I’m still mad at my mom, and definitely still mad at Zane, but at least I’m not furious to the point where I’m a danger to the people around me.
“Okay, so obviously nothing is going to happen between Zane and me, nothing more than what already has,” I say out loud to myself. And obviously even if things weren’t going to be tense the way that we’d left them the night before, they were definitely going to be tense now after the argument Zane and I had.
My phone buzzes, and I look at the screen. It’s a text message from my mother.
Are you okay? Please let me know you’re not dead in a car accident or something, sweetie.
For a second my mood wavers between guilt and anger.
I’m fine, Mom. Be home in a bit.
That’s as much as I want to tell her, and as much as I think she deserves to know right now. The question that really weighs on my mind is the issue of the big project I have waiting for me. I’m supposed to leave to go back to Brooklyn, back to my normal life, in a little over two days. The office wants me to come home even sooner than that.
I could probably tell my mother about the call, and explain that I need to take the opportunity to get back to work, and put the whole sordid mess with Zane behind me. She might even support me about it, even if it makes things a little bit awkward with Bev and Nolan at the dinner we’re supposed to have. I could leave now and be in Brooklyn tonight, and forget I ever did anything at all with Zane Lewis.
But I don’t want to. Whatever else is going on, I want to figure out what the deal is with Zane and me, and I don’t want to see myself as a coward. I want to see myself as someone who did what she wanted to do, and faced the consequences, whatever they were.
I decide that I’ll go back home and deal with Mom, and that I am going to make a policy — we are not going to talk about Zane in any way. I’ll get to work on some of the paperwork the office sent me and I’ll avoid Zane until I have to deal with him at the dinner.
Then after all that, I will go back home, to my lonely apartment and single-girl life, and I can put everything that happened on this ill-conceived vacation behind me.
“As if it will be that simple,” I mutter to myself as I start the car up again. I’m definitely taking the long way home. I want to be ready to put my foot down with my mom when it comes to the subject of Zane. I start rehearsing what I’m going to say to her in my head, and thinking about the best way to avoid Zane without having to actually make it obvious that that’s what I’m doing.
It’s going to be complicated, I know that, but I figure that I can make it happen. Besides, it’s only a couple of days, and then I’ll be gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ZANE LEWIS
I look out over the lake where Harper left me. I have no idea what the hell to do with myself. I figure I might as well go home, but I don’t really want to. There’s nothing for me there, and I might end up getting there right after Nadine tells my parents about what she saw Harper and me doing the night before.
I’m about to get in my car and leave the lake when another car pulls into the parking area. It’s my dad, and for a second I feel guilty, thinking that for sure Nadine has gone to my parents, and this is him here to chew me out.
“Glad I caught you before you left,” Dad says through the window, pulling into the spot next to mine in the little lot. “Wanna talk to you a bit, and this is a good place for it.”
“What’s up, Dad?” I lean against my rental, my heart beating faster at the idea that I’m about to get read the riot act about fooling around with the next door neighbor’s daughter.
“I’m worried about you because you don’t seem to have much of a plan when it comes to the army. The anniversary parties seem to have taken over your vacation and I thought it was time to focus on what’s happening in your life,” Dad says.
I almost breathe a sigh of relief at that opening.
“I’ve got a couple of months to think about it before I have to pull the trigger,” I say.
“I got to thinking, when I heard you were up for discharge, you might be somewhere shacked up with someone, or at least on your way to hooking up. That’s what you kids say these days, right?”
I have to laugh at the sound of my Dad saying ‘hooking up.’
“Yeah, something like that,” I say.
“I used to take your mom out here for the occasional romantic picnic, so I figured if you did find a girl, this might be where you’d go,” Dad says, and flashes me a grin. “Imagine my surprise to see you here by yourself.”
“I just came out here to think,” I tell him.