Faker - Sarah Smith Page 0,61

answered him, bombarding him instead with personal questions of my own.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

He nuzzles my neck, wetting my skin with his breath. “Not when it comes to you.”

I swoon from the inside out. “Money. My parents couldn’t afford to live in Hawaii anymore. My dad has family in the Midwest, and he and my mom decided it would be better to live here since it’s cheaper. And my dad’s family offered to watch my sister and me so my parents could save money on babysitters. So we moved, but it didn’t help things all that much. My dad still could never hold a job for long.”

“Why?”

“He has a difficult personality. Very stubborn. He got into arguments all the time with his bosses and coworkers. He’d get fired or quit. It drove my mom nuts. She eventually got sick of it and divorced him. My little sister and I lived with her from then on and saw him every other weekend.”

He stares at me with tenderness and sympathy. I realize now he’s been looking at me with those emotions in his face ever since I fell at the worksite. It makes something in my chest flutter.

“That must have been hard,” he says.

“It was for the best. They’re better apart.”

“You’re so strictly business. About everything. I like that about you.”

My cheeks flush at his compliment. “It killed my mom to leave Hawaii. She loved it there.” My chest aches thinking back on how sad she was when we first moved.

“Do you think she regrets moving?”

“I think so. She would never admit it, though. She cried most nights our first few months living here. She waited until she thought my sister and I were asleep, but I could hear her sometimes.”

“How awful.”

“If she didn’t have kids to support, she would still be living there probably.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s true. She always worked, always had a job. Supporting herself was never a problem. Maybe if my dad had been a harder worker like her, or more ambitious, we could have stayed. She would have been happier.”

“Your mom loves you and your sister. Part of being a parent means making sacrifices for your kids. She may have been sad at first, but I bet having two wonderful daughters means more than living in Hawaii.”

“You sound like a therapist.” I rest my head on his shoulder. When his arms slips around me, I moan. I’ve never felt this comfortable talking about these tough moments of my childhood with anyone before. “You know that coconut shell I keep on my desk?”

I feel him nod against the top of my head.

“She gave it to me when we moved from Hawaii. She knew I would take the move pretty hard, so she wrote a note on the inside for me to look at whenever I felt sad.”

“What does it say?”

“‘For my beautiful anak, who’s as sweet and strong as this coconut.’”

“That’s perfect.”

I can hear the smile in his voice. It sends goose bumps across my skin.

“She has the other half. She said she held on to it her first few months of living in the Midwest, to remind her to be strong for me and my sister. It’s like my security blanket, reminding me to be strong like my mom whenever I feel weak.”

“You’re never weak, Emmie.”

“So wrong. You have no idea.”

“Can I ask you something else?” A deep sigh follows his frown when I nod. “How long until your classmates finally called you by your real name?”

“Most never did.” I wince at the memory of kids calling me Pocahontas and Lilo in class and in the halls of my middle school, my face blank as I tried to ignore it. But another part of me feels joy. Tate remembers me telling him this at the hospital, and it stuck in his mind. I stuck in his mind. I’m important to him.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. All through middle school. High school was better. I made friends with people who were nice enough to call me Emmie.”

“Jesus. Little fucking assholes.”

“It was a learning experience. I ignored them. Or pretended I couldn’t hear them.” I clear my throat. It was years ago, but every time I think about middle school, the feelings of embarrassment and hurt crash over me in waves.

“It still bothered you though, didn’t it?” he says softly.

“It hurt to know they wanted to be mean to me, make me feel like an outsider, just because I looked different. I was this dark Lilo-girl from a place they only