Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,70

see my mom without turning in my dad.” He shrugged and then laughed, high-pitched and a little hysterical. “And so I volunteered and the next day there were two police officers at our house. My dad wasn’t home, but I was.” He shrugged. “And that was it. Gone again.”

I didn’t say anything. The words I needed to say probably hadn’t been invented. A car drove past us, its lights flashing across our faces and making us both duck away from the brightness. When it passed, we came back together.

“Remember last week, when we were talking?” I said. “You said, what kind of kid doesn’t call their mom? But you did, Ollie. You did what you could when you could. And yeah, it’s not easy now but it won’t always be this difficult. It’ll get better.”

Oliver looked down at me. “Is that what everyone said when I first went missing? That it wouldn’t always be this difficult?”

I nodded. “Something like that, yeah.”

“And did you believe them?”

I smiled, my eyes filling with tears. “Nope. Because it never did get better. Not until you came back.”

Oliver kissed the top of my head and I curled up against his arm, wrapping my hand around his. The street was quiet around us, most of suburbia tucked away for the night.

“I’m sorry I was a jerk to your parents,” Oliver finally said after a while. “They’re always really nice to me.”

“You weren’t a jerk,” I said. “I was just nervous that you were going to out me for applying to UCSD. Whatever, it’s fine, I don’t care. But we should probably go back. Our parents might get worried.”

“Yeah, I know.” He squeezed my hands through the hoodie. “Thanks for coming after me.”

“Yeah, well, I needed some cardio, anyway,” I said, then wished I hadn’t made a joke.

He just wrinkled his nose at me, though, then stood up and pulled me to my feet. “Onward,” I said.

“Just so you know,” he said, “I’m probably going to be grounded again. So don’t expect a text or anything for a while.”

“Got it,” I said, but I didn’t think Maureen would ground him, not this time.

I thought that she would probably just be happy to see him come home.

When we got back to the house, Oliver kissed me quickly under the shadow of a bougainvillea tree, its pink petals brushing against the tops of our heads as we met in the middle. “You going up to your room?” he asked, and I could feel the words form on his lips.

“Soon,” I said. I could see my parents moving in our kitchen, their bodies casting long shadows out onto the backyard grass. Oliver followed my gaze, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait for you to turn off the lamp, then.”

“You don’t have to wait for me,” I said. “You’re probably exhausted. You should go to bed.”

“Oh my God, Emmy, one mom is enough right now.” But he was smiling as he said it, and I smiled back and then stood on my tiptoes to kiss him again. “Good night,” he whispered. “See you tomorrow.”

“’Kay,” I said, and we split up into our separate yards, our hands staying together until the last possible second, until just our fingertips touched. He swatted playfully at them as we parted, a brief smile crossing his face as if to let me know that he was all right, that everything had just been a joke, a gag to pass the time until something actually interesting happened.

I smiled, too, but I didn’t believe one bit of it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

When I finally managed to open the sliding-glass door and step into our living room, neither of my parents were in the room.

In fact, the only person sitting on the couch was Maureen.

She had her hand wrapped loosely around the stem of her almost empty wineglass, swirling it around in slow motion so that the wine climbed the sides of the glass and then oozed back down. The rivulets winding their way down to the bottom made it look as though the glass was crying. When Maureen heard me come in, she stopped.

“Emmy,” she said, but she didn’t sit up or even look at me. “I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

Her mascara was smudged, and so was her lipstick, which I later realized was just the red wine staining her mouth. “It’s okay,” I said automatically.

“No, it’s really not,” she sighed. “But you’re a polite girl, I know. You’ve always been very polite.”

“Thank you.” I glanced around for my