How to Hook a Bookworm (10 page)

Chapter 13

I wonder if I could pull off the hobo look.

The front porch light of my trailer is on when Adam drops me off. It lights the top of Levi’s blond head, and his knees stop bouncing when his eyes flick to mine. He shuffles to his feet and gives Adam a head nod.

“You have minutes on your phone?” Adam asks as I unbuckle. I guess it’s really not necessary for him to walk me up tonight since my brother is right there.

“A few.”

“Two second call to my cell and I’ll come right back if you need, okay?”

I nod. Not sure I’ll take him up on it since Levi’s home, but it’s good to have a backup.

Levi waits till Adam rounds the corner before the redness in his neck consumes his entire face.

“What happened?” he growls. I roll my eyes because he’s hardly intimidating.

“Nothing.”

“Then why haven’t you slept at home for the past week?”

A sharp rusty taste builds on my tongue. My eyes scan his blue work shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows. Tie has been loosened and his gold nametag is slightly off-center. Judging by the dark circles under his eyes he’s worked another double shift. He’s already upset with me, but a part of my heart registers his concern too. And I just can’t tell him that as hard as he’s working, it’s still not enough.

“It hasn’t been that long,” I counter, hoping he’ll just find me guilty of being a pain in the ass. That’s better than finding out I’m actually completely torn up and livid inside over Mom. “A few days maybe. And I’m here now.”

He sighs, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Why?”

“Just a stupid fight with Mom. Seriously, relax. I was at Sierra’s house the whole time. It’s not like you didn’t know where I was.”

“Yeah, and she said you didn’t show up till midnight one of those nights. And you barely spoke three sentences to her.”

“I’m not much of a talker.”

“What about this dude you were with? Who is he?”

“My
boyfriend
.” That word still feels super weird. “Thought your girlfriend would’ve told you that too.” It comes out clipped, hurt, and like I was betrayed somehow, yet I don’t know why it comes out like that. I knew Sierra would tell Levi. They have that tell-each-other-everything relationship.

“She’s worried.” His voice rises. “
I’m
worried.”

One look at his torn face and the words almost spew out.
Mom is sleeping with people for money!
They build up and up and up through my throat—then just as they get to my tongue, they detour to the back of my eyes.

“I’m fine,” I croak, like those words were plucked from the bottom of my feet, the farthest place possible from how I really feel.

His already furrowed brow creases deeper, and I know I don’t have him convinced in the least bit, but he drops it
for
now
. He reaches behind him and yanks the screen door open to let me walk in first.

It’s a relief to not be hit in the nose with the pungent scent of unknown man, but even the absence of the smell pushes the visual of last week to the forefront of my brain.

Levi brushes past me, loosening his tie. He leans over Mom on the couch, brushing her curly and frizzy hair from her face, waking her.

“Hey, Brea’s home. I’m heading to bed. Early shift tomorrow.”

Mom yawns and stretches, blinking her eyes free of sleep. A sharp pang stabs me in my gut. I can’t even stand to look at her, and all the anger I shoved away starts to bubble behind my eyes. But I refuse to let it out.

Levi shuffles off to his room, and my feet bolt to follow him, but Mom croaks out a “Brea, sit please.”

“No thank you.” My feet keep moving.

“Brea!”

I stop where I’m at, refusing to do anything but stand and stare at the dark hallway.

“You can’t leave like that again,” she says, and it takes every ounce of energy I have not to scream.

She sighs when I don’t respond. “I never meant for you to see that.”

“You servicing someone for money? Yeah, I really didn’t want to see that either.”

“It’s not…” I catch her reach up to wipe her cheek in my peripheral. “I didn’t go through with it.”

My eyes finally drift to her. She’s picking at the hem of her shirt. “Would you have if I hadn’t walked in?” My voice gets harsher, but I keep quiet so Levi doesn’t hear. “Are you planning on any future ‘clients?’ Do you need me to let you know what I do every freaking second so I don’t disrupt a paycheck?”

Her tears bottle up, but like me, she pushes them back. Her lips purse, her brows pull together, and she stands over me, using the same tone I am.

“You’re too young to understand.”

“You mean I’m too
stupid
?” The word stings on my tongue, feels like acid and hurt and regret and pain and truth.

“I’m doing what I can for
you
. This is what mothers do for their kids.”

I shake my head, back up a few steps toward the front door. The walls press in on me, like I’m trapped inside my own body, in a world I can’t escape. That even going outside wouldn’t help. Running from the conversation won’t do a damn thing. But that’s what I want to do. I want to run and run and run till I can’t feel my feet anymore.

She reaches out and grabs my arm. “You’re not leaving again,” she says, but not like a command. More like a desperate plea that I don’t want to listen to. If I’m the reason she’s doing what she’s doing then I want out.

“I’m not going to be your excuse.” I rip from her grasp. “And if you make me stay here, I’m telling Levi everything.”

She drops her hand. Opens her mouth but says nothing. I hold my breath and force my feet to move toward my room. I pack nearly everything I own, which isn’t much, push back everything that’s building in my eyes clear down to my toes. My phone is up to my ear when I walk from the room. Mom doesn’t even attempt to stop me when Adam answers the line.

“Sorry it’s late,” I say, “but I need a place to stay.”

***

I sleep on Adam’s couch the whole week, but I’m moving to Jolie’s tonight because Adam’s dad is off work for the next couple days. And honestly, I don’t need more drama with the boy/girl sleepover interrogation. Fortunately I haven’t seen much of Jay because I can’t explain the need to sleep at Adam’s house without letting him in on way more of my home life than he needs to be—or
anyone
needs to be.

After asking Jolie and making sure it was okay with her family if I could crash for who knows how long, Jolie and Sierra dragged me off to the mall. I think they want me to talk about what’s going on with staying away from home, but I’ve kept everything firmly in my throat.

The mall was a good idea though. Every store we went to I picked up an application. Now we’re sitting in the food court, Sierra forcing me to eat some of her orange chicken.

“Zoe wants to do a slumber party for her bachelorette thing. You in?” she asks after shoving a particularly large piece into my mouth.

I shuffle through the stack of applications and pull out the one for The Gap. “Um,” I say over my mouthful, “I don’t really know Zoe.”

“Okay, it’s not really for her. It’s for
me
and her, but I want to make a party out of it.” Sierra takes a loud sip from her Icee and looks at Jolie. “It’s sort of our last hurrah before she becomes old and has kids and lives her life totally away from me.”

She pouts at us, and I shake my head and start filling in the boxes with my name and all that other crap. I try really hard not to make my handwriting so loopy.

“Well, I’m down,” Jolie says, picking at the brownie on her plate. “Will there be a stripper?”

Sierra laughs, but my stomach drops through the floor. For some reason stripper sends thoughts of single dollar bills into my head, and that train of thought leads to a whole bunch of others I’d rather not think about.

“Brea?”

“Yeah?” I croak, forcing myself to concentrate on my age and date of birth instead of pole dancers.

“Please come?”

“When is it?” I move my eyes from the application and swivel them between my two friends.

“This weekend.”

I shrug. “I’m staying with Jolie, so I’ll be forced. Unless I have a job by then I probably won’t be able to—”

“I’m planning on you being there. So, just let me know if you can’t.” Sierra offers the rest of her Icee to me, but I shake my head and go back to filling out my lack of job history.

“I think we
all
need a night to relax and have fun,” Jolie says, and I can feel the burn of her stare in the top of my head.

“Totally,” Sierra agrees. “It’s like we never get to do that, and we won’t have much time either since we’re going off to college.”

“And you have a boyfriend,” Jolie points out as I huff into the papers.

“So does Brea now.”

Jolie fake gasps, and I can’t help but roll my eyes.

“That’s right!” she says. I catch her nudging Sierra with her elbow. “And I haven’t heard any details.”

“This is a girlfriend code red.”

“You guys,” I grumble, but there’s a small smile on my face. Talking about boys means I don’t have to talk about Mom. And Sierra brings it up every chance she can get. “I’ve got more important things on my plate.” I gesture to the applications and before I can get a good hold, Jolie swipes them from under my hands.

“I want details first then we’ll go job hunting.”

They blink big, faux-innocent eyes at me.

“I don’t
have
details.”

“Oh come on,” Sierra says, lips blue from her drink. “If you don’t spill I’ll start talking about Levi.”

My eyes narrow. “Don’t even go there.”

She sits back with a goofy smile, speaking to the heavens. “When we first kissed, it was like the skies opened up and rained fireworks just for us.”

“Sierra,” I groan while Jolie laughs.

“His lips tasted like salt, but the good kind. The kind you put on popcorn. And my gosh, his
tongue
—”

“Stop, please!” I chuck a straw wrapper at her, but I’m laughing so I know she won’t ever take me seriously. But nobody wants to hear how their brother’s tongue is during a kiss. “
Okay,
Jay kissed me again. A lot.”

Both Jolie and Sierra lean in, and I feel heat seep through my cheeks. I stare at the fry salt on the tabletop and mumble out “details.”

“We went to his place…which is gigantic. Like, he has a movie theater and a freaking fountain in his entryway. And we were going to watch movies, but he wanted to do that in his room.”

“Omigosh,” Sierra says, inching even closer. I raise my eyebrows waiting for anything else she wants to add, but I guess that was it.

“Well, uh, he kissed me in the theater…”
and it completely erased all the crap I’m dealing with so I…
“Um, I liked it, so I sort of kissed him back. Then we didn’t stop.”

“Did you make it to his room?” Jolie sort of whispers. They are both hanging on my every mumble. My cheeks are up in flames.

“Yeah…”

“Did you guys…?”

“We made things official, I guess.”
But that was a week ago, and now I’m not sure how to juggle the drama at home, the drama at school, and keep a boyfriend at the same time.

“What?” Sierra is so far across the table
she’s
almost kissing me. “Official
how?
”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“
What
?” Heat creeps up my neck. “No.”

Sierra leans back and blows out a whoosh of air. “My gosh. Heart attack. I can’t imagine having that conversation with Levi.”

“Ew. You better not be telling him any part of
this
conversation or I’m not telling you anything again.” I point a fry at her so she knows I’m serious.

Jolie nods. “That’s also part of the girl code.”

Thank heavens
someone
has my back.

“Right, right, I know. It’s just so hard to hide things from him.” She fills her cheeks with air for a second, then smiles at me. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know.”

“Thanks.”

“So,” she says, tentatively sliding the job applications back under my nose, “does Adam know?”

My pen freezes on the Orange Julius app. “About Jay? Of course he does.” I drop the pen and start unpicking my braid. “Why?”

They share a look, and I almost fling another wrapper at them.

Jolie chews on the end of her straw, and says, “It’s just, you always tell him stuff before you tell us. That’s kinda unfair.” She laughs it off, but there’s still this weird air around us.