Just You (21 page)

Which was why, I thought, I should’ve known
better than to take the risk. But now I did know better, and when
Michael called my cell that afternoon, I let it go to
voicemail.

Then, when he called again an hour later, I
answered and told him I had a bad headache, which was true, and
that I planned to go to bed really early tonight, which was also
true. The excuse worked that night, but the next afternoon, after a
short phone call during which I offered more lame excuses, Michael
started to catch on. I acted distant on the phone, putting him off,
hoping he’d get the hint without my even saying anything, and give
up. But he didn’t. He knew something was up.

And so did Lynn.

I was in my room listening to music, cell
phone set to vibrate on the bed beside me, when she appeared at my
door. When I noticed her there, I ripped out my earbuds and tried
to furtively dry my cheeks with the pillow, but it was too late.
She saw.

“Taylor?” she said, her perma-smile
slipping. She wore pink sweats and no makeup, her curly hair damp
from the shower she’d taken when she got off work.

“Yeah?” I blinked away the last traces of
wetness from my eyelids.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, wishing more than anything that
she’d leave me alone and at the same time, hoping she wouldn’t. But
it was close to five and she needed to start dinner, so she backed
off for now. I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.

At dinner, I picked at my food and tuned
everything out. I did notice my father and stepmother exchanging a
few meaningful glances, but I focused mainly on my plate until the
meal ended and then escaped to my room again, leaving the door
open. Lynn would probably be along soon with an offer to talk. This
was what she did. She was a nurse—she took care of people.

But to my surprise, it wasn’t Lynn who
showed up in my room ten minutes later. It was my father, the last
person on earth I wanted to talk to right then. The last person on
earth who would understand.

“Are you sick, sweet pea?” he asked,
hovering near my bed.

“No.” I busied myself with untangling my
earbuds wire so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. Just the fact
that he was standing in my room right now, all worried about me,
made me inexplicably angry at him. Angrier than I’d been in a good
three years. Feelings I thought I’d put behind me long ago were
suddenly erupting to the surface all at once, raw and sore like a
re-opened wound. The protective scab had been picked off and I was
bleeding, even worse than the first time. Back then I was young and
naive, unable to grasp anything other than that my daddy had left
me. Now, I was old enough to understand the impact it had made on
me, the damage it had caused. And I realized maybe I hadn’t
forgiven him, after all. That maybe I never would.

“I want to be alone, Dad,” I said, securing
the earbuds in my ears. My finger rested on the “play” button,
ready to drown him out.

He backed away. “Okay, I’ll come back
later—.”

“No,” I heard from the hallway, and then
Lynn burst into the room, heading straight for my father. She put a
hand on his arm to stop him. “Steven, no.
Talk
to your
daughter. I’m not going to let you avoid it any longer.”

Dad dropped his gaze to the floor and I sat
up, plucking out my earbuds. I stared, intrigued, at Lynn’s
determined face. Obviously she’d been listening outside the door.
She turned to me before Dad could react to her words.

“Taylor, this talk is well past due.” She
placed a hand on my father’s back and sort of steered him toward
me. He sat down at the foot of my bed, slowly, as if in pain. Lynn
stayed close by, arms crossed, eyes fixed on my dad.

“Honey,” Dad said, and then paused to take a
deep breath and rub his beard. “Honey, what you said a few weeks
ago, about how I felt guilty for ruining your mother’s life…”

I shook my head. “I was mad.”

“No.” He looked at me now, that same
stinging pain in his eyes. “You were right.”

That shut me up. I touched the swan charm at
my neck, feeling its shape with my fingers as I waited for Dad to
continue. He took a deep breath and shot a glance at Lynn before
speaking again.

“I’ve spent the past four years feeling
guilty for what I put your mother through. For what I put you and
Emma through. For how I handled it all. At the time, I didn’t see
any other way, but now…now I look back and think about what I could
have done to make it easier on you.”

“Not leave at all?” I said bitterly. I
couldn’t help it. This had been building in me for so long.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I
have a lot of regrets, Taylor. The infidelity—that was inexcusable.
But I don’t regret divorcing your mother. I don’t regret meeting
Lynn and marrying her.”

Lynn squeezed his shoulder, her eyes shiny
with tears.

“Is that what you think I’ve been upset
about?” I asked. I was curious as to why they chose today of all
days to come to me about this, when I was already emotionally
wrecked. “Because it’s not. It’s about Michael. It has nothing to
do with what I said to you that day.”

“I’ve been bugging your dad to talk to you
ever since he told me about what you said,” Lynn explained. “We
both
wanted to talk to you. There are some things I need to
say too.”

“What happened with Michael?” Dad asked.

“Just a fight,” I said, though it wasn’t a
fight at all. More like a stonewalling.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No offense, Dad, but you’re the last person
on earth who should be giving out relationship advice.”

He did that wincing thing again, like I’d
slapped him, and right away I wanted to take it back. Here he was,
trying his best to reach out to me, and I was acting like a
brat.

“I guess I deserved that one too,” he said
softly.

No one said anything for a minute. Finally I
look at Lynn, whose hand still rested on my father’s shoulder.
“What did you need to say?”

She frowned a little. Seeing Lynn’s face
without its smile was like seeing a cat without its fur. Strange
and just…
wrong
.

“I needed to say that I’m sorry,” she said,
her voice cracking on the last word. Dad gripped her hand. “Taylor,
I’ve loved your dad from the moment I met him, but I never…I never
intended to break up a marriage and a-a h-home.”

She started crying then. I’d only seen Lynn
cry once before, years ago, when Leanne ran away from home and was
returned by the police. Lynn had cried with relief when she
realized her daughter was safe, and then in anger because Leanne
had worried her so much.

“I forgive you,” I told her. It was the
truth. I’d stopped blaming her long ago, and home-wrecking aside,
she was an amazing stepmom. Most days I liked her better than my
own mother.

Lynn reached for me, wrapping me in an
Ivory-soap hug. “I love you and Emma,” she blubbered into my
shoulder. “Like daughters.”

I could tell she’d been waiting a long time
to get all that out, so I sat still while she hugged me and
whispered her apologizes, over and over. “It’s okay,” I said,
patting her back. Finally she pulled away and took a deep,
shuddering breath.

“Sweet pea,” my father said once Lynn had
control over herself. “I guess what we’re both trying to say is we
know we’re not perfect. We’ve made mistakes. Adults do make
mistakes sometimes. And we hope you and Emma can forgive us for
them.” He reached tentatively for my hand. “I left your mother and
our house, yes. But I didn’t leave my girls. I hurt them deeply,
but I’ll never leave them.”

But you did leave us, I thought. You left us
confused, scared, and angry. You left us with a broken mother and
an upside-down life. Maybe you were technically there, a
twenty-minute drive away, or as a voice on the other end of the
phone, but it was never the same again. We never looked at you the
same again.

I thought all this, but didn’t say it.
Instead I said, “It felt like you left us.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “And I plan to spend
the rest of my life making it up to you.”

Lynn wrapped her arm around Dad’s shoulders,
and his arm circled her waist. They both looked at me nervously, as
if they thought I might scream at them or call them horrible names.
I’d wanted to, at one point in my life. But now, all I could do was
let it go.

I met my father’s eyes. “I think I
understand why you did what you did. You found the person who you
wanted to spend the rest of your life with. Mom was never that
person for you.”

Dad cleared his throat a few times, like he
did when he was trying not to get emotional. “You’re exactly
right,” he managed to say. And then he looked at Lynn in that
mushy, starry-eyed way he always did. The way Cliff Huxtable looked
at Clair. The way Brian looked at Kara.

The way Michael looked at me.

As I was thinking this, a buzzing sound came
from my bed. It was my cell phone, still on vibrate and burrowed in
my covers. I grabbed it and checked the call display. Michael. “I
should take this,” I told my father and stepmother. They quickly
got up to leave.

“Go easy on that kid,” Dad said on his way
out. “I’m sure he’s sorry for whatever he did to upset you.”

We’ll see, I thought, putting the phone to
my ear. “Hello?”

“What’s going on?” Michael’s voice sounded
both alarmed and annoyed. “You said you were going to call me back
and you…Why are you mad at me?”

“Can you come over?” I asked. “We need to
talk.”

There was dead silence as the heaviest four
words in history registered in his ears. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“When I get there,” he said, “will you let
me in?”

“Yes,” I said, my index finger reaching up
to trace the swans again as I spoke. “I’ll let you in.”

Chapter 20

Every year around April, when the warmer
weather hit, my father and stepmother would go away for a weekend
to “reconnect”. I tried not to think about what, exactly, that
entailed. This year they were heading down the shore to a seaside
resort. Usually, I’d stay at home during that particular weekend
and didn’t anticipate this time being any different. But about a
week before their trip, my plans unexpectedly changed.

“You can come over next weekend and keep me
company, if you want,” Leanne said to me as we cleaned the kitchen
together after our traditional Sunday brunch of pancakes and turkey
bacon.

“Really?” I said. Leanne had never requested
my presence before. Up until a few months ago, she was too busy
trying to ignore it.

“You can help me with Jamie and stuff.”

I quickly hid my shock. “Uh…sure. I can,
like, babysit too, if you wanted to go out.”

“Yeah?” She smiled. “I did sort of want to
go to this concert Friday night…are you sure you don’t mind? I
wouldn’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you. I mean,
I totally don’t mind sticking around.”

“No. Really. I don’t mind at all. We can do
something on Saturday, take Jamie to the movies or whatever.”

“Okay, sounds good,” she said, nodding. “Oh,
and if you wanted to have Michael over tomorrow night, feel free. I
won’t tell a soul.”

That settled it for me. After weathering our
first rough patch, I figured Michael and I had earned an
unsupervised night together.

As promised, I’d let him in when he showed
up at my dad’s house that night. And even though we weren’t really
supposed to, we went for a drive and parked near the waterfront. It
took me a long time to organize the thoughts in my head into
coherent sentences but, as always, Michael waited patiently until I
was ready.

“Elena Brewster,” I’d said at last. “You did
go out with her.”

“I did?” he’d asked, thoroughly
confused.

“So you didn’t
go
out
with
her. But you had a
thing
with her. A one night thing.”

With that, his gaze wavered. “Who told you
that?”

“Kayla said something about it Monday
night.”

“Right out of the blue?”

“She assumed I knew. She assumed, after
seeing Elena flirt with you over and over again right in front of
me, that you’d told me about having a thing with her.” I felt my
business-like calm start to slip. “So tell me…was this before or
after you met me?”

He seemed bewildered by the edge in my
voice. “It was a stupid mistake,” he said. “Yes, it was before I
met you. A couple of weeks before.”

“And?” I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to
know all the details.

“And…” He squirmed a little in his seat.
“One night, we kissed a little and she…well, I let her…”

Now I
knew
I didn’t want to hear the
details. What went on in the bedrooms of the Redwood Hills party
houses was common knowledge. Some of the girls even bragged about
their skills in this particular activity. “I’m sure you really
fought her off,” I said, feeling sickened by the fact that in one
sense, Elena Brewster knew my boyfriend almost as intimately as I
did.

“Really, it was no big deal. Temporary
insanity on my part.”

“But you told me,” I said, “not long after
we started going out…when I asked you why you’d never gone out with
her, you said you didn’t like her, that she wasn’t a nice
person.”

“I remember.”

“You didn’t like her, yet you…did that with
her.”

He ran a hand though his hair, looking
pained. “We were at a party and having a few drinks. It just sort
of happened.”

“So you made out with her, made her think
there was something between you, and you’ve been avoiding her ever
since.” When he didn’t answer, I knew I’d hit the mark. She liked
him, and he had led her on. Gave her hope. And while I was busy
worrying about
her
trying to steal Michael away from
me
, she was probably thinking
I
had stolen him away
from
her
. “Why didn’t you tell me about this, if it was no
big deal? You let me think she had this little crush on you all
this time. You could’ve mentioned something about hooking up with
her once.”