For Rory
You were the sweetest baby and the kindest kid, and I know you’re going to be the most amazing man.
Aiden isn’t watching the movie.
My skin grows warm as I realize he’s not even pretending to watch the movie.
“You know, you were the one who picked this.” I extend a finger toward my laptop. “What happened to all that ‘I can’t believe you’ve lived in New Jersey for nearly a year and you still haven’t seen Garden State’?”
I barely get the words out before Aiden’s hand fits to my jaw and he leans in to kiss me. It’s a good kiss, the kind that makes my skin tingle and the whole world fade away until we’re the only two people on the planet. His free hand slides around my waist, pulling me closer, and a light sigh escapes from me. I could get so lost in him if I let myself.
That thought abruptly brings reality back into focus, and I shimmy from Aiden’s arms until we’re awkwardly sitting beside each other again in the reading chair that’s meant for only one person. This chair, my bed, and my thrift-shop desk and dresser make up the entirety of the furniture in my room—unless you count the boxes I never bothered to unpack.
Easygoing almost to a fault, Aiden lets me go without protest, raising a single eyebrow. “Did you hear your mom or something?”
I shake my head and shift to the cushioned armrest so we’re no longer smooshed together. “She left barely an hour ago. That would be a new record for world’s shortest first date, even for her.” I want to check the window, though, and he knows it.
Aiden toys with a thread from the frayed knee of my jeans. There’s an ease to the way he’s touching me that screams boyfriend. I shiver involuntarily, which in turn makes me inch my leg away.
“Would it be so horrible if she knew about me?” he says. “I mean, we’ve technically already met.” He glances over at the hiking boots next to my dresser, the ones he sold me and Mom four months ago, before she and I hiked the Smoky Mountains over the summer. I’d wanted to go to Disneyland, but she gets superanxious in big crowds, so she surprised me with a road trip and a secluded weeklong hike instead, which, I’ll admit now, turned out kind of amazing. So did the cute REI sales associate who oh so casually slipped me his number while Mom was checking out mini stoves.
I gnaw my lip, trying to think of a way to say that, yes, it would be horrible if Mom knew about him, without actually having to say yes. I settle on “It’s not you.”
In response, Aiden slowly nods. “Right.”
“It’s not.” I reach for the hand he’s drawn back. “It’s not even her. It’s me.”
He gives me a humorless smile. “Ashamed of me, huh? No, I get it. Guys who volunteer at animal shelters are generally dicks.”
“No.” I let my mouth curve up. “But they do sometimes smell like cat pee.”
A genuine laugh erupts from Aiden. “Seriously? I try to be really careful about that.”
I lean forward to brush his cheek with a kiss, catching a hint of something crisp and foresty and definitely not at all like cat pee. When I start to stand, Aiden tugs me back.
“Then what?” His voice is as gentle as his touch. “ ’Cause I keep expecting you to just ghost me one of these days, and I’m fully ready to admit how much that would suck.” His hand slips over mine. “I like you, Katelyn. I’m fine if it’s more than you like me, but tell me I’m not wasting my time here.”
Every bit of the humor that initially attracted me to Aiden is gone. We’ve always kept things light and fun. Now he looks like my next words have all the power in the world to elate or crush him.
And I will crush him. Not intentionally, and probably not without crushing myself a bit in the process, but it’s going to happen. Not because Aiden is a bad guy—I think the fact that he’s in my bedroom despite all Mom’s rules speaks for itself. As does the fact that he made a cute Rapunzel joke instead of complaining when I told him he’d have to climb the drainpipe and sneak into my bedroom if he wanted to see me. I couldn’t risk letting him use the front entrance like a normal person (I wouldn’t put it past Mom to rig the door with some kind of undetectable sign to check if it’s been opened when she leaves me home alone).
I should probably explain about my mom.
She’s amazing and funny—but nearly every hour of the day she’s terrified out of her mind that something terrible is going to happen to me. I think it has to do with how she grew up. She’s never been exactly forthcoming about her past, but I do know that her mom dropped her on the doorstep of her unsuspecting father’s trailer when she was three, never to be seen again, and that the height of her dad’s parenting skills was remembering to feed her most of the time. He died shortly before I was born, so I never met him, but given my mom’s lack of parental supervision growing up, it seems like she swung really far the other way with me.
Until a few years ago, the only time I was allowed on the computer was for school—home school, that is. And I think it was more my mom’s fear of algebra than any of my pleading that finally made her relent and allow me to go to public school. Though, to be fair, it might also have been the hunger strike I enacted.
It took me a little longer to convince her to let me get a cell phone, which I finally accomplished by printing out news stories at school about kids who got kidnapped and saved themselves by calling for help. Were some of them stories I wrote myself using mock-up layouts I found online? Maybe. But sometimes my mom needs that extra push to rein in the superparanoid would-keep-me-in-a-bubble-forever mentality that defines her as a parent.
I’ve learned that the best way to get what I want is to either convince her I’m in more danger if she doesn’t listen to my suggestions (e.g., public school, a cell phone) or just keep a few harmless details from her (e.g., Aiden).
Most days, I think she knows I cut corners when it comes to her rules, but I like to think she’s the teeniest bit proud of me when I figure out how to get around one. I’m not stupid enough to flaunt Aiden in front of her, though, which is why I practically shove him off the chair when I hear the front door open downstairs.
She did break her record. It isn’t even nine o’clock yet.
“Katelyn?”
“In my room!” I call, jumping up and pushing Aiden toward the window.
“Is this my answer?” There’s a teasing quality to his voice that I can appreciate only because he has the good sense to whisper.
“Know what happened to the last guy my mom found in my room?”
“He got invited to dinner?”