"Nothing. Why?" Kylie asked.
Holiday arched a suspicious brow. "I saw you skip out of the dining hall yesterday when he walked in, and the same thing happened at dinner."
"I just didn't want to talk to him." It was the truth. Part of it. Neither did she want anyone with the ability to read her emotions or smell her hormones to know how turned on she got by just looking at him. Until she could get her wayward thoughts in check, best not to be close to him in a crowd. Or alone, she admitted. And yeah, sooner or later she was going to have to explain that to Derek. Later being her first choice. "So something is wrong?" Holiday asked.
Kylie crossed her arms over her chest. "Am I imagining things, or didn't you just tell me to be careful not to..." She didn't want to say it out loud. "You warned me to be careful around him? And now that I'm being careful, you act as if that's wrong. What is it you want me to do?" Holiday pursed her lips to the side in thought. "Careful, yes. But I didn't mean for you to avoid him."
"You might not have meant that, but right now this is my way of being careful. My way of dealing with it."
Holiday held up her hand. "Fine. You deal with it your way." She paused, then let go of another deep sigh that told Kylie she didn't approve.
"Have you spoken with your stepdad yet?"
Kylie rolled her eyes. "Did my mom call you again? I swear. I don't get why she thinks it's such a great idea that I forgive the man, when she doesn't have plans to forgive him anytime in the next century."
Holiday's mouth did another one of those twists to the right as if she was considering the words before she released them. "He's divorcing your mom, not you."
Yeah, Kylie's mom had sort of said the same thing, but Kylie didn't buy it. "It sure as heck doesn't feel that way." She could still remember begging him to let her go live with him. But no, he hadn't wanted her, and why? She looked up at Holiday again. "Did my mom also tell you he's screwing a girl who's only a couple years older than I am?"
"No," Holiday said. "But you told me. The day we went for ice cream."
Sympathy filled her eyes. "Look, Kylie, I'm not saying he hasn't done something wrong. But this still isn't about you and him. If I let the relationship between my father and mother affect how I felt about them, I'd hate them both."
"I'm sorry, but I totally disagree. It might not be about him and me, but what he's done affected me," Kylie said. "It affected me in so many ways. For example, my mom called me yesterday and told me she's considering selling our house. The house I grew up in, the place I've called home all my life."
Holiday leaned back in her chair. "That's tough. I can still remember how upset I got when my mom sold our house. But..."
"No buts," Kylie said. "My mom shouldn't push me to do something that she can't even do. She can't forgive him. Maybe I can't forgive him, either. So just tell her that the next time she calls. Or maybe I'll tell her myself."
Holiday frowned. "It wasn't your mom who called. It was your stepdad.
And he said he's-"
"Oh, crap. He called you?" Kylie remembered how embarrassing it had been when her dad had hit on Holiday, gawking at her as if she was candy and he had a sweet tooth. "Please don't tell me he asked you out or anything?"
"No. He sounded genuinely worried. He said he keeps e-mailing and calling you but you don't answer."
"If he was so worried he could just show up for parents day. But does he do that? No. And you know why? I'll bet it's because his girlfriend doesn't want him to come. Her parents probably won't give her permission to leave town."
"Or maybe he doesn't show up because he thinks you don't want to see him." Holiday shook her head. "I just think ... maybe you should try talking to him." She bit down on her lip and then her mouth tightened to the right again. "Oh, hell. I've already tossed my two cents in. I might as well go for the quarter. I also think that you are using avoidance as a way of dealing with everything that's going wrong in your life right now. Your dad and now Derek. And frankly, I should add that avoidance is a poor excuse for a coping method. I know because I've tried it a time or two."
"Yeah," Kylie said, back to feeling pretty bitchy again, yet unable to stop. "But until another coping method magically appears in my bag of tricks, this one is going to have to do." She almost wanted to defend herself and tell Holiday that she wasn't avoiding everything. She'd spent the last day and a half calling Dallas area Brightens, trying to find her dad's adoptive parents, so she might find his real parents, so she might find out what she was.
Holiday frowned. "We all have to learn lessons the hard way, don't we?"
"I guess so," Kylie said, not sure it could get any harder. "I'm just not ready to deal with my dad ... stepdad ... or with what I'm feeling about Derek. Is it too much to ask to just be given a reprieve?"
"No, it isn't too much to ask. But generally speaking, the longer you put off dealing with something, the harder it is to solve. Sometimes, you just have to face things head-on. My dad used to say that you should look trouble right in the face and spit in its eye."
"I never mastered the art of spitting," Kylie said.
Holiday smiled then glanced at the mail again. Sighing, she raised her gaze. "Do you want to avoid this as well?" She pushed a letter across the desk.
"What?" Kylie stared at the envelope and saw her name scribbled in a familiar script.
Lucas's script. He had written her another letter.
Chapter Eight