She’s the first person I feel like I can talk to about my mom, because she understands without being too close. Without there being so much shared grief, like with my dad and Nina, that it’s suffocating.
Blake doesn’t just want to make me feel better, like my friends do, and she doesn’t need me to share her grief. And something about that helps me feel like I’m not so completely frozen.
A couple of weeks ago, when Kiera was leaving for camp and everything was so broken, it felt almost like the last straw. Like I was at the end of my rope.
When I heard Johnny and Blake were moving to Huckabee and we were going to bingo, I never would have guessed this would happen.
But… I feel like she’s got me back in the game. And for the first time in a long time, I feel ready to play.
14
I wake up the next day still riding the high from cliff jumping and my new, list-inspired goal.
Talk to Matt. I finally feel ready. Like if I stop thinking about it and just go for it, the right words will come to me.
The feeling builds and builds through my shift at Nina’s, time moving at a glacial pace despite the morning rush and the batch of blueberry scones I spend the afternoon baking.
For once, the familiar rhythm of whisking, and adding ingredients, and shaping doesn’t bring me the same kind of comfort, my mind too distracted to fully concentrate on what I’m doing.
“You good?” Nina asks as she peers at my misshapen triangles. “First you get banned from Snyder’s, and now you think a triangle looks like a football.”
I grin sheepishly. “Sorry, Nina.”
I’ve thought about telling her about the list, but something always stops me. Where my dad can hardly talk about my mom, Nina is… almost the polar opposite. The Julie Miller pain is always a sentence away, always just within reach. And it’s heavy and awful, the shared grief between the two of us enough to make you feel like you got run over by a train.
So, today, like all the other days, I decide not to say anything.
By the time the clock strikes two, I’m already sprinting out the door. The bells jingle behind me as I grab my bike out of the rack and pedal quickly down the street before I can talk myself out of it.
The pool is less than a mile away, situated just outside the center of Huckabee and down the road from the hospital. I usually make it a point to avoid this route, going through a development and tacking on an extra half a mile, but I don’t want to waste another second. I’ve wasted too many already.
Before I know it, I’m turning into the parking lot and locking up my bike, the too-familiar sound of kids splashing in the water and muffled music pouring out of an ancient boom box filling the air.
Is Blake still working? I know she was here this morning. I don’t want her to hear this.
But if I can fix things now, maybe she’ll never have to.
I start power walking, skidding to a stop in front of the plastic chair by the front gate, where Jake is sitting, the chair tilted back on two legs, a silver whistle swinging around his finger. His eyes widen when he sees me, and he flails, righting himself before he completely tips over.
“Oh shit,” he says, pushing his shaggy blond hair out of his face to give me a once-over. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Nice to see you, too.” I crane my neck, looking past him, my eyes scanning the deck. “Matt here?”
“Uh, yeah.”
I go to slide around Jake, but he stops me. “Pool fee?”
I put my hands on my hips, giving him a look. “Jake. You can’t be serious.”
He doesn’t say anything but keeps his hand outstretched. I let out a frustrated sigh and dig into the pocket of my jeans for the tip money I just made, peeling off five ones and handing them to him.
He slips it into a black leather bank bag, nodding toward the rusty vending machines outside the bathrooms. “He’s over there.”
I follow his nod to see Matt peering through the glass in a pair of red swim trunks, debating between salty and sweet, just like he always does. My heart begins to hammer noisily in my chest.
“By the way,” Jake says as he leans back in his chair again, pointing at my left cheek with a smirk. “You’ve got flour on your face.”
“Better than rotten apples,” I mutter, rubbing away at the flour as I move past him. I walk right up to Matt without even a second thought, like I’m running straight toward the edge of a cliff.
“Hi,” I say, jumping off.
He looks over at me, surprised, a strand of his brown hair falling onto his forehead. “Hi,” he says, brushing it away. For a second he smiles, like a reflex, but then he clears his throat, plastering on a serious glower. “What are you doing here?”
My stomach drops, and I feel my breathing hitch. I open my mouth to say something, and wait and wait until I realize… this isn’t like cliff jumping at all.
I would’ve hit the water by now, but instead I’m still falling, my arms flailing wildly around, a belly flop damn near inevitable.
“I just wanted to say…,” I manage to get out. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
His eyebrows fall into full brooding mode. He doesn’t say anything. He just crosses his arms and glances to the side at the lifeguard table, where a sea of eyes peer at us intently. Cassie Evans, an upcoming junior who’s had a crush on Matt for the past two summers, looks like she’s trying to murder me using just the power of her mind.
But that doesn’t come close to the look on Matt’s face. I’ve never seen him this upset before.
“Matt,” I
