So Over It (17 page)

Heather’s brow creased. “Complicated how?”

“You know. Just how things tend to get complicated sometimes.”

She leaned forward in her chair, wedding dress temporarily forgotten. “Complicated how?” she repeated, slower, more serious.

I took a breath but just looked at her. If I told her about Jodi, she’d see what a horrible Christian I’d been. That I hadn’t wanted Jodi at church or youth group, that I’d been hostile toward her and did nothing to encourage her transformation. I’d made it all about me and Connor.

“Did you and Connor have sex?” Heather asked.

“What? No!”

She burst into laughter. “Oh my gosh, what a relief. You kept using the word
complicated
and you clearly didn’t want to tell me what’d happened . . .”

“I can’t believe you thought we’d do that. Never. Never ever.”

Heather shrugged. “I’m glad you feel that way, but sadly it’s not always that cut-and-dried. You’re eighteen, you’re with the guy who you think could be ‘the guy’ . . . All those lines can get kinda fuzzy.”

“My lines aren’t fuzzy.”

“Good.” Heather assumed a sewing position but didn’t press her foot to the pedal. Something about the look on her face reminded me of a couple weeks ago, at Kaplan’s, when I’d been 99 percent sure she’d already lost her virginity.

“But I know what you mean,” I said. “It’s easy to get fuzzy.”

The sadness in her eyes made me ache. “You’ve no idea.” I bit my lip and focused on sewing beads to the trim of Heather’s veil. “Do you want to talk to me about something?”

She sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it.”

A long silence ensued. I peeked and found Heather staring at the bodice of her rosy dress.

“There was a guy,” she said, her voice clear and calm. “We’ll call him . . . Guy. Guy and I met in high school, at youth group, actually. He was amazing. Good-looking, funny, intelligent. And so passionate about the Bible. I thought he was it.”

Her mouth quirked into a strange smile. “I had these fantasies about getting married and spending our evenings drinking coffee and having great theological discussions. He wanted to be a pastor, and I was going to be the perfect pastor’s wife.” Heather rolled her eyes at the memory of herself. “I was such a dork, Skylar. I asked for a mixer that year for Christmas because I wanted to learn how to bake the best cookies.”

“You weren’t a dork,” I said.

“That’s when I learned how to sew too. My mom didn’t know how, so I begged Grandma to teach me. It was all about him, Guy. It was always all about Guy.”

“So what happened?”

“It wasn’t as dramatic as you might think,” Heather said, fretting with a pin. “We used to go to this parking lot after dark. Sometimes we just talked. A lot of times we fooled around. This went on for a couple years, and then one night . . .” She shook her head. “We let it go too far.

“Neither of us knew what to do on the drive home. We just sat there in the car like stones. And when we pulled into the driveway of my parents’ house, Guy said, ‘Maybe we should take a break.’ You’d think it’d have devastated me, but I felt so relieved. ‘Yeah, we should,’ I said. And that was basically the end of it.”

“That was the end of it?” I said. “A break?”

Heather nodded. “We saw each other at church, of course. But then he left for Bible college and I stuck around here for school. My parents are still friends with his parents. I hear stuff about him sometimes. He’s a pastor in Rhode Island and has twin girls.” She shrugged, as if this were no big deal.

“Do you still love him?”

Heather frowned. “I’ve thought about that a lot, about if I ever
did
love him. Have you ever read
The Great Divorce
by C. S. Lewis?”

I shook my head.

“Okay, then never mind, because I can’t explain it like he does.”

“Try.”

“Well, he’s got this theory that when you’re in heaven and looking back on your life, you’ll feel that everything was for good. Even those really sucky times, you’ll see how it all pointed heavenward. On the other side, if you’re in hell looking back on your life, you’ll feel everything was for bad. That you were always in hell. Make sense?”

I hadn’t thought so hard since I took my last final. “Kinda.”

“Okay. Well, I think it’s like that with me and Guy. If it’d all worked out and it was
me
with him in Rhode Island with twin girls, I’d probably think I truly loved him in high school. But now, feeling what I do for Brent, what I had with Guy doesn’t seem like love at all. It seems like . . . nothing.”

I stared at the shopping bag full of “whisper pink” tulle. “And this is why you won’t wear white at your wedding? Because of one night in high school?”

Heather blinked at me. “A white dress symbolizes purity. Other women disregard it. I refuse to.”

“But what about forgiveness?” I bent my head, focused once again on the beading. I didn’t want Heather seeing how my eyes had pooled. “Some of us have done a lot worse stuff than you. You’ve always told me I’m forgiven, so why doesn’t that apply to you?”

Heather paused. “I guess it’s like with Abbie. She’s forgiven for having sex outside of marriage, but God didn’t take away Owen. There’s still cause and effect.”

“I think that’s an excuse,” I said. “I think everyone has forgiven you except you. And you should wear a white dress.” I couldn’t say what I wanted to most—that I
needed
her to wear a white dress. I needed her to teach me to forgive myself.

Heather’s mouth pressed into a firm line. “I have to get ready for work.” She left the room, leaving no question in my mind that the time for me to leave had come.

I let myself out the door without saying good-bye.

When I entered my house through the garage door, it was clear Mom and Dad hadn’t heard me arrive.

“That’s not what this is about,” Mom said. It sounded like they stood in the kitchen. “Why do all our arguments turn into you concluding that?”

“I think it’s a valid point.”

“It’s
not
a valid point. Especially because I’m telling you that’s not my issue with you working late.”

“And I hear what you’re saying, but—” Dad spotted me and put on a smile. “Oh, hi, honey. How was Heather’s?”

“Fine.”

Mom turned, her smile forced as well. “You make much progress on the dress?”

“Some.”

Then we all just stood there.

“Well, I’m gonna go upstairs.” I turned and left them to finish their argument in privacy.

That gnawing feeling had returned, that my parents couldn’t make it work. That the path they’d started on last fall, when Mom left and started pursuing divorce, would eventually manifest itself.

I didn’t doubt Mom and Dad wanted to reconcile. They’d been going to counseling and seemed to be controlling each of their vices pretty well—Dad’s hours at the office and Mom’s overspending. But I continued to feel as though the other shoe would soon drop. That once again Mom would split, Dad would pretend it was normal, and Abbie would close herself off. Once again I’d be left to piece the Hoyt family back together.

As I entered the hallway, I heard crying. Not Owen’s scratchy cry, but Abbie’s heart-wrenching sobs.

I crept into our bathroom and peeked through the gap between the door and the wall. Abbie knelt beside her bed, beautiful red hair streaming into her face, blocking my view. Her narrow frame shook, and she looked so much like a child. How had she possibly given birth just a few months ago? In the corner of her room, Owen snoozed in his bouncy seat, blissfully ignorant of his mother’s emotional state.

“Please, God, help me,” Abbie choked out. “I don’t know how to get over Chris. I don’t know how to balance school. I don’t know how to do anything. I’d swear you said you wanted me to raise Owen. Please show me how. Please make me stronger. Make me better.”

I backed away from the door, restoring Abbie’s privacy. She didn’t need me. She was in good hands.

19

“That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I smiled at Connor, who’d materialized behind me. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“What
is
that?” Connor leaned over my shoulder to look at the screen of my laptop.

“It’s freaking awesome, is what it is,” I said, turning back to the picture of a Claire McCardell pattern. “Think I could pull it off?”

“Why would you want to?”

I frowned. “Easy, okay? Be nice to Claire.”

“What’s with the bow on the butt?”

“I wouldn’t make it with the bow. Or not one that full, anyway.” I enlarged the image. “I don’t know what kind of fabric she intended. I was thinking polished cotton. Wouldn’t it be perfect for Heather’s wedding?”

“I don’t know.” He squinted at the photo. “What year’s she getting married in?”

I grinned. “Hopefully 1957.”

“You’re gonna look like one of those old-timey housewives.” “I won’t. You’ll see.” I clicked to add the pattern to my shopping cart. “Just a sec and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Take your time.” He stretched out on my floor. “Your carpet smells nice. Mine smells like dog.”

“Cevin’s a nice-smelling dog, though.”

“Not this morning. He got in the garbage. Mom was livid.”

I smiled as I typed in my credit card info. “I can’t imagine that.”

“It happens.” His stomach growled. “I know I said to take your time, but—”

“Thirty more seconds.”

“You and Heather make up yet?”

I hadn’t told Connor what Heather and I fought about yesterday, just that we had. “Not yet. Hopefully by her bridal shower.”

“When’s that?”

“Next Saturday.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No,
next
Saturday.” I closed the lid of my laptop. “If I’d meant tomorrow, I’d have said tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow is the next Saturday.”

I sighed. “Wanna go to dinner by yourself?”

“You know you don’t mean that.” He stretched up his hand, and I tugged him off the floor.

“Oof,” I said as he stumbled into me. “Graceful.”

“Why, thank you.” His hands pressed into the angles of my hipbones as he steadied himself. Our gazes met, and I had one of those moments. I knew I was a girl, he was a boy, and we were standing in an empty house.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but we should leave.”

I smiled. “You read my mind.”

After a swift kiss, Connor took my hand and we headed out the door.

“So I need you to answer something for me,” Connor said as we perused the dinner options at Houlihan’s.

“Hmm?”

“Why are you struggling so much with what to major in?”

I bristled. He knew how much I hated this topic. “Lots of people struggle with what to major in.
You
don’t know.”

“That’s because I’ve got no obvious talents.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re so artistic! That sketch you made of—”

He halted me by holding up a hand. “I don’t want to debate that. I want to talk about why you’re not pursuing design, or fashion, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Don’t even want to wait until we place our order, huh?”

He smiled. “It’s not that hard of a question. Come on, now. Straight answer.”

“Straight answer?” I shrugged. “It just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do with my life, you know? I mean—fashion. How pointless is that?”

“I think you’re looking at this all wrong,” Connor said, leaning forward. “It’s not that—”

“Hey, guys.”

I looked up to find Eli towering over us, his arm around the same cute blonde girl I’d seen in the truck.

“Hi,” I said.

“You guys know Marin?”

We shook our heads.

“This is Marin. Marin, Connor and Skylar.”

She barely glanced at Connor, just zeroed in on me. Her eyes narrowed slightly with her assessment.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey,” she said, her word a mere wisp.

The waiter appeared with Connor’s and my drinks. He glanced at Eli and Marin. “What can I get you two?”

I opened my mouth to explain they weren’t with us.

Eli slid into my side of the booth. “I’ll have a Coke. What about you, Marin?”

I turned round eyes to Connor—had our date just been hijacked?