I figured they found condoms in your backpack or something.”
“Ha. No. Actually, they would have probably found that to be very responsible of me.”
“I see.”
“We were just white trash. But with a lot of drugs. I don’t have any happy memories of my childhood. Well now, that’s not true. There was this one Christmas when my mom was trying not to use. And my dad had his use kind of under control. I mean, he was able to shoot up and then kind of be around. And I don’t know. We got these little TV dinners with slices of turkey and gravy and we had a tree made of tinsel. And it was nice.” She could still see the living room. Fake wood panels and that shiny little tree. They’d eaten their meal on TV trays on an old green couch that had a hole in the arm, with foam protruding through the end.
She had presents under the tree that year. It had made her very happy. Her parents had been pretty happy.
They had been sometimes. That was the thing. Because for years it was a back and forth between them and the drugs. Child services and all of that. They had tried. Intermittently they had tried. But once she had been a teenager they just stopped. Like they’d thrown up the white flag of surrender and just jumped right in headfirst to addiction rather than making it a dance where they put their feet in and then ran back to the shore.
“My dad told me I was going to end up just like them.”
“Jordan...”
“Always kind of thought maybe I would. It terrifies me. That thought. And I thought... I don’t know. Dylan’s family was so normal. It was so wonderful to be a part of that. I remember the first Thanksgiving that I spent with them, right after my parents kicked me out. And they had...this huge turkey. And mashed potatoes and gravy, and nobody got in a fight. And nobody fell and cut themselves on a glass or screamed at me or locked themselves in the bathroom. And I didn’t know that people like that really existed. I mean, logically I knew they had to. But I’d only ever seen them on TV.”
“You feel like they saved you.”
She nodded. “They did. I mean, that’s the thing. Because what would’ve become of me?”
“I wish I would’ve known you then,” he said.
“Yeah. Well. You would have been too old for me then,” she said.
And then she felt immediately silly, because he wasn’t offering her anything but friendship. And she hadn’t really meant it the way that it had come out. It was just...
“You know what I mean. Because sixteen-year-old girl, twenty-six-year-old man, that doesn’t really work. But this works.”
“Right,” he said.
But he was appraising her a little bit too closely. She scampered back to flip the patties, and then just went ahead and hugged the stove top so that she could keep her distance between herself and him. And the crackle of heat in her stomach.
Because she wasn’t in a relationship. Not anymore. And that... That felt just a little bit too revolutionary in the moment.
But Laz was still her friend, and he was her only lifeline. She’d gone from having Dylan’s family to having Laz, and she needed to be careful.
“You wanted to know,” he said. “Why I didn’t ask you to not marry Dylan.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling jarred by the subject change. “Yes.”
“Well, it took me a little bit to realize the answer,” he said.
“Let me guess, it’s not because you thought we made such a great couple?”
“No,” he said. “It’s because it would have been selfish.”
“What?” Her heart slammed into her chest.
“I thought that it would have been selfish of me to ask you to not marry him. Because I’m not disinterested, Jordan. No matter how much I might want to be. And then I went over there and I saw that flowered suitcase that you had...”
“His mother got that for me for Christmas.”
“You said that you were afraid that if you weren’t with him you might become like your family. I get that, but you spent the past... It’s been a hell of a long time in a family that never even really knew you. I knew you didn’t pick that suitcase. I knew it. And you know, I didn’t see any point in saying anything, all things considered. I didn’t see the point in disrupting anything further than it already has been, but you wanted