Days Like This by Danielle Ellison Read Free Book Online Page B

she was uncomfortable. I didn’t like being the one she was
uncomfortable around. “Want some water or something?” I asked.
    “No, thanks.”
    I couldn’t
stop staring at her. Her hair was short now, shorter than ever, and darker too.
So dark it made her eyes a bright blue. She’d always worn it long, past her
shoulders, and I used to love the way it’d be a tangled mess after sex, and how
we’d lie in bed after and she’d twist it around her finger like she was nervous
to look at me.
    Stop
staring at her, Tucker. Leave.
    “I guess
you’re good then. Night.”
    “Goodnight,”
she said. Her voice was low, and she bit the side of her cheek again. Part of
me wanted to ask her what was wrong, but I knew the answer. I knew it was me,
it was here, it was all the things she hated in one place. The sad part was I
used to be the one thing that made her happy. Or so I’d thought.
    “Graham,” she
called. I inhaled and turned back to face her. Her hair was new, but she stood
in that room like she fit there. Even though the paint was different and we
were different and so much time had passed, she still belonged there. And it was
damn annoying because it was the one place she didn’t want to belong. “Thank
you.”
    I waved her
off. “The room was all Mom.”
    She shook her
head slightly. “For my mom. For being here to help. For the call.”
    The only thing
I could think of to say was “someone had to do it” but I didn’t want to see her
face when I said it. So, I nodded and walked out the back door.

    I WAS AFTER orange juice. It
was a few minutes past 7 a.m. and I was going to go into the kitchen, get the
juice, and get out. But Mom was already up and behind the stove. A stack of
pancakes was forming beside her, and I thought twice about going inside. If she
saw me, she would plan for me to stay, too. I couldn’t eat pancakes across from
Cass and my mom and pretend everything was normal when it wasn’t. Mom probably
wanted me to, especially since Dad left this morning for Japan, but I couldn’t.
I’d have to tell her the truth eventually, I guessed, about why we weren’t
together.
    “Graham, you
can come inside,” she yelled out the window.
    “I only need
orange juice,” I said, closing the door behind me.
    Mom huffed.
“I’m making pancakes.”
    “I see that.”
    “Blackberry—those
were always Cassie’s favorite, remember?”
    I’d never
forget. Cass stayed over once when I was seventeen, and my parents were in New
York City visiting my brother, Timothy; we woke up to a batch of blackberry
pancakes and my parents sitting at the table. “I made your favorite, Cassie,” Mom
had said. Cassie had on my clothes and hair all over the place. A whole weekend
of teenage drinking and sex will do that. I thought for sure they would say
something else, and I already had three escape routes planned in my head, but
they didn’t. Instead, Cassie’d said, “Thank you,” and we all ate breakfast like
it was the most normal thing in the world. Later, I’d heard all about having
her over here, and using protection, and pregnancy—the whole thing.
    “I remember,
Mom,” I said. She laughed a little, but didn’t turn around. I grabbed the
orange juice out of the fridge. “I can’t stay though.”
    “Why not?”
    “Have to go to
the site.”
    “I thought
they finished up the day of the fire?”
    Crap. “About
that fire—Cassie doesn’t know.”
    “Doesn’t know
what?”
    I took a sip
of the juice but Mom stared me down. “That it was me who saved Mrs. H. I told
her Mrs. Pearson called 911.”
    Mom put her
hand on her hip, looked at me like I was insane, and held her spatula in the
air with the other hand. “You lied to her?”
    “I didn’t want
her to know it was me,” I said, sitting down.
    Mom shook her
head. She wouldn’t understand why, not if I didn’t tell her the truth. The
skillet sizzled as she flipped the pancake over. “This is a small town, Graham—you
can’t expect to keep