“You’re a worrier. You and Dad.”
I groaned. I didn’t want to worry. I didn’t want to be the nagging older-by-six-minutes sister. And I certainly didn’t want to be anything like my dad.
“Don’t lump me in with Dad. Come on. I don’t want you to be in trouble. That’s all.”
I was almost home.
“Yeah, wouldn’t want to mess up this bright future of mine.” It was meant to be funny, but a hint of sadness filtered through.
“Do you want to come over tonight? I miss you.”
“I can’t tonight. I’m meeting up with someone. But tomorrow? And Dad and Estelle are going to Atlanta for a few days, leaving on Saturday, so I’ll have the house to myself.”
“House party!” I laughed at the memory of Austin’s streak of failed house parties throughout high school. Most of the kids our age had been too afraid of the Military Police to go to a party on post, but fewer people actually made the parties more fun.
“Totally.”
“And I was totally joking. You’re not going to have a party at Dad’s house.”
“Uh, yeah. I am.”
He could not be serious. Our dad would lose his mind if Austin had a party at his house. I couldn’t bear to think of the consequences.
“You are not. I mean, throwing a party a few days after you get arrested? What is wrong with you? We aren’t in high school anymore!”
It was stuff like this that made me return to my family theory, which was that Austin had inherited my mother’s ability to live without consequence and charm her way through tricky circumstances. My little brother was always so good with people. He could be thrust into any situation and people would flock to him. What’s that saying, like bees to honey? He had all the honey. Me—I was the opposite. I fluttered around people like Austin, easily charmed, like my father.
“Speak for yourself.”
“How do you even know enough people here to have a party? I mean—”
“Look, I gotta go. See you sometime tomorrow. Stop worrying. You should come over. Love you.”
He hung up before I could get in another word.
Oh, Austin. I love you, but sometimes you make some really shitty life choices.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I was surprised to find my front door locked. I dug for my key and let myself in, grabbing my mail from the box on the way. My little mailbox was falling off my house. Another thing to fix. As I flipped through envelopes, a realtor’s brochure of fancy, expensive houses in Atlanta was on top. I searched for the smiley realtor—Sandra Deen, was her name. The price for a house in Buckhead, with a sparkling swimming pool, was three million dollars. Yeah, I freaking wish, Sandra.
Until I hit the lottery or my random idea of opening up a chain of high-end spas takes off, it’s the little white house with the dangling red mailbox for me. When I got inside, the house was heavy with silence. I went through the rest of my mail—nothing interesting, mainly bills and flyers—and because the entire house smelled of Elodie’s popcorn and it made my stomach growl, I grabbed some pretzels from the pantry.
My house felt different with no sound. It felt strange not hearing the name Olivia Pope every few minutes. I was completely alone. No Elodie. No Kael. We didn’t agree on a time or anything, but I guess I’d assumed that he would be at my house when I got off work.
Where else would he go?
I microwaved the last of the leftovers from Mali. I washed a load of dishes. Sat at my kitchen table. Grabbed the paperback I was reading to pick up where I had left off. I tried to focus on the story, but I kept thinking about Kael, wondering how he would be when he got here. If he was still coming. Would he be more talkative than before?
I loved to torture myself with second thoughts, so now I wondered if I had misconstrued the whole situation. Did Kael want to come over? Was he under the impression that I wanted him to come over? I started to convince myself that he might be thinking I was weird or pushy. Or both.
Ten minutes later, I was back to reality. No way would Kael be sitting around overthinking our conversation—wherever he was. I was totally overreacting.
Overthinking. Overreacting. Not exactly skills I could put on my résumé. I put the book down without having read a word, then picked up my phone and went through Facebook, typing Kael Martin in the search box. No change in his profile. And I still couldn’t bring myself to send him a friend request.
I clicked out of his page and went to my inbox, as if I was expecting an important email or something. I was pacing around my room before I knew it, going in circles, getting myself worked up. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. With my dark hair pulled back, my eyes wild, I looked like my mother. Frighteningly like my mother.
I lay on my bed and grabbed my book again, but soon felt like I needed a change of scenery, so I went to the living room and flopped on the couch. I checked the time on my phone. Almost seven. I picked up where I’d left off on my last dog-eared page—I had never been a bookmark kind of girl—and let Hemingway’s brutal tale take me to the First World War. It wasn’t the distraction I had hoped for, though. The closer I got to sleep, the more Kael’s face appeared on multiple characters. He was a drill sergeant. A wounded soldier. An ambulance driver. And he looked at me like he recognized my eyes.
I woke up on the couch, the sun bright on my face. I looked around the living room, gathering my thoughts. Elodie was in the shower; I could hear the water running.
And Kael hadn’t come back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It would be four days before I saw him again. When we finally crossed paths, I was sitting on my front porch, trying to get my feet into a new pair of shoes I had seen on Instagram. I knew that the IG model I followed had most likely been paid to wear them, but I still had to have them. Per the caption, they were “The Best!” and “SOO comfy!!! [heart-eye emoji].” Maybe for her. I could barely get the first one on. I mean, the damn thing wouldn’t go over my heel. I was tugging on the shoe, leaning back on the porch like some kind of idiot, when Kael pulled up in his gigantic jeep-truck thing. Nice timing.
He must have gone shopping, since he was head-to-toe in civilian clothes. Black jeans, a rip on one knee, and a white cotton shirt with gray sleeves that looked almost identical to one that I had. The only difference was that mine said Tomahawks on it and had a picture of an actual tomahawk.
A friend from Texas had given it to me; well, she left it at my house before she moved. It was from her old high school in Indiana somewhere. I wondered if her midwestern home had been like the place where my mom grew up, a little town that was hit hard by the advances of technology, causing factory after factory to close down completely. I also knew horror stories from the place, like when the hyper schoolchildren had gone on field trips to sacred Native American burial grounds—what they called “Indian Mounds”—and stomped all over them while being taught a false history of dangerous savages. No mention that these people were victims of genocide or that we had taken their land and forced them into poverty today.
Come to think of it, I didn’t really want to wear that shirt anymore.
Kael stopped short of my porch.