Totally and Completely Fine(31)

I caught her eye, and she gave me a furtive look.

Pulling out my phone, I made a sound of surprise.

“You guys are going to be late for the movie,” I said.

They weren’t.

“You’d better hurry along,” I said. “I’ll see you afterward.”

“Thanks, Mrs. P!” Eve said.

“Thanks, Mom.”

The two of them walked off, Eve’s arm looped through Lena’s.

I glanced over at Jessica, wondering if she was thinking what I was thinking. Because that had been us. Once upon a time. Truly inseparable.

But she wasn’t even looking.

“They seem to spend a lot of time together,” Diana said.

“They’re friends,” I said.

“Friends are one thing,” Diana said. “But how is Lena going to get a boyfriend if she’s not more social?”

“Isn’t she too young to date?”

That had always been her rule. No dating until eighteen. Not that it mattered what Diana’s rules were pertaining to my child, but I was still surprised she was suddenly eager for my thirteen-year-old to have a boyfriend.

Diana frowned. “I just think she needs to be spending more time with other kids.”

Which meant that Diana wanted Lena to spend time with the right kind of kids.

“The church youth group is great for that kind of socializing,” Jessica said.

“She would love it,” Diana said.

I knew for a fact she wouldn’t. I knew because I’d asked her, and she’d said no.

“She’s always welcome,” Jessica said. “I think it would do her good.”

Diana looked at Jessica like she wished she were her daughter-in-law. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that look. Or had this conversation.

“This looks delicious,” I said, changing the subject by focusing on food.

Another lie. The cookies were store-bought, the cake looked stale, and someone had brought brownies with frosting. I hated brownies with frosting. As far as I was concerned, if you needed it, then your brownies weren’t good enough.

“Have some,” Diana said, handing me a paper towel with a brownie on it.

I took it.

“Maybe don’t eat it all at once,” Jessica said.

She gave me a once-over. I knew she was trying to imply that I looked fat or fatter, but I already knew that I didn’t look like I had in high school, and I didn’t care.

Apparently, Jessica cared.

If I were a nicer person, I might have felt sorry for her. But who cared about high school anymore?

We were older. Fatter. Grayer. Those were just the facts. That was what happened when people aged.

I knew better than anyone what a gift that was.

Spencer would never get older. Fatter. Grayer.

Even though I hated brownies with frosting, I ate the entire thing. It burned my teeth and made me feel sick, but I relished the horrified disgust in Jessica’s eyes as she watched. If Lena were still standing here, she probably would have died from embarrassment.

Bad enough that I’d forced her to be in public with me, but now I was standing in the middle of town with cheap chocolate frosting smeared on my cheek.

Diana handed me a napkin.

“Don’t make a mess,” she said.

Chapter 19

Then

I moved into an apartment of my own at the end of spring. The snow was melting into an awful slush that soaked my pant legs as I transferred bedding from my car to my tiny basement unit right off Nickle Junction. It was barely insulated, and my upstairs neighbors were apparently tap dancers or bowling ball enthusiasts from the noise they made, but I didn’t care.

I’d raided the local secondhand stores for dishware and curtains. Stocked my pantry—which was merely a cabinet with a broken hinge—with dented cans and label-less tins I got for half price at work. My coffee table was a piece of wood stacked on a couple of cement blocks that Gabe had piled into the basement for reasons unknown. I had two chairs. My couch was patched with duct tape, mismatched fabric, and hope. I held my breath every time I sat on it.

The apartment was hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

On its best days, it smelled like garlic; on its worst, feet.

But it was mine.

I’d wanted Spencer to move in with me, but unfortunately Diana was recovering from yet another surgery where she needed her son to be available to her at all times.

“I’m just worried she’ll fall and hurt herself,” he said.

She’d had a mole removed from her arm.

I didn’t argue. There wasn’t any point. If I’d learned anything about Spencer it was that when he was ready, he was ready. Not a second before.

At least he was only a few blocks away. And there was something undeniably pleasurable about having a place that I didn’t have to share with anyone. I could do anything I wanted. It was delicious and terrifying at the same time.

Spencer was my first official guest. He brought an air freshener plug-in wrapped up in a bow and pizza from work. King Cheese had taken him back when he dropped out of college, though he’d also started working at the hardware store on the weekends. We ate at the coffee table, sitting on the floor.

“I keep expecting to hear my mom down the hall,” I said. “It’s so quiet.”