Page 30 of Pieces Of You

14

Jamie

I waituntil the warning bell goes off before going to my locker the following day, which I’m aware is entirelylame. But the truth is, I’m scared.

I don’t want to face Holden.

Or Dean.

Yesterday, just as Holden placed his mouth on mine, the laundry door opened, and Dean was there. He saw what he saw, but he said nothing as he watched us pull apart. And he remained silent the entire drive to my house.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that I don’t care about any of it.

Only I do.

I’m grateful that the locker bay is mostly empty when I arrive, and I rush to throw in my bag and grab what books I need. When I slam the locker shut, I jump back a step, my hand to my heart at the sight of Holden leaning casually against his. “Question,” he says, and he’s smiling the kind of smile that, no doubt, makes girls stupid. Imaybe one of those girls. It’s yet to be determined.

“You’re going to be late to class,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “What’s with the mood rings?”

“What?” I almost laugh at how ridiculous the interaction is. Yesterday, his tongue was just parting my lips when Dean interrupted. And now… now he’s asking about my jewelry? I look down at my hands, at the four large rings on my fingers, just so I don’t have to look at him. Because looking at him reminds me of the way his body felt against mine, first with the hug, and then with the kiss. He was so solid against me, and last night, I went to bed thinking about it. Abouthim. About how strong he is… and how that strength had the power to destroy me.

“Is it so you can warn people about what mood you’re about to grace them with?” he cracks, pulling me back to reality. “Because you might need to walk around with a giant neon sign to explain what the colors mean.”

“I don’t think it would help,” I tell him, letting my shoulders relax in his presence. I splay my fingers out between us. “See? They’re all different colors, anyway.”

His eyebrows dip as he inspects them. “So, what’s the point?”

I let out a breath, the sudden anguish tainting the smile I’d worn only seconds ago. “I wish I knew.”

* * *

“All right, I’m off,”I say through the most dramatic yawn in the history of yawns. It’s 11:30 p.m., a half-hour since my shift should’ve ended.

“Thanks for hanging back,” Zeke says, handing me a twenty for the extra time. Zeke owns the truck stop diner named after him and is always super generous when it comes to paying me—and feeding me.

It was almost four years ago that Mom and I randomly popped in for a bottomless coffee that we both inhaled like junkies into our bloodstream. Caffeine, at that point, had become Mom’s new addiction—a new bad habit to replace the ones she was trying to kick.

We’d been driving around for weeks by then, and we had no real destination in mind. We slept in the car whenever we needed to rest and drove when Mom got restless. Whimsically, we referred to that time in our lives as a Girl’s Trip.

In reality, we were running away.

Our first visit here, we hung around for five hours before Zeke asked us if we needed help with anything else. Those were his exact words.Help. And I could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew we were desperate forsomething. We just didn’t know what. He offered us both jobs, Mom on the floor and me in the back, and so we stayed and found a cozy little trailer nearby that we soon called home. The job didn’t last long for my mom. Just like all the other potentially good things in her life, Mom’s “bad habit” found a way to ruin it. In the end, once she was gone, I kept my job, and Zeke, so he says, kept me in his prayers.

It seemed that during the few months Mom was able to work here, Zeke had found a soft spot for the woman he affectionally calledDarl, a play on her real name.

When she died, I caught Zeke by the dumpsters out back and asked him if he ever felt the urge to ask my mom out on a date. From what I knew about Zeke, he’d never been married, never even been in a serious relationship. The diner was his baby, and he spent almost every second of every day there. He stood taller when I asked, his ever-present ball cap on backward, covering his dark hair. After adjusting the sleeves of his flannel shirt, he shook his head, a puff of cigarette smoke emitting from his lips, and said, “Nah, your ma’s a sweet lady, but she’s one you admire from afar.”

“Why not close up?” I’d asked him.

He smiled, but it was so,sosad, and I’ll never forget what he said next. “Because when you look too closely at anything, you always see the cracks. And your mother was nothing but imperfections.”

I hated him at that moment.

And I’d forgiven him the next.

Because he was right, and it made me wonder how people saw me.

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