the bills and the supermarket flyers, a big, fat envelope from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is sticking out. Another one of those useless college solicitations. I’m not in the mood for thinking about everything I can’t have right now, but I grab it anyway, along with the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog addressed to Monica, and head upstairs.
I flop down on my bed and flip mindlessly through the catalog. Even totally hot, half-naked, perfectly tanned models in lacy lingerie can’t do the job in taking my mind off this afternoon. Not even the chick in the bra with the real diamonds.
I feel so completely impotent, and not in that can’t-get-your-jock-up kind of way. I mean, after everything that happened, I just stood there and watched Peyton leave. Short of throwing myself across the hood, I don’t know what I should have done. Peyton didn’t make a move. And what if she had? What then? Ride off into the sunset with her on the handlebars of my frickin’ bike?
I can’t sleep. All night I toss and turn, listening for her at the window. Every noise I hear outside I think maybe could be her. I consider riding over to her house to make sure she’s okay, but I worry what might happen if her mother or Pete sees me, and the position that might put her in. I finally fall asleep, but I swear I hear a girl’s voice downstairs as I drift off.
I wake up to the distinct smell of overcooked eggs and burned bacon. I’m halfway down the stairs when I notice the green suitcase with the rainbow-colored ribbons propped neatly by the door, like Mary Poppins has come back to visit. I smile and groggily stagger into the kitchen, following the smell of cremated food. Sure enough, there’s Monica, standing at the stove wearing my dad’s lucky Red Sox tee and a pair of pink fuzzy socks, and cracking more eggs into the pan.
“Good morning,” she says and grins, nibbling on a slice of semi-burned toast while she scrambles the eggs, like it’s no big deal that she’s in the kitchen making breakfast at six thirty in the morning.
“Hey,” I say. “You’re back.”
She smiles as she pours herself a cup of coffee. “I am.”
“That’s great,” I say. “I’m glad.”
“We talked last night. Like…really talked. Your dad’s trying to get his shit together, and it’s about time I got mine together too. So we’re gonna try to help each other, you know? Make a few changes. He’s quittin’ the drinking, and I’ve decided to quit dancing.” She plates some eggs, hands them to me, and adds, “Actually, I have you to thank for that.”
“Me? How so?” I ask, taking a bite of eggs. They’re crunchy. I subtly extract a piece of eggshell from my mouth and place it in my napkin.
“That day when you brought Peyton to see me? You know, to fix her hair? It felt so good to help someone, to know that what I did was making a difference in how they felt about themselves. It made me realize I want to do something that makes me feel like that every day. I don’t want my past to hold me back.”
She reaches for her mug of coffee, takes a sip, and says, “Then I bumped into your dad as he was coming out of his AA meeting downtown. That’s how we started talking about how he was making some changes too, and I thought to myself, ‘Monica, this definitely is some kind of sign.’ And you know I’m into signs.”
“Can’t ignore the signs,” I say. I bite into the bacon. It makes the eggs suddenly seem delicious by comparison.
“You really can’t.” She smiles, then asks, “So where’s Peyton?”
I shake my head and tell her about what happened yesterday.
She refills her mug, grabs the milk from the fridge, and adds a splash, stirring it with her spoon as she says, “Wow, that’s rough. It sounds as if you need to lay low for a while. It’s not like they have her chained there, so if she were really in some sort of danger, she’d run away again, right? Maybe there is more to the story. Peyton knows how to reach you. I’d let it sort itself out.”
I shovel another bite of eggs in my mouth. They’re terrible, but I appreciate that she’s here and that she made it for me. “That doesn’t feel like much of a solution.”
“This is real life, Hank,