“I ran a few extra miles this morning, so I’m running late. I’m going to hit the shower and then go to the house, make sure the boys are up and ready. Are you going to school today or you still need more time?”
“No,” she says, her voice hoarse from sleep. “I should go. I’ve missed enough.”
“All right.” I kiss her forehead. “I’ll take you home so you can get what you need.” Then I head to the bathroom.
“Luke?” she calls. “Thank you. You’re a good friend.”
The kitchen is a mad house. Lachlan’s spilled milk all over the table trying to pour his own cereal. He’s crying, wailing, and Linc and Liam are pointing, laughing, doing nothing to help him. Logan’s literally sleeping through his alarm. Obnoxiously loud gangsta rap fills his room, a room that reeks of stale socks, Cheetos and fifteen-year-old boy. The walls shake, the water in the eleventy-three plastic bottles scattered throughout his room ripple, and I pick one up, remove the lid. Then I pour the content all over his face. He sits up, gasps for air, spits and splatters and wipes his eyes. “You’re such a fucking jerk.”
“Get up. Get ready. We leave in fifteen.”
“Okay!”
Then I go to Lachlan’s room, pick out his clothes and run downstairs. “Linc, clean up the milk. Liam, help dress Lachlan.” They whine, but they do as I ask, and Lachlan won’t stop crying over the spilled milk, and he’s trying to eat, but the milk’s seeping out of his mouth and going back to the cereal bowl and Liam’s getting frustrated with him and “Where’s Leo?” I ask Linc.
“He’s at an early session with the private tutor.”
Fuck. I forgot about that, which means I have to take the minivan and drive everyone to school. I run back upstairs, open Logan’s door, catch him masturbating under the covers. “You got two minutes, jerk-off.”
“You said I had fifteen!”
I silence the music. “Change of plans.”
I start to leave when he yells out, “I’m going to have blue balls all day.”
Lachlan shouts from the bottom of the stairs, his pants wrapped around his neck, “What’s blue balls?”
“Logan’s joining the field hockey team,” I tell him, walking past him just as the front door opens. Laney’s holding a protein shake in one hand, my school bag in the other. “I wasn’t sure if you had time for breakfast. Leo’s car’s gone. Are you on your own?”
I take the protein shake, thank her, and tell her where Leo is.
Logan thumps down the stairs. “I think I have a test first period so we can’t be late. Oh, hey Laney,” he murmurs. Then he smirks at me, goes back to her. “I was just thinking about you.”
I smack the back of his head and tell Lane, “We’re running so late.”
Lane’s eyes widen. Then she claps once. “We can do this! Lachy, come here, baby.” I down the shake while she starts to dress him, talks to Logan, “Since you have the body of a girl, you think I could borrow some clothes?”
Logan rolls his eyes but starts up the stairs to his room, and Laney and I shout at the same time, “Clean clothes!”
I chuckle, and she says, “I don’t really need anything from home so we can skip that.”
I nod, then, “Crap. Laundry.” I go through the house, find the dirty clothes and put on the wash while Lincoln finishes the kitchen clean-up and Liam loads the dishwasher and Logan helps Lachlan pack his bag and then Laney appears in Logan’s jeans that somehow fit snug on her hips and legs, and a gray, long sleeve top underneath my old baseball jersey from middle school. I look at Logan. He shrugs. “You said clean. It was all I had.”
We pile into the minivan, one by one, and after making sure Lachlan’s buckled in right, I speed to Miss Anita’s house—an old lady who lives a block from the elementary school and watches a group of kids. When it’s time, she walks them all to the school. Then I drive the twins to their school, and finally, I get to the high school and quickly find a place to park. Logan jumps out before I’ve even stopped the car completely, and once he’s gone, I take a moment, take a breath.
“Can I do anything to help?” Laney asks, and I almost forgot she was sitting next to me. I look from her worried eyes down to the jersey she’s wearing. I smile, tease, “My name’s on your shirt.”
“It’s not your name.”
“Is so.”
Her lips curve. Then she says, “Why wasn’t your dad home this morning?”
Surprised by her question, I tell her, “Because Dad gets to work at five, does all the prep and paperwork before the phone starts ringing. Then he normally gets done by one, and he picks up the boys and does all their afternoon activities. It’s a good compromise.”
After a moment, her gaze drops, she says, “I already knew that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you came up with the plan.”
“I’m sorry, Luke, my mind’s a little lost right now.” She sighs, adds, “You’re the glue, Lucas. Without you, that family would fall apart.”
I look out the windshield, grip the wheel tight. “Sometimes I wish Dad didn’t get rid of Virginia. When I go off to college, it’ll just be Leo in charge and…” I trail off.
“And Logan.”
“Yeah, but he barely counts now.”
“Maybe you should tell your dad that.”
I force a smile and motion to the school. “We better go, we’re going to be late.”
The school play runs for another two nights, which means our afternoons and evenings are spent at the school theater. I trust Leo enough to handle any set mishaps that may occur, but being here means being with Laney, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. I stand beside her as she watches the play from the side of the stage, her eyes lost in wonder. “It looks so different,” she whispers. “With the lights and the audience and the set and the—”
“Costumes,” I cut in. “It’s the costumes that bring it all together.”
She smiles at that. “I did pretty good, huh?”
“No, Lane. You did great.”
Her features soften as she continues to watch the play; Romeo’s hiding in the bushes, watching Juliet on the balcony and he says, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
“I have absolutely no idea what they’re saying,” I whisper to her.
She glances at me quickly, then goes back to the play, her hand squeezing the key pendant on the necklace my mom left her. “He’s describing Juliet, saying that she is the sun. That she can bring light to darkness, that the stars in the sky pale in comparison, that her eyes…” She sniffs back a sob. “He’s just talking about love, Lucas. About deep, irreversible love…”
In freshman year, Laney tried to start a knitting club that would meet at lunch one day a week and knit and talk about knitting. She was so excited about it, she posted flyers throughout the school. One time, she saw a bunch of girls making fun of the flyer and ripping it off the wall. In her bedroom that night, she told me she didn’t care, but she did. And when no one showed up to her club, she tried so hard not to let it affect her. She kept telling me it was fine, but the cries and the tears were there, just under the surface. She’d hold her breath, not risking that they might force their way out of her. I told her I’d get us soda and went upstairs to her kitchen. When I came back down, she was sitting in her bed, looking ahead, tears streaking down her cheeks. There were no cries, no other sounds that matched those tears. Just tears. I gave her the soda and she wiped her cheeks, said thanks, and continued to stare ahead with silent tears.
That’s how Laney spent the rest of the play, with silent tears and silent cries.
We don’t talk about what happened even though she knows I watched her cry, and when the play’s over, I take her home. Her house is quiet, dark, and the only car in the driveway is hers. She looks to the house, then back to me. “Dad must be at Misty’s,” she says, then sighs. “I’ve never slept at the house by myself before.”
“But your dad’s bee
n staying at Misty’s for a while, right? And during winter break…”
“Yeah, but Cooper…” But Cooper’s not around, and I am, Lane.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket for the third time since we got in the car and she ignores it, just like the other times. She says, “I hate to ask—”
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
She shakes her head. “Can you just come in while I get my things and maybe I can stay at yours again? I’ll sleep on the couch this time, and I’ll get up early and help in the morning and do your laundry and—”
“Laney, you don’t have to do that. You know my house is your house. It always will be.”
I sit on her bed while she shuffles around her room, filling a bag with more than enough clothes for just one night. She gathers stuff for school, her laptop, her toiletries, and I watch, confused, and her phone vibrates again, and again she ignores it, and I finally ask, “If there were something going on, you’d tell me, right?”
Her hands freeze midway through zipping up her bag. She looks up, meets my gaze. “I just don’t want to be alone right now, Lucas. That’s all.”
I insist she takes the bed and this time, I don’t wait for her to fall asleep. I don’t watch her. Instead, I lie on the couch, count the seconds, minutes, hours, and I listen to her cry. It doesn’t matter that I want to go to her, that I want to wrap my arms around her and comfort her, because it isn’t about me, or us. If there even is an us anymore.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LUCAS
Same play, different day. Garray slaps my shoulder backstage and whispers, “Is it true, bruh?”
“Is what true?” I ask, watching Lane fix the hem on Lady Capulet’s dress.
“About Cooper and The Lo-meister?”
I face him. “The what?”
“Cooper and Lois. Did they break up?”
“Rumors are flying, dude,” Logan says, standing next to him.
“What rumors?”
“She cheated on him,” Leo joins in. “With you.”
“That’s fucking bullshit!” I almost shout, earning me a round of hushes plus a confused glare from Laney. I lower my voice, add, “It’s not true.”
Garray says, “But you’re driving her to and from school?”
“Yeah, so?”
“That’s because she’s slept in Luke’s bed the past two nights,” Logan says.
I shake my head at him.
“So what’s the game plan, bruh?”
“There is no game plan,” I tell them. “She literally just broke up with Cooper so…”
“So fucking what?” Logan whispers.
I look to Leo, hoping for a way out of the conversation, but he just shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter. Come August you’re not going to be around anyway.”
In the car after the play, Lane tells me that her dad called, said he’s at home and wants to see her. He misses her, of course, and those many phone calls she’s been dodging? She says they’re all from him. And here I thought Cooper was a creep who couldn’t let go. But then maybe not such a creep because after dropping her at her house and making sure she gets in okay, I go straight to my apartment, jump into bed, and sniff the pillow she’d slept on. I do this for way too long, but I’d probably do it for longer if Leo wasn’t knocking on my door. “Laney’s on the phone,” he says, eyeing me sideways, like he knows what I’ve been doing.
I take the phone from him, mute it. “Why is she calling your phone?”
“It’s Lane,” he says, shrugging. “She probably doesn’t know how to unblock your number.”
I unmute the phone, speak into it, “My number still blocked?”
“Can you come over,” she rushes out. “Please?”
I break every traffic violation getting to Lane’s, which in our town is speeding and ignoring one yield sign. She opens the basement door before I get a chance to knock and I can tell she’s mad and I take a step back in case I’m the one she’s mad at, but I haven’t done anything wrong. I mean, I’ve done a lot of things wrong and the majority have to do with her, but nothing recently. I think.
“Cooper went to see my dad today!” she whisper-yells.
I whisper, too, “Why are we whispering?”
“Because my dad’s upstairs and I don’t want him to hear, idiot!” Oh yay, Old Laney!
“Okay.” I take her by the shoulders, and she flinches at the touch. “Calm down,” I say, moving her to the bed. “Sit.”
She sits.
I say, “I need a moment to wrap my head around what’s happening right now because when you called, I thought something really bad was happening.”
I take the phone from her hand, unblock my number while she says, “This is really bad. Did you hear what I said?”
“My moment’s not over yet!”
She rolls her eyes, crosses her arms. She’s frustrated. She’s so cute when she’s frustrated. “Now?”
“Fine.” I give her back her phone.
“Cooper went to see my dad today—”
“We’ve covered this.”
“—And he offered him a job.”
“What?” Now I need to sit down. I sit on the couch opposite her bed and ask again, “What?”
“Cooper’s starting his own construction company. Dad said that Cooper told him that his dad approved the business plan because they were wasting money using third-party companies, so soon, there’s going to be a Kennedy Construction and he wants my dad to oversee everything. He offered him double his current wage and a $25,000 transfer payment.”
“What the fuck is a transfer payment?”
“I don’t know.” She throws her hands in the air. “I guess to transfer from one job to another.”
“What did your dad say? Did he say yes?”
“He said he’d think about it but, Luke… that transfer payment is a year’s tuition at UNC, and that’s all Dad can think about right now. He wants to take it. For me.”
I drop my head in my hands, finally understanding her frustration. “He can’t take it, Lane. Anything to do with the Kennedys is bad news.”
“I know that. And I tried to tell him that. I even told him that I broke up with Cooper—”
“He didn’t know?”
“No!” This entire conversation is whispered which makes it so much harder to communicate. “He asked when we broke up, and I said Monday when I got home because I didn’t want him to know about spending all that time in a hotel in Charlotte.”
“And what did he say?”
She sighs. “He said that I was cruel for breaking up with him after he spent the week taking care of me.”
“You have to tell him, Lane.”
“I can’t.”
“So he’s going to take the job?”
“I don’t know,” she whines. “I can’t believe this. I’m finally free of him, and he still finds ways to dig his claws into my life.”
“What do you mean ‘free of him’?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “I’m just emotional.”
“Maybe he’s bluffing?”
“How?”
I get up, sit next to her on the bed. “What if he’s making it all up? Like, maybe there is no business?”
She scoffs. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I get out my phone, call Lucy.
“What are you doing?” Lane asks the same time Lucy answers.
“Did I wake you?” I ask Lucy.
“It’s 11:30, Luke, I have an early class. What do you want?”
It’s 11:30! Holy shit, I must’ve been sniffing my pillow for longer than I thought. “When you were working admin at Dad’s, you had to look up companies on some business register, right? Do you still have access to it?”
“What the fuck is this?”
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“Right now?”
“Please, Luce.”
She moans and not like, in an annoyed way, in a…
“Holy sh
it, are you guys having sex right now?”
“Cam will be done in two minutes. I’ll call you back.”
I drop the phone. “Fucking gross.”
Laney’s laughing now, silent but pure.
“It’s not funny.”
She flops on her back, holding her ribs from laughing so hard. I lean over her, take in all her features. I miss her smile, her laugh. Her. I reach up, run a finger across her forehead, move her bangs away from her eyes. I miss those eyes. “I miss your eyes, your smile.” And without meaning to, I’m running my thumb across her full lips and licking my own and I want to kiss you, Laney.
“Luke,” she whispers, her smile fading. “We can’t.”
“Why not? Are you planning on getting back together with Cooper?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Her gaze falls between us. “It has to be different,” she says, and I have no idea what that means. “And it’s too soon.”
“It’s too soon” = Throwing a dog a bone.
I ask, “So a month from now, would you consider going out with me?”
Her smile’s back. It’s small, but it’s there. “Define going out?”
“A date?”
“One date?”
“Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred! Whatever it takes.”
“In a month’s time?” she asks, and she’s the fish and I’m reeling her in and I don’t even care that I just heard my sister having sex because, in some fucked up way, it brought us to this.
“I can wait a month,” I tell her.
“I doubt it.”
“Watch me,” I announce. “I’m the fucking Felicity of waiting, and you’re my Ben Covington.”
Her eyes go wide, her smile wider. “Did you just Felicity me?”
I nod, chuckle. “I’m that good, Lois Lane.”
My phone rings and I blindly answer it, forgetting who it is and what they’re calling about because Laney’s still looking at me, smiling at me. Then Lucy says, out of breath, “What am I searching for, cockblocker?”