As I watched the exchange, the grateful smile I shot Kaylee for her save faded. What must it be like, to have friends who knew you so well they could order for you? At this point, I could barely order for myself.
“So listen—” Kaylee started.
The squeak of the door interrupted Kaylee. For a moment, the smell of asphalt and manure mingled with frying chicken and grease. Two teenage guys walked in: one blond with a small U-shaped mole on his forehead, the other dark haired with a tiny red stain on his shirt collar.
That made customers ten and eleven since we’d been here.
“Ugh, just look at Tommy . . . those scruffy old work boots?” Kaylee said, scrunching her slightly crooked nose and talking loud enough to be heard over the whir of a blender. “Atrocious. An affront to feet everywhere. And Jackson isn’t much better. Did you know he plans to stick around once we graduate, so he can help his parents run their store? La-ame.”
Ella and Parker nodded in agreement.
“Plus Jackson dresses like he’s the founding member of the Carhartt shirt-of-the-week club,” Kaylee continued in real time, shaking the booth with one of her typically over-the-top shudders. “Logo shirts—also lame.”
I tried to drum up similar disdain for the yellow logo on Jackson’s shirt but instead saw my dad cheering on the Phillies from our old living room. Wearing his red tee with the white, stylized P logo in the top right corner.
I pulled the sleeves of Dad’s flannel shirt over my hands and rubbed the worn fabric between my fingers. The feel of it was so familiar by now, I could probably recognize the shirt blindfolded. He’d been forty-three when he died thirty-five days ago, yet all I had left of him was this and a handful of memories. It wasn’t enough.
An insistent tug on my baggy sleeve made me look over, to find Kaylee staring at me. All of them, staring at me.
“What?”
Kaylee glanced at my shirt-covered hands, cleared her throat in a not-so-delicate ah-hem, and then flashed me her brightest smile. “We brought you out here because we thought you might need to get out a little more.”
Ella nodded while Kaylee continued. “You know, a break from the ranch, your mom . . .”
“That shirt,” Parker muttered under her breath.
I stiffened, but no one else seemed to notice what she’d said.
“. . . things,” Kaylee finished.
Dad dying. Summed up as “things.”
Suddenly the vinyl seat felt like a trap. I’d made a mistake, after all. A mistake in thinking that an outing with Kaylee, with anyone, would help. At least back at the ranch, the horses didn’t think I could be fixed with a Blizzard.
I winced as soon as the thought formed. They were trying, at least. Okay, not so much Parker, but Kaylee. And Ella, in her quiet, don’t-rock-the-boat way.
They were trying. They just didn’t understand.
“Thanks,” I finally murmured. I just wished they’d focus their collective interest on something besides me.
Luckily, the door by the cashier squeaked open. “Who’s that?” I asked, mentally apologizing to the boy, whoever he was, for nominating him as diversion-of-the-minute. He eased into the restaurant, a tall, lean frame topped with a mass of dark, wavy hair.
Kaylee’s brown eyes widened. “Dunno. But day-yum . . . I’d like to.”
Parker feigned a yawn. “You’d say that about any guy who wasn’t local and had a pulse. Actually, nix the pulse part.” But when she craned her head to look over the back of the booth, she puckered her lips and let out a short, off-key whistle. “Not bad.”
Not to be left out, Ella craned her neck to peer at the newcomer, who was now placing his order with the young, pimpled cashier. “Maybe he’s from Annandale?” she said, naming the next closest high school.
I shook my head. “He said he just moved here when he ordered.”
Parker curled a pink-glossed lip at me while she swirled her straw in her Diet Coke. She always made at least three revolutions before each sip. “Right. Like you could catch that from all the way back here.”
“Mila’s quiet. She notices things,” Kaylee said, taking the sting out of Parker’s words. And then she laughed. “But maybe she does have some high-tech hearing aid stashed away in there.” Her fingers reached out to yank playfully at my earlobe, and the sensation triggered a series of images.
White walls. A blurred image of a man in a white lab coat. His fingers reaching out, jabbing deep into my ear.
In my lunge to escape, I jolted the table and knocked over my Blizzard cup. I was out of the booth and on my feet before I even realized I’d moved.
“Jesus, Mila. Don’t be such a spaz,” Parker snapped. “Seriously, someone tell me why we hang out with her?”
“Shut up, Parker—she’s cool. I mean, at least she’s lived somewhere besides this godforsaken place. Where were you born again? Oh, that’s right—Clearwater.”
I stood by our table, dazed. For once, Parker was right—I was acting like a spaz. Based on the stares and giggles from around the restaurant, everyone else thought so, too. Including the new boy. Up by the cashier, he studied me with blue eyes so pale, they looked almost translucent.
A crease formed over Kaylee’s nose as she waved her hands at me, palms out. “I swear, I had no idea you were an ear-o-phobe. No more ear touching, promise—but try not to make us look lame in front of cute boys, okay?”
Forcing a smile, I sank back into the booth. Even if I wanted to explain what had happened, I couldn’t, because I didn’t have the faintest clue. Unless this had something to do with the hospital, post fire. Maybe the doctors had performed a procedure on my ears?
Ella’s giggle rescued me. “Hey, the new guy’s still looking this way.”
“Thanks to Mila, everyone’s still looking this way,” Parker muttered. But of course our heads swiveled toward him.
Old denim, I decided. His eyes were the color of old denim.
His long-sleeved white tee was paired with slim gray pants. And on his feet—checkered gray-and-black Vans.
“No work boots,” I pointed out, for Kaylee’s benefit.
“Duh. That’s the first thing I noticed.”
I bit back a smile. Of course it was. Me, I’d noticed lots of things—as always. The gray along his jawline that hinted at five o’clock shadow. The way he leaned against the counter, poised but standoffish, his hunched shoulders not inviting anyone to chat. The way the left side of his upper lip was slightly higher than the other, saving his mouth from perfection in an intriguing way.
And then a worker handed him a drink, and he was out the door.
Kaylee broke the silence by banging her fist on the table, making our collection of cups jump. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. That’s exactly the kind of fresh blood we need at Clearwater.”
“Too bad Mila scared him off with her booth dive,” Parker sniped.
Kaylee jumped in, pointing out that any attention was better than none at all. While the girls’ chatter went from mystery boys to favorite actors, I burrowed into Dad’s shirt. My gaze found the window, but instead of pastureland, I summoned more memories, pored through images of Mom and Dad smiling and dabbing my nose with tomato sauce while we assembled a homemade pizza. Images of all three of us, curled up on our navy-blue sofa, playing a game of gin rummy.
Kaylee’s fake swoon into my shoulder stole them away. “Oh my god, he was hot in that werewolf movie. But I still liked him better in Tristan James, Underage Soldier.”