Here I Go Page 19

  “Hi,” he answered, and got a big smile, too. He glanced over at Thana, who glared and turned her back. “Friendly,” he murmured to me.

  “I think she got up on the wrong side of the bed,” I whispered. “She was nicer yesterday. Only slightly.” At least yesterday, she hadn’t told me that I was so cheery that I wounded her soul.

  “How is it going today?”

  I told him how I’d just gotten in trouble for the free coffee, and Cain frowned. “You can’t give away the product, Aria.”

  “It was just a little bit. Not even a full cup! And it doesn’t taste very good.”

  “So I shouldn’t order anything?”

  “I’d only buy a muffin,” I whispered. “I can get that for you. Thana makes all the drinks because I don’t know how yet, and she never washes her hands.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  I saw Imhotep step out of the back storage area. “One blueberry muffin, coming up!” I told Cain. “I’ll heat it for you. The heating is free.”

  “Hang on.” He put his hand on my wrist. “I came by because I have to go out of town on business.”

  “Oh.” I felt a jolt of sadness, like I was already lonely for him. “Where are you going?”

  “Korea.”

  “Wow,” I said, my heart sinking. “Wow. That’s really far.” I glanced at Imhotep and put the muffin in to heat. As I did, I remembered my memaw’s old globe, which I’d enjoyed spinning when I was a kid. Aubree had liked to pick out all the places that she wanted to travel, but I had just liked to run my fingers over the cardboard bumps of the mountains, glad that I was home and not anywhere else. I remembered the Pacific, that big, blue ocean that would separate me from Cain. “When do you come back?”

  “I don’t have a firm return date yet,” he said. “I may be there a few weeks.”

  “Oh,” I repeated. “That’s long.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I could—” I started to say, but stopped myself. He didn’t want me there with him, that was for sure. If I was this out of place in San Francisco, how would I be in Korea? “Nothing,” I finished.

  The microwave made a sick buzzing sound behind me and I got out his muffin. I’d heated it for too long and it was steaming like it was going to explode. “Maybe give that a minute before you take a bite,” I advised as I put it into a bag. “What are you going to be doing in Korea?”

  “Just going to meetings. I was thinking that when I come back, we could go home. I mean, we could go to Tennessee,” he corrected himself. “You could visit your family and help out your cousin and your friend with their weddings. Aren’t you the maid of honor for both of them?”

  “Matron of honor,” I said, and saw the surprise in his face, just like every time he got a reminder that we were married. I checked his finger and the gold band was still there, though. “I’d love to do that. We could stay a few days and also have the memorial service for Miss Liddy.”

  He nodded slightly. “That’s something to think about.”

  “You can do it,” I encouraged him. “It’s going to be hard, but I think it will be good for you, too. You’ll get to hear how you weren’t the only person who loved her.”

  “Aria?”

  I turned and saw my new manager watching us. Thana drew her finger across her throat as she also stared at me and I hoped she was just scratching an itch there. It couldn’t have been a death threat.

  “I think I have to get back to work,” I said regretfully, focusing on Cain. “When are you leaving?”

  “I have a flight in a little while. I’m heading for the airport now.”

  “What? Right now?” Well, then, never mind about getting back to work! I hurried out from behind the counter. “I’ll be back in a sec,” I told my coworkers, and we left before they had time to object too much.

  There was a car and a driver outside waiting for him. “Are you really leaving now? Right at this moment?” I asked.

  “I have to,” he said, and shrugged. But I swore there was regret in his face, too.

  “I’ll miss you,” I told him.

  “We don’t see each other very much. I was thinking about how much time we’ve spent together, total, and it doesn’t add up to a lot.”

  He’d been thinking about spending time with me? That was wonderful news!

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked. “I’ve been hearing you walking around at night.”

  I hadn’t been sleeping all that well, it was true. “I think that things will be better after the funeral.” My mama would have to stop talking about how I had to attend it, because it would be over. And maybe once he was in the ground, some of my memories would get buried, too. I hoped so.

  “I’m sorry I have to go right now. I don’t like leaving with this happening.”

  “I’m ok,” I told him. I stepped closer. “Come back soon, though. Try to do all your work really fast.”

  Cain smiled. “I will.” Very quickly, he pulled me to him in a hug, lifting me off the ground. His arms held me tightly to his chest and I felt him sigh against my neck. Then just as quickly, he put me back on my feet and got into the car. He rolled down the tinted window and waved as he drove away. I hugged my own arms around my body to replace the feel of his but of course it wasn’t the same. I missed him already.

  It took me a moment before I woke back up to being practical. “Are you going to call me? What’s the time difference? What city will you be in? Will you send me your flight numbers? The name of your hotel?” I yelled after him, but he was already gone. I watched until the car disappeared over the top of another hill.

  “Who was that guy?” Imhotep asked me when I came in. “By the way, that counts as your break. And breaks are supposed to be put on the schedule, by me.”

  “Sorry. It was my husband,” I answered.

  “You’re married?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s hot,” Thana said, which was honestly the first nice thing I’d ever heard from her. She wouldn’t even say “you’re welcome” to customers. “I wouldn’t mind nailing his ass to my wall.”

  I wasn’t sure if she meant that literally. “Well, he’s my husband, so you won’t be doing that,” I told her. He was, and it felt like things between us were getting stronger. I worried that putting the big ocean in between us wouldn’t help very much.

  Chapter 11

  The scream woke me up.

  “Aria! Aria!”

  “Kayleigh?” I answered, still half-asleep. Was I home in Tennessee? Then why was the bed so big and comfortable? No, this was California—but I was sure I’d heard my cousin call my name! I stumbled down the stairs toward her voice. “Kayleigh?” I didn’t understand what was happening but when I heard another scream, I yanked open the front door. Immediately, the house alarm went off, blaring so loudly that I covered my ears.

  And my cousin really was standing on Cain’s doorstep in San Francisco! “What are you doing here?” I yelled. She yelled something back but I couldn’t hear with the shrieks of the alarm echoing off the marble floor, so I went to the panel on the wall and started to type in the numbers that Cain had told me. It took a few minutes for me to get the code right to make it stop and when the sound cut off, my ears still rang with it. I saw Kayleigh speaking to me rather than heard her at first, but then the words made sense.

  “I’m so glad you did that. The alarm made it run away! Thanks, Aria!”

  “What? What are you—you’re here?” I shook my head to clear away the echoes of the noise and my sleepy confusion.

  “I came to visit,” she announced, and pulled a huge turquoise suitcase into the house, slamming the front door behind herself. “Wow, this is a really nice place. Not the kind of neighborhood where you’d expect a stray dog to chase you! It took off down the street when you opened the door and the noise started.” She spun around and looked at the foyer with the high, white walls and the black ceiling. “We could fit so many more people in here than in our old apartment. D
o you remember the parties we had there?”

  “Yeah, it was so—” I stopped myself. “No, hold on. You didn’t tell me you were coming, Kayleigh! I can’t believe you just showed up on Cain’s doorstep!”

  She shrugged. “I missed you.” Then she smiled and hugged me. “You look great! I love your hair. It’s even better in person than in the pictures you sent.”

  “Thanks.” I moved my hands to smooth it from where my nap had mussed it up. “Kayleigh, I’m so glad to see you, but really, what are you doing here?”

  She walked past me down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Wow, this house only gets better! What’s this, a whole library? Does Cain read these? I didn’t picture him as a book nerd.”

  “He’s very smart,” I informed her. “He—hold on, you didn’t answer my question. Kayleigh!”

  She’d opened the refrigerator and was checking in the drawers. “I’m starving. Why don’t you have anything to eat? Actually, Ari, you look super skinny. Are you dieting again?”

  “I look skinny? Does it really show?” I asked, so pleased. “I—no, just a moment, Kayleigh Lynn! Tell me what’s going on, right now!”

  She took the food she’d dug out of Cain’s refrigerator over to the kitchen island. “I told you. I came to visit and a dog was hiding behind the bush in front of your house and chased me up the walkway.”

  “But why are you here, KayKay? Why aren’t you at home on a Thursday morning?”

  “What are you doing home?” she asked me right back. “I thought you had a job.”

  I did have a job. I used to, anyway, until I’d been recently fired. “Kayleigh! Don’t make me call your mother.”

  “Fine! Fine.” But she took another bite of the chicken and rice I’d made, which Cain hadn’t finished before he’d left. It was two weeks old but since he’d been eating from that container, I hadn’t had the heart to toss it. “This is delicious,” she said. “It tastes just like my mama’s. You’re a really good cook, Ari.” She looked at my face and sighed. “Fine! Ok, fine. I came because I was already in California. I’m supposed to be in San Diego, but I left.”

  “San Diego?” I repeated.

  She took another bite and chewed very slowly before she answered me. “Yeah, you know. South of here and more palm trees.”

  “Kayleigh!” I exploded.

  “My mom and dad sent me there,” she explained. “To a rehab place.”

  I plopped down in the stool next to hers. “Rehab? For drugs? For drinking? Oh, my word!”

  “It’s not a big deal,” she assured me. “It really isn’t. They just weren’t used to me going out and having fun. They got surprised by it when I moved back home with them, that I was different from the kid I’d been when I graduated from high school and left their house.”

  Sure. I waited.

  Kayleigh sighed. “Ok, one thing did happen. I had to go have my stomach pumped after I drank a little too much and my parents got upset.”

  “Kayleigh, no!” I was horrified, and knowing Aunt Jill, I bet she was hysterical on the floor.

  “They were very upset,” she qualified. “When I got home from the hospital, they said I had to go to rehab and then stay clean for six months before they’ll help me rent my own apartment. So I picked the place in California because I thought it would be the most fun. But it sucked! It was just all these people whining about everything, all the damn time. Boo hoo, my wife left me because I passed out and didn’t make it to her sister’s wake, wah wah, my kids think I’m a terrible mother because I missed every one of their gymnastic meets to go get high. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “That sounds so sad! It’s terrible!”

  She just went on like she hadn’t heard me. “I had to have a roommate, and she was so gross, Ari. She’s old and she’s been drinking forever and she pissed on herself at night. The room smelled like a litterbox.”

  “That poor lady!” I shook my head. “But you just left? Do your parents even know where you are?”

  “I guess someone from the rehab place might have called to let them know that I escaped.”

  I dug in the pockets of my pajama pants for my phone. I’d been keeping it close to my body just in case I might get a message from Korea, but now I used it to dial Aunt Jill. “Hi, Kayleigh is here with me and she’s fine,” I said when my aunt answered, and then, when my cousin shook her head and waved her arms at me, I added, “She doesn’t want to talk right now, but I’ll figure this out and call you in a while.”

  Aunt Jill had a few more things to say before we hung up. “She’s really worried,” I told Kayleigh when her mother was finally done talking. “She says you have to go back to rehab. Immediately.”

  “I just rode a bus for twelve hours to get here. I’m not going to do that again anytime soon.” My cousin chased the last grain of rice around the dish and ate it. “I would have called her before but they took our phones the day we all checked into that prison. I didn’t mean to make her worried, ok?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m starving,” Kayleigh interrupted. “Don’t you have anything else to eat? Let’s order pizza.”

  “I’m not ordering pizza,” I grumbled, but I was hungry, too. I looked at the clock and saw that it was around the time that most people ate lunch, but I’d been skipping regular meals as much as I could and eating vegetables keep myself going. She started to look around in Cain’s cupboards. “Kayleigh, you have to go back to that place. Or you have to go home! You can’t stay here.”

  She stopped opening an old box of stale crackers and met my eyes. “I will, ok? I swear. I just needed some time away from there. Then I’ll go back, I promise. Can I please stay for a little while? I need a break.”

  I thought for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. Aunt Jill had been too upset to give me much direction. “I guess you can,” I said slowly, “but only if you talk to your mom and dad. And only if you swear on the Bible that you really will stop drinking and go finish up your rehab stuff. Your parents wouldn’t have sent you away unless they thought it was really serious. You got your stomach pumped? That’s so scary, Kay.”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. But yes, I will talk to them and I’ll swear on the Bible that I will go back.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this,” I marveled. “And Cassidy didn’t tell me, either! Or my mama, or my sisters.”

  “No one in the family knows about the hospital stuff,” she explained. “They all think that I went to visit my mama’s cousin in Alabama for a while. Not even your mother managed to sniff out the truth, even though she’s the queen of the gossip bloodhounds.” She got a funny expression. “I think my parents are really embarrassed.”

  “I think your mother is more scared than embarrassed.” I slid my phone over to her. “Call her.”

  While she did, it gave me the chance to do some work upstairs. If Kayleigh was going to stay here for a few days, then I had to make some quick changes in the bedroom situation. Specifically, I had to move the rest of my stuff from the guest room and into Cain’s room. I didn’t want my cousin to find out that we were sleeping separately and I certainly didn’t want my mother, the gossip bloodhound, to find out, either. And actually, since Cain had been gone, I’d been spending some more time in his room. A little.

  That wasn’t honest. The truth was that I’d been sleeping in there for the past two weeks, ever since the day he’d left. I’d been standing in his closet to sniff the slight aroma he’d left behind, not cologne, but something delicious. I’d been cuddling with his pillow every night, pretending that it was him. I’d been taking baths in the big tub that I didn’t think anyone had ever used, imagining that he was there with me and we were going off to work in the morning. First, he’d have to take a shower and the warm water would trickle around the abs I’d seen that one time, washing down even lower over…

  I realized that I was standing in the middle of Cain’s bedroom floor, a pair of jeans trailing behind me and
squeezing socks in my fist, panting. Maybe I’d been alone for too long. Maybe it was a good thing for me that Kayleigh had come! I just hoped it was also good for her, and that maybe I could help her figure out what she needed to be doing to make her parents happy and clean up her act. I’d been around her partying for years and it had always been on the edge of pretty bad, but if she’d had to go to the hospital, then things had taken a turn for the way worse.

  I started to get worried and worked faster, until there was almost nothing left of my presence in the room where Cain had first dropped my pink suitcases. I’d put Kayleigh in one of the other suites, anyway—this house had four other places where you could stick a visitor and she’d be totally undisturbed. I winced when I remembered what she’d told me about her roommate at the rehab place. Those poor people!

  Thinking about that made me wonder what Kayleigh was up to downstairs and I hurried to find her. But I heard her voice and I heard her laugh, and that was great! Her mom would be much calmer after speaking with her.

  “Just a sec! I want to talk a little more before I pass it over,” she said into my phone as I walked into the kitchen. “I’m not, either! How dare you,” she said, but she laughed again. More like a giggle. I squinted in confusion. “Is it nighttime there? What do you wear to sleep in? I don’t wear anything at all.”

  “Kayleigh! That can’t be your mother. Who are you talking to?” I grabbed my phone from her hand. “Hello? Who is this?”

  “It’s Cain,” he answered me. “Your cousin picked up when I called. What is she doing there?”

  “She was just telling you—you were just telling him that you sleep—Kayleigh!” I broke off, not able to get the angry words out of my mouth.

  She waved her hand at me and walked quickly out of the room.

  “Aria?”

  I focused back on the phone. Cain and I hadn’t been talking all that much, with how busy he’d been and the time change due to the giant ocean in between us. But he’d been writing to me and sending pictures of where he was (mostly offices) and what he was doing (mostly working). Hearing his voice was wonderful and I could deal with Kayleigh later.