Love You More(7)

“You were just scared,” I said. “And you didn’t know Maeve yet. She was a diagnosis, not a person.”

“Yes. That’s exactly it,” Mick said. “I’ve never once wanted to change her, but my mom still gets sad. Or maybe she’s just overwhelmed. Who knows? But I know one thing—her drinking got worse after Maeve.”

Mick had mentioned his mother’s drinking before, and I was never sure how to respond.

“Do you think she’s…” I made myself say the word. “An alcoholic?”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. That’s safe to say.”

He proceeded to tell me a story about coming downstairs the morning of his thirteenth birthday and discovering that the freezer door had been left wide open. His customary ice cream cake had melted, spilling down the front of the refrigerator and all over the kitchen floor.

“Someone left it open?” I asked, not tracking.

“Yeah. Someone who keeps her vodka in the freezer.”

“Oh,” I said, wincing. “I’m sure she felt terrible.”

“She never knew. I cleaned everything up before she came downstairs.”

“Did you tell your dad?”

“I had to. The cake was gone. But I told him it was my fault—that I’d left the door open when I came down for a snack in the middle of the night. He acted like he believed me, but I know he didn’t.”

Mick paused, then lowered his voice. “We both cover for her all the time.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, picturing him crouched on the kitchen floor, mopping up melted ice cream, trying to protect his mother.

“Thanks, Billie,” he said, his voice low in my ear.

I stared into the darkness, the phone pressed to my cheek.

My heart was his. He just didn’t know it yet.





Chapter 4


One Friday afternoon in mid-December, Mick asked if I was free to get together over the weekend and study for our math exam.

“Good idea,” I said. My heart skipped a beat. We’d never seen each other outside of school.

“How does Sunday afternoon look?” he asked. “Around three?”

“That works,” I said. “Where should we meet?”

“Can we do it at your house? Maeve will never leave us alone.”

“Sure. Do you need my address?” I smiled. “Or did Will give you that, too?”

“Hey! I’m not a stalker!”

We both laughed as I scribbled my address on a piece of paper, then handed it to him.

“Cool,” he said. “I’ll ride my bike over.”

“Cool,” I echoed, holding his gaze.



* * *



— I was bursting to tell Erin the news, but she was in rehearsal, having scored the role of Urleen in Footloose. I had to wait two hours for her to come home, and by the time I raced over to her house and upstairs to her bedroom, I could barely contain myself.

“Guess who asked me to study this weekend?” I said, breathlessly throwing myself onto the bed beside her.

“No freaking way!” she yelled.

“Yep,” I said. “He’s coming over on Sunday afternoon!”

“Billie! This is the moment we’ve been waiting for!” She reached over to grab my shoulders. “I bet he wants to ask you out!”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “But it feels like progress.”

“Huge progress,” she said. “You need to get your family out of the house.”

“So they don’t embarrass me?”

“No. In case he wants to make a move.” She shot off her bed, ran over to her desk, and rummaged through a drawer, pulling out her makeup pouch and a hairbrush. “C’mere. Let’s do a trial run.”

“A trial run for what?”

“Hair and makeup. You always look great, but we need to kick it up a notch. Do a slightly glossier version of you.”

She pulled a tube of lip gloss out of the pouch and opened it, swiping it on me. She tilted my chin toward the mirror. “See? Doesn’t that look nice?”

“It does,” I admitted.

She kissed the tube, then handed it to me. “Here. Take it. It’s now your good-luck lip gloss.”

I smiled and wedged it into my back pocket, knowing I needed all the luck I could get—and maybe a little of Erin’s confidence, too.



* * *



— That Sunday, when Mick rang our doorbell, the chime echoed through our house. I smoothed on a coat of Erin’s lip gloss and hurried down the stairs. Unfortunately, my father got to the foyer first, opening the door with a surprised hello. I’d told my parents that a friend was coming over to study but hadn’t mentioned that he was a boy.

“Hi, Mr. Wright,” Mick said in the same polite voice he used with Ms. Sprinkman. “I’m Mick—”

“Holy smokes! I know who you are! Mick O’Leary! Number thirty-one!”

“Dad—” I said behind him, mortified.

He ignored me and kept going. “That eighty-yard run against Mukwonago! Man oh man, that was something else!”

“Thank you,” Mick said, shifting his feet.