Her finger traced dings on the table. “Car wreck. Both my parents died. That’s how I got the scars.” She glanced up at me.
Whoa, I wasn’t sure she would answer and didn’t expect the bluntness of the statement. “I’m really sorry, Marissa. How long ago was it?”
She shrugged and refused to make eye contact. “Long time ago. Seven years this next January.”
She was so young.
“You were what? Sixteen?” I thought back to when I was sixteen. My biggest fears were the debate team and if someone noticed my worn-out shoes.
“Fifteen.”
Was this why she was afraid to plan for the future? Because herparents died? I thought of my loud, overwhelming family. What would it have been like to be raised without them? Who would I even be? Changed for sure.
Without being prompted, she continued, like a door had opened and she was afraid of what would happen when it closed. “I was raised by my Nan, my mom’s mom.” She turned and looked out the window. “It wasn’t easy to come to a small town with a tragic story like that. I couldn’t escape the stares and questions. Even now, I'm worried someone will bring it up or ask about it. I can’t move on while I'm here, you know?”
I thought about what it would be like to be a teenager and find yourself in the center of the Hillsdale gossip chain and have your entire world ripped from you. My view of Marissa as carefree sunshine was not accurate at all. I always assumed her life must have been light and breezy to make her cheerful, but it seemed like it was the opposite.
She had to be overly happy so people wouldn’t pity her for being sad.
I nodded as another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“That’s why you don’t like to plan . . .”
Marissa smirked. “We had lots of plans. My mom loved to travel. We would be on one trip, and she would already plan the next. We were going to London when I graduated. Planned to spend months backpacking through Europe. That’s where my parents honeymooned. She wanted to show me. No one knows what will happen. If you plan, it’ll hurt more if it doesn’t work.” She took a sip from her drink.
London. Another piece of the puzzle.
“I almost went after graduation, but Nan got sick and then had hip surgery, and she had always taken care of me. Then there was Harry. I was a mess when I arrived in Hillsdale. I made his coffee without a filter for three months before he told me I was doing it wrong.” Marissa chuckled. “Hillsdale has challenges for sure. Everyone is in everyone’s business, and everyone has anopinion about everything in your life. My Nan would know about stupid high school stuff before I even got home from school . . .” She leaned back in her seat and looked at me. “But when tragedy strikes, the people in Hillsdale come together. It’s annoying here but also kinda beautiful . . . sometimes.” She shook her head and picked up her pizza. “Trust me when I say I get not fitting in with Hillsdale.” She took a bite of pizza and chewed.
I reached across the table without thinking and grabbed her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. Her hand was soft under my mine. My knee jerk reaction to comfort her surprised me, but I didn’t regret the decision to reach out. And I didn’t want to take my hand back.
She shook her head, coming out of the daze of her past, and pulled her hand gently away from mine and tucked it under the table. “Wow . . .” She shook her head. “Sorry, that is way more about me than you bargained for.” Her cheeks flushed. “Tell me something about you now. Please, stop me from talking.”
The time for a change of subject was obvious. The door to her past was now shut.
“Thanks for telling me.” I smiled at her, trying to lighten the red in her face. “I’m glad you did.” She nodded but wouldn’t look in my eyes.
“I didn’t have a great high school either, although it had nothing to do with being the new kid and all with being the poor, nerdy, awkward one. That and my perfect twin brother was always everything I couldn’t be.”
Her eyebrows scrunched down. “You?”
“I had these embarrassing thick glasses and oh man, it was bad. This one time, before my parents realized I needed glasses, I walked into the girls bathroom when I was upset and my third-grade crush found me in there crying . . . She told everyone. My defense was to deny it. To this day, if that story ever gets brought up—and trust me, with my family, it gets brought up—I say it wasn’t me.” Icontinued to tell her every embarrassing thing about me I could remember. It seemed only fair.
The rest of the night, my mission was making Marissa smile and laugh. And I succeeded. As she got into her car, she had a soft smile on her lips as she looked up at me. Mission accomplished.
“Thanks for tonight.”
Chapter Fifteen
MARISSA
I punched my pillow,blaming its uncomfortable lumps on my restless night. I flopped back onto my bed and rubbed my tired eyes.
Why had I told Scott all those things about my past?
I never talked about the past to anyone. Why did I start now? Why with Scott, the man I see every day?
Would he make it weird at work today? Would he pity me now?
