Everything (37 page)

“Oh, well, fuck that. I’m no Southern belle,” I joked.

He laughed out loud. “Good, ’cause I couldn’t be friends with those girls, too proper and I-broke-a-nail-help-me type.”

I held up my hand to show him my nubs.
 

“That’s why we will be great friends, Dacey.”

Sam came out with a red basket and a gargantuan sub packed full of different meats with pineapples, banana peppers, olives, and other things I couldn’t see because honestly, all I saw was meat.

“Y’all enjoy,” Sam said as she set it down and left.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“This is the Big Kahuna.” Justin rubbed his hands together, getting ready to dig in.

“How the hell do I eat something like this without it getting everywhere?” I didn’t even know where to start.

“Oh, well, you pick it up and you hold your head to the side and you bite, like this,” he mocked, picking up the sub and doing exactly that.

“I know how to eat a sub, smart ass. I just mean they don’t give you utensils for all the meat?”

“Oh, you need a knife and fork, Southern belle?” he challenged.

“Ohh, why no, no I don’t.” I picked up a glob of meat that had fallen off when he took the first bite and shoved it in my mouth. “Uummmohmygod,” I chewed, “this is so good.”

“Told you. Now try some with the bread, caveman,” he said, rolling his eyes.

I broke off a piece of the other side of the sub along with more meat and took a bite. “You were right—this is the best in town,” I said after I swallowed. “Although I haven’t been here before, so I have nothing to compare it to.”

“Well, we will have to fix that then, won’t we?” he said, breaking off some of the sub and eating it.

I was only able to eat about three more bites before I became full, leaving Justin to finish it.
 

“Thank you,” I said as he held the door open for me as we left Mamma B’s.

“My pleasure. I would love to do it again.” We headed back to the medical plaza building.

“Um, I’m not sure when I’ll be in Orlando next, and I have finals—who knows if I’ll even pass those. My teachers have all given me a ‘her parents died’ pass, except for one, and it’s not because he doesn’t care, more like he just wants to make sure I succeed, so I think I’ll be good, but you never know.”

“What are you majoring in?”

“Journalism.”

“So you want to be a writer or an editor?”

“Writer, I think. Aria thinks I’ll be an amazing writer.”

“What do you want to write about?”

“At first I wanted to write for newspapers, you know, the normal go-getter articles that every journalism major wants to write about, but now...” I trailed off, not wanting to finish my thought.

“Now?” he urged.

“Now I want to write about life, and life’s changes. How it can change in one minute, how it can change
you
in one minute for good or bad if you let it, how it sucks, how it’s awesome, and how it can be so insanely fucking funny you think it’s fake but it’s not—it’s life.”

We had reached the medical plaza building, and Justin was just staring at me funny with his hand on the door about to open it for me.

“What?” I asked after a minute.

“So whenever you write this, whatever it is about life, I want the first copy.”

“Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious. Everyone’s take on life is different, but yours, I would love to read what you write about life.” He pulled the door open for me and told me good-bye and that he would talk with me soon.
 

Mr. Eugene was still in the lobby, and I sat down next to him and thought about what Justin had just said. Could I really do it—write, for all to see, about life, about
my
life? A part of me was scared shitless to even entertain the idea, but the other part of me, the part that had changed, felt the urge to. They say people have their own way of dealing with grief. I think maybe I just found mine.

Chapter 18

It was going on three in the afternoon by the time we got back to Shaddy Groves with a very irritable Opal, who had been asked to remember this and recite that and stuffed in a MRI machine and then poked until she threatened to sue them for harassment. I had to calm her by telling her I would buy her pudding later, which is why we were making a pit stop at the grocery store now before Mr. Eugene was to drop us off.

I was so focused on Opal, I didn’t have time to freak out about the chances of me running into Trevor, or worse, Trevor and Kelly. As we pulled into a parking space, Mr. Eugene barely had time to put the car in park before Opal was out of the car and into the store, leaving me and Aria running in after her. We had just enough time to stop her before she tried to open the pudding cup right there in the store.

“Auntie, we have to buy them first,” I said as if I were talking to a child.

“Look, I been poked and messed with. Jus’ let me have my pudding, chile,” she shot at me.

“Maybe you should just let her, Dac. I’ll go pay for it now,” Aria was saying as she was pulling money out.

 
I looked up to see that Mr. Eugene was in the parking lot on the phone. He would be of no help in trying to pacify her, and his smoothness could come in handy right now.

“Yeah, I guess, but how are you going to eat...?” My question died on my lips as I watch her pull out a spoon from her bag. I should have known she would have one in that thing. “Auntie, why?” I asked, shaking my head at a loss for words.

“What?” she asked, peeling back the foil top of the pudding cup and dipping in the spoon.

“’Cause everyone carries around a spoon in their purse.”

“They do if they wanna eat pudding.”

Aria giggled and went to go up front to pay. “Pay for three packs,” I yelled, and she gave me the thumbs-up sign.
 

Opal looked perfectly content to stand in the dairy section of the Shaddy Groves Market and eat pudding, and I didn’t feel inclined to tell her to move. Walking a little ways away, I pulled out my cellphone intending on texting Tina to make sure she got home okay when a voice stopped me.

“You know that’s stealing.”
 

Fuckfuckfuck
. My spine stiffened. “Hi, Shannon,” I said, turning around.

“What is she doing?” she said, looking past me at Opal and making a face.

“Eating pudding, what does it look like?” I said, not keeping the sarcasm out of my voice.

“She’s stealing.”

“She’s not. My sister is paying for it now.” I moved into her line of sight, blocking Opal from her.

She focused on me and smiled acidly. “Haven’t seen you around lately, but then again, I wouldn’t, would I, now that your
less
occupied.”

Bitch. “Oh, I didn’t think you would have noticed, what with how occupied
we all
know you can be.” Score one for me.

If my dig about her being the town slut got to her, she didn’t show it as she chuckled and started walking but then stopped and turned to look at me over her shoulder and added in a sickly sweet voice, “Yeah, Trevor knows how occupied I can be too,” then she sauntered away.

Score five for the bitch.

The logical part of my brain knew better than to believe anything that came out of her mouth and that Trevor wouldn’t have dared sleep with her, but the other part of my brain, the part that’d had her mind blown these past few weeks, didn’t know what or whom to believe anymore. It was possible that I had been played this entire time and this was the reason Shannon never liked me, because she was the other woman. Thinking that he would touch her and then touch me made me want to go home and take a bath in bleach.

I was pulled from my reverie by my cellphone ringing. “Hello?”

“Miss Harper?” said a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize.

“Yes?”

“This is the law firm of Bartholomew Jackson. He needs to set up a reading of your parents’ will with you and your sister.”

“Oh, yes, okay.”

“How is tomorrow for you?”

Aria had come back, and I made a motion to her that I needed a pen and a piece of paper with my hand. She reached into her purse and pulled out a scrap of paper and pen and handed it to me.

After I told the caller that tomorrow was fine, she began to recite an Orlando address, of course. I thanked her and hung up.

“Who was that?” Aria asked.

“Mom and Dad’s lawyer. The will is ready. Tomorrow at eleven we hear it,” I said, pushing all thoughts of Trevor and Shannon aside, for now.

“Oh, I’m really curious what they have in a will,” Aria admitted.

“Yeah, me too,” I said distractedly.

“Come on, get Opal and let’s go. I’m suddenly drained.” In truth, I was tired, but I just really wanted to lie down and forget about what I just heard.

Having gone through almost one pack of the four-pack pudding cups by the time we got to her house, Opal was in a much better mood. I told her I would call her the second the doctor called me, as I had given the doctor my number as a contact. Aria and I drove home the short distance in silence, with me in my thoughts about the Shannon thing and Aria just silent.

“Why are you so silent?” she broke my thoughts.

“Hum, nothing. Just tired.”

“Bullshit.”

“Whatever, I am tired,” I defended myself.

“You just spent four days in bed. You’re not tired.”

She had a point. “I don’t mean physically tired, just mentally tired,” I clarified.

“What did that ho-bag say to you?”

“Ho-bag?”

“Shannon. Don’t act dumb. I’m the actress, remember?” she said, eyeing me.

“How do you know she said something to me?”

“Because she has hated you ever since you and he-who-must-not-be-named had started going out ’cause she has wanted him since forever and you had him, and she wouldn’t resist making you feel like shit now that you don’t, just because. Plus I saw the flies. They follow her, you know, the smell.”

“Okay, first, I’m with you on the smell. And second, she did say something to me, but it’s not worth repeating.”

“Yes it is. You’ve been in your head since we left Opal’s, and it’s not about the will, so don’t lie to me. Please.” She reached over and put her hand on mine and squeezed, and for the first time today I was reminded of Mom.

“She implied that her and Tre—”

“Ah, don’t invoke his name!” she hissed.

“What the hell was I thinking?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Anyway, she implied that she and he had sex.”

“You don’t believe her, do you?” She looked at me like I was starring in my own version of crazy-town, which I was starting to think I was.

We had pulled up to our house now, and I turned off the car and turned to her. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, A. I thought he loved me, and I was wrong about that, so I am kinda questioning everything right now.” I shrugged.

“Yeah, but come on. Think about it. Even he was not that stupid. Shannon? Really? She is the town slut, for crying out loud. Even the town hobo wouldn’t do her! I know he-who-must-not-be-named is a jerk and I can’t believe I’m actually defending him right now, but I don’t think he would have slept or will ever sleep with her. He’s just not that desperate. I mean, why would he want to when he had you?”

“Exactly, he
had
me and he didn’t want me, A,” I said sadly.

“Well, what the eff does he know? Stupid Trevor. Shit!” She slapped her hand over her mouth at the slip.

“You just invoked his name,” I teased.

“I know, stupid Aria!”

I laughed and got out of the car and went inside. It felt good to talk to her about it even though the obsessive part of me was still dwelling on the fact that he didn’t want me and he had never loved me, but I didn’t let myself dwell on it for too long because if I did, hello cave, and I had promised myself.

We had just finished dinner, shepherd’s pie that Mrs. D sent with Tina, when the doorbell rang. People were still stopping by from time to time to check in on us, but the visits were getting scarce as the time passed. I went to get the door, prepared to tell whatever well-wisher that we were fine, and was surprised to find Riley on our doorstep, so soon after last night’s bedroom showdown.

“Hi, Dacey, you look particularly not murderous tonight.” He laughed nervously.

“Riley, what are you doing here?” I asked acidly. Even though I was not actually mad at him, I still had to give him shit for being in my sister’s bedroom.

“Aria said you weren’t mad.” His smile faltered a bit.

“Aria was lulled into a false sense of security, just like you,” I said, stepping outside and closing the door behind me. Riley was a good foot and some inches taller than me, but that didn’t stop me from getting right in his face on my tiptoes.

“I’m only going to say this once, so listen up. I know that you’re a good guy, and I know that your intentions with my sister are good. But I also know that you’re a guy and sometimes guys are stupid. Don’t be stupid about my sister, Riley, or I will hurt you.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but I held my hand up to stop him.

“I’m not done. Furthermore, don’t defile my sister in front of me. I don’t want to see it. If my dad were alive, you would have had to meet him and go through a far greater grilling than this, so consider this getting off easy. And lastly, thank you. You were there for her when I couldn’t be, when she needed someone and I...I just wasn’t, so thank you. You’re a great friend, and I’d hate to have to cut the balls off of one of my friends.”

“Wow, okay, how am I supposed to follow that?” he joked nervously.

I shrugged and backed up, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the door.

“I didn’t intend to like Aria so much. It kinda just happened. I mean, she’s one of my best friends’ sister. It’s kind of an off-limits thing, but she has this thing about her and it’s kind of hard to stay away. And I have been nothing but respectful because she hasn’t even noticed that I liked her like that, and I don’t even know if she likes
me
like that. And even if she did, I would never hurt her. Not all guys are him, Dacey—he’s an asshole to not see how awesome you are and what he had.”