TWENTY-FOUR
Ozzie
Mom and Dadtake the news precisely as I expect them to.
“Ozzie. How could you do this to her?”
Dad glowers at me from behind Mom’s kitchen island chair. Mom hasn’t looked this disappointed in me since that time I put Bryan’s head through a wall and tried to cover it up with Sawyer’s One Direction poster. That time? Mom and Dad were more upset about covering it up than they were about the fact that Bryan could have suffered a concussion.
And now, they’re more upset with me for coercing Mila into acting like we were engaged for my own benefit than they are about her entire tale of revenge, deception, murder, and secret identity.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
Dad nods in Mila’s direction. “Direct your apology to your girl, not to us.”
I turn to Mila. “I should never have done that to you. I should never have used your near-expulsion to get you to agree to pose as my fake fiancée. I should have told you initially that I wanted to date you.”
A smirk pulls at the corner of Mila’s mouth. “You did ask to date me. But I said no because my life is too complicated.”
Now that I’m looking at everything from the outside, I realize how this looks. This looks like creepy-ass behavior. “I’m such an asshole for holding this over your head to get you to come with me,” I say.
“Ozzie. If you recall, I was the one who said I owed you one. I said I’d find a way to repay you but couldn’t be in a relationship. I didn’t have to accept your terms,” Mila says.
“So why did you?”
I can feel Mom, Dad, and all the siblings’ eyes on Mila and me, and their stares going from me to her and back to me, like watching a tennis match.
“Because I thought that after what happened in the alleyway when I was caught with the gun…I thought the best thing would be to lay low. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to get off campus.
It was shortsighted of me. I was long-sighted enough to know I didn’t want you to get mixed up with me. But it was stupid of me to think I could hide forever.”
Emmeline stands then and walks over to face me. There is fire in her eyes. For a moment, I think she’s going to let me have it. Let me know how I got her hopes up for a new daughter-in-law and then dashed them again. Instead, she clasps my hands in hers and nods. Then she lets go of my hands and goes to Mila, doing the same thing, grasping her hands in hers. “You can stay here as long as you want. We will take care of you. Whether or not you’re engaged to my son, you’re as good as my daughter as far as I’m concerned. Any friend who walks over that threshold is under my protection. And I mean that. Right, Carl?”
“We’ve got your back. Always, kiddo.”
Mila drops her head, and I can’t tell if that’s out of shame or if she’s embarrassed that she’s going to cry.
Emmeline shakes both of Mila’s hands and exhales a cleansing breath. “How does it feel now to have all the wrongs righted? All the lies untangled and stand in your truth?”
I inwardly cringe. My mom has always been like this. A bit New Age and a bit Oprah.
But Mila’s into it. “Good. Scared. But good.”
Mom nods vigorously and closes her eyes. “Hmm. Yep. I feel it. It’s like a whole new aura coming off you.”
I have to put a stop to this woo-woo. I wrap a protective arm around Mila’s shoulder. “Do you want me to drive you home to Beta Beta Psi?”
She looks up at me and bites her lip. “I think that might be for the best.”
My heart breaks. I’ll do what she wants, but my heart breaks wide open inside my chest so abruptly I think I can hear it.
We climb the stairs to the attic, where I watch her pack her things.
Mila tosses her things haphazardly into her suitcase as I watch. The more items she puts into it, the more I feel this ache in my chest.
“Why are you looking at me like that? You’re leaving after the football game anyway,” she says, her makeup bag landing on top of a pile of undies with a heavy thunk.
“Because now that I know the truth, I don’t want to leave you alone at Beta Beta Psi. You could stay here for the rest of fall break. Or indefinitely.” My inability to keep my emotions out of my quavering voice is regrettable. But since we’re both laying everything on the table, I might as well not hide anything anymore.
“Under the circumstances, I think it would be awkward for me to stay now. Don’t you think? Anyway, it’s not that dramatic. It’s one person leaving the party early. It’s Sunday. I have reading to do, and I want to start outlining my midterm…or figure out what a midterm is in the first place.”
Mila’s muttering now about school, and I’m starting to panic. “Why do I get the feeling that I won’t see you again after I see you home? That you’ll be gone by tomorrow?”
She hesitates, then folds Melinda’s cardigan and sets it on the bed. It was the tiniest of pauses, but I saw it. A whole conversation took place in her head in that pause. An entire debate with herself after the initial shock of me calling her out. She doesn’t respond to what I’ve said but presses her knee on the suitcase as she zips it closed noisily.
“You’re going to disappear as soon as I drop you off at Beta Beta Psi. Aren’t you?”
She looks up at me and rests a hand on her hip. “If I disappear for a while, I’m studying. I have a lot of work to do. Now please take me home.”