Page 15 of Never Forever
“Carrie. I swear I don’t know what’s going on. What’s wrong?”
She was panting. Her chest heaving. Tears in her eyes.
With a will of their own, my arms lifted and I forgot about my smell and the boner that could happen at any time, and I put my hands on her shoulders. So soft and surprisingly strong. I gave her lots of time to stop me. To jerk back and laugh in my face, but she never did. And then I was hugging her. And she was sighing against my neck and leaning into me like I’d given her just what she needed.
A second to rest. Someone to keep her on her feet.
“My dad left,” she whispered. “Like, left, left. He’s not coming back.”
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
She pushed herself away from me and tried to keep her chin high, but I could see her bottom lip tremble. I wanted to run my thumb over it. I wanted to pull her back against me.
“When?” I asked.
“A few weeks ago,” she whispered. “I mean, he’s been like a non-presence for years. But he made it official and moved his shit out. But you don’t want to hear about my drama…”
I sat down on the edge of the bandshell, my legs hanging off the end. For her and her drama, I had all the time in the world.
“Where did your dad go?” I asked her. She eyed me like she wasn’t sure she could trust me and I just eyed her right back. I wasn’t going anywhere. Carrie was popular, sure, but I watched her enough to know she didn’t have a lot of friends. And this girl in the green dress with tears in her eyes – she needed a friend.
Finally, she sat down next to me. Not close enough to touch, but probably close enough to smell me. Although she didn’t seem to mind.
“Boston,” she said, looking down at the hands in her lap. “He has some woman there he says he’s in love with. He wants to be with her. He said we don’t appreciate him like we should.”
“Carrie,” I breathed. “I’m sorry.”
She waved her hand away like it didn’t matter. But it did. I knew from experience. “We should have expected it, right? The curse and everything?”
“Curses aren’t real.”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “My great great grandfather killed a rival blueberry farmer and his daughter said every generation of Piedmonts would be women and we’d be doomed to marry disappointing men. So far we’re all women and my dad and granddad have been pretty disappointing.”
“Your dad didn’t leave because of something you did,” I said.
“I don’t know. I’m not even sad. He was right. About us not appreciating him. There were times… times I didn’t even like him that much. Mostly, I’m just mad because Mom and Annie are so sad. It’s like the two of them are having a crying contest.”
“But not you and Gran?”
“No. Me and Gran get it.”
“Get what?”
She looked out at the benches facing the bandshell and the kid’s playground on the other side. “We’re better off without him. He could be so mean. To all of us. You know how he was.” She looked at me and I had to nod. Because I did know how he was. He was a dick. None of the Piedmont’s deserved the way he treated them. “Everything his way all the time and don’t make a mistake. Ever. Nothing we did,nothing, was ever good enough for him.”
As much as she wanted to believe she wasn’t sad, I knew the truth. Her dad had picked someone else over his whole family. Over her.
It hurt. It would always hurt.
I knew because I had the same mom-shaped bruise.
“So you came here to scream,” I said. That made sense. I’d thought she was singing, but no, clearly she was screaming away her feelings.
“No,” she looked at me like I was an idiot. “I was singing.”
Oh my God.“Why?”
“My mom is going through a divorce induced crisis and signed me up for some stupid audition in Portland and now I have tosing. I can’t sing!”