It's Never Enough: Book 1 in the Never Series (11 page)

My eyes moved to Devin and his dad. Devin’s upper body was stiff. I couldn’t see his face, but even from where I stood, I could feel his anger; it emanated off him like steam. Luke looked at his oldest son, and his bushy eyebrows formed together in the middle of his forehead. Obvious confusion over what he’d done that was so wrong. While Devin’s arms jetted into the air in all directions as he spoke. Then Devin scraped his hands over his face and throughout his scalp. There was movement around me, and I think someone asked me a question, but I couldn’t hear properly. I was transfixed. It was like watching a car accident. What I really wanted to do was turn around and leave, but I couldn’t look away.

With a whip of his body, Devin spun back towards me and stomped hard and fast in my direction. He brushed past the area where Kyle was and then he backtracked. “Buddy, I gotta go, okay? I’ll see you later tonight though, alright?” he said to Kyle, who gave him a that’s-cool-I’ve-got-presents-to-open smile as he tore open a new remote controlled racecar set.

“Devin?” my voice cracked like a twelve-year-old puberty-struck boy.

“Let’s go,” he muttered as he passed me. I followed his double-time steps as best as I could, but he kept getting further and further away.

Devin was already in the driver seat of his car by the time I caught up to him in the driveway. He turned over the engine as I shut the car door. There was hardly a moment to secure my seatbelt before he started backing out. We hit the main road, and he revved the engine, which sent smoke billowing out his exhaust pipe. My gut leapt to my throat as he barely slowed down at a stop sign before barreling on ahead.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be driving right now,” I said while holding onto the door handle as he banked a corner.

A moment later, he pulled into a vacant lot and killed the engine. Unable to move, I sat frozen as I watched him flip open the glove box and remove a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He exited the car and began to pace as he lit up a cigarette. Dirt kicked up in soft wisps by his feet as he stomped over the ground again and again.

Unsure of how to handle the moment, I sat in the car feeling detached and confused. He was pissed. Beyond pissed. He paced and smoked and smoked and paced, taking the cigarette forcibly in and out of his mouth. He looked like a fire-breathing dragon, and the tip of the cigarette would illuminate his face as he sucked in hard on the filter. When he’d smoked half of it, I moved from inside the car to standing in front of it. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said as I wrapped my arms around my body. Even though it was warm outside, my body was shivering.

“I don’t.” He took a long drag. “I mean I did. I haven’t since I got back.” He paused and looked at the cigarette in his hand. Disgust crossed his face before he dropped it to the ground and smothered it hard with his shoe. “What the hell is wrong with him?” He picked up a small rock from the ground and threw it into the distance. “Doesn’t he know how fucked up that is? To give him that stupid gun. To tell him he’ll be a fucking hero like his big brother.” He threw another rock. This time so hard that he nearly knocked himself off balance.

“I’m sorry,” my voice quaked. If I’d known what to do or what to say, I would have done or said it. I looked at this gorgeous man who was so obviously feeling tortured at this moment, and I wanted a magic ball to tell me what to do to take his pain away.

He let his head and shoulders fall, and he turned and looked at me with obvious resentment in his eyes. “Mal, I’m sorry. This is family shit. I didn’t want the party to go down like this.” He walked over to me, and a softness washed over his face.

“Come on, it’s not your fault. All families have drama. Trust me.” I thought of my dad and Janet and their new baby on the way. I thought of my mom in Vegas spinning the roulette wheel wondering if she ever wondered how I was.

Devin put his forehead on mine. “I’m sorry for storming out. Sorry for speeding. Sorry for smoking.” The pungent smell of tobacco was still on him.

I shifted my body closer to his. “Remember before the cake when you were going to tell me something?” That moment had been playing over and over again in the back of my brain since it happened. “
There are, like, a million things I want to say to you, to tell you, but I don’t want to freak you out
.”

Devin took his forehead off mine and gently kissed my lips. “I should get you home,” he said before he walked back to the car. As I stood there alone in the warm summer air, another chill washed over me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I’d been lying on the couch for an hour. After Devin dropped me off, I tried to keep busy by reorganizing the linen closet. And reorganizing the medicine cabinet. And reorganizing my dresser drawers, but nothing could take away the nagging feeling that crept all through my body. I needed to eat. Improvising a recipe I’d seen on the cooking channel, I made a batch of butterscotch pecan fudge brownies. The end result was gorgeous. Almost too beautiful to cut into.
Almost
. The combination of the butterscotch and fudge melted across my palate, easing away the feeling in the pit of my stomach. The one that was always there on alert, ready to take over at any given moment. The one I constantly fought with. Mr. Dobson was overjoyed at the tasty treats. He could never move or die. He was my savior in a way, and he didn’t even know it.

“Hello my little wench,” Fiona sung as she entered the apartment. “How was the party?”

I rolled to my side and stood up. “Eventful,” I said, walking towards my bedroom. “I’m going to lie in bed for a while.” And question everything about my life.

“Screw that,” she said as she crossed and stood before me. “I’ve seen this woe is me look before.” She motioned to my face. “So the party sucked, I’m assuming. So what? It’s a kid’s party. Who cares? Did you have any more success walking the dogs today?”

“They’re gone for the next week. Casper had to do some publicity thing in L.A. so he needed his whole pack.” A week without the dogs was both good and bad. Good that it would give my forearms a break from all the pulling they endured during a walk, but bad because it left me with even more time on my hands—never a good thing.

“Well, let’s go get a coffee or something.”

I opened my mouth to object, but before I could speak, she added, “And you’re not going to pussy out of it. So slap on some lip gloss, and I’ll go change.” She spun on her heel and walked to her room as she pulled her top off over her head.

Knowing Fiona, I knew that if I didn’t go willingly, she’d take me along forcibly. So I dabbed on some mauve lip gloss and waited for her to take the lead and I’d follow.

***

There was something off about Perked. It wasn’t until I sat in my booth that I realized it. One table away from me, there was a cleared out area. It used to have a table that sat four, but the table and chairs were gone. Instead, there was a small throw rug on the ground, a stool, a mic stand, and a small amplifier.

“What’s going on over there?” Fiona asked as she sat down across from me.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t here this morning.” Whatever it was for, I wasn’t happy with its proximity to my area.

Fiona swirled a coffee stirrer around her cup over and over again. “So there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” She took a small sip of her drink while keeping her eyes glued to the table.

My stomach instantly twisted. Whenever someone sits you down to “talk,” it’s almost never a good thing. I allowed myself a deep inhalation and exhalation before saying, “What’s up?” in a super casual manner.

She tucked her blond bob back behind her ears. “So I’m going back to school,” she said before immediately sipping her coffee. Her eyes cast towards the window.

This was kind of a shock coming from Fiona. She swore she’d never go back to college. “Really?”
I needed to be supportive
. “Well, that’s great. Congrats!” I touched my cup to hers in a cheers motion.

“That’s kind of not all.” She gnawed for a moment on her thumbnail, smudging her lip gloss. “I want you to come with me.”

Ba-bam!
There was the wrecking ball I didn’t see coming. “No thanks.”

“Just hear me out. I talked to my mom and your dad about this.”

“What? When?” I was upset that she’d gone to them behind my back, especially to discuss
my
future.

She shook her head. “I went over there to see how my mom was. Don’t worry about that. The point is I was stupid to have left school after earning my associates degree. I mean, you can’t do shit with an associate’s degree. I know that now. Hell, I don’t want to be making all my money off my ass. I mean I have a brain, you know—”

“You do? I’ve always been too distracted by your ass to notice.”

Fiona threw a sweetener packet toward my face, which I deflected with my hand. “Ha ha, Miss Funny Pants. Listen. Janet’s paying for me to go back, and Jack is one hundred percent ready to pay for you too. You know that.”

I shook my head and took a sip of my drink as my legs bounced up and down under the table.

“Mallory, think of it this way. We can go to the same school. It won’t be like you’re doing it alone. I’ll be there.”

“Yeah, two years ahead of me. We won’t be in the same classes. And I know my father only agreed to pay for business school.”

“So what’s wrong with business school? That’s what my degree is in, and that’s what I’m going to finally get my bachelors in. Jack’s right, you can’t make a career out of walking those stupid dogs.”

I shot her a glare, and she averted her eyes from mine.
How dare she throw my father’s words at me!

College only made me think of Haley. We both received our letters in the mail the same day. She didn’t want us to open them separately, so I drove over to her house so we could open them at the same exact time. We were both accepted to Grand View University. We were both going to major in liberal arts. We were both unsure of what we wanted from our futures. But we knew that the only way we’d survive college was if we were in it together. In high school, we were each other’s yin and yang. If there was a subject Haley didn’t have all the answers on, I’d help her pick up the slack, and vice versa. Each test that we’d freak out about, we’d collaborate with each other, having sleepover cram sessions complete with pig-out hours. Of course those pig outs led to binge-and-purge sessions. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to take courses and study and cram without her. Or without the rituals we’d set up. There was no way to explain that to my dad or even Fiona. The truth was that I was scared shitless.

“Look, I’m sorry about the dogs comment. I know you like that job for whatever reason. But you and I both can do so much more with our lives. It’s time to do it. So what do you think? I’ll be there for you.” She put her hand out face up on the table and waited for me to place mine on top of hers. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not now.

“I’ll have to think about it.” Even though it was a lie, I tried my hardest to make it sound sincere.

She nodded as she slowly moved her hand away. Her lips curved up into a complacent smile. The kind that kids give their parents when they ask for something and the parent says, “Maybe, if you’re good.”

As I took a sip of my coffee, I heard someone clearing her throat to the right of me.

“Ahem, hello, everyone?” Eliza said into the microphone. “We are excited to announce that Perked will now feature live music! Please give a steaming warm Perked welcome to Jude Coleton!” She clapped and moved to the side as a guy with a guitar sat on the small stool.

He had wavy, flaxen hair that landed just above his shoulders, like the kind of effortless hair surfers had. He wore faded jeans and a black t-shirt. He pulled the microphone stand closer to him. “Hey all. I’m Jude Coleton.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but the blank stares of the crowd put an end to it. Instead, he just started strumming out a mellow riff on his guitar.

“Live music at Perked?” I asked.

Fiona sat back in her chair and gave Jude the once over. “If all the musicians look like him, I don’t have a problem with it.” She licked her lips.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who seemed smitten. Eliza had been wiping down the same spot on the counter for at least a minute. She couldn’t take her eyes off Jude.

“You’re not the only one,” I said, making a gesture to Eliza.

“I’ll fight her for him. You know what they say? Musicians have big—”

“Bank accounts?”

She formed her mouth into a viperish smile before saying, “No, silly, they have small bank accounts, but big cocks.”

“Here, here!” We clinked cups to musicians and their extremities everywhere.

***

When we got back to our apartment, I locked myself in my room and called Devin. With each unanswered ring, my heart beat faster and harder. The sound of his deep voice shot through me like a bolt, even though it was only his voicemail. I hung up before leaving a message. Maybe the party was still going on. Maybe he was helping his mother clean up. Maybe he was having it out with his father. Maybe he was destroying the gun his father had bought for Kyle. The day had been weird. What was up with his father? Why would he want to flaunt the fact that Devin was in the war? Had he killed people? It was something I’d never really thought about before. Knowing he was in the war and imagining him in the war were two separate thoughts. I couldn’t picture him in the thick of it with a gun in his hands. I didn’t want to picture it. So I didn’t. What were the things he wanted to say to me? Was he hiding something major? Had he gone AWOL or something?

My head started to hurt, so I rubbed my temples in slow methodic circles.  There were too many questions, too many thoughts. I’d thought it had only been a few minutes, but looking at the clock, I realized I’d been lying on my bed thinking for a few hours. I picked up my phone and dialed Devin. On the fourth ring, his voicemail picked up again. There was nothing for me to say. I didn’t know what was going on, and I didn’t know what might set him off or push him away. Tossing my phone on my bed, I rolled to my side and stared at the wall. I tried to force my eyes to close, but they wouldn’t. That itching feeling began to make its way all over my body. I needed a release.

With soft feet, I plodded out of my room to the hallway. Fiona’s door was shut, and I could hear her white-noise playlist through her door. The sounds let me know that she was already asleep. Once the babbling brooks and twittering birds started to play, she was out like a light. I walked to the kitchen, knowing I didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of ingredients. It was also going to be too late to bring anything over to Mr. Dobson.

With a quick flick of the cabinet door, I revealed some basics: sugar, maple syrup, brown sugar, vanilla. Struggling for an idea, I finally came up with something. Grabbing the brown sugar and vanilla with one hand and some butter from the fridge, I dumped all the ingredients into a saucepan. My mouth salivated as the mixture turned to caramel within minutes. Once set, I didn’t bother to transfer it to a container to cool. Instead, I just let the blazing hot caramel burn my tongue spoonful after spoonful until I couldn’t even taste it because my tongue was so fried. With lots of soap, I scrubbed the pot and the spoon clean before setting them on the counter to dry. Then I slowly headed back to bed. When I lay down, I saw I’d missed a text message on my phone. It was from Devin.

Sorry today was a mess
, it said.

I swallowed hard and responded,
No problem
.

It was best to act casual over text. No reason to start something up at that point. And maybe if he thought I was casual about the whole thing, he’d be more likely to open up to me about all the mysterious things he had to tell me.

Thanks
. His text read.
I’ll make it up to you next weekend okay?

I texted back a smiling emoticon and the word
perfect
.

And I really hoped it would be.