September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (19 page)

Avery was in the back of the van,
watching the store fronts blow by. I’d invited her at the last
minute because knowing she was there would help me feel confident
enough to relax. And Jake didn’t say anything when she got into the
car, so I assumed it was okay.

“Where’s your mom work?” Avery
asked.

“Post Office.” Jake turned to me and
smiled.

“Why do you want me to meet her so
bad?” I asked.

He looked into the rearview mirror
again. “Because I like you.”

Just then, I looked into the back.
Avery was staring at him, wearing a small smile that faded when her
eyes met mine.

My fingers clutched at a set of knots
forming in my stomach. When I looked back to Jake he glanced from
the rearview mirror to the road, and then back at me. I
straightened in my seat.

When we stopped at a red light, Jakes
eyes went right into the rearview mirror, again. He was looking at
Avery, even when she wasn’t talking. I understood why—I mean she
was so much prettier than me—but it made my chest quiver, and not
in a good way.

I told myself it was nothing, but
couldn’t help asking, “Why do you keep looking behind you, in the
mirror?” my tone was low, hoping Avery couldn’t hear.

Jakes face didn’t change, but his gaze
shifted to the road ahead. “I’m being a responsible
driver.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Angel.”
Avery whispered, reaching up to pat my shoulder. I swear she had
the ears of a jungle cat.

I looked out the window behind us.
There were a few cars. The light changed and we started moving. I
watched Jake as he checked his mirrors and then switched lanes, but
his gaze kept going back to that rearview mirror.

“What are you looking at?” I asked
more forcefully.

Jake didn’t take his eyes off the
road, but they shrank. “Traffic.”

“Who
are you looking at?”

“Angel.” My name was a warning. “Don’t
start this again.”

“Tell me. Who are you trying to scope
out back there?”

Jake shook his head and scoffed as he
guided the van to the roadside. He parked and turned to face me,
pinning me under his undivided irritation. “Are you trying to start
a fight? Because I thought we were going to having a nice time. I
thought that I was taking you to finally meet my mother. If picking
a fight is your way of trying to get out of it again, you let me
know. The way I’m feeling right now, I will fucking fight.” His
lips thinned and his voice was stern.

The sliding door of the van slammed. I
looked into the back and Avery was gone. I turned to look out my
door and found her face in my open window.

“I’m not fighting with anyone.” She
snapped, before taking off down the sidewalk.

I jumped out after her. She stopped
when she heard my door close and turned around, stalking back to
me.

“Angel, dammit, would you get back in
the car?” Jakes’ voice sailed from inside the van.

I ignored him. “Ave—”

“Go, Angel.” She told me. “I’m only a
few blocks from my mom’s store. She’ll give me ride
home.”

“Angel!” Jake called, sounding more
upset.

I was torn. “I’m sorry,” I told
her.

“Angel, you’re really pissing him off
right now. Over nothing. Just get in the van and go meet his
family. It’s important to him.” She turned and started down the
block again.

A second later, Jake was behind me.
“Well? Are we fighting or what?”

I turned to face him, but kept my eyes
on the ground. “Let’s go.”

He opened the vans passenger door for
me and I hopped inside.

Jake’s temper vanished as we drove
down the road. My mood improved considerably as I watched him
repeatedly checking the rearview mirror.

The ease of his hand on my knee didn’t
last long. Once we got to his moms place, I was nervous all over
again.

I stood in her pale yellow kitchen,
fidgeting as she stared me down. Mrs. Haddon collected ceramic
roosters. There was a high shelf on the back kitchen wall that was
covered with them. The pale yellow curtains over the sink had
little white outlines of roosters crowing. Jake had gone off to the
bathroom or something and I felt helpless, trapped under her
searching stare.

She lifted her Snoopy coffee cup and
took a sip. “My son tells me that he loves you.”

My stomach dropped at the blatant
honesty, but I couldn’t hide my smile. I cleared my throat, staring
at the faded yellow and white linoleum floor. “He tells me the same
thing.”

“Well?” Both her eyebrows
lifted.

A moment passed before I managed to
answer. “I love him, too, ma’am. He’s very special.”

She nodded. “I thought so. You know,
you’re the first one he’s brought home in a long while.”

My smile grew. “I didn’t know
that.”

She grinned and then asked about “my
people.” When I told her I didn’t have any to speak of, her soft
demeanor became tender. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“Well you do, now.”

I liked his mother. She was so
warm-hearted and open. I think that’s where Jake got it from. He
looked like his dad, but he was sweet like his mother.

His older sisters were identical
twins. Both nice and smart—they were off in college before we got
together, so I didn’t really know them, but they seemed nice the
two times I met them. His younger brother, Henry, was three years
younger than me.

Jake’s mother busied herself in the
kitchen, putting an end to our talk. I wandered out to the living
room and watched Henry. He liked to rock himself back and forth
when he played alone on the living room floor. It was a game no one
understood but him. From what I could tell, it required his
imagination, a sharpened pencil, and the mumbled sounds of
explosions. Jake said Henry played it all the time. He was either
painting or crouched on the floor, flipping a pencil.

Henry hardly spoke to anyone and when
he did, he never looked them in the eye. Jake said he could tell
Henry was listening by the way he leaned his head to one side,
inclining his ear. Sometimes, when I greeted him, he’d pat my
shoulder as he turned away.

What Henry lacked in etiquette, he
made up for in talent. He was a really great painter—he did
abstracts in oils, mostly. But there was this one charcoal drawing
he’d done of Jake that literally took my breath away every time I
saw it. It was mounted in the hallway because Jake hated walking in
and seeing himself hanging over the sofa. It was a still-life; Jake
sitting on a stool with his legs outstretched. His face held a
faraway look, like he was lost in thought with a cigarette in his
hand.

+++

After that first day, Jake took me by
his moms whenever he felt like it; usually for dinner.

He also used to tease me,
relentlessly, about my taste in music that wasn’t his. He sincerely
disliked hair bands in general, but knew how I loved them. One
night, when we went over to his moms place to eat, we walked inside
and Jake went straight to the living room, mumbling something to
his mom. She pointed at the entertainment center.

Jake turned around, wearing a
ridiculous grin. His mom walked over to the kitchen doorway. She
paused to wave to me and laughed when she looked back at
Jake.

“What?” I asked, loving the greeting
and sparkles in their eyes.

“Listen to this.” Jake smirked and
quickly turned around to the stereo. He popped a tape into the tape
deck. The room filled with screeching guitar. I jumped at the
sudden noise and he laughed.

“This is my new song for you.” He took
me into his arms, leading me in a misplaced slow dance to Seventeen
by Winger.

We both laughed out loud. “It’s
fitting. Don’t you think so, Liar?”

+++

The memory of his sparkling gaze
leaves at quickly as it came and I am alone again, with only my
fragmented mind to keep me company. I shut my eyes, willing myself
to sleep.

+ + +

20

—
Avery

The day I first saw Angel was the day
of her accident. We didn’t talk until the day with the kittens, but
I first saw her on the day she was liberated from her psycho birth
mother by way of a wreck.

There were large birds in a grouping
of trees and I used to like to watch birds. I was standing at that
bend in the road, watching and thinking how the long-necked fowl
might be some kind of crane. They looked rare, I thought, because I
had never seen birds like that in the area. The cranes were
drinking from the puddles between the drying trees. I can’t
remember if it had been raining or if someone had just watered, but
I know there were puddles everywhere.

I didn’t know anymore about what
caused the accident than Angel did—beyond the obvious fact that the
mother never used her brakes. In fact, she sped up as the car
neared the bend in the road. Angel’s mother was way beyond fucked.
Had to be, to take her daughter, set her into a car without a
seatbelt, and then decide to keep going straight when the road
curved just as easy as choosing tea over coffee.

But I did like to watch birds. The way
they fly and loop through the air, I used to think it was
beautiful. Now that I am caged, I’m sure of it.

When I think about it, I think that
birds live mysterious lives. They do the strangest things. A
million of them used to gather inside of one, tiny tree in the high
school parking lot. They’d sit there, singing their songs and
sounding so happy. When they flew away, they’d do it with such
uniform grace.

Flying always fascinated
me.

I also used to watch the birds playing
in the sprinklers at the schoolyard. They’d soar from the crowded
tree in the parking lot in small groups and make for the showering
spray. They’d start out so high up, then dive down into the
fountains shooting from the sprinklers. And then, go back up and
loop back down again. Each bird moved according to what the others
did. It was if they had no single path, but all shared it—a hundred
tiny birds moving as one entity.

Sometimes, when I looked outside my
bedroom window at night, I would wonder where the birds were and
what they were doing. I wanted to know if they were happy and
chirping, or if they were nesting somewhere, oblivious to my
wonderings. I wanted to be one of those birds looping up and down,
to be capable of taking the things that I needed and float back up
into the sky. Far, far away from everything below.

+++

“Thank you for doing this, Avery.”
Angel squirmed in her chair.

We were seated in the long corridor at
Carlisle’s rinky-dink County Hospital. There was a long reflective
panel that stretched along the wall. As I stared at it, I could
hardly believe that I was there.

“You know I’m always here for you.” I
said, even though I felt like leaving and never looking
back.

With a deep breath, I patted Angels
shoulder, stood up, and turned into the heavy door that was the
entrance into Doctor Williams waiting area. Her office door was
open so, I kept going and took a seat on a thinly padded seat set
before the doctors’ desk. Adjusting myself in the chair, I set my
hands gently onto the smooth wooden ends of each arm. Despite the
lacking impression, the seat felt plush.

Doctor Williams gracefully sank into
her fluffy leather chair, resting her elbows on the arms, her palms
touching.

She was a nice looking lady, I
thought. I had seen my share of psychiatrists, but this was my
first lady shrink. And she was the first decent looking one. Doctor
Williams had smooth cocoa skin with totally invisible pores and a
cute, round nose, and these thick lips she painted a deep red. It
accented the natural flush of her cheeks. Her dark rimmed glasses
slipped down the bridge of her nose. She pressed them back with two
fingers.

The doctor was quietly staring. The
hollow sound of her desk drawer rolling open filled the small
chamber. A file folder, dictionary thick, plunked onto her
desk.

“Avery?”

“That’s my name.” I crossed my legs,
going for nonchalant and failing. The heel of my red flat
disembarked, flopping like a slipper on my hanging toes.

“I would like to talk to you about
Angel.”

“That’s why I’m here.” I leaned down
and tucked the shoe back on my foot, noticing an old-fashioned
pocket-watch on the doctors’ desk. It was the kind I’d seen in old
Westerns, round and gold attached to a long chain.

“How long have you been with
her?”

The exact amount of time escaped me
and I shook my head. “Since the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Our friendship.” I thought over the
answer and almost chuckled. Almost. “If that had a beginning. I
mean, it seems like we’ve always been friends.”

“Angel has told me that the first time
she saw you . . . was . . .” she thumbed through some papers in the
folder, “the day her mother died.”