I whirled around to face him. “It’s not funny!” I shrieked. Although, of course, ordinarily I probably would have found it hilarious. All that wondering, all that worrying, for years, and over what? A midnight swim.
I swung back around to face Mom. But before I could get a word out, she was saying, “If he really loved you, Jessica, he’d have waited for you. The fact that he did run away, just because of my little speech…well, that shows you something about him, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said tensely. “It shows me that he loved me enough to respect my parents’ wishes. And do you have any idea what he did while he was waiting for me to turn eighteen, Ma?”
“I’ve told you before,” she said irritably. “Don’t call me Ma.”
“He bought his own business,” I went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And his own house. He’s probably earningmore than a hundred thousand a year, fixing up motorcycles for rich Baby Boomers,and he’s going to college at the same time. What do you think aboutthat , Ma?”
“I think,” Mom said, her mouth flattening to a straight line, “that you’re forgetting one very important thing.”
“What?”
“That you saw him kissing another girl. You’ve never seen Skip kissing another girl, have you?”
I stepped around her and headed to my bike.
“Well?” Mom wanted to know. “Have you? No. You haven’t, have you?”
“Only because no other girl wouldlet Skip kiss her,” Douglas pointed out, causing Tasha to start laughing so hard, she had to slap a hand over her mouth to stifle it.
I pulled my bike from the garage, kicking the doors closed behind me with one booted foot.
“Where are you going?” Mom demanded. “Wait, don’t tell me. You’re going to seehim , aren’t you?”
“No,” I said, lowering my helmet over my head. “I’m going to get away fromyou .”
And then I gunned my engine a few more times than was strictly necessary, just to drown out whatever Mom said next, and drove away.
Nineteen
“Ruth?”
The voice on the other end of the phone sounded groggy. “Jess? Is that you? God, what time is it?”
I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. “Oops,” I said. “It’s one in the morning. Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. Did I wake you up?”
“Yeah, you woke me up.” Now Ruth sounded less groggy and more alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. I held the cell phone closer to my ear, blinking up at the ceiling in my night-darkened bedroom. After an evening of driving aimlessly around the countryside—then returning home to find Mom still sulking in her room, and Dad working late at the restaurant—I’d amused myself by watching home-improvement shows.
Only all these did was make me think of Rob, who’d done a much better job improving his house than any of the people I saw on TV.
“I mean, nothing’s really wrong,” I said to Ruth. “I just…I really need to talk to you. I think…I think I did something really stupid.”
“What did you do?” Ruth asked, her voice filled with dread.
“I…I think Rob proposed, and I just sort of…walked out.”
“You think Rob proposed?” I could tell Ruth was sitting up, since her voice suddenly got much clearer. “What do you mean, youthink he proposed? Did he give you a ring?”
I gazed at Rob’s grandmother’s ring, still around the third finger on my left hand. It was dark in my room, but I could still make out the diamond in the middle of the band. There were smaller diamonds set all around it, in some curlicue gold stuff. I bet Karen Sue Hankey would know what that curlicue gold stuff was called.
“Well,” I said. “Yes. But—”
“Holy crap,” Ruth said. “Heproposed !”
Which is when a male voice, sounding like it was coming from somewhere very close to Ruth, said in the background, “Hewhat ?”
The weird thing was, I could have sworn the voice was Mikey’s.
“Ruth?” I asked in the silence that followed. “Was that—”
“That was Skip,” Ruth said quickly. “He came in here to see who I was talking to.”
“Really,” I said. “Because it sounded like he was in bed with you. And it sounded more like—”
“I can’t believe Rob proposed!” Ruth interrupted. “That is amazing, Jess! I mean, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing. He didn’treally propose. He told me he wasgoing to propose when I got back from Afghanistan. But then I—well, you know.”
“Saw him with Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”
“Right. And he seemed to think it would be better if he just let me go through whatever it was he seemed to think I was going through, at the time.”
“Which,” Ruth said, “in retrospect, wasn’t such a bad thing, Jess. I mean, you have to admit, you were a mess back then.”
This was so not what I called her to hear.
“What happened to‘he’s the guy who let you walk away when you needed him most’ ?” I asked indignantly. “Suddenly you’re on his side?”
“Of course not,” Ruth said. “But look how things turned out. You’re a lot better now. And he still gave you the ring. Which means he must still want to. Marry you, I mean.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “He didn’t so much as give me the ring as throw it at me. And I just sort of hung on to it. The thing is, Ruth—” And suddenly I found myself pouring out the whole story—Hannah, and Randy, and the videotapes, and the scrapbook, and the things Rob had told me that afternoon. All of it.
And when I’d finished, Ruth said, “Well, it’s obvious he’s still in love with you. The question is, are you still in love with him? I mean, would you take him back? In spite of Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”
I had to think about that.
“It’s not like she’s in the picture anymore,” I said slowly. “I mean, that I can see. And, I mean, we were broken up then…sort of. The thing is, I don’t even know if he’d take me back. You know, if I offered.”
“He gave you a ring.”
“He THREW it at me.”
“Well, why don’t you ask him?”
“What? Just go up to him and be all,‘Hey, do you still want to marry me?’ ”
“Basically, yeah. Why not?”
I stared at the ceiling. “Because what if he says no? What if he thinks I’m still”—I swallowed—“broken?”
“Then you give him the ring back, say sayonara, and hop on the first flight back here, and I’ll find you a totally hot new guy who fully appreciates what an amazing person you are.”
“Tell her if she wants us to, we’ll still beat him up for her,” whispered the male voice very close to Ruth, apparently thinking I wouldn’t overhear.
Only I did.
And this time, I knew it wasn’t Skip.
“Ruth,” I said. “Why is my brother Mike in BED WITH YOU?”
“Crap,” Ruth said. Then, apparently to Mike, she said, “I told you she could hear you.”
“Hi, Jess,” Mikey called in the background.
“Oh my God.” I was sitting up, convinced I was going to hyperventilate. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen it coming. It was just so…so…
Gross.
“I can’t believe I only go away for two days,” I said disgustedly, “and you two have already hopped into bed together.”
“Jess,” Ruth said, sounding worried. “It’s not like that, really. I—I—”
“Oh my God,” I said. “If you say you love my brother, I’ll barf. I swear it.”
“Well, it’s true,” Ruth said. “I think I always have—”
While this was true, I still didn’t want to have to hear about it.
“Put Mike on the phone,” I said to her.
“But, Jess—”
“Just do it.”
A second later, Mike’s deep voice was saying, “Jess. It’s not what you think. I really—”
“If you break her heart,” I said to him, “I will break your face. Do you understand?”