Regretting You (23 page)

She follows us as we put our trays away. Miller swipes the bag of chips off my tray when she’s not looking and shoves them into the front of his jeans, covering them with his T-shirt.

The monitor leads us to the library, where she signs us in for lunch detention. I have literally never had lunch detention in my life. This is a first, but I’m actually a little excited about it.

We take a seat at an empty table. The teacher who’s monitoring detention is playing a game on his phone while his feet are propped up on the desk. He doesn’t pay us any attention.

Miller begins to move his chair a little bit at a time so that it goes unnoticed. It reminds me of how he’s been moving the city limit sign.

He’s eventually sitting so close to me that our thighs and arms are touching. His proximity is nice. I like the way it feels being close to him. I also like the way he smells. Normally, he smells like bodywash.
Axe, maybe. Sometimes he smells like suckers. But right now, he smells like Doritos.

My stomach growls, so Miller leans carefully back in his seat and sticks his hand in the band of his jeans. He removes the bag of chips and coughs a little when he opens them to cover the noise of the crinkling bag.

The detention monitor looks in our direction. Miller stares down at the table and tries to look innocent. When the guy goes back to playing his game, Miller holds the bag of chips toward me. They’re all crushed, so I take the most solid one I can find and slip it into my mouth before the teacher notices.

We eat the entire bag this way, taking turns sneaking chip fragments, sucking them until they’re soggy so we don’t crunch too loud. When the bag is gone, I wipe my hands on my jeans and raise an arm. “Excuse me?”

The detention monitor looks up.

“Can we get a book off the shelf to read?”

“Go ahead. You have sixty seconds.”

A few seconds later, we end up on the same aisle, and Miller’s mouth is on mine, my back against a wall of books. We’re laughing while we kiss, making every attempt at being quiet. “We’re gonna get detention again,” I whisper.

“I hope so.” His mouth meets mine again, and we both taste like Doritos now. His hands slide from my cheeks down to my waist. His tongue is soft, but his kisses are quick. “We better hurry. We only have thirty seconds left.”

I nod but wrap my arms around his neck and pull him even closer. We kiss for about ten more seconds before I push him away. His hands remain on my hips.

“Come to the theater tonight,” he whispers.

“You working?”

He nods. “Yeah, but I can get you in free. I’ll make fresh popcorn this time.”

“Sold.”

He pecks me on the cheek and grabs a random book off the shelf behind me. I grab one, too, and we both return to our seats.

It’s hard to sit still now. He got me all worked up, and I want to hold his hand or kiss him again, but we have to settle for playing footsie instead. After a while, he leans over and whispers, “Mind if we trade books?”

I look at his book, and he closes it so I can read the cover.
An Illustrated Guide to the Female Reproductive Cycle.

I cover my laughter with my hand and slide him my book.

When we’re back at my locker after detention, Lexie appears. She wedges herself between Miller and me. “He’s funny.” I think she’s talking about Efren. “Short, but funny.”

“You two should come to the movies with me tonight,” I offer.

Lexie makes a gagging sound. “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever gone to the theater with you?”

I think about that, and she hasn’t. I’ve just never questioned it.

“Do you have something against movie theaters?” Miller asks.

“Uhhh,
yeah
. They’re disgusting. Do you know how much semen is on a theater seat?”

“Gross,” I say. “How much?”

“I don’t know, but they should probably research it.” She pushes off the locker and walks away. Miller and I both stare at her.

“She’s interesting,” he says.

“She is. But now I’m not so sure I want to come to the theater tonight.”

Miller leans in toward me. “I clean that theater, and it’s spotless. You better show up. Seven?”

“Fine. I’ll be there. But if you could Lysol the entire back row of every room, that would be great.” Miller leans forward to kiss me goodbye, but I push his face away with my hand. “I don’t want detention again.”

He laughs while he backs away. “See you in six hours.”

“See ya.”

I don’t tell him there’s a chance I might not be there. I haven’t talked to my mother about it yet. After what happened in the hallway today, it’s clear she doesn’t want me dating Miller. I’ll probably hang out at Lexie’s after school for a while and then lie to her and tell her we’re going to the movies.

I’m getting pretty good at lying to her. It’s easier than telling her the truth.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MORGAN

Jonah knocks softly on the front door before opening it.

I’m on the couch with a sleeping Elijah when he lets himself in.

“I picked him up right before they were about to lay him down for a nap,” I whisper.

Jonah looks down at Elijah and smiles. “They sleep so much at this age. I kind of hate it.”

I laugh quietly. “You’ll miss it when he starts refusing to take naps.”

Jonah nods toward the garage. “I didn’t have time to run home after work. Mind if I try to unlock Chris’s toolbox?” I shake my head. Jonah heads in that direction, and I put Elijah in his bassinet. I move it to the far side of the living room so that the noise from the kitchen hopefully doesn’t wake him.

Jonah walks back into the house with Chris’s toolbox and carries it into the kitchen. I follow him to help him with the door.

I hand him a knife, and it only takes him a few seconds to pick the lock. After he opens the lid, he lifts the top tray out so that he can search through the larger section in the bottom.

There’s a perplexed look that suddenly appears on his face. That look prompts me to walk over to the toolbox and look inside.

We both stare at the contents that were hidden beneath the top tray.

Envelopes. Letters. Cards. Several of them, all addressed to Chris.

“Are these from you?” Jonah asks.

I shake my head and take a step back, as if the distance will make them disappear. Every time I feel like one of my many wounds might be starting to heal, something happens to rip it open again.

Chris’s name is written in Jenny’s handwriting on the outside of all the open envelopes. Jonah is sifting through them.

My heart begins to race, knowing there could be answers to all of our questions inside those envelopes. When did it start? Why? Was Chris in love with her? Did he love her more than he loved me?

“Are you going to read them?” I ask.

Jonah shakes his head with assurance. His decision is so final. I’m envious of his lack of curiosity. He hands them all to me. “You do what you need to do, but I don’t care to know what they say.”

I stare at the letters in my hands.

Jonah grabs what he needs from the toolbox and pushes it aside, then gets to work on the last stubborn door hinge.

I walk the letters to my bedroom and drop them onto the bed. Even just holding them feels too painful. I don’t want to look at them while Jonah is here, so I leave my bedroom and close the door. I’ll confront them later.

I push myself up onto the counter in the kitchen, and I stare at my feet, thinking of nothing but the letters, no matter how hard I try to think of something else.

If I read them, will it give me a sense of closure? Or will it only deepen the wound?

Part of me is afraid it’ll make it worse. The small memories I have make it bad enough, like the one I had this morning that almost brought me to tears.

Jenny and I were downtown last year, a week before Chris’s birthday. She was adamant about getting him a particular abstract painting
she saw hanging in a store. In all the years I’d been married to Chris, I’d never known him to be interested in art. But the painting reminded Jenny of Chris somehow. I never thought much about it. After all, she was his sister-in-law. I loved how well they got along.

The painting hangs above the portable kitchen island I keep shoved against the wall.

I’m staring at it now.

“Jenny was adamant about getting Chris that painting for his birthday last year.”

Jonah pauses what he’s doing and looks over his shoulder at the painting. Then his eyes sweep quickly over me, and his focus is given back to the door.

“I told her he would hate it, and do you know what she said to me?”

“What’d she say?” Jonah asks.

“She said,
‘You don’t know him like I do.’
”

Jonah’s shoulders tense, but he doesn’t respond to that.

“I remember laughing at her because I thought she was joking. But now, knowing what we know, I think she actually meant it. She was serious about knowing my husband better than I did, and I don’t think she meant to say that out loud. Now, every time I look at that painting, I can’t help but wonder what story it holds. Were they together the first time he saw it? Did he tell her he loved it? Every memory I have of them I thought was set in stone. But the more I think about it—about them—those memories are all changing shape. And I hate it.”

Jonah finally gets the door off the hinges. He props it up against the wall and then leans against the counter and grabs a Jolly Rancher. I’m surprised when he pops it in his mouth.

“You hate watermelon.”

“Huh?”

“You just ate a watermelon Jolly Rancher. You used to hate them.”

He doesn’t respond to my observation. He’s staring at the painting when he begins talking. “The night before they died, when we were
all eating dinner at the table? Chris asked her if she was excited about the next day. And I thought nothing of it when she said,
‘You have no idea,’
because she was supposedly starting back to work the next day, and I assumed that’s what they were talking about. But they were talking about staying together at the Langford. They were talking about it right in front of us.”

I hadn’t thought about that moment. But he’s right. Jenny looked Chris in the eye and more or less told him she was excited about getting to sleep with him. Chills creep up my arms, so I rub them away. “I hate them. I hate them for lying to you about Elijah. I hate them for rubbing it in our faces.”

We’re both staring at the painting now. “It’s such an ugly painting,” Jonah says.

“It really is. Elijah could probably paint something better.”

He opens the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of eggs. When the refrigerator door falls shut, he opens the eggs and pulls one out, cupping it in his hand. Then he throws it at the painting. I watch the yolk trickle down the right side and fall onto the floor.

I hope he knows he’s cleaning that up.

Jonah is in front of me now, holding out an egg. “Feels good. Try it.”

I take the egg and hop off the counter. I draw my arm back like I’m throwing a softball, and then I hurl the egg at the painting. He’s right. It feels good watching it splatter over a memory Jenny and Chris made together. I take another egg from the carton and throw it. Then another.

Sadly, there were only four eggs in the carton to begin with, so now I’m out, but I feel like I’m just getting started. “Find something else,” I say, urging Jonah to open the refrigerator. Something about destroying one of their memories fills me with an adrenaline rush I didn’t even know I’d been missing. I’m bouncing on my toes, ready to toss something else, when Jonah hands me a plastic cup of chocolate pudding. I
look at it, shrug, and then throw it at the painting. Part of the plastic punches through the canvas.

“I meant for you to
open
the pudding, but that works too.”

I laugh and grab another pudding from him, then tear open the film. When I try to throw the pudding at the painting, the contents are too thick and too hard to get out. It’s not as satisfying as the egg until I dip my fingers into the cup and walk to the painting. I smear the pudding across the canvas.

Jonah hands me something else. “Here. Use this.”

I look down at the jar of mayo and smile. “Chris hated mayonnaise.”

“I know,” Jonah says with a grin.

I dip my whole hand inside of it, scooping out a cold glob of mayonnaise before smearing it on as much of the painting as I can. Jonah is next to me now, squirting mustard on the canvas. Normally, I’d be freaking out about the mess we’re making, but the satisfaction far outweighs the dread of the eventual cleanup.

Besides, I’m actually laughing. The sound is so foreign I’d smear mayonnaise all over the house just to keep up this feeling.

I’ve smeared almost an entire jar of mayonnaise over the painting when Jonah starts at it with a bottle of ketchup.

God, this feels good.

I’m already thinking about what else in this house might hold secret memories between the two of them that we could destroy. I bet there’s stuff in Jenny and Jonah’s house too. And Jonah might even have more eggs than I did.

The jar of mayonnaise is finally empty. I try to turn around so I can find something else to throw, but the combination of bare feet, egg yolk, and tile flooring doesn’t make for a reliable surface. I slip and grab at Jonah’s arm on my way down. In a matter of seconds, we’re both on our backs on the kitchen floor. Jonah tries to push himself off the floor, but the mess we’ve made is everywhere. His palm slips on the tile, and he’s on his back again.