Not Another Bad Date

Adele could use a few things herself. “Is it okay with your dad?”

“Yes. Daddy gave me his credit card and said not to come home looking like a hooker.”

“Like Jenny Callaway,” Kendra said through a snort, and the two girls started to laugh.

The last time Adele had seen Daddy, he’d just come out of a bathroom stall. At first she’d been too blinded by the hope of no more curse to feel much of anything other than relief and pure joy over what had happened in that bathroom. A week later, she just wanted to curl up and groan. If those girls hadn’t walked in, she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t have ended up having sex with Zach against the wall. She didn’t want to think about what might have happened if Zach hadn’t pulled her into the stall before those girls opened the door.

“Aunt Adele?”

She looked over at her niece. “Yes.”

“No Kendra,” Tiffany whispered loudly from the back.

Kendra turned and looked between the seats at Tiffany. “She might know.”

Adele looked in the rearview mirror at Tiffany shaking her head. Her eyes huge. She looked so much like her mother, it brought back memories of Devon making fun of the brand of pants Adele wore. “What’s up?” Adele asked.

Kendra sat back in her seat. “When did you get your period?”

The car swerved a little as Adele glanced over at her niece. “Why?”

“’Cause Lilly Ann Potts got hers last week. That makes everyone in the eighth grade but Tiffany.”

Adele stopped at a red light and once again glanced in the rearview mirror. Tiffany leaned forward with her face buried in her backpack. She seriously doubted every girl in the eighth grade had her period but Tiffany. “Are you worried about it?” Adele asked.

Tiffany shrugged.

“She thinks something might be wrong with her,” Kendra provided. “And she doesn’t have a momma to talk to her about it.”

The light turned green, and Adele drove through the intersection. At the age of thirteen, she hadn’t had a mother either, and she knew what it was like to have that important piece missing in your life. To always feel the loss and sorrow and longing in your heart, but at least she’d had Sherilyn. Perfect, pain in the butt Sherilyn to explain things to her. “My mother died when I was ten. Just like you. Only I had an older sister to talk to about embarrassing stuff I couldn’t talk to my daddy about.”

Tiffany lifted her head. “I tried to talk to my daddy about it. He said I could go to a doctor, but I don’t want to, and I don’t want to talk to my grandmas either. And there might not be anything wrong anyway, but I saw a story on TV about girls who have too many boy hormones or something and they don’t get their periods and they grow a mustache. I don’t wanna grow a mustache.”

Adele had never heard of such a thing, but she supposed it could happen. “I think I was thirteen when I got my period, but my friend Gail was fourteen. She was littler than I was and a late bloomer.”

“See. I told you not to worry.” Kendra picked at a blue patch of polish on her stubby thumbnail.

“I think my mom was a late bloomer,” Tiffany said.

“Yes. I think she was.”

Tiffany sat straight up. “You knew my mom?”

“We graduated from Cedar Creek High the same year,” she said as she turned into Dillard’s parking lot. “We didn’t hang around with the same group of friends, but I knew her.”

Adele parked the car, and the three of them got out and moved toward the front of the store.

“Did my momma have lots of boyfriends?” Tiffany asked, and folded her arms across the chest of her red sweater.

Devon had always dated a football player. “I believe she did.”

“Were they cute?”

“Sure.” Adele hung her purse on her shoulder. “Your daddy knew her better than anyone, I imagine.” They walked into the store and paused at the perfume counter. “You should ask him about her.”

Tiffany shrugged and sprayed herself down with Juicy. “I do ask him, but he didn’t know her before UT. And he just says stuff like, ‘there was no one like your momma’ and that she loved me.”

Zach was right. Adele had never met anyone else like Devon, which was a good thing. “You should ask Genevieve Brooks.” Adele picked up a bottle of Burberry, pulled back her sleeves, and spritzed her wrists. “She knew your mother better than I.”

Tiffany shook her head, and her golden blond hair brushed the shoulders of her sweater. “She only talks to me so that she can be around my dad. The others, too.”

“Smell this.” Kendra held her wrist up to Tiffany’s nose. “It smells like grapefruit.”

They set down the bottles of perfume, and Tiffany asked as they moved to the Estee Lauder counter, “What was Momma like in school?”

A heinous bitch. “Well, she was perky and cute.” Adele dug around in her memory for something nice to say. “She was a cheerleader and popular.” Then she flat out lied. “She was just plain wonderful.” She swallowed past her constricting throat. “Really great.”

Tiffany grinned, showing a mouthful of metal. Her whole face lit up from the inside out. “Everyone loved her.”

“Yes. Everyone loved her.” Adele smiled and was glad that she’d lied.

“Grandma Cecilia says that people loved her ’cause she was so sweet to everyone.”

Adele opened her mouth, but her throat closed completely. Apparently one lie about Devon a day was her quota. “Mmm-hmm,” she managed and was saved further comment by an Estee Lauder salesclerk with a pile of blond hair and perfect makeup. The clerk set the three of them in chairs in front of mirrors and let them play with makeup as she gave them tips.

Adele felt bad for Tiffany. Going through your teen years without a mother was rough, and although she was positive Zach loved his daughter, he could never be her mother. She could never go to him with those excruciatingly embarrassing questions that every girl had when her body changed from a little girl’s into a woman’s. She wondered if she should tell Zach that Tiffany had talked to Adele about her worries.

While the girls applied a little pink rouge, Adele picked out liquid eyeliner and drew a narrow, plum-colored line across the base of her lashes. She pumped up the volume of her lashes with some Illusionist mascara, then turned to her niece. “What do you think?”

“I like the eyeliner, but…”

“But what?”

“No offense, Aunt Adele, but the scrunchie has to go.”

“Go where?”

“In the garbage.”

She lifted a hand to the ponytail at the back of her head. “What’s wrong with my scrunchie?”

Tiffany leaned forward, and answered, “It’s so nineteen-nineties. Noooo one wears scrunchies anymore.”

“Jordon Kent’s mom does,” Kendra said as she gazed at herself in the mirror. “I saw it when she picked him up from school.”

“Yeah, and she wears mom pants and big bangs, too.”

Adele suddenly felt really old and lowered her hand. “Really? My scrunchie is a fashion no?” How had she not known that? And how had she suddenly become so incredibly uncool?

“Your scrunchie is a fashion heck no.” Tiffany gave her a consoling smile. “But you’ve got pretty eyes.”

Pretty eyes? Wasn’t that what people always said to unattractive people when they couldn’t think of something nice to say?

“And you’re really cute when your hair isn’t in a scrunchie,” Tiffany added, throwing Adele a bone.

Cute? “Thank you.” She looked up at the saleswoman. “I’ll take the Illusionist mascara.