This Secret Thing, стр. 29
She cranked open her window and watched as Micah’s dad—the source of the laughter—took a turn with the basketball. The fall breeze, slightly cooler since September had surrendered to October, carried their voices to her. “Watch and learn, Son,” Micah’s father called out, then proceeded to sink a jump shot. He whooped at his accomplishment. Micah clapped and Chipper barked. Violet had to turn away. Despite what Micah had faced in the past year, he still had not one but two parents at home, a dad who played basketball with him, a dog. Violet had none of those things.
As if in protest to her dismissal of him, her grandmother’s dog, Barney, like the purple dinosaur, barked. Violet smiled in spite of herself. She sniffed the air and detected the smell of meat frying. Her mother never ate fried foods. She rarely ate meat. Violet was curious to see what used to be her mother’s favorite food, because Polly’s hunch was correct: it was no longer her favorite. Violet’s stomach rumbled in response. Whether it was her mother’s favorite or not, whatever was cooking smelled good. Maybe, she thought as she turned away from the window and headed back downstairs to investigate, it could be her favorite now.
Casey
Eli slid into the driver’s side of the car, looking grim as he reached over to stow a grocery bag on the floorboard of the back seat. Casey heard the satisfying clink of bottles hitting each other. She could already taste the beer. She hadn’t had a drink since she left college two weeks ago, and she missed it. Missed the helpful oblivion of getting drunk. It was funny how drinking had led to what had happened, and it was drinking that helped her forget what had happened. She could not separate the two, so she didn’t try. She just went with it, depending on the liquid to slide down her throat, enter her bloodstream, and bring the freedom she craved.
“Thanks,” she said to Eli, who started the car and didn’t answer her. When he turned to look over his shoulder as he backed out of the parking place, his eyes grazed over her, looking at her but refusing to see her. She could tell he was angry but didn’t want to say so, because who knew if this would be the only time they would see each other while she was home. No sense starting a fight, better to go along. She knew him so well she could read his mind.
“Can we go back to your place and drink this?” she asked, trying to reassure him that he was not just the procurer of her alcohol, but her drinking partner as well. She was not just using him. She wasn’t. That Eli had a fake ID and she didn’t had nothing to do with it. There had been a time he wouldn’t have hesitated to get them beer, to drink it with her. But then they had broken up, and it seemed he wasn’t anxious to go right back to the way things were. In that moment, Casey wanted nothing more. She wanted to pretend just for an afternoon that she was someone different, someone she used to be. She glanced at his profile, his face serious, his eyes intense, as he watched the road.
“Please?” she asked, making her voice sound playful. She rested her hand on his knee, partly out of habit and partly as a gesture of reassurance. “Your mom’s at work, right?” Eli’s mom worked a lot, and his parents were divorced, so they had often had his house to themselves. She missed those afternoons from senior year, the cold ones when they had snuggled on his couch and caught a buzz while watching old movies, and the warm ones where they had donned bathing suits and sat on his back patio catching rays and dreaming of their future.
He moved his knee away from her touch. “Not sure that’s a good idea,” he said.
She pouted even though he wasn’t looking at her. Both of them were silent for a few minutes as she debated her options. Push too hard, and she could push him away. A thought dawned on her: What if he’d met someone since they had broken up? She thought about the girls from high school who’d stayed behind to attend community college, still rattling around town doing the same old things while everyone else had gone off to the hallowed halls of higher learning or whatever. Casey wouldn’t put it past one of them to make the moves on Eli after their breakup. She wondered who it could be.
Better to play hard to get, to prove that no matter how desperate those other girls were, she wasn’t. Suddenly she found herself wanting nothing more than to spend the afternoon with Eli. “Fine, then, I guess just take me back to my car,” she said, willing her voice to sound nonchalant, denying what she felt inside. She was getting frightfully good at that.
Eli shrugged and, at the next light, turned in the opposite direction of his house. She felt her heart sink but willed herself to keep her chin up, like her mother often said.
They were silent all the way back to where they’d left her car, in the parking lot of the restaurant where they’d met. The lunch had started off nicely, the conversation flowing naturally, like the old friends they were attempting to be. She’d relaxed completely by the time their food had arrived, and she could tell he had, too. She’d been so relaxed that once they’d eaten and the check had arrived (which he had insisted on paying for despite her protests), she’d blurted out that they should get some beer, keep the party going. The funny thing was, though his face had fallen when she said it, he’d done it.
He pulled into the parking space next to her car but