Flopping into the chair across from her, Jules closed her eyes and drank in more of the sun. The female singer-songwriter music her mother liked so much lilted softly through the open window from the kitchen. The Shawn Colvin Pandora channel, Jules suspected.
“Good night?” her mother asked.
“The best.”
Her mother scooped some organic strawberries into a bowl and slathered Greek yogurt on top of them.
“Here,” she said. “Breakfast. Tell me all about it.”
She could honestly say that her mom was her best friend. Her dad had died six years ago of a heart attack, when she was eleven, and since then it had been just the two of them. They talked about everything. Her mom never judged. And through her, Jules had learned that the world had a way of working things out as long as you didn’t try too hard to war against it.
Jules picked at the fruit in front of her. “Well, there’s this boy,” she said.
A wisp of a smile floated across her mother’s face. “Of course there is.”
Jules laughed. She’d had this very same conversation with her mother many times before, but from the other side, listening to her describe her excitement about this or that new guy in her life.
“But he’s one of the good ones. He’s funny. And kind of goofy-cute. But there’s, like, a seriousness to him. I’ve told you about him before, actually.”
“Oh?” The hint of a smile, just a ripple across her lips that was so hard for Jules to read, emerged on her mom’s face.
“You remember way back in sophomore year … that party I went to on the beach?”
“Weren’t you already hanging around with Todd by then? It seems like there was always some party or another on the beach.”
Jules couldn’t help making a sour face at the memory of all that wasted time with Todd and his surfing buddies. “No, before that. With Lauren? It was like a bonfire with a bunch of upperclassmen. Remember? I came home just totally upset? I had to beg you not to report it to the school?”
She was talking about the time she and her friend Lauren had gone to a beach bonfire and been harassed by a bunch of guys who thought it was funny to paw at them and pull at the drawstrings of their bikinis. They’d actually managed to get Lauren’s top separated from her body. And then they wouldn’t give it back. It was all a game to them. Keep-away.
Her mom’s gaze narrowed as she remembered being told about this. It was like she was looking through Jules into some place deep inside her that she didn’t know how to protect. “This guy was involved with that?”
“No—no, that’s not what I mean. Seth Kruger was the guy who stole Lauren’s bikini top. Carter was the one I told you about, who raced down from out of nowhere shouting, ‘What the fuck, assholes,’ and dive-bombed Seth to get Lauren’s top back.”
“Thank God,” her mom said, relieved.
“And last night, we just talked and talked. It was all so effortless. He was so sweet. And …” Jules drifted off into memories of the touch of his lips on hers. She’d thought about what it would be like to kiss him for years and the reality was so much better than she’d imagined.
Her mom reached across the table and patted her tanned hand with her own. “You really like this guy, then,” she said.
Jules looked down at her yogurt, suddenly embarrassed; then she glanced back up at her mother and crinkled her eyes. “Yes,” she said, blushing.
“I sense a but coming,” her mom said.
“He’s got a girlfriend. And …”
As Jules outlined the parameters of the situation—glossing over the details of what exactly she and Carter had done, but not hiding them, not lying about them—her mother listened carefully, looked her in the eyes, took in not just her words but her vibrations as well, all the subtle physical clues that communicated more than her words ever could. She didn’t push Jules or try to steer the conversation. She just listened and watched until Jules was done.
“Is that a bad thing?” asked Jules.
“No,” her mom said. “Not bad.” She put her hands to her lips like she was praying, and thought for a moment. “First, you should know—’cause you’re going to be worried about it later—you’re not responsible for the things he does. If he chose to fool around with you last night, something must be very wrong between him and his girlfriend. It’s not your fault.”
She reached across the table and covered Jules’s hand with her own.
“Did you hear me?” she said. “It’s not your fault. You don’t have to own problems he’s created for himself. Okay?”
Jules nodded.
“But,” her mom said, arching her eyebrows, “be careful. Guys with girlfriends … they have no idea what they want. And they’ll charm you into thinking that it doesn’t matter. You should know that by now, given the example I’ve set for you.”
“I know,” Jules said. “You’re right. It’s just …”
She gazed off between the stilt houses to the sliver of ocean they could see from their porch and thought about her mother’s tumultuous love life, the way she fell in love so quickly, and allowed herself to believe again and again that whichever new, cool, brooding, muscular guy she’d met this time would be different from all the other ones she’d dated. She was so wise about how relationships worked, but so terrible at taking her own advice.
Jules’s mom patted her hand, and then gave it a playful squeeze. “It’s just that they’re so hard to resist,” she said.
They smiled at each other, almost but not quite ashamed of this truth.
By the time she got to Jeff’s house, Lilah had calmed down enough to think straight, at least. She shut the door to the Caravan softly and took care with her footsteps as she made her way across the landscaped front lawn and past the grand stone-inlayed entrance to the house and around the side to the backyard, unlatching the gate to the pool area quietly.
She could hear rap music coming from somewhere deep inside the house. It was muffled, a private sound, not the full, surround-speaker blast she knew Jeff’s stereo was capable of, and she figured it to be coming from the rec room in the lower level of the place.
Before slipping inside and tiptoeing down there, she did some recon, peeking in windows, listening for other signs of life. The place seemed abandoned. There weren’t even any crushed red cups or beer cans lying around.
She peered through the windows of the pool house, twisting and straining to catch a glimpse of what might be behind the closed venetian blinds.
And there he was, Carter, sleeping like a baby on the pullout bed.
He was alone. That’s the first thing Lilah noticed.
Taking great care not to make a sound, she turned the handle on the door and slowly opened it and stepped inside.
Watching him sleep, so peaceful and content, curled up in the fetal position, his hair standing up in all sorts of odd angles, Lilah had a sudden urge to cuddle up with him. He looked so innocent there, so adorable, with the cowlick at the ridge of his forehead sending a pinwheel of sandy hair down over his eyes.
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