Thin Love (34 page)

Keira wanted to crawl under the sink and hide. Kona knew better, he’d been with her more than Leann and he’d know there was no way she could fit in a date with Mark. Besides, Kona had won that round at Nathan’s and Mark had backed away without a fight. He had to know her mother was goading him.

“Keira and I are friends, Ms. Michaels,” he lied and Keira was grateful. She’d told Kona how ridiculous her mother was, how she wouldn’t understand their relationship. “It’s not my business who she dates. She was at the hospital when my grandfather was brought in and she was very sweet to me, helped me out when I had no idea what to do.”

There was a pause and Keira could picture her mother sipping her wine, allowing it to fuel her arrogance. Part of her was humiliated. She hadn’t wanted Kona to ever have to deal with her insane, drunken mother. That’s why she’d never asked him to come home with her for weekend. But she knew if she went downstairs, if she interrupted the verbal lashing her mother was preparing, then Kona would smile, would touch her, would call her Wildcat and all her defenses would crumble. He was good at that, the whole making her crumble thing. Keira was weak around him. She didn’t have the strength to completely walk away from him. He was too consuming and so she kept herself in that bathroom, holding onto every word he spoke. She’d missed his voice, his arms, his mouth, those beautiful eyes. But she wouldn’t let herself cave. Her heart couldn’t take another break and she was so afraid Kona’s juicing wouldn’t stop. What he was doing to himself, to his future, to his life, would be what broke that damaged heart of hers until it was nothing but dead filaments.

“Well, as I said, she won’t be back to school this week. She’s not feeling well. We think she may have picked up that virus that’s going around. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re busy and don’t have time for random visits.”

“Can you please tell her I stopped by?”

“Sure.” The door slammed before the word had left her mother’s mouth. It took ten full seconds, which Keira counted, for her to hear the quick rumble of her mother’s feet on the stairs. Keira jumped down off the hamper and darted back onto her bed just as three quick taps rapped against her door. Her mother didn’t wait to be asked in.

“Keira, that boy…”

“What boy?” She wouldn’t give her mother an inch, but just didn’t have the energy to fight. She knew the lecture would come, but she’d take it in stride, just as she had with all the stupid meddling the woman had given her during the past four days.

“That Hispanic boy.”

“Diego?”

Her mother’s lips twisted into a purse and Keira had to bite the inside of her bottom lip to keep from laughing. “No. Not
him
. The other one. From the hospital?”

Keira lowered the book she was pretending to read and looked over it at her mother. “You mean Kona?”

“That’s the one.” She sat on Keira’s bed as though she was gently inquiring and not gearing up for an investigation. “He was just here asking about you.”

“Was he?” When Keira tried crack the spine of her book open, her mother jerked it out of her hand.

“It is rude to read while someone is speaking to you.”

“I think it’s ruder to interrupt someone while they’re reading.”

She pushed on Keira’s leg, giving it a soft tap with the book in her hand. “Sit up now.”

“Mother, I have no idea why Kona was here. We’re just classmates.”

Her mother was doing that weird, suspicious calculating sneer with her mouth—twisting again, but this time there was a definite pull on her top lip. “You would have not spent hours holding that boy’s hand at the hospital if he was just a friend and he would not have driven forty-five minutes outside the city, looking the way he did, if you were just classmates.” Keira hadn’t gotten a good look at him, but he must have taken extra care with his appearance if her mother noticed. She actually seemed mildly impressed. When Keira didn’t answer, when she pulled her knees against her chest and acted as though she had no clue what her mother was implying, Cora’s weird sneer became exaggerated and she clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “I have told you once before,” now she frowned and the sneer became a scowl of disgust. Keira knew the “time before” she mentioned was her very brief rebellion with Diego, “it isn’t wise to befriend the wrong sort of people.”

“Wow, Mother,
whatever
do you mean?” Keira pulled her guitar off the foot of the bed and began to strum slowly. She did it specifically to annoy her mother. Just looking at her father’s guitar made the older woman’s face scrunch up in irritation.

“You know damn good and well what I mean. You are not to see boys like that. You are not to see boys that aren’t like us.”

Keira stopped strumming. “You mean you don’t want me hooking up with Spanish boys or Asian boys or Black boys or, like Kona, Hawaiian boys? Is that what you’re trying to say, Mother?” She gripped the neck of her Gibson to hide the trembling of her fingers. “Or is it not just the color of their skin? Do you mean I should just date boys like Mark, rich boys, privileged boys, boys in our social circle? Or, since you’re so hell bent on making sure I stay all, what? Aryan?” At this her mother’s mouth fell open. “Please clarify this for me, Mother. So you wouldn’t have a problem with me dating a boy who grew up in a trailer park as long as he was lily white?”

“Keira Nicole that is not what I mean at all.”

Keira let one tight laugh leave her mouth before she started finger picking her strings with her nails. “Then just what is it that you do mean? Oh, Mother, you’re a racist. Just admit it. We’re at home. No one is listening. If you’re going to have those opinions, then at least have nerve enough to admit you have them.”

“That is not the point.” Her mother stood from the bed and brushed one manicured hand over her pants. “I just want you to make smart decisions about who you associate with in college.” The woman had to speak over the strum of Keira’s fingers as she played faster. “Mistakes you make today will have adverse repercussions on you tomorrow. Try to remember that.”

“Yes,
Mein Führer
!”

Her mother’s face screwed up into another sneer, something ugly and insulted and Keira wasn’t surprised when she lunged forward, slapping Keira, once, twice, so hard her guitar fell off her lap. She could smell the wine on her mother’s breath, and she focused on that smell, pulling back on her anger, trying not to retaliate. It wouldn’t do any good, her mother would fight back and she didn’t care if she left evidence or not. Keira didn’t have the energy to make excuses for weeks about the marks on her face or how they got there.

She licked the corner of her mouth, relieved when there was no cut, no trickle of blood; she was almost happy that the pain radiated for her cheek and not her mouth. A slap mark would fade faster than a cut lip. It usually did.

Out of breath, her mother stepped back, pulled her knit top down from where it had ridden up over her thin hips, and brushed her perfectly styled hair out of her face, daring Keira with a stare to say something smart again. The girl knew better. “Mistakes,” her mother intoned coolly, for emphasis, in order to have the last word, “can last a lifetime, especially the ones you make when you’re young.”

Keira wondered if her mother was talking about her own mistakes. She wondered if loving her father felt like the biggest mistake of the woman’s life. If it did, that didn’t say much about Keira. If it did, that meant her mother had regretted having her as much as she regretted falling in love with a man who struggled to live out his passion. “Are you taking your birth control pills? Making sure you’re not missing?” When Keira nodded, her mother walked to the door, holding it open in one hand as she looked over her shoulder. “I know you think I’m backwards and stupid, Keira, but I really am looking out for you.”

Somehow, Keira doubted that her mother looked out for anyone but herself.

By three that afternoon, Keira was finally alone and her face had stopped throbbing. Steven and her mother swarmed out of the house, brief waves and longer warnings falling behind them as they loaded their car and headed for the airport. It was only then that Keira could breathe.

That is, until four o’clock when her mother was already on a plane and the heater broke. The weather had turned chilly, colder than it had been at the game the weekend before but it wasn’t the cold she had to deal with. The heater managed to get stuck on high, at least 80 degrees, and Keira didn’t know how to turn it off.

So she spent much of the afternoon on her balcony, guitar on her lap as she tried to find that elusive hook. She poured all her thoughts, all those bitter, angry emotions she felt toward Kona into each chord, every word she wove together. But then, as if even nature were against her, dark clouds emerged, the skies opened up, and Keira was stuck in the sauna-like house while a cold rain fell outside.

The shower Keira took should have left icicles on her skin it was so cold, but as soon as she left the bathroom and dug in her dresser, her cold skin warmed and sweat began to pool down her back. She plucked an old Black Crowes tee that was grey and slightly threadbare from her drawer and decided she’d forgo any sleep shorts. She knew she’d likely be naked before the end of the night anyway. The room was stifling and Keira needed a distraction, so she turned on her stereo, skipping through the CDs already loaded and stopped when she came across a worn, overplayed track.

Dave Matthews. “Crash Into Me.” Keira loved the quick tap of the cymbals, right on the bell top and the slow rap against the low register of the guitar. It was a song that haunted, seduced in such an intense way, and most of the time she jumped the track back to the beginning to hear that intro again and again. But Dave Matthew’s lyrics, his hypnotizing voice also filtered into her skin, had the hairs on her arms rising. She’d always wanted someone to crash into her like that, to pay tribute to her body, to touch her with that much passion. Now she did. Or she had, past tense. Her chest felt tight, emotion clotting in her throat at the thought of anyone else but Kona touching her like that.

Keira felt the tears burn against her lids and cursed herself for being weak. Crying was something she thought she couldn’t do anymore. Not since her father’s cowardly retreat. But those past few months with Kona had reawakened emotions long buried and she hated and loved him for that. With her head down on her dresser, Keira felt the vibration from the speakers and she rubbed her face against her arm, feeling weak, feeling pathetic and supremely stupid since she was the reason he wasn’t with her now. She wouldn’t second guess her decision to leave him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hurt, that she wasn’t wounded by having to walk away from him.

Outside, rain slapped against the French doors that led out to her balcony and the lights above flickered, the erratic electrical current skipping the track on her stereo. Keira looked up, watching as the feeble quake of the bulbs in her chandelier flickered and when they glowed, she pushed play again, setting the song on repeat before she turned off the overhead light and switched on her bedside lamp.

There was a huge clap of thunder outside, followed by the bright strike of lightening and Keira jumped in fright. She turned to look through the door onto the balcony to see if anything had been struck, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Kona standing on the other side.

“Shit!”

He was soaked, hair flat against his head, white t-shirt sticking to him like oil, looking like some feral god, and Keira had to force her eyes away from the outline of his body, from the hard contours of his chest and ripped stomach so she could make it across the room.

She was at the door and had almost reached for the lock before she remembered the self-warning from earlier that day—the one she had to repeat when her legs tried making her move down the stairs to save him from her mother. She couldn’t let him in. He’d kiss her, he’d apologize, he’d have her forgetting why she’d left him in the first place.

Keira pulled her hand back, stepped away from the door, before Kona splayed his hand on the glass, eyes low lidded as he silently begged her to let him in. He looked horrible. Dark circles bagged under his eyes, his body trembling in the frigid, wet weather outside and rivulets of rainwater coursing over him. “Let me in.”

It was hard to refuse him, especially when he looked so lost, but Keira managed a head shake, a quick refusal that had Kona balling his fists at his side.

“Wildcat, open the damn door.”

She hated his tone, the anger laced behind each syllable. He had no reason to be mad. That anger was for her, her tiny gift for having the stomach to walk away from him. Now Kona’s own anger turned to a threat when Kona slammed his fist against the glass.

“Stop it.” She walked closer and Kona’s eyes immediately scanned her face, moved down lower, to her chest, her hard nipples. She tried not to react to the way he was looking at her, to that simmer in his eyes or the long, slow lick he made over his lips. “Just go back to campus,” she said. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”