Chapter Twenty Six
Riley
“Hey, look what I got!”
I’m on the couch with a textbook open on my lap, a pen and notebook beside me in case I need to take notes.
At the sound of my mom entering the living room—and apparently with something to show me—I turn around to see what it is. She’s holding up a gift card.
“We’ve got $10 worth of free custard, baby.”
“Nice,” I say, flashing her a smile. “Where’d you get that?”
Her enthusiasm drops and her shoulders slouch. “Ugh, stupid, awful PTO meeting.”
“Oh, was that tonight?” I ask sympathetically.
She nods, kicking her heels off and dropping onto the couch beside me. “Those women are vipers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Awful, awful, terrible, no-good…”
I point to her gift card. “But we get free custard. That’s something, right?”
“Free is an overstatement. Those custards cost six bucks each and we can’t leave Ray home. He hasn’t even had custard before; we have to help him fix his life.”
“And the first step is custard?”
“The second step is custard.” She smirks. “The first step was something you are far too young to know about.”
“Gross,” I tell her. “Also, how old do you think I am?”
“You’re seven and you want a pony for Christmas.”
“This might explain why you insist I’m too young to look at boys,” I say.
“Speaking of boys…”
My eyes widen in alarm. “What? We were speaking of custard.” I redirect her attention to the mom perk she brought home from the PTO meeting. “So, the gift card will actually end up costing us $8.”
She looks over at me, exaggerating her exhaustion. “Everything about the PTO is terrible.”
“I’m sorry. You should quit.”
“That’s the spirit,” she says, but quickly, so she can move on to the topic she was trying to segue to before. “You want to know what else I found out tonight?”
A lone butterfly takes flight in my stomach. “Is it custard-related?”
She shakes her head, her smile tightening into a sympathetic grimace. Her eyes, though. The eyes of a hawk.
She knows.
I accept it for a split second before she says, “Guess who decided to come home for senior year?”
I break her gaze, sighing and looking straight ahead.
“Maybe you don’t have to guess,” she murmurs.
“I was going to tell you.”
“Were you? School’s been back for over a week, hon. Seems like it should have come up by now.”
“I know you don’t like him.”
“Of course I don’t like him. He lied about my daughter sleeping with him before she could drive. What’s to like?”
She’s not wrong, and I’m mad at Hunter for new reasons she doesn’t even know about, but old instincts somehow still come into play. The protectiveness I always used to feel that made me shy away from sharing Hunter with my mom… there must still be some essence of it, because the last thing I want to do is sit here and talk about him with her.
I slide a piece of paper between the pages of my textbook and close it. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “It’s not even worth discussing. Hunter and I aren’t friends anymore. He’s back—so what? It doesn’t matter.”
Regarding me skeptically, she murmurs, “So you said.”
“Well, it doesn’t.” I hear myself being defensive, but I struggle to rein it in.
If she’s heard Hunter is back, I’m terrified she might have heard something else.
“Have you talked to him?” she asks, her tone calm despite my rising hysteria.
I know it’s not her fault, but her questions are making my skin crawl.
It’s my fault. I feel guilty because I have been keeping this from her, and there’s more I’m keeping from her. Worse stuff that I really, really don’t want to talk about.
I get off the couch and busy myself collecting my study materials so I have something to do other than look at her or noticeably avoid her gaze. “Yeah, I guess. Nothing significant, just…”
That’s not a dodge, it’s a blatant lie.
My stomach sinks.
I hate lying to my mom.
“It doesn’t matter that he’s back,” I say, looking up at her as I clutch my books against my chest.
“Yeah, I heard.” Her tone is flat. “Hunter is back and it doesn’t matter—that’s my clear take away from this conversation.”
“Good. It should be.” I drop her gaze, my heart feeling all funny.
“What are you doing?” she asks, glancing at my books clutched to my chest.
“I’ve got some homework to do,” I tell her. “I’m gonna go in my room.”
Mom sighs. “You know what my least favorite thing about Hunter is?”
This feels like a trap, but I answer anyway. “I’m assuming the ‘lied about me in middle school’ thing.”
She shakes her head, pressing her lips together in a grim line. “You’d think so, but no, it’s not that. It’s the effect he has on you. In all our years, we’ve never encountered anything that made you keep secrets from me, not until him. Remember the year you accidentally found one of your Christmas gifts in the closet? I didn’t even catch you, still you came into my room near tears because you ruined the surprise. You told on yourself. And when Hunter first happened, I thought, hey, you know, she’s growing up. Maybe this is just how it has to be now. She’s becoming a teenager, maybe she needs to keep some secrets, have some areas of her life that are only hers.”