Sunday Afternoon: April 10th
The chirp of my phone distracted me from reading the most recent entries on Paisley’s blog. She was extolling—her word—the virtues of faux-leather boots. Meet at park?
Gin. He was back. I smiled, wanting to dance, except I was still sitting on my bed. Now? 4 shizzle.
His response beeped seconds later. C U soon. I tossed my tablet on my pillow and jumped off my bed, doing a fake ballerina twirl before grabbing my jacket. Gin was finally home.
The park was just two blocks away, and halfway between our houses. It wasn’t much of a park; just a block of verdant grass, sprinkled with picnic tables, with a play structure on wood chips in one corner. The real park, the see-and-be-seen place for families of the neighborhood association, had a crystal clear blue swimming pool and giant play area. But it was always busy.
Not like the mini-park. Sometimes we’d seen moms and kids from the surrounding houses, but it was usually quiet.
Another person was entering the park as I was. The walk gave him away, the even stride, even before I could make out his features, which I knew almost as well as my own. Brown eyes. Ski jump nose that was the only thing he inherited from his mom. Black hair trimmed short else it would erupt into a giant afro. An image of Gin as a five-year-old flashed into my mind. We met at this park when his parents moved into the neighborhood. Our nannies knew each other and arranged a lunch date. Gin had been fascinated by Maggie’s signing and willing to race me from the picnic tables to the swings.
I did an exaggerated step-shuffle, and Gin mirrored the movement. My heart felt lighter, like I’d been missing something this past week. We met at our usual picnic table. Our initials were carved into the bottom. Gin had chosen a spot out of sight since the neighborhood association had a zero tolerance for graffiti. Plus, it’d be easy to trace our initials back to us. It was nice to know they were secretly there, hidden from view. As Gin said, it was our private example of how all sorts of things were hidden beneath the surface if you cared to look.
“I brought you something.” Gin handed me a small paper bag with a gift shop logo stamped on it. I opened it to find a Whistler keychain.
“Thanks. My keys will love the change in style.” But I gave Gin a smile so he wouldn’t know I was being completely sarcastic. “I like that it’s also bottle opener. It’s useful, not just pretty.”
“Kind of like you.”
“Ha ha,” I deadpanned.
“I think we need to talk.” Gin’s tone was hesitant. Like he was afraid I’d freak out on him. He sat down on the top of the picnic table with his feet on the bench. He stared across the park toward the swing set and tan houses on the other side of the street.
“What?” I sat down next to him. Was he breaking up with me? The thought sunk down into my stomach like I’d swallowed a balloon filled with marbles. Gin had never asked me if I’d be his girlfriend; it just happened. He’d always been my default, my best friend. He didn’t have to ask me to Homecoming, and I didn’t have to ask him to Sadie Hawkins. I assumed we’d spend weekend nights together. We studied at each other’s houses. Gin came to Maggie’s soccer games with me if he could. He always planned something just for the two of us for my birthday, and I always sneak cookies into his locker for his.
We kissed on a regular basis. He was my boyfriend, even if I didn’t spend time elaborating on what it meant. Like our parents assumed. Like everyone said. Can you break up with someone if you’ve never said out loud that you’re boyfriend and girlfriend? Although I’d heard Gin refer to me as his girlfriend before.
“So—the whole housebreaking thing—I’m not sure if I’m down with it anymore.”
Okay, not breaking up with me. My shoulders slumped slightly before I remembered breaking into Marisa’s house last night. “What do you mean?”
“It was sort of fun to break into each other’s houses. Exciting. But I felt weird after I did it, like I was violating my neighbors. I’m really not sure about doing it again.”
“Same rules apply. We didn’t steal anything unreplaceable,” I said.
“Irreplaceable,” Gin said.
“Whatever, Mr. SATs.” Maybe he didn’t know about Alex breaking out the window and setting off the alarm when I was upstairs. Had Alex told anyone about it? In retrospect the adrenalin rush had been incredible. Not that I hadn’t wanted to kill Alex at the time. Not that I still didn’t want to plan out a particularly spectacular revenge. Something that punctured his over-inflated ego.
“Benji and I talked about it, and he’s not sure about this either.”
“When did you talk to Benji?” Wasn’t I supposed to be the first person he talked to after he got back?
“On the phone last night. Paisley and Alex were drunk and he wanted to talk to someone sober enough for a serious conversation. He said you’d already bailed and he couldn’t imagine calling Sarah after she stormed out.”
“He didn’t say anything last night when he heard the plan.”
“Sounds like it was sprung on him without any chance for him to object.” Gin stared straight ahead. His face could have been carved from stone.
I sighed. “Check yourself before you wreck yourself,” I muttered.
“Exactly.” Gin turned to me, and the stone like expression on his face softened. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. Or me, for that matter. It’d derail our college plans. Felonies will do that to a person.”
“Is it really a felony?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Gin said. “I thought about asking my dad but he’d have too many questions for me if I did.”
“I’ll think about this. All of it,” I said. The toe of my red converse sneaker had a black smudge, and I rubbed it against the bench in a swirling pattern.
“That’s not all,” I said.
“What’s that?” Gin’s eyebrows raised as he looked at me.
“Something else happened. When I was upstairs, Alex turned the alarm back on and then broke a window on purpose. I had to run out the back door and find my way back to Benji’s car while staying out of sight of the neighbors. And the police.”
“What?” Gin grabbed my lower arm. When I looked at him with raised eyebrows he rubbed a gentle circle on my arm.
“You heard me.”
“On purpose?”
“You heard me.”
Gin let go of my arm and ran his hand over his head. “I can’t believe he tried to throw you under the bus.”
“I’m sure he didn’t think I’d get caught.”
“You could have been.” Gin’s voice was all cold-fury. He stared into the distance, a muscle in his jaw clenched.
“Let’s not worry about that right now. It’s done. We can’t change it.” My voice was equally grim.
“We’ll need to tell Alex, together, that we’re out. He’s not going to be happy,” Gin said. “Not that I care.”
“Is Benji quitting for sure?”
“He will, and Paisley will follow, if we do.”
“Let’s talk tomorrow at lunch on how to break the news to Alex,” I said. Gin’s brown boots looked new, and bigger than I remembered. My feet looked tiny next to his. Maybe Gin was going to grow a few inches taller. He was already seven inches taller than me at six feet even.
Gin scooted closer and put his hand on top of mine. His fingers spilled over the side, touching my jean-clad thighs. His voice dropped deeper, and sounded smoky. “Quit with me. It’ll be good. We’ll find better things to do.”
I looked at him, and he kissed me.
“Did I tell you I missed you?” he said when we came up for air.
“I’m sure you were pining for me every minute you were away.”
***
Mom was sprawled out on the living room sofa with an issue of Departures in one hand and a mostly full glass of red wine in the other. An open bottle was on the table next to her, along with a bowl of grapes. I didn’t know she ate grapes that hadn’t been fermented first.
“I want to go a yoga-spa retreat in Malibu,” she slurred and waved the magazine at me. “And I need a new ice cream maker. Cuisinart.”
“Good for you. Where’s Maggie?”
“Her friend texted and invited her over dinner. Did you hear about Gin’s house?”
I paused in the doorway of the room. Instead of heading upstairs I stepped back into the room, wondering what the neighborhood gossip network had come up with. “No, what about Gin’s?”
“They were burglarized when they were skiing!” Mom whispered, as if this was a big secret we needed to keep away from the neighbors.
I sat down on the edge of a blond leather wingback chair. “Really? Tell me more.”
“Well, they didn’t notice at first. But then Denise realized her godawful watch was gone, so they started looking around more closely.”
“Wow.”
Mom sighed loudly and stretched before taking a sip of wine. I was about to stand up when she said, “Add that to the burglary on the other side of the neighborhood, and man, this place is going downhill.”
“Oh, there was another break-in?”
“Oh, yes, at the Forets’…”
She went off into full detail of everything that went down at Marisa’s house, including the broken window.
“The police must have just missed the robbers! I heard they don’t have any leads, but there were fingerprints left all over the house.”
Hmm, I’d worn gloves. Black leather that fit snugly. Alex had joked about his driving gloves before we entered, so he couldn’t have left any fingerprints behind either.
Alex. He’s going to pay for breaking that window. My stomach muscles tightened, and I had to breathe out before I could get my fists to unclench.
“I didn’t know you knew Marisa’s mom.”
“Oh, you know Marisa?” my mom said. “She’s not a soccer player. Is she a regular in detention?”
“I know people who don’t play soccer. And I’m not in detention that often,” I said.
“Her mother used to be in my gardening club but she works and couldn’t make the meetings when we switched to Thursday afternoons. She has to work full-time to pay for Marisa’s school fees.” Mom waived her hand at me, knocking her wine glass over in the process. “Damn it!” she jumped up and over-balanced. She grabbed her napkin off the table and tried to sop up the wine on the couch.
“I’ll get a towel and some club soda.”
“Thanks, Sweetie.”
“Good thing I’m used to cleaning up your messes,” I grumbled as I left the room.