Page 53 of Regretting Youu

Chapter Fourteen

Clara

I finished my first-ever full cup of coffee about two weeks ago, the morning after my mother knocked a random hole in our kitchen door. Since then, I’ve discovered the one thing that just might save me from my monthlong depression.

Starbucks.

Not that I’ve never been to a Starbucks before. I’ve just always been that teenager who orders tea at coffee shops. But now that I know what it’s like to be sleep deprived, I’ve been through almost every drink on the menu and know exactly which one is my favorite. The classic Venti Caramel Macchiato, no substitutions.

I take my drink to an empty corner table, one that I’ve sat at almost daily for the last two weeks. When I’m not at Lexie’s house after school, I’m here. Things have gotten so tense at home I don’t even want to be there. My curfew on school nights is ten, as long as I don’t have homework. My curfew on weekends is midnight. Suffice it to say, I haven’t been home before ten p.m. since the last argument my mother and I got into.

If she’s not demanding to know where I am and who I’m with or sniffing me for signs of drug use, she’s moping around the house, knocking random holes in the doors.

And then there’s everything we haven’t talked about. The fact that I was texting Jenny when they died. And I know where she and Jonah went when they left the house together—the Langford. I saw it on the app. I asked her that night where they’d gone, but she wouldn’t tell me. If I brought it up to her now, I have a feeling she’d lie to me.

Things just feel uneven with her. We aren’t on the same page. We don’t know how to talk to each other now that Dad and Jenny are gone.

Or maybe it’s me. I don’t know. I just know I can’t take being in our house right now. I hate the feeling I get when I’m there. It feels weird without my father there, and I’m scared it’ll never go back to the way it used to be. It used to feel like home. Now it feels like an institution, and my mom and I are the only patients.

It’s sad that I feel more comfortable at Starbucks than in my own home. Lexie works at Taco Bell five days a week, and tonight she’s back at it, so I get comfortable in my quiet little corner of Caffeine Land and open a book.

I’m only a few pages in when my phone vibrates on the table. I flip it over to look at the new Instagram notification.

Miller Adams started following you.

I stare at the notification, allowing the meaning of it to soak in for a moment. Did Shelby break up with him again? Is this his way of getting back at her?

I feel a smile attempting to form on my lips, but I bite it back because I’m kind of getting whiplash. Get in my truck. Get out of my truck. Let’s be friends on Instagram. No, let’s not be friends. Okay, yeah, let’s be friends.

I won’t allow myself to feel happy about this until I know what the hell he’s up to. I open our Instagram messages, since I deleted his number, and I send him one.

Me: Get your heart broken again?

Miller: I think I did the breaking this time.

There’s no biting back my smile this time. It’s too big to fight.

Miller: What are you doing right now?

Me: Nothing.

Miller: Can I come over?

My house is the last place I want him.

Me: Meet me at Starbucks.

Miller: On my way.

I set my phone down and pick up my book again, but I know I won’t be able to concentrate on the words while I wait for him. It doesn’t matter, though, because five seconds later, Miller is pulling an empty chair over to my table. He sits, straddling the chair backward. I pull my book to my chest and stare at him.

“You were already here?”

He grins. “I was standing in line to get coffee when I messaged you.”

Which means he probably saw me grinning like an idiot. “That feels like an invasion of privacy.”

“It’s not my fault you’re severely unaware of your surroundings.”