Jessica Martinez - The Vow

“Of course not.”

“And I’m not trying to be her.”

“Okay,” she says. We stand in awkward silence.

“I should get back in there,” I say finally. “Reed’s all alone.”

Flora gives me a half grin. “Ha.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Do I look blind to you?”

I sigh and stare into the oak trees behind her. “There’s nothing going on. He’s nice and all, but I don’t really know him that well.” I’m trying to sound casual, but my voice is too high.

“Nice and all,” she grunts, and raises an eyebrow. “I love you, sugar, but you might be an idiot if you think the way he’s looking at you is nice and all.”

I step back.

“Now be good,” she says and gets into her car.

I walk back across the parking lot, jingling my bracelets and thinking about being good—whether she’s talking about Lena or Reed or scooping custard. I’m always good. I have to be. It’s the thing I have going for me.

Reed is serving a middle-aged man and his son when I come in. I watch him for a moment, hoping he won’t turn around and see me. I replay the moment from earlier, and my arm burns where he held it.

The man pays, and before I can pretend to be doing something, Reed turns around.

“You’re back. Thought maybe you’d decided to go play the slots with Flora.”

“No, I’m not lucky.”

“Or twenty-one,” he says.

“Right,” I say. “It stopped raining.”

He gives me a funny glance. “A while ago, I think.”

“Oh. I guess I just didn’t notice.”

He walks over to the broken Relic, picks up the screwdriver Soup left on the counter, and starts fiddling with it. “You live in your own world, don’t you?” he says.

“What do you mean?” He says it like it’s not an insult, but I’ve heard too many versions of the same comment to take it any other way. Spacey, dazed, out of it—this is how people see me. I should be used to it.

“I mean you seem like you’re thinking hard about things that aren’t in this room.”

I don’t know what to say. It is, by far, the nicest interpretation of what Mo calls Annie’s Planet. “I guess so. Drives my mom crazy.”

“You said your mom teaches literature, right? That must make you a bookworm.”

That makes me a disappointment. “She used to teach,” I say. “But I’m more into painting than reading.”

“I’m guessing not the type of painting I’m into these days.” He holds up his arms and I see the pale-yellow flecks of paint. They’re on his jeans too.

“I’ve never painted the outside of a house,” I say. “But I’m painting a mural right now.”

He stops tinkering with the Relic and turns to me. “Really? Where?”

I’m suddenly shy, wishing I hadn’t started. It sounds so juvenile—painting pretty pictures on my walls. “My room.”

“What of ?”

“Um. The ocean.”

He puts the screwdriver down and waits for more.

“I want it to feel like you’re underwater when I’m done.” I say. “I’ve only just finished the water. I’m doing coral now.”

“Hmm.”

I can’t tell what that means, what he’s thinking. “Mo thinks it’ll give me nightmares about drowning.”

“Mo is the friend? The one who’s moving?”

I nod.

Reed pushes his glasses up and looks over to the table in the corner where the man and his son are finishing their sundaes. “Or maybe it’ll give you good dreams. Maybe you’ll be able to breathe underwater.”

I try to imagine it, but can’t quite make myself take a breath. “Maybe.”

The man and his son leave, and Reed and I start the cleanup process together in silence, except for the music. It’s an ABBA CD, one of seven CDs we have to rotate through. I’m so sick of this one already, I’m considering accidentally dropping it into the blender.

The rattle of my truck pushes through the music, followed by the three long blasts of the horn.

“Is that your dad?” Reed asks.

I shake my head, embarrassed. “Mo. Sorry. Sometimes he’s kind of like a five-year-old. I’ll go tell him to wait.”

“No, we’re done. I can do the cash and lock up.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.”

The horn blares again.

I give an apologetic shrug and untie my apron. “He knows my parents are strict about what time I get home.” I don’t add that he’d be doing the same thing if it was noon.

Reed eyes the clock. “Strict? Your application said you’re eighteen.”

“It’s complicated,” I stammer.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to criticize. I just—”

“No, it’s okay. I know it’s early.” I don’t attempt to explain that even though I can carry a gun and buy cigarettes and get married and die for my country, if I’m not home by 10:20, all hell will break loose.

“Are you on tomorrow?” he asks.

I nod, remembering the wave like cool water that flowed through me when he touched my arm. I can feel it now.

“Good,” he says.

“Why did you read my job application?”

He smirks. “Perk of being the boss’s brother-in-law. I was just making sure you looked good on paper too.”

I duck out before he can see that I’m smiling.

I can’t stop smiling.

I make it halfway down the steps before I see Mo. He’s staring at the Mr. Twister sign like he wants to rip its head off and set it on fire. His face is gray and crooked and hard. He looks like his dad.

Guilt rolls through me, flushing the smile and the warmth in my chest away. Head down, I make my way to the truck.

I forget that he deserves a charley horse for honking like a psycho and slide into the passenger seat. I can’t kick him out of the driver’s seat tonight either. He loves driving.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

“How was your day?”

He grunts.

Nothing else needs to be said, not with the anger rising off him like fumes. We just sit in silence, hurtling down the road I will never walk because I am not crazy.

It feels wrong, this silent mutual misery, but fighting with him would be worse. Besides, how many more times will we get to sit beside each other like this? The thought connects like a kick in the gut, and it takes all my willpower not to crumple beside him. Two weeks—no, less than two weeks now—and he’ll be gone. Have they bought plane tickets? Has Dr. Hussein come to his senses and started looking for a job here? What really happens if they just don’t leave?

I don’t ask a thing. It nearly kills me, but I let Mo be broken and silent because I know he wants it that way. It’s all I can do to let him have it.

Mo

It’s all I can do not to let Annie have it, and it’s not even her fault. No, it is her fault. Her smile when she came out that door is a slap in the face. Last night she was sobbing because life without me was going to be unadulterated misery, but today she’s got a grin to rival the Mr. Twister Hitler mascot. That’s not supposed to sting?

No, that smile doesn’t sting. A bee stings. A slap stings. This burns. It’s betrayal.

I don’t know what I expected. If the roles were reversed, I probably wouldn’t be any better at sharing the grief. Acknowledging it doesn’t make me any less pissed at her, but I get that sympathy can only take you so far. She can feel sorry for me, but at the end of the day I’m the one who’s irreversibly screwed. Not her. She’ll recover. She’ll make new friends, or she’ll hook up with whoever it is in there who’s making her smile, and she’ll go on to art school, and she might even get the guts to walk away from her parents’ misery and step out from her sister’s shadow. She’ll be happy, like she deserves to be.