The Stars Will Shine (11 page)

“Right down my alley,” I reply. “Plus, I’m so hungry, I will eat anything right now. How much do I owe you?”

She waves her hand in a dismissive manner. “Don’t worry about it.” Leaning over the counter, she asks, “What are two working on?”

I turn the laptop so she can see our flyer designs. Trevyn and I both cringe a little when her mouth turns down.

“Ah.” It’s all she gives us.

Trevyn states the obvious. “You don’t like them.”

Amber pulls on her earlobe some, still scrutinizing the fliers onscreen. “You remember that I took some graphics design courses in college, right?” she tells Trevyn. “I would’ve gladly helped you guys with this.”

Trevyn and I let our breaths out at the same time, not out of exasperation but out of relief.

“Please, Amber,” I say, folding my hands into praying pose. “You still can help us. Please fix these sad excuses for flyers.”

Her mouth twitches into a smile. “Gladly, darlings.” She slides her bag off her shoulder and nods toward the takeout. “You two get eating.”

And we do. We gobble down that Italian food while Amber bends over the laptop, furiously hitting keys and rapid-firing the mouse. Fifteen minutes later, she flips the laptop so we can see her progress.

“How does this look so far?” she asks.

I know this doesn’t sound pretty, but I swear, the noodles I just shoved into my mouth slide back out when my jaw goes slack.

The flyer is incredible. It has a fitting retro vibe in its fonts, color scheme, and television-static texture. But all that is mixed brilliantly with a classic rock feel. At the middle-bottom, there’s a silhouetted graphic of an electric guitar with its chord snaking to the edge of the flyer. The shop’s address is typed in a single line across the bottom. In large bold font,
Miles of Vinyls
stretches across the top. And below that in smaller and simpler type:
Walk the road. Enrich your soul.

“Holy smokes,” Trevyn remarks.

Amber, pleased with our reactions, pulls the laptop back and continues working, a proud tilt to her lips.

Chapter Eight

Following Aiden’s confession about the wine incident, Aunt Miranda sort of wordlessly ungrounded me by simply not objecting whenever she saw me leave the house. Of course, immediately after Aiden left, she made a big fuss over having mistakenly punished Dylan. Dylan said nothing to her in reply, didn’t acknowledge her in the least, just walked past with a stoic expression and went up to his room again to play guitar. The soulful wails of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” followed, winding their way down the staircase and around Aunt Miranda and me where we stood in the kitchen, not looking at each other.

It’s Friday now and hard for me to believe I’ve been living in California for almost two weeks. Aunt Miranda is gone for a weekend of wine tasting in Napa Valley with some of her college sorority sisters. I still can’t decide whether it was funny or pathetic seeing middle-aged women act like they did back in college, squealing and screaming and shuffle-running in four-inch heels into each other’s arms. I’m just glad they didn’t stick around for long because I don’t think my sanity, or Uncle Jim’s and Dylan’s for that matter, would have lasted. We very nearly turned to savages and clawed each other’s eyes out, just to vent.

I stand at the bottom of the stairs in a debate with myself over whether I feel like holing up in my room for the day or driving around town just for the hell of it. I haven’t been out much, what with putting so much time into Miles of Vinyls, so I could probably use the sun and fresh air on this day off from work. Maybe I’ll take a day trip to Sausalito.

But just as I open the door to head out, Uncle Jim’s voice stops me.

“Hey, Delilah.” There’s a question in it, I can already sense that. I shut my eyes and roll them beneath my lids before I turn around. He stands in the hallway that leads to his and Aunt Miranda’s bedroom, his head down while he focuses on fastening the cufflinks attached to his white Oxford shirt.

“Yes,” I ground out, mostly because I can’t stand hearing this man talk. There’s an underlying arrogance in his voice that makes even the nicest thing he says sound condescending.

He flicks his eyes casually upward, not noticing my annoyance. “I have a meeting with a young couple that wants to use our winery as a venue for their wedding.” He slips a dark gray blazer off its hanger from a hook on the wall, shrugs into it, and straightens it by the lapels. “Do you think you can check on Leah every once in a while? Dylan doesn’t seem to be around.”

No, he wouldn’t be, would he?

I sigh inwardly and shut the door, having barely missed my escape. “Sure,” I say flatly. It really doesn’t bother me to spend time with Leah, as I’ve been wanting to get to know her better, against Dylan’s orders. It’s more that I want Uncle Jim to know how much I don’t like him.

“Good,” Uncle Jim says without looking at me, and then he is gone, probably for the rest of the day.

***

“Hey, Leah,” I say, hesitant. She is sprawled out on the sofa in the living room, her feet crossed at the ankles and her hands tucked under the pillow beneath her head. She tilts her head back to look at me.

“Hey,” she says with a sort of breathless brightness. She has a sweet innocence to her voice and in her eyes—the complete opposite of Uncle Jim, and I can’t say it reminds me of Aunt Miranda or Dylan either. How did she come out an angel in the midst of all these gargoyles?

Leah props herself up on her elbow, drops her eyes, then rushes to sit fully upright. After flipping her hair perfectly over her shoulders and smoothing the blue cotton skirt she wears, she glances up at me again, a little flushed as if by finding her sprawled out, relaxed on the couch, I caught her in some indecent state. I smile kindly, in a way I hope conveys I don’t expect her to act all prim and proper in her own house.

“What’re you watching?” I plop down onto the white leather recliner by the couch. Everything is white in this house—the furniture, the floors, the walls, the shelves. It’s unnerving, actually. As spotless as a hospital and just as suffocating. Maybe it was Aunt Miranda that decided on this interior, but the house exudes the personality of Uncle Jim.

“Oh, just…
Gilmore Girls
. I have all seven seasons.”

“Can I watch with you?”

She stares at me for a moment, and I see thoughts slide through her eyes—confusion, hope, uncertainty. She narrows her gaze on me.

“Did my dad force you to hang out with me?”

My heart skips a beat, but I don’t hesitate when I lie. “No, of course not. I just figured we haven’t really gotten to talk much yet…I’ve been busy working and all, and figuring out what all there is to do in this…town.” I swallow and trace the threading of the armrest with my index finger. “I thought it’d be cool to hang out. The last time I saw you I was your age, and you were, like, five. Maybe you don’t even remember me.”

“I remember you,” she squeaks. “I—I mean, I remember thinking you were kind of awesome.” She blushes again and gives me a timid smile. “I was, you know, proud that you were my cousin.”

I laugh. “No way.”

Her eyes grow saucer-like. “Yeah, you were really good at soccer, and you could play piano really well.” She has an energy, an eagerness so obvious on her face when she talks about me, and it makes my heart hurt…because she remembers me as someone she looked up to. But that girl she remembers is long gone. I haven’t touched a piano in years, and I quit soccer after the whole thing with Tommy, when everything began to feel heavy and pointless.

“Delilah?” Leah’s voice breaks my dark reverie, and I realize I’ve been staring unblinkingly at the centerpiece on the coffee table. I force a smile, but Leah still watches me with the keen child-like sense that something is wrong. I don’t want her to see me how I really am—I don’t know why. I never act like I care about how everybody else sees me. But hearing Leah talk about me as though she admires me moves something in me, and it would just…break my heart to let her down.

She settles back into the couch, still watching me but with a lighter expression now.

“I’ve always wanted a big sister,” she says. “I mean”—she examines her hands and fingers as she twists them together—“it’s not that I don’t love Dylan. I really do…a lot. Just, sometimes I wish I had a girl to talk to.”

This is exactly what Dylan doesn’t want. Not that he doesn’t want Leah to have all that, but he doesn’t want
me
to take on that role. And at this moment, while my heart thumps hard in my chest at her words, I don’t blame him. I am not the girl Leah should be looking up to. I am not the one she should be talking to about girl things. I can’t give her what she wants. But I can’t explain that to her because she’s staring at me with hope in her eyes, a light so bright it burns me on the inside, and she wants me to tell her I’ll be everything she’s looking for.

“Yeah,” I whisper shakily because it’s all I can manage right now. “Yeah, I’ve always wanted a sister, too.”

With a pout she says, “You and me, we got stuck with just boys.”

“They got stuck with just girls, too,” I point out, and she giggles.

“But we’re more manageable than they are.”

Oh, if only she knew how untrue that is.

“Is there a boy you like?” Leah’s voice is still like candy, colorful and sweet and delightful. “I like a boy. He’s in my class. And I think he likes me, too. Mom says I can’t like boys yet.”

I feel a stab to my chest. Tommy’s face swims before me, and I grip the armrest of the recliner so hard my fingers go rigid and pale.

“Well, maybe you should listen to your mom.” I try to slow my breathing, but all my lungs want to do is expand in a gasp for oxygen.

“But he’s super sweet. We held hands during recess on the last day of school. Do you think he’ll still like me when school starts again?”

I blink slowly, hard. “Boys can seem sweet,” I say. “But a lot of times, they just break our hearts.”

She blinks back at me with a look that makes me feel like the ultimate dream-crusher.

“I mean,” I blurt in a rush to make things right, “of course, not all boys are like that.” My thumb and forefinger come up to pinch my ear, a nervous habit. “What’s his name?”

“Jacob,” she answers, still staring like a child that’s just discovered Santa isn’t real.

“I’m sure Jacob is a very nice boy. I just meant that sometimes we girls need to protect our hearts.”

Her expression grows soft. “Did you love somebody that hurt your heart?”

How does she see right through me? My chest squeezes again, and I turn away so she won’t see the pain on my face.

“No,” I let out, “I just know somebody who did.”

“What happened?”

Hot prickles build behind my eyes, but I steady my voice when I say, “My friend—she loved a boy before she understood what it really meant to love somebody. And she thought he loved her, too.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“That wasn’t very nice of him to go on giving her the impression he did, when he didn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She shakes her head, a somber look about her. “I don’t think Jacob is like that. He picked me flowers once.”

I lean forward and pat her knee gently.

“Leah, I heard your mother say something to you the other day. She said, ‘You’re a woman now.’ What did she mean by it?”

Leah turns a deep shade of scarlet.

“Oh.” Picking at the seam of her skirt, she mutters on, “I started my…you know…my period.” She whispers the last word like it’s a bad word, and it makes me want to wrap her delicate frame in my arms. I sink, relieved, into the couch.

“Oh, Leah, it’s nothing to be ashamed about.” I run my hand down her hair. “It really sucks though, I’ll tell you that.”

Leah laughs. “That’s what Momma said, too.”

It is 1:00 a.m. when Dylan returns home, Aiden in tow, from wherever the hell they’ve been all day. Their hair is ruffled, and there’s dirt smeared across their faces and mud caked on their clothes. Dylan has a large rip at the hem of his shirt, a split lip, and dried blood below his nose. They’ve left their shoes and socks outside, so they’re standing in the entryway with bare feet. Dylan glares in my direction when I raise my brows at them.

“What happened to you guys?” I say as I take a swig from my water cup. They reek of alcohol, and closer examination of their faces leads me to believe Dylan is the more intoxicated one. Not surprising in the least.

“Shut up,” Dylan replies with a slur. He looks up the stairs then down at himself and frowns. “Mom will kill us if we track mud through the house,” he mutters to Aiden.

“Especially on that pristine carpet of hers,” I supply with a pointed nod to the untainted whiteness covering the stairs. “Better strip down, boys.”

Aiden coughs, his hand coming up to scratch his hairline, but Dylan just glares languidly at me again.

“She’s right,” he admits reluctantly. It kills him to agree with me. He takes off his shirt, not without some trouble, and trips out of his pants until, still distracted and disgruntled, he stands in only his boxers. He balls up his muddy clothes, and when he does, his wallet falls out. I’m too quick for him when I scoop it up and slide out his I.D. One glance at the name verifies my suspicions.