bottle an inch from my lips. I shift in my spot and the foam filler resettles. “What about Jackson Oates?”
She leans forward and puts her hands together in a steeple, like one of those TV detectives who also happens to be a psychologist. “For a long time, I thought that he liked you and you didn’t even realize it.”