The Summer of '98 Read online

  “Can we sit for a sec?”

  Cass furrowed her brows, and though she was wearing shades, I could tell that she was confused. We moved over to a bench seat that was outside a tattoo parlor, a bookstore, and a small café. We turned our knees into each other, and I took a deep breath.

  “The reason that we couldn’t continue our um—finger stuff, was because we had to go and help Noah. He was at the Weismanns, being threatened to be beaten by Peter or whatever his name is.”

  Cass’s shoulders rose with a large inhale. She pursed her lips and I could see that she was aware of where I was going with the story. “Natalie.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t with Natalie.”

  “Her mom?”

  “What? Cass, no.”

  She gasped and slapped her hand down on mine. “Her dad?”

  “Cass! No! I just said her dad was the one who was attempting to kill him.” I blanked at how slow she was behaving. She either forgot that Nadia existed, or she was in adamant denial. “Her sister. Nadia. He was with Nadia.”

  “No, no. Nope.” She folded her arms and shook her head, refusing to accept the truth. “He wouldn’t. She’s a fucking child.”

  I sat in silence while her leg bounced, and she chewed on her thumb. I felt so bad for her. She had been nothing but sweet since I met her, and I really couldn’t understand what possessed Noah to be such an asshole. I also couldn’t understand what possessed her to stick around. She could do so much better.

  “I feel like some of this is my fault,” she said. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. “We’re not official. How can I ask him to stop sleeping around if we aren’t an actual item? I just need to tell him that I want all or nothing.”

  “I thought that you hated him and wanted to let him go?” I recalled her speech from last week.

  “I think it’s obvious that I’m full of shit,” she said. “I’m obsessed with that bonehead.”

  “You shouldn’t be. He’s thick. He carries his brains in his back pocket if he can’t see what a catch you are. You deserve better.”

  “Honey, I know that.” Cass held a hand across her chest. “Trust me, I’m well aware that these curls could be tangled in the fingers of a much more deserving man. But we can’t help who we fall in love with.”

  As inclined as I was to agree, I still had to argue. “Yes, but we can help who we let touch us. You need to be strong. Tell him no. The distance might make it easier to move on.”

  She sagged with a defeated sigh. “Ellie, I know that he doesn’t love me the way that I love him. He’s never looked at me the way that Leroy looks at you. And I wish that I didn’t care about him so much. But—I do. And I guess I’m just kind of hoping that he’ll grow up and love me back.”

  Her voice hitched and I suspected that underneath her shades, she might have been fighting back tears. It broke my heart that she felt so torn-up over Noah. I couldn’t see the attraction; I didn’t get it. But she seemed to care about him more than she wanted to and I empathized, unable to imagine how awful it must be, to feel so much for someone who didn’t feel it back.

  She inhaled a deep breath, let it go, and looked around before her attention stopped on the tattoo parlor in front of us. “Should we go get matching tattoos?”

  It was so hard to tell if she was kidding or not, but I had a feeling that she meant it. “I think that would be fun and all, but we could think on it for a bit?”

  Her shoulders slouched. “Tattoos are the sort of thing you do on an impulse, chick. Let the moment carry you.”

  “I don’t think I’m in the moment.”

  She frowned and I almost wished that I was the sort of person who could walk into a parlor with no preparation and get a tattoo. It might have been fun. But the thought of Momma finding out was enough to scare the only shred of consideration right out of me.

  “I’ll watch you get one.”

  She waved me off and stood up, regaining the confidence in her posture. Confidence that was admirable and intriguing. Confidence that I wished she had when it came to standing up for herself against Noah. In all other aspects of her life, Cass carried herself as if she were untouchable, in command, sure of herself and her worth. How much of that was an act or a façade? Because I couldn’t understand how this was the same woman who let a boy like Noah walk all over her.

  We wandered into a nearby pharmacy. I wanted to browse the skincare products, more so when I saw bins full of bargain items.

  “This stuff is so cheap,” I gasped, turning a bottle of retinol over in my hand to read the ingredients. “And it’s the real deal.”

  Cass dug through the bin too, rummaging through the various cleansers and oils. “I don’t know much about this stuff. I never know what I should be using.”

  “What’s your skin like? Problem areas?”

  I’d noticed some minor breakouts on her chin and forehead but pointing it out seemed cruel.

  “I get pimples on my forehead and chin. Cheeks too sometimes.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got an excess oil issue. What about dryness?”

  “No, my skin is never dry.”

  “Definitely an oil issue, then,” I said and dug through the bin as a staff member wandered past with intent interest in what we were doing. It wasn’t uncommon for teenagers to steal from the pharmacy; it happened all the time at the one I worked at back home. I smiled at her and continued searching. “You’d benefit from using a salicylic acid face wash. Salicylic is good for excess oil. I’d start with a two percent. It’s likely to dry your skin out at the beginning, especially if you haven’t developed a tolerance to it. Be sure to use a good moisturizer, preferably one with an SPF in it. This is a good brand.”

  I shoved the moisturizer into her hands, along with the face wash. “Niacinamide is another good product for excess oil. Pure ingredients are so much better than using skincare that has like zero-point-three percent niacinamide and the rest is additives that can sometimes be worse for the skin. Niacinamide goes after the cleanser but before moisturizer. Leave it for about ten minutes to soak. Retinol! Retinol has anti-ageing properties. It speeds up the cell turnover and prevents fine lines, uneven skin texture, and age spots. It also regulates oil production and helps with breakouts. The younger you start using it, the better, but it makes your skin super sensitive to the sun, so, sunscreen every single morning. It can also dry you out so if you start to notice that, leave it for a day or two. I actually use it every second day.”

  Cass stared at her handful of products. “You might need to write all of that down for me.”

  I laughed. “Sure.”

  “Also, are you qualified to be giving out this sort of advice?”

  “I’m not giving you medical advice. None of these products are prescription only, so it’s safe. And I know what I’m talking about, I promise. I live and breathe this sort of stuff. The worst that’ll happen is some inflammation. In that case, you stop using the product and the inflammation will stop. It should be fine, though. Do a patch test on your neck first.”

  “Okay then,” she said, going to the counter. I followed her with a few of my own products. “New skin here I come.”

  We paid for our items and went back outside with a paper bag each.

  “Let’s go and get an ice cream,” she linked her arm through mine. “It’s a furnace out here.”

  “You sure about that?” I asked. “Ice cream.”

  “I’m not letting my intolerance tell me how to live. You know, I didn’t eat ice cream, cheese, milk, nothing like that until I was eleven. Eleven! Mom cut me off as soon as she found out that I was intolerant. She hated dealing with the aftermath. I was deprived, and then James left, and I ran away when it was dark outside, went to the nearest convenience store, and ate an entire tub while I walked home. So worth it.”

  I laughed as we passed a clothing store. There
were racks of scarves on the sidewalk, a stand of hats, and shoes on a table. The little tags with permanent marker prices stapled to the clothes tipped me off to the fact that it was a thrift store.

  “We should go in here,” I said, stopping to browse the shoes.

  “You wanna know why my first instinct was to eat ice cream?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Have you ever seen Kramer vs. Kramer ?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said as we slipped inside the store and the aroma of musty clothes invaded me. It was so familiar. A little slice of home right here in Colorado.

  “I’d watched it with my parents a few months earlier,” she explained as we weaved in and out of racks. “Which was totally awkward during a sex scene; I mean, I was eleven. So, anyway, there’s this scene with a little kid and his dad, and the dad is telling the kid to eat dinner, but the kid is totally acting out because his mom just left and whatever. So, the kid goes into the freezer, grabs a tub of ice cream, and the whole time his dad is like ‘Billy, you better not eat that.’ But the kid does eat it and the dad gets mad and sends him to his room, and anyway, at the time I saw ice cream as this prop that’d piss Mom off if she knew. A way to act out, I guess. Now that I look back, I think maybe I was hoping my dad would come back and tell me off for eating ice cream when I knew I wasn’t allowed to.”

  Cass still had her shades on while she flipped through hangers of coats. My heart was aching for her. She’d known her dad and had had a relationship with him—she had someone to miss. I couldn’t relate to that because I’d never known mine. Even without him, I had a mom who was there and who, while a bit overbearing, was around when I needed her.

  “You wash the clothes before you wear them, right?” Her voice snapped me out of sorrowful thoughts, and I looked to see that she was holding up a cute plaid skirt.

  “Of course.”

  “Great, because this is tight and it’s only two dollars.”

  “It’s cute.”

  She grinned, wide and convincing before she slipped around me toward the counter. Her moments of vulnerability were overwhelming to witness. There was so much I wished that I could do to help her feel more whole.

  When Leroy met us outside of Rocky Ryan’s an hour later, his brow was damp, all of the car windows were down, and he had a bottle of water between his legs as he held the gear stick. Cass slipped into the backseat, I took the front, and Leroy peeled away from the curb.

  “You do some shopping?” he asked.

  “There was a skincare sale at the pharmacy,” I explained. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  He smiled. “Where to?” He peered in the rearview mirror at Cass, who was going through her bag of clothes, the wind whipping at the paper and her larger-than-life hair.

  “Drop me off at Tony’s,” she said.

  Leroy pursed his lips, indicating some sort of internal conflict.

  “Who’s Tony?” I asked.

  “A friend of Noah’s,” he answered.

  Part of me wondered, just for a short second, if Cass was on some sort of revenge mission. Was she going to get even for all the screwing around Noah had been doing? She must have noticed the tension radiating from the front seat, because she scoffed.

  “I’m not going to hang out with Tony. I just know Noah will be there. I need to talk to that scrub.”

  No one else said anything for the rest of the ten-minute ride. The entire time, I was growing increasingly nervous over the fact that I’d told Cass what Noah had done. It worried me to think that Leroy might be pissed off at the fact that I’d snitched on his little brother. Then again, he wasn’t a fan of the way that Noah treated Cass either.

  We stopped in front of a white brick home with tall pine trees on the front lawn and a tire swing hanging from a thick branch. Turning in my seat, I saw Cass inhale a deep breath and nod with determination. She didn’t thank Leroy for the ride or tell us goodbye when she stepped out and shut the door behind her. I concluded that it was probably because she was gearing herself up for a showdown with Noah, and part of me wanted to stand beside her for that. The other part of me knew that she’d be just fine on her own.

  Leroy looked over at me as he shifted the car into first. “What was that about?”

  “Please don’t be upset with me.” His brows pulled as I worried on my lip. “I told her about Nadia and Noah. About the whole thing that went down. She was sort of upset.”

  “Why would I be mad about that?”

  “I snitched on your little brother.”

  He chuckled and settled lower into his seat, one hand on the wheel, the other on the stick. “What you choose to tell Cass is none of my business. No, I wouldn’t have told her. But there’s no issue if you choose to.”

  Something about his words bothered me. “Why, though? Why wouldn’t you tell her?”

  “It’s just . . . it’s complicated. You don’t have a sibling, so you might not understand the dynamic, but the truth is, no matter how much he pisses me off or dicks around, he’s my brother.”

  That wasn’t good enough as far as I was concerned. But how could I tell him that he was wrong? He was the one with a sibling. He knew how these things worked; I didn’t. But I couldn’t fathom that he would be so blindly loyal when Noah was hurting Cass. She didn’t deserve that, and he was fine with just . . . keeping quiet?

  “Cass knows,” Leroy said as if sensing my conflict. His attention moved between me and the road. “She knows what he’s like. She’s been warned a ton. Her choices are her own.”

  “I still don’t get it, though; you should tell her when you see him doing that sort of stuff. Don’t cover for him. You said yourself that he shouldn’t take advantage of her.”

  “I do think that, but I’m not going to snitch on him. That’s . . . not how it works.”

  My breathing grew labored. I was pissed off and it startled me to feel like this toward him. I hated it.

  “Ellie—”

  “I know I don’t understand,” I mumbled. “You don’t have to protect him when it comes to stuff like this. You’re enabling his crusty behavior. Maybe calling him out and getting him into trouble when it comes to stuff like this will help him recognize that he’s acting like a fool.”

  He didn’t respond for a while and then when he did, it surprised me. “You’re right,” he said, I looked at him. “You are. I can have his back without letting him act like an asshole.”

  “What? I mean, yes, you can.”

  He leaned over, picked up my hand, and kissed the tips of my fingers. “You’re so good, baby,” he murmured, watching the road. “You’re just good. Good heart, kind heart.”

  Speaking of my heart, I was a little worried about it at that moment. It was beating fast and hard, and it wasn’t just because we’d been on the brink of an argument, but because we’d made it to the other side of one. And the love that he expressed despite my brutal honesty, reminded me of how right we were for each other.

  Later that evening, Leroy and I were on the couch watching a DVD. His parents had an event of some sort that would give us the house free until around eight p.m. I sat tucked into his side and he used his free hand to create soft circles on my shoulder.

  “This is sort of gross,” I mentioned, watching Mike Myers on the television screen.

  “Austin Powers is hilarious,” Leroy chuckled, his fingers running through my hair. “We can change it if you want?”

  “It’s fine. Some parts are funny. It’s just super—”

  “Crude?” He finished the sentence and I peered up to find him grinning. “You’re cute.”

  I attempted to concentrate but his hands were far too distracting. His firm chest underneath me was arousing on its own accord and I was about to suggest that we make better use of the alone time when the front door slammed and Noah appeared, his eyes scanning the room until they fell on m
e and pulled me into a harsh stare.

  “You had no fucking right,” he stormed toward us. “You had no right to tell her!”

  Leroy stood up so fast that I fell back into the couch and watched him give Noah a shove, putting distance between us. “Step off, Noah. Cass had the right to know.”

  “You were the one that told her?”

  There was only a brief pause before Leroy nodded and shouldered the blame. I stood up to protest but without looking back, he raised his hand behind him to stop me.

  “You’ve never told her what I get up to,” Noah growled, his fury obvious, but he appeared more suspicious than anything. “Why now?”

  I couldn’t handle watching Leroy take the blame for something that I’d done. Not to mention Noah’s cowardice was starting to get on my nerves.

  “No, I told her,” I snapped and stepped into place beside Leroy. “She deserves to know. She deserves to know that the loser that she’s in love with is a disgusting pig. I don’t know what she sees in you. But she cares. A lot. And the worst part is, she knows that you don’t feel the same. But she still cares! She’s a great girl and you are a pathetic piece of garbage. She could do so much better and I can’t wait until she realizes it.”

  I was seeing stars. Dots of adrenaline danced in my vision. I was sure that I had red cheeks, but I didn’t wait for a response. The corridor, staircase, and upstairs hall were a blur as I took refuge in the spare bedroom. I was proud of the speech that I had delivered. He deserved to hear it and I didn’t regret one word of it.

  The bed dipped beside me and I turned to find Leroy watching me. “He needed to hear that,” he said, tipping my chin toward him so that I couldn’t avert my gaze. “You’re an amazing woman, Ellie.”

  “Do you think it’ll make a difference?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I doubt it. But he looked like he had just been slapped across the face when I left the room.”

  That felt good. I wished I could remember his expression. But it was like a haze when I tried to think about it, as if it was a drunk memory. Adrenaline was a weird thing. I leaned into his hold when he wrapped an arm around my shoulder.