I pulled up to the high school pickup line and put the car in park, then grabbed my phone to look at the picture of Emma. Again.
We’d talked for three hours last night. She stayed on the phone with me for my whole walk, then another two hours after I’d gotten back to my apartment. She was cool. She was really cool. I liked her. This curse- breaking thing was turning out to be way more interesting than I had anticipated.
A bell rang and kids started pouring out. The last day of summer school. When I saw my brother, Alex, walking with a group of his friends toward the buses, I rolled down the passenger side window and leaned across the seat. “Hey! Need a ride?”
He looked over and his whole face lit up. He said an excited goodbye to his friends and jogged toward me, backpack bouncing. I got out just as he made it to the car, and I tossed him the keys. He caught them against his stomach and stared at me with wide eyes. “Seriously?”
“Mom says you need behind-the-wheel hours. You’re driving.” His face ripped into a grin. “Yesssss!” He fist pumped.
We drove for thirty minutes, then stopped at a drive-thru, got food, and headed back to Mom’s. He clipped a curb and almost missed a stop sign on the way home, but we survived.
“Hey, we’re here,” I announced, shutting the front door behind me. “I got McDonald’s.”
“In the kitchen!” Mom called.
I came in and Mom was there loading the dishwasher. Leigh, Mom’s best friend and Brad’s mother, sat at the kitchen table.
“Hey, Leigh.” I set the food down. “I didn’t know you were here or I would have gotten you something.”
She waved me off from her chair at the table, bracelets clinking on her wrist. “I’ve got a Bumble date in a half an hour. Let him buy me food.”
I pulled my face back. “A date? What happened to George?” “He’s gone, Justin. May God rest his soul.”
I blinked at her. “Your boyfriend died?” “He’s dead to me.”
Mom laughed and I shook my head at my honorary aunt.
Leigh was a character. Forty-eight like Mom, but her polar opposite in every way. She’d been married four times and had been engaged twice as many times as that. Leigh’s single periods were always a lot of fun for the family. Highly entertaining.
I could hear Chelsea running down the stairs. I pulled out her food right as my little sister tore into the room.
“Jussin!” She hugged my legs for a split second, then launched off me and climbed into a chair. “Yay!” she squealed, seeing the Happy Meal.
I started setting her up, opening her box of nuggets and peeling the top off the sweet-and-sour sauce.
Mom looked up from loading the dishwasher right as I was putting a straw into Chelsea’s apple juice. She made a face. “Justin, why did you get drinks? We have juice here, you didn’t need to waste the money.”
“If I don’t get her the Happy Meal, she won’t get the toy.” My tone came off drier than I intended. Mom ignored it.
“I got you a chicken sandwich,” I said to Mom. “Where’s Sarah?” I asked, looking around.
Mom dried her hands on a kitchen towel and sat down at the table next to Leigh. “She’s in her room. You’re not eating?” she asked, noticing I didn’t have anything in front of me.
“No, I gotta go soon,” I said. “I need to walk Brad.”
Leigh rolled her eyes. “Still on that, huh? Christine, tell your son to rename his dog, please.”
“He’s a grown man,” Mom said, tiredly. “I can’t tell him to do anything.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking long and hard about it and you’re right, Leigh, I’m being unreasonable,” I said, setting out Chelsea’s fries. “If Brad
agrees to pay the seven thousand dollars he intended to stiff me, I’ll rename the dog.”
Leigh made an exasperated noise. “Seven thousand—you got a new apartment, Justin. Your rent is lower than before, how is it that he owes you seven thousand dollars?”
“It’s for pain and suffering now.” Leigh cackled, despite herself.
“So how did he do?” Leigh asked, nodding at Alex. She was still tittering.
“He did great,” I said.
Alex beamed, shoving fries in his mouth.
“Thanks for taking him,” Mom said, rubbing her wrist. Leigh eyed her. “How’s work?” she asked.
Mom gave a one-shoulder shrug. “It’s okay. I did four houses yesterday. The Klein house has three sets of bunk beds. It’s hard to make them. Wears me out. But I’m taking as many jobs as I can before I go.”
Before I go.
My jaw ticced and I had to look away from her. Mom cleaned houses now.
There was nothing wrong with being a housekeeper. What made me upset was why she was a housekeeper.
She had a bachelor’s degree in accounting. She’d been a CFO. But her degree and the last twelve years at her old company were worthless now. She wouldn’t get jobs like that again. The repercussions for what she’d done had already begun, and she hadn’t even left yet.
My mother was going to prison.
My brain just couldn’t wrap around it, it didn’t feel real. But it was real. It was coming. And my whole life was about to be turned upside down so that everyone else’s life could stay the same. In a few weeks, I was taking custody of my siblings. I had to move back in here. Give up my apartment
—not that it was much to give up, but still.
If I didn’t, Chelsea, Alex, and Sarah would have to go with Leigh. They’d have to change schools, leave the neighborhood they’d grown up in. It was bad enough they lost their dad, now they were losing their mom too. I couldn’t let the rest of their world disintegrate. And I couldn’t even contemplate what this meant for me and my life because thinking about it
made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
I got up. “I gotta get going,” I said flatly. “Want me to run this up to Sarah?” I nodded at the bag of food for my sister.
“Yeah, can you?” Mom said.
I left the kitchen without saying goodbye.
When I got to Sarah’s room, I had to shout over the music. A moment later she pulled the door open and went back to her bed without saying hello.
I came in and looked around. “This is new,” I said. She had red LED string lights along the walls. The whole bedroom was bathed in red. It was sort of depressing. “I got you McDonald’s.”
“Thanks,” she muttered without looking up from her phone. I put her food on the desk. “So what have you been up to?” No answer.
“Are you watching any cool shows?” She glared up at me, annoyed.
“Oookay,” I said. “Well. I’ll see you later then.” “Bye,” she said, irritated.
I left.
This was another thing that worried me. Alex was easy. Chelsea was too, in her own way. But Sarah? I didn’t know what her deal was recently. She was moody and pissed off, and I would be the one who had to figure it out.
I felt preemptively exhausted.
The kids probably needed therapy. I would have to find someone, at least for the older two who knew what was going on. One more thing to add to the long-ass list of stuff I would now be responsible for.
A few hours later I’d gone for a run and come back to my apartment and put some Buffalo chicken into the slow cooker for tomorrow. I looked up some options for family counseling and sent a few emails, which at the very least made me feel like I was heading in the right direction. I was thinking of dropping in on Brad or Benny or something, just to stay busy, but something better came up. Emma texted me “WYD.”
Right now Emma was my favorite distraction. Honestly, she was the only thing going on that didn’t suck.
I didn’t text her back. I called. “Hey,” she said, picking up.
“Hey.”
I heard the long sound of a zipper closing on luggage. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Packing for Hawaii?”
“No. Not yet. I’m just throwing something in there. I don’t pack until the morning I leave.”
“Really?” I sat in front of my monitor. “I need like a whole day to pack.” “That’s because you’re deciding what to bring. I know what to bring. I
just bring everything I came with.”
I smiled, pulling up the spreadsheet I’d started working on last night. “So do you have a second?” I asked.
“Yes, or I wouldn’t have answered.”
“I know we’re not doing this thing until you’re back on the mainland somewhere, but I was thinking we should probably work out the baseline. You know, so we’re ready when we meet.”
“A baseline?” she said. “For what?”
“For the dating thing. So we do it right. This has to be a controlled experiment. We need to replicate the pattern that leads to the outcome we keep getting. How long the dates need to be, what we need to do on the dates, where we need to go. We have to make sure we hit all the common denominators.”
“Oh,” she said. “Good idea. You’re so organized.”
“I need to be in my line of work. I started a spreadsheet. I can send it to you when I’m done.”
“Okay.”
“All right, so we have to do a minimum of four dates,” I said, “over the course of one month. Does the length of time matter for each date?”
“I think it has to be at least two hours.”
“Maybe we should shoot for three hours, just to be safe?” “Okay. Three hours works.”
“Or longer. The dates could definitely be longer. You know, if that feels organic of course.”
“Sure.”
I smiled. “Is there anything that we absolutely have to do?” I asked. “Something that’s been the same for all the qualifying dates? Like they’ve all been dinner dates or something?”
“They’ve all been different.”
“Okay. Mine too,” I said.
“Do we have to kiss?” she asked.
“I did kiss all my dates at least once,” I said.
“Me too,” she said. “And they always kiss me first.”
“Okay. So we have to kiss once, and I have to initiate it. Open-mouthed or -closed? Either has been enough for me.”
“Open. So you kissed Brad’s girlfriend? Is that weird now?”
“Not really. It was a closed-mouthed kiss and I don’t think either of us particularly enjoyed it. It was sort of like kissing my sister?”
“Ha.”
“So I’m assuming since you only kissed a few of them once, sex isn’t a prerequisite?” I asked, as professionally as possible.
“If it was, I would not agree to it for the sake of this experiment. Just so you know.”
“Just being thorough. It’s not a prerequisite for me either. And same. Gross.” I made a shiver noise. “I’m a sex-on-the-fifth-date kind of guy,” I said. “So you’ve lucked out.”
She was laughing.
“All right,” I said. “So we have to have four dates over the course of a month, one a week, a minimum of three hours each, we can do any activity, we have to text or talk daily, and I have to kiss you at least once.”
“Yes. I think that’s everything.”
“So four dates, one kiss, and a breakup.”
“Four dates, one kiss, and a breakup,” she agreed.
“I’ll get this typed up. Let me know if you think of anything else.” “Okay.”
This felt like the moment the call could have ended, but instead she said, “So what did you do today?”
I grinned. She didn’t want to hang up.
I leaned back in my chair. “Well, I did the same exact thing I did when I woke up yesterday—drank my coffee while staring morosely at my personal billboard. Walked Brad. Worked for a few hours, then I took my little brother for driving lessons—Oh, I forgot. I also made you something.”
“You did? What?”
I leaned over my keyboard and hit send on the draft I had waiting. “I’m going to hang up so you can look at it. Check your phone.”
