Out of My League - Sarah Sutton Page 0,49
burst like a balloon in my chest and I felt bad—bad for lying, bad for scheming, and bad for keeping my mouth shut. But there was no other option.
“We all have choices,” Edith eventually said, not doing a thing to soothe my conscience. “Some just have bigger consequences than others.”
Chapter Fourteen
Independence Day gifted both of my parents time off of work, and they decided it would be in the spirit of the holiday to make a big family breakfast.
And it was bizarre.
Now that they’d decided to get a divorce, it was seemingly time to do parent things. Like grounding me and making family breakfast. What was next, a family vacation?
Quite honestly, when Dad came to my room to ask “bacon or sausage,” it really almost seemed like things were back to the way they’d been. To life before starting high school; to life before we grew apart.
When I got downstairs, I saw that Mom had papers sprawled out in front of her at the kitchen table, sorting through them. Dad stood at the stove, stirring what looked like scrambled eggs in the pan. He still wore his pajama bottoms, the hems coming up above his ankles
Despite their separation announcement, neither one of them had packed up their things. They even still slept in the same room, unless one of them snuck onto the couch in the middle of the night.
“Good morning,” I said.
Mom glanced up from the papers, smiling. “Morning, Sophia.”
“What are you working on?”
Dad scraped the pan of eggs onto a large plate, voice peevish. “Divorce paperwork.”
This time, I kept my mouth shut, and even mustered a somber expression. Good behavior.
“Do you really need to do that now, Amber?” Dad went on, not turning. “And at the kitchen table?”
“The lawyer needs them by the seventeenth and it’s better to get things done early.” She continued to trace the paper with her pen, reading the lines.
The ceramic plates slammed down on the breakfast bar, and Dad stepped away from them. “You should eat before it gets cold.”
Mom acted like she hadn’t even heard him, sorting through the paperwork with her ears turned off. Dad pretended like she had listened to him, moving to make a plate of his own food.
The doorbell chimed as I reached for a plate, startling Mom from her focused state. “I’ll get it,” she said, finish the line she’d been reading before standing. “It’s probably Mariana. We’re going out on her pontoon for the day. Isn’t that fun?”
It really irritated me that my mom could have plans and I couldn’t. Good behavior.
As I turned to start loading my plate with bacon, I noticed that Mom stood at the edge of the hallway, her words hanging in the air while her eyes were on Dad. With his back turned, he hadn’t seen her look. She opened her mouth to speak but disappeared off toward the front door.
I sat next to Dad, readjusting my glasses. “Do you have any plans tonight, too?”
“A few friends from the office are going down to the bay for the fireworks display. I’d invite you, but—” he shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth, “—you’re grounded.”
“About that,” I said slowly, carefully cutting into my waffle. “I was going to ask—”
“No, you can’t get off early.” He looked at me like he knew where that question was going, which he did. I guess it was pretty transparent. “I’m sorry. I’m trusting you’ll stay home the whole night.”
I deflated. “Yeah, yeah.” I was too much of a goody-two-shoes to sneak out, and he knew it.
“Sophia,” Mom called from the direction of the front door, voice oddly cheerful. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Edith again? She’d left after she curled my hair yesterday, pretending like she wasn’t hard-core judging me. I was surprised she’d given up on the cold shoulder so soon, and quite honestly, I wasn’t sure I was ready to give up mine.
But I walked into the hallway, with a clear view of the door, and I stopped mid-step. Definitely not Edith.
Walsh Hunter stood in the middle of my meager entryway, hands in the pockets of his jeans, glancing around. And I stared at him with bedhead, no makeup, and my glasses on. Though my hair was still slightly curled from last night, I hadn’t brushed it this morning, and it was a tangled rat’s nest, all knotted in the back.
My heart stopped beating for a moment.
Walsh’s eyes finally settled onto mine, and his lips broke into a bright grin. He pretended that he didn’t