My Favorite Mistake(23)
“You’re bluffing.”
“Want to test it out?”
We glared at one another, neither willing to blink. Finally, I realized that I’d be a horrible bitch if I said no. It wasn’t like he was asking me to drive him to a bar to get wasted.
“Fine. Let me get dressed.”
“Hurry up, we have to go,” he said, pointing at a non-existent watch.
“Why, you going to be late for your appointment with Joe?” I said through the bedroom door.
He was enough of a non-ass today to not follow me. He must really be in a hurry, because this would be a prime opportunity to catch me naked. I tore through my closet. Damn, did he expect me to come in with him, and like, meet them?
“Are you decent yet?”
“Don’t rush me. If I’m meeting your family, I have to look at least presentable.”
“You’re going to meet them, not try to sleep with them. Whatever you wear will be fine. You’d look gorgeous in one of those hospital gowns.”
“Well, I’d like to look like I at least tried to make an effort.” I ripped through my closet, looking for my favorite baby blue gauzy shirt.
“Oh, for the love of —” He banged the door open.
“I swear to God, if I was naked, I would have torn your eyeballs out of your head,” I said, with my head in the closet.
“I don’t doubt it. Now, what are we searching for?”
“Top. Baby blue. Kind of ruffly on the sleeves.” Why was my closet so freaking dark? It didn’t occur to anyone that I might need a light in there.
“Like this one?” He held up the exact shirt he’d somehow extracted from my dresser drawer.
“Yes! Now I need jeans,” I said, glancing at the mess I’d made. I had a pair of dark skinny jeans that would look great with a pair of silver sandals I knew were under my bed.
“Here,” Hunter said, finding the exact jeans I was thinking of.
“Are you sure you’re not gay? Because you can put an outfit together.”
“Can you just get ready?”
Hunter was not in a playful mood. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was stressed. Hmm. That was a new emotion for him. What was he so stressed about, and what did this Joe guy have to do with it? Looked like I was going to get to find out.
“Okay, keep your shirt on. I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed a new set of underwear when he wasn’t looking and dashed to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth with one hand and finger combed through my hair with the other. I was going to leave it down, but it was doing this weird poofy thing on one side, so I whirled it into a messy bun and called it good. I usually didn’t wear much make-up and today didn’t seem like the time to mess around with my new mascara.
“If you aren’t done in thirty seconds, I’m going to break the door down, whether you kick me in the balls or not.”
I waited until he got down to ten before I opened the door. He stopped counting.
“Better than a hospital gown?”
“You could say that. “ He blinked a couple more times and rubbed his tattoo. I tried not to smirk in satisfaction.
“Don’t we need to go?” I said when he hadn’t moved.
“Right. Here,” he said, tossing me my keys.
“These were in my purse.”
“And?”
“And you would have had to go into my purse to get them.”
“We’re in a hurry,” he said.
“We will discuss this in the car,” I said, pointing my keys in his face. “And we’re listening to my music. No arguments. Also, we’re stopping for breakfast and you’re buying.”
His eyes narrowed, but when I didn’t move, he sighed.
“Fine. Let’s go.” He picked up his guitar, and we were off.
“What do you need that for?”
“Harper,” he said, as if that explained it. He was still grumpy so I didn’t push the issue.
We trooped out to the student lot, and it took me a second to remember where I parked Sassy.
“Sassy, this is Hunter; Hunter, Sassy,” I said, pointing from car to boy and back.
“Am I supposed to shake her hubcap?”
“No mocking my love for my car. I can leave you by the side of the road, Mr. Zaccadelli.”
“Yes, Miss Caldwell,” he said, opening my door for me.
“Thank you.”
I got in and cranked my Florence and The Machine CD as he stowed his guitar in the backseat. If he made any cracks about Florence, he was going down.
“God help us,” Hunter mumbled when he heard the music.
“What was that?”
“I love this song,” he said, bopping his head and tapping his hand on his knee. One, two, three, four, five. Pause. One, two, three, four, five. Pause.
“You are so full of shit.” I turned the radio up louder and yawned.
We stopped at a drive-through, and I made Hunter get me an iced coffee and cheese Danish. He got black coffee and a bagel, and seemed to be okay with my musical selections. I’d switched to The Band Perry, and I even caught him humming along.
“So where does your family live?” I said.
“Bar Harbor.”
“Yeah, I got that part when you said we were going to Bar Harbor. Can you be a little more specific?”
“I’ll let you know when we get there. You’ve been there before, right?”
“Sure.” A few times. Bar Harbor was actually part of an island known as Mount Desert Island and was home to Acadia National Park, the only National park in Maine. It also had a lot of rich people.
I finished my Danish as we passed through Bangor.
“So, aren’t you going to give me a pep talk? Like, things to avoid, what to be prepared for? I know about Harper, but is there anything else?”
“Not really. Hope is my aunt; John is my uncle. You don’t have to call them Mr. and Mrs. Mason. They kind of hate that. The only other person of importance is Harper, and you’ll get to meet her, too.”
“So they aren’t your legal guardians?”
“I’m over eighteen. I don’t have a guardian.” Ugh, he wouldn’t stop shutting me down as I fished for information. So frustrating.
“But when you did need a guardian, were they your guardians?” I glanced over to find him watching me intently.
“Has anyone ever told you that you ask way too many questions?”
“Nearly every teacher I’ve ever had. They used to call my mom in for parent-teacher conferences and they’d always write that in my evaluation.” True story.
“It’s a long story, and one we don’t have time for.”
“When will you have time? I’m really not trying to be nosy. I’m just curious.” He was my roommate, and I guessed maybe he was a friend… sort of. I wanted to know about his life. I wanted to know how he became the gorgeous douche who wrote a song about doing the dishes one minute and grabbed my ass the next.
He shifted in his seat, clearly uptight with the direction our conversation had taken.
“Do you mind if I change it?” he said.
“Sure, CDs are on the visor.” If he was going to answer my questions, he could play whatever he wanted.
He flipped through my eclectic selection and finally settled on Parachute. Huh. Not what I would have picked for him.
“I can hear you judging me,” he said as I merged onto I-395.
“I just didn’t think you were a Parachute kind of guy.”
“Why not?”
“No reason. So, you were talking about your aunt and uncle.”
“Right,” he said, but I knew he remembered. He let out a deep breath that seemed to go on forever. “They took me in when I was eleven. My parents died, and there was nowhere else for me to go.” He stopped, and I waited a few seconds before asking my next question.
“So Hope is your mother’s sister?” I had no idea, so thought I’d take a stab at it.
“Right. My mother’s younger sister, but they were only two years apart. My mother’s brother lives in Texas. He’s an ass.”
“So it runs in the family?”
“It’s genetic, what can I say?” Well, he was okay enough to joke, so that was good.
“That explains why you and Mase are like brothers.”
“We are, more or less. We grew up together, we beat the shit out of each other to solve our issues, and we’d take a bullet for the other one.”
It was like me and Tawny. If I had to stand in front of a moving truck to prevent it from hitting her, I would. She’d saved my life once, and I could never pay her back.
“I know what that’s like,” I said.
“So do I get to ask you about your family situation now?”
I shrugged. There wasn’t much to tell.
“My parents split up when I was thirteen. Dad’s an ass who just pretends like he cares. My mom’s amazing and then there’s my sister. I have a few aunts and cousins and such, but they all live in different states.”
“So that’s why you have anger issues with men.”
It took a second for the comment to penetrate my brain. He was getting very close to pushing a button he most certainly did not want to push. If he’d thought I was nuts before, it was nothing to how I could be. He hadn’t seen the worst. Not by a long shot.
“Walk away, Hunter. You have stuff you don’t want to talk about and I respect that. So I’m asking you to walk away.”