“What’s so funny?” she asks.
I snort. “You thinking I need normal.” I shake my head. “Normal is just a setting on the dryer, Star.”
“You sound like one of the Reeds.” But she’s grinning.
“They do tend to rub off on you after a while.”
We stop at the tattoo shop and I go through the hassle of getting the chair out and shifting into it, so I won’t have to ask Star to go in for me. I value my independence. Paul and Friday are there, and Friday has put together a lunch for us. I take it, not sure what to say. “You shouldn’t have.”
She scoffs. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
No, I mean she really shouldn’t have. Every since my accident, there are certain things I can’t eat. I’m really careful about what I put in my mouth. Otherwise, I could end up in the bathroom for the whole rest of the day, miserable. “Thank you.” I appreciate the thought.
“Paul put some things in here, too,” she tells me. She rolls her eyes. “You know how he is.”
“What kind of things?”
She laughs. “Check it later, okay?”
I take the little cooler from her, get my paycheck, and tell them goodbye. On my way out the door, the curiosity is killing me. I unzip the small pouch on the front of the cooler, and I see condoms. Lots of condoms. Various sizes and flavors. Lubed. Not lubed. Ribbed. God, I didn’t even know they came in so many varieties. I shake my head.
Paul opens the door a crack and yells, “Be careful!” Then he laughs and goes back inside.
There’s one thing I do have to say: Paul cares. He cares a lot. I kind of like belonging to a family. Now, I just have to go back home and face my own. That’s not going to be a pleasant experience.
Star has her feet up on the dash when I go back out to the car. She doesn’t offer to help stow my chair, which I kind of like. It’s a hassle, but I’d rather do it myself. She’s reading a book on her e-reader. She looks up at me and smiles. “All ready?”
“Yep.” I bus her cheek with a quick kiss. She covers it with her fingertips and looks at me, her brown eyes warm. “Do we need to go by the drugstore?”
I hold up the cooler bag. “Paul and Friday gave us enough condoms to last a year.”
Her brow shoots up. “Seriously?” She takes the bag from me and starts to rummage in it. “Banana. Cherry.” She holds one packet up. “Oh, this one is supposed to be bumpy.”
“I’ll let you choose.”
She gets quiet.
“You know, Star, that I don’t have any expectations about this weekend, right?”
She nods. “I know.” Then she smiles. “I have enough expectations for the both of us.”
I laugh and put the car in gear. And we spend the next few hours talking and listening to music. I even get her to sing for me a few times. Star is fun and kind and pretty…and she’s not with me because we’re having a mad, passionate affair. She’s with me because she doesn’t have anywhere else she wants to be. I need to remember that.
Star
Josh gets really quiet when we get to his hometown. His free hand clutches the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turn white.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
He blows out a harsh breath. “I never thought I would ever come back here.”
“Your family is here, right?”
He nods. “Yeah.” It’s more of a sigh than a word.
“Tell me about them.” I want to learn all about him.
“My parents live here, but I don’t see them.” He bites his lips together.
“Why not?”
“They don’t want to see me, not after what happened.” His voice is so soft I can barely hear it.
“What happened?” I remember him telling me about his dream. “Was the dream real?”
He nods and my gut twists.
“Oh, no,” I breathe. I lay a hand over my mouth.
“It was after a party,” he says quietly. I reach over and turn off the radio. “My buddy was supposed to be the DD. But at the end of the night, I was the most sober one in our group.” He looks at me, and I can see a storm in his eyes. “I volunteered to drive. I thought it would be all right.”
“It wasn’t.”
“No,” he admits. “It wasn’t. My buddy and his girlfriend died. My girlfriend was thrown from the car, and so was I.”
“That’s how you were injured?”
“Yeah.”
He’s quiet.
“Your girlfriend survived?”
“Yeah.” He grimaces.
“What?”
“She suffered a traumatic brain injury. She’s motor-challenged and she lost a lot of cognitive function. And she’ll be that way for the rest of her life.”
He takes a deep breath.
“My parents kicked me out after it happened. They were worried about what people would think. They sent me to live with my grandmother in New York. That’s where I got messed up in some crazy shit. I met some people, started experimenting with some drugs, joined a gang. It didn’t turn out well.”
“Where are your parents now?”
He pulls the car over to the side of the road. “They live here.”
I look up at a huge house with a sprawling yard. It’s almost palatial, and it’s in an apparently nice district.
I gasp. “Here? This is where you grew up?”