SSDTU 2 - He’s So not Worth It Page 2

  Subject Chloe slams the NARS bottle she was considering down on the shelf and storms out. Several jars hit the floor and two of them break, ruining Subject Hammond’s Nikes. Pinched-face saleslady forces Subject Hammond to pay for two sixteen-dollar bottles of nail polish. He shoves the door open so hard on the way out, it smacks against the window, and the Botoxed customer next to me actually changes expression.

  (Personal Note: It’s a good day.)

  “Don’t worry, bud. I have a plan.”

  My father sat down on one of the two stools at the breakfast bar in the one-bedroom apartment he’d invited me to come check out with him in downtown Orchard Hill. The stools were the only furniture in the entire place and the one he’d chosen tipped as he sat down on it, the legs clearly uneven. The kitchen behind him had four cabinets, one stove, and no dishwasher, and the living room carpet was dotted with several nonspecific stains. Still, my dad had just signed the lease that now sat on the countertop next to him, so apparently this square apartment, those ancient stools, and even the scary stains were somehow part of his plan.

  “A plan for what?” I said.

  For explaining why you left? Or why you’re back? A plan for winning Mom back? For getting her to break up with Gray? For winning me back? The words were on the tip of my tongue, but my lips wouldn’t open. I’d always been able to talk to my dad about anything. Just not, apparently, the most important things of all.

  “A plan for getting our lives back to the way they’re supposed to be,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  I leaned back against the whitewashed wall of the living area, trying to figure out where to look. I couldn’t believe I felt this awkward around my dad. But then, when you don’t see someone for two years and they suddenly step back into your life, I suppose awkward makes sense. For so long I had wished he would come home, but now I could hardly wrap my brain around the fact that he was here.

  “First of all, I’ve got a new job. Two new jobs, actually,” he said. “Charles Appleby has decided to open a day-trader’s shop and he’s asked me to come on board. I’ll be starting at the bottom, of course, re-proving myself, but at least it’s a foot in the door. But before I can start making trades I have to retake my Series Seven Exam, which means taking night classes, so in the meantime I’ve landed a gig as manager at Jump, Java, and Wail!”

  I stared at my father. He couldn’t be serious. He was going to be working at the coffee shop where everyone from school and their parents bought their soy lattes and triple-shot espressos every day? Where the people whose money he’d lost two years ago—most of whom, by the way, had not gotten over losing it—popped by for their morning cup of joe? Did he not see a problem with this plan?

  “You’re kidding,” I said finally, because I had to say something.

  “I know. Charlie’s been amazing these past couple of years,” my father said, missing my point entirely. “He’s really been a true friend to me, putting me up in the city . . . giving me that job at the deli. And when I came to him a couple of months ago and told him I was going to try to start over, he really listened to what I had to say. It means a lot that he’s willing to give me this second chance.”

  It was so ironic I wanted to laugh. Chloe’s dad listening, giving him a second chance. Meanwhile, when I tried to explain to Chloe what had happened between me and Hammond over two years ago—why we’d kissed and how it had meant nothing—she didn’t want to hear a word.

  “Um, yeah, that’s amazing,” I said.

  I slowly crossed the room to the wall of windows—the tiny place’s best feature—which overlooked Orchard Avenue. Mature trees lined the sidewalks and there were flower boxes in front of almost every window. Down below, a white Mercedes pulled into a parallel parking space, hit the curb, pulled up and back, hit the curb again, then stopped. A woman got out, her dark hair perfectly framing her tan face and gold sunglasses. She looked at her back tire, which was half on the sidewalk, muttered something under her breath, and stormed through the front door of the Apothecary, which was right beneath my feet.

  The Apothecary, where all the wealthy Crestie moms went to procure their night creams and cellulite solutions and magic age-reversing vitamins.

  “And then, once I pass my Series Seven, I can start trading full time, making back all the money I lost,” my dad continued, strolling over to join me. “Who knows? Maybe one day we can even get our old house back.”

  My throat closed over and I hiccup-coughed into my hand. Jake Graydon and his family were currently living in our old house. I had a sudden vision of me reclaiming my old bedroom and tossing Jake’s stuff out onto the street, while he looked on, all helpless and dejected. In my current frame of mind, the image was highly gratifying. Impossible, I knew, but gratifying.

  “Shouldn’t you be telling Mom all this?” I said, glancing up at my dad.

  “I should be telling both of you all this,” my father said, putting his arm around my back and his hand on my shoulder. “Unfortunately, your mother won’t answer my calls.”

  I shrugged away from him, and his face fell, but just for a moment. “So . . . what? You want me to tell her all this?” I asked, sounding belligerent.

  “No. Of course not.” He took the apartment keys out of the pocket of his gray pants and fiddled with them. “Though it might be nice if you could, possibly, convince her to call me.”

  My teeth clenched as a surge of anger coursed through me. I turned to the window again and held my breath for as long as I could. I was not this person. I had spent the last two and a half years trying as hard as I could not to be this person. Trying not to think about my dad at all. Because whenever I did think about him, I felt this awful mix of rage and confusion and longing and sadness and insecurity burning inside my stomach. So I had just . . . put it aside. I’d just not let myself go there. And I’d become so good at it—the not thinking. So good that I’d actually been able to fool the world into believing I was a perfectly normal, well-adjusted, happy human being. I’d even kind of convinced myself.

  But now that he was here, it was impossible not to think about everything that had happened. And that meant feeling it. All of it. All the time. Well-adjusted? Ha. Try malfunctioning.

  My life was a total and complete wreck because of him. All my old friends hated me, which wouldn’t have even mattered if I still had Jake, but that blew up in my face, thanks to my dad, too. And now, what? He was asking me to do him a favor?

  The thing was, I’d also missed him. I’d missed him every single day and had daydreamed every other hour about what it would be like when he came back. And now here he was. So how was I supposed to deal with it? Was I supposed to be angry or happy? Excited or indifferent? Because right now, I was everything.

  I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Tried to choose to be hopeful. Because if he’d come back now with this elaborate plan, he must be serious about staying. He must be serious about trying to get things back to the way they’d been before—back when we were all one happy family. That was what I decided to believe.

  “I like the view,” I said, changing the subject.

  You could see the spire of the Episcopal Church down on the other side of Oak Street, which cornered the building, and the hills beyond were all green and rolling, like something out of a Thoreau poem.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” he said.

  On the sidewalk down below, Quinn Nathanson and her friend Lindsey walked along eating frozen yogurt, shopping bags swinging from their wrists, totally carefree. At that very moment, Quinn’s dad, Gray, and my mom were out shopping for new bedding for Gray’s shore house. For his bed. The bed they would share for the summer.

  Puke.

  Every time I thought about the two of them together—the way they held each other’s hands during dinner, how they were always exchanging knowing looks, how he touched the small of her back whenever they walked through a door together—I felt an awful panic risin
g up in my throat. Maybe I didn’t feel like doing my father any favors, but I had a bad feeling that my mother wasn’t going to be picking up the phone to talk to him on her own any time soon. And with Gray in the picture, the longer my mom and dad didn’t talk, the worse off we all were.

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll talk to her for you.”

  “Thanks, bud.” He leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “So!” He clapped his hands together and took a step back. “How’s everything been? How was school this year? I hope you’re still playing basketball.” He walked over to the counter again and picked up the lease.

  “Yep. We had a good season.”

  “And school?”

  “It was . . . good,” I lied.

  Except for the last few days. If I could just go back and make the last few days un-happen, I’d be fine. Then I wouldn’t go to Shannen’s party, she wouldn’t show that awful video, I’d never know that Jake knew all along where my dad was and didn’t tell me, and Jake and I would be together and happy right now, planning our two months down the shore.

  I opened my mouth, the fourteen-year-old in me—the one whose dad was her best friend—wanting to pour it all out to him. To tell him what had happened with the Cresties and with Jake Graydon, the guy who’d crushed my heart and had yet to call, text, or even e-mail to apologize. But I forced my lips shut again. Because I wasn’t that fourteen-year-old girl anymore. And he wasn’t my best friend anymore either.

  My dad shoved the papers into a brown leather messenger bag. I tugged my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the screen for messages. Not a one. Not from Jake, not from Chloe, not from anyone.

  “And I hear you’re going to be spending the summer down the shore?”

  His voice was excited. Maybe too excited. Like he was trying too hard to sound okay with it. I guess when you come back to town to win your family back it’s kind of a bummer to hear they’re moving away for two months. I wondered how he’d heard. Probably from Mrs. Appleby. The woman did love to gossip. I wondered why she hadn’t told him about Gray. Probably didn’t want to spoil the delicious surprise. Evil witch. I swallowed hard and tucked the phone away.

  “I don’t really want to go,” I told him.

  Understatement city. I loathed the idea of going down the shore, of spending the summer watching my mom and Gray live like a couple, of hanging out with the Cresties every day—them thinking I wanted to be there, that I still wanted, on any level, for them to accept me as one of their own again. Because I didn’t. I was over it. Why I’d ever wanted any of them back in my life was beyond me.

  But worst of all I’d have to see Jake all the time and deal with that spirit-shattering awkwardness. Deciding whether or not to go places based on whether or not he would be there. What to wear, how to act, what to say. Ugh.

  “But Mom is going so . . . I guess I have to.”

  Suddenly, my father’s face lit up. “Or maybe not.”

  “What?”

  “You could stay here!” he said, his eyes sparkling. “With me!”

  I stared at him, feeling a quick flutter of excitement. If he was inviting me to stay, then he couldn’t be planning on bailing again, right? “Really?”

  “Yeah!” He dropped his messenger bag and walked a few paces past me toward the bedroom. “You could have the bedroom for the summer and I’ll sleep on the couch.” He laughed and put his hands on his hips. “When I get one.”

  My throat tightened suddenly. I saw the entire summer play out before my eyes. Me and my dad in this tiny apartment, having shallow conversations and pretending everything was fine. Me wondering if he was ever going to explain. Him constantly asking me how my mother was doing. The whole thing seemed uncomfortable and sad.

  “Uh . . . yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ll have to ask mom,” I hedged.

  “This is going to be so great!” My father walked over and enveloped me in a hug. His signature, tight, no-holds-barred hug. He smelled different and suddenly it hit me like a speeding car to the chest. He’d been out there somewhere, all this time, working and talking to people and smiling at strangers and smelling of new cologne. All this time he’d been out there and I’d just been here. Waiting for him. When he released me, I felt relieved. “I’ll call your mom and leave her a message. Since we both know she won’t pick up,” he joshed, as if we were old pals telling an inside joke about a third buddy of ours.

  “Um, okay,” I heard myself say.

  “Great. We’ll spend the whole summer hanging out, catching up. We can go fishing! It’ll be just like old times.”

  My dad walked into the kitchen, pulling out his phone. I turned toward the window again and leaned my forehead against the cool glass. The Mercedes woman got in her car with her pink paper Apothecary bag, slammed the door, and peeled out, almost taking out a lady with a jogging stroller in the crosswalk.

  A summer down the shore with all my sworn enemies a shell’s throw away, or a summer in this apartment with the man I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust. As I heard my father start to leave a voice mail on my mother’s phone, I started to wonder . . .

  Was there an option C?

  Before Ally Ryan moved back to Orchard Hill, I never didn’t know what to do. Now it was all the time. It was like I always didn’t know what to do.

  And it was starting to piss me off.

  Like, was I supposed to call her, or not call her? She’d told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. Did she mean it? Or was I supposed to, like, go after her? And if that’s what I was supposed to do, did I really want to be that guy? The guy who begged a girl to take him back?

  The only thing I knew for sure was that every night I did want to be that guy. Lying in my bed, listening to the crickets, thinking about what she was doing, I was like, Fuck it, just call her. Then every morning, I’d wake up and be relieved I hadn’t done it. Because Jake Graydon doesn’t beg for girls. What was I thinking?

  Then I’d spend all day obsessing about her, and as soon as I was in bed again, the cycle started all over.

  As I drove over to Hammond Ross’s house the Monday after the shit hit the fan, all I could think about was the cycle. And whether or not I had the balls to break it. It had been about forty-eight hours since my best friend Shannen Moore had shown that video of us finding Ally’s dad at that deli in the city. Forty-eight hours since she’d made me look like some kind of lying, secret-keeping jerk to Ally, then told me she basically did it because she liked me. Yeah, that part I definitely was not ready to deal with. But I was starting to sort of feel like I could maybe talk to Ally.

  Possibly.

  “S’up, man?” Hammond loped across his front yard and got into the passenger seat of my Jeep. His blond hair looked longer than it had during the school year, and he was already tan. “Why are we driving to Faith’s again?”

  “Because we can,” I said.

  He smirked. Fist bump. “Nice.”

  Ever since I got the Jeep for my seventeenth birthday I drove wherever I could. I would’ve driven from my door to the mailbox to get the mail if my mother didn’t pounce on it the second it came. I hit the gas and two seconds later we were pulling up in front of Faith’s house. When I swung the car into the driveway, I saw that Chloe Appleby’s white convertible was there too.

  “Shit,” Hammond said. “Did you know she was coming?”

  “Faith said it was just us,” I told him.

  I should’ve known something was up when Faith had called me that afternoon. She’d never called me before unless she was trying to track down someone else. The story was, her mother had all these leftovers from a church thing she’d hosted and she wanted us to come over so they wouldn’t go to waste. Had she invited Chloe, too, or had Chloe just shown up? Hammond made no move to get out of the car, so I didn’t kill the engine.

  “You talk to Chloe yet?” I asked.

  “Once,” he said. He reached forward and picked at some invisible speck on my dashboard with his thumbnail. “Long enough
for her to officially dump my ass.”

  There was an odd twist in my chest. “Sorry, man.”

  “I can’t believe she broke up with me because I kissed some girl two years ago,” he said. He shoved himself back in the seat, his hands limp in his lap.

  Again, the twist. Hammond hadn’t just kissed some girl. He’d kissed Ally Ryan.

  Two years ago, I said to myself. Before she even knew you existed. For some reason, it still didn’t make me feel better.

  “She didn’t even let me explain what happened,” Hammond said. “She could’ve at least heard me out.”

  That was what I was afraid of, why I really hadn’t called Ally. Because I didn’t want her to just hang up on me. I wanted her to let me explain. And I was scared shitless that she wouldn’t let me. That we were so far gone, she wouldn’t even listen. And if we were that far gone, I didn’t want to know.

  Which made me a wuss. Which also pissed me off.

  “Come on, dude. Let’s go in,” I said, turning off the engine. “Get it over with.”

  Hammond stared at the arced, red front door of Faith’s stone house. “Yeah. Yeah. All right.”

  We got out and walked inside without knocking. The only door we ever knocked on was Shannen’s, and that was only because she never wanted anyone to come in, so she only ever came out. The lights were on down in the kitchen, and the door to the basement was open. We heard voices from the top of the stairs. Hammond looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, so I figured I should go first. I jogged down the steps and suddenly wished I was, too. Because Chloe wasn’t the only surprise guest. Shannen was there also.

  “Dudes! Faith got the new Extreme Sports!” Todd Stein stood up from the wraparound couch with an Xbox controller.

  “Get your asses over here so we can school you,” his twin brother Trevor said.

  Todd was in brown shorts and an orange T-shirt. Trevor was in orange shorts and a brown T-shirt. Their blond hair stuck out all over, like they’d just woken up, which considering summer had started, was completely possible. Trevor popped a mini quiche into his mouth, then laughed, showing us the mangled bits of food on his tongue. So at least the claim of leftovers was real.