Meg Cabot - Missing You

Chick sat at the dining room table, eating what appeared—if the empty wrappers in front of him were any indication—to be his third cheeseburger. There was no sign of the owner of the house.

“Where’s Rob?” I asked Chick, since Hannah and her mother seemed otherwise occupied.

“He couldn’t take all the estrogen,” Chick replied with his mouth full. I couldn’t help noticing that he seemed to be keeping his eye not on Hannah, but on her mother, who was an attractive blonde around his own age, though considerably slimmer. “He went out to his workshop in the barn.”

“Thanks,” I said, and started for the door…

…only to be stopped by Hannah, who cried, “Oh, there she is!” and leaped up to grab my wrist.

“This is her, Mom,” Hannah said, dragging me over to where her mother sat on the couch. “Jessica Mastriani. She’s the one who found me.”

Mrs. Snyder, Hannah’s mom, looked up at me tearfully. “I can’t thank you enough,” she gushed, “for bringing my daughter home.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” I said. I always did hate this part. “It’s very nice to meet you. I have to go now….”

“That’s not all she did, Mom,” Hannah began, and she started chattering about Randy and his misdeeds, and the part I’d played in getting his no-good butt hauled off to jail, and how she needed to go down to the station house to do her part to keep him there. Fortunately I managed to wrestle my wrist free and escape without her seeming to notice. A second later, I was out in the bright sunshine, heading for Rob’s workshop in the barn.

In the same way that his house had undergone a renovation since the last time I’d seen it, so had Rob’s barn. New wood panels lined the walls, so that in winter the place would stay snug, and in the summer, the central air Rob had obviously installed would cool it. The holes in the high-beamed ceiling, through which birds used to slip, were gone, as were the horse stalls—removed to make way for tool racks and a pneumatic lift. Partially refurbished bikes stood in neat rows, with the one Rob was currently working on—a 1975 Harley XLCH—on a table in the middle of the barn.

Rob was standing by the sink he’d installed at the far end of the building when I came in, and didn’t notice me right away. When I said, “Rob,” he turned around, started to say something, then noticed what I had in my arms.

Then he immediately clammed up. He leaned back against the metal sink basin, his arms folded across his chest. Dr. Phil would call this kind of body language hostile.

“I found it in Hannah’s room,” I said when I’d gotten close enough to him—about five feet away—that I could speak in a normal voice in the cavernous space and still be assured of being heard. “She…she told me about it before, but I didn’t believe her.”

Rob’s gaze was on the album. His expression was carefully neutral. “Why wouldn’t you believe her? Is it so weird I’d want to keep track of what you were doing? It’s not like I could ask you. You weren’t speaking to me, if you’ll recall.”

I looked down at the album, too. “Not all of this stuff is from the time when we weren’t speaking.”

Rob unfolded his arms and slid his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. Dr. Phil would call this a defensive gesture, too.

“All right,” he said at last with a shrug. “You got me. I tried to get you out of my head—from the day I found out you were so much younger than me, I tried to get you out of my head. But I couldn’t. That book’s the result. I know it’s creepy and weird.”

I finally looked up. “I don’t think it’s creepy,” I said. I was trying hard not to wonder if, now that I knew Hannah had been telling the truth about the scrapbook, the other things she’d said about Rob were true, too. How he kept going on to her about “how great and brave and smart and funny” I was. Did he really say those things? Did he still think they were true, now that he’d seen me again after so much time had passed?

I was also trying not to remember what had happened the last time we’d been in this barn alone together. Admittedly, it had just been some kissing…but Rob had always been a fantastic kisser. Not that I had so much experience to measure him by. Still, I couldn’t help remembering the way my knees had always buckled at the touch of his lips to mine.

“I don’t think it’s weird, either,” I added when he didn’t say anything. “Well. Maybe a little weird. I never thought you liked me that much.”

Because that, of course, was something else that had happened in this barn. I’d told him I loved him. And he had not acted too pleased about it.

Rob shrugged again. “What was I supposed to do?” he wanted to know. “You knew I was on probation. And you were underage. And the way your mom obviously felt about me—I couldn’t risk it. It seemed better just to stay away from you until you turned eighteen.”

“But you couldn’t wait,” I said. Not bitterly. I just said it like it was a fact. Because it was.

Except to Rob, apparently.

“What do you mean, I couldn’t wait?” he demanded, taking his hands from his pockets and stepping away from the sink. “What do you think—Jesus, Jess! I totally waited. I’mstill waiting.”

I blinked at him. “But…that girl—”

“Christ. Not that again.” Rob looked like he wanted to hit something. I didn’t blame him. I felt like hitting something myself. “I told you. Nancy’s a customer. Shealways kisses the mechanics. She was excited about—”

“—you fixing her carburetor,” I finished for him in a bored voice. Except that I wasn’t bored. I was faking the bored part. The fact was, I wanted to cry. But I wouldn’t let him see my tears. “You said that.”

“Damned right I said that. Because it was the truth. And if you’d stuck around, instead of running off, I’d have shown you—”

He broke off. He didn’t look defensive now. He looked angry. What was he so angry about?

“Shown me what?” I asked in genuine bewilderment.

“This,”Rob said. He held out his arms to indicate the renovated barn, the motorcycles waiting to be serviced. “All of this. The house, the garage…the fact that I was going to school. Jesus, Jess. Why do you think I did all this? I mean, yeah, part of it was for me. But a big part of it was to prove to your parents—your mother, at least—that I wasn’t some bum who was just after her daughter’s virginity—or worse, looking to ride on your coattails. I did it so she’d let you go out with me. So she’d realize I’m not a worthless Grit.”

Now when I blinked, it was because my eyes had filled up with tears, and I was trying to get them out of the way so I could see.

“You…” It was hard to talk, because something appeared to be clogging my throat. “You did all that…for me?”

“I was so excited when I found out you were coming back,” Rob said. “Ask anyone. I knew you had lost your powers—everyone knew that. But I never thought—hell, I thought you’d behappy about that. No more press bugging you. No more working for the government. And you were finally eighteen…I thought we were golden, at last. I had this whole thing planned. I was going to show you the shop and the house and take you to that restaurant Doug was talking about today—the one in Storey—and propose. Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous now.” He added this, I guess, because he saw how my eyes widened at the wordpropose. “But that’s how far gone I was. I was going to give you this—”

Digging into one of the pockets of his jeans, he pulled out a gold ring. I couldn’t see it too well from where I was standing, on account of the tears. But I thought I saw a glint of diamond.