“You wanted nothing to do with us that night, Riley.” I pointed my butter knife in her direction.
My mom had one of her closest friends Liz stay over for the night. She lived several hours away and only visited a few times each year. My mom invited several of her friends over for drinks. My dad kept the twins busy in the basement, leaving my mom some space. He may have been hardheaded, but he loved my mom. Riley stayed in her room all night; she went through a short phase of not wanting to be near anyone. I on the other hand loved hanging out with my mom’s friends. I helped with the setup. I listened in on all their conversations and gossip. Then I helped clean and put everything away at the end of the night.
All my mom’s friends cleared out by midnight, save Liz. Her and my mom weren’t quite ready to retire. The two of them wanted to continue the night and asked if I wanted to practice my nighttime driving to get some extra hours into my driving log. I was more than happy to and drove them in the middle of the night. They picked Greektown since most of the restaurants and bars closed really late thanks to the casino. We ended up at this same restaurant. I ordered a spanakotiropita and a Pepsi, and my mom and Liz ordered a flaming saganaki with their cocktails. We’d laughed and talked so much, the waitstaff started giving us dirty looks when the restaurant finally emptied for the night.
“What a fun night.” She shook her head.
“It was,” I said, handing Niall a napkin after noticing breadcrumbs accumulating on his lap next to me.
I felt somewhat at ease sitting there with her talking about times past. Like the stresses of the last year and a half of our lives were finally starting to fade. The only thing that would have made this moment better was ifhehad texted me.
WEDNESDAY 18 JUNE 2008
21
DANA
Iwas sitting on the back porch watching the twins kick around the soccer ball this morning, thinking about when Thad would finally decide to talk to me.
He hadn’t reached out to me since our conversation in the bleachers on Sunday. Nor did I hear from him Monday night after dinner downtown with my family. I spent most of that night and the following day asking myself if I should reach out to him, then decided not to for fear that it would drive him further into his own chagrin. A thought appeared in my head late in the day on Tuesday while I was lying in Riley’s hammock looking up at the night sky.
“What if he’s thinking the same? What if he wants to talk to me, but doesn’t know what to say?” I asked myself, looking for the moon through the faint sliver of clouds.
I put together a message to text him but found it hard to press send without Rhonda’s voice overpowering my thoughts. I regretted erasing the message and listening to Rhonda’s advice. I wanted to talk to him. I needed to talk to him. But he needed more time to sort things out. It couldn’t have been easy with both of his parents being as closed minded as they were. I wondered though, did his mom really feel that way? Or was she falling in line with what his dad was saying? That was a valid question. From what I’ve heard, moms usually tend to be more accepting with their sons. Usually, but I guess not always.
As I watched my twin brothers argue whether or not Callum actually kicked the ball into the goal at the other end of the yard, around the corner near the front gate Frankie started barking at a dog and its owner passing by. And as I got up to go grab him, my phone vibrated. I inhaled, hoping it was finally a message from Thad. I reached down and grabbed my phone, then let out a disappointed, “Oh.”
Hey, Dana texted.
Should I reply?I wondered. My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a minute before typing,Hi Dana.
Are you at work today?
“She wants to hang out. Maybe this is a good step. We’ll fix this wedge between us,” I said under my breath.
No. Sitting in the backyard with the twins.
Maybe want to come over?she texted.
Come here instead?I asked, hoping she’d say yes.
I was not about to go to her house and be ambushed. I also didn’t want to pretend like everything was fine in front of her mom. She was a considerate person, and I didn’t want her in this mess. She would only have burdened herself with trying to bring us back together like that time in eighth grade when Dana was more interested in me than I was in her and wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I shut that down as quickly as possible, using the excuse that she was like a sister to avoid telling her I wasn’t interested in girls. Her mom probably understood the situation better than she had, using her charm to get us back to being friends.
Never mind. Forget it, the message said. I imagined her dropping her phone on her bed and rolling her eyes as she wrote this last message, her hair probably a new color again.
Wait. Why don’t we go for ice cream?Hopefully this was a better compromise.
K. Be there in an hour.
Alrighty, I replied, worrying about theKresponse.
The ice cream shop was the perfect place. It was public, but we could also sit on the bench in the back of the patio where no one else would hear us.
Callum and Niall asked if they could come with me. I told them that it was only Wednesday, and that they’d already gone twice this week. I didn’t want them there distracting Dana and me like the last time. They would have been a good buffer between us, but we needed an actual discussion if we were going to clear the air. And this time, I would tell her everything about Thad and me. I was cautious the last time we spoke, for Thad’s sake. But she wasn’t a blabbermouth. And I always trusted her before this mess happened.
Dana wasn’t there when I arrived, so I decided to order myself something and sit on the bench before anyone else tried to claim it. My usual order would have been a small chocolate and vanilla twist dipped in hard chocolate, but I decided to get a butterscotch milkshake, extra thick. It used to be my mom’s favorite. When she would order it, she’d let me have a sip only if she could have the first bite of my cone. Which was fair. I only usually liked a sip of the milkshake, and she only liked the hard chocolate tip that folded over the swirl. A milkshake seemed like the better choice today since Dana and I would probably be there for a little while. And licking a melting ice cream cone while talking to someone seemed rude.
I waited another ten minutes past the time we had agreed on, nerves forcing me to slurp the milkshake, which gave me a brain freeze. I tried pushing my tongue against the roof of my mouth to alleviate the pain. Where was Dana?