A few hours later, Miller came trudging back.
“Well? How did it go?”
The bonfire cast light and shadows over his hardened expression. “About as bad as humanly possible.”
His boss at the arcade had given him three beach chairs to replace our rocks around the fire. Miller sat in his heavily, tossing his guitar case on the sand with more force than I’d ever seen him use.
“What happened?”
“Violet wanted to make a video of me playing,” Miller said, staring into the fire. “To put on YouTube or something. So I sang for her, and the moment grew big, and I felt things change and go deeper, so I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”
“That doesn’t sound terrible,” I offered, glaring at Ronan, who was leaving me to handle this conversation solo.
“It all went to shit,” Miller said. “Nothing changed. I kissed her, and nothing changed.” He ran his hands through his hair and then held his head, elbows resting on his knees.
“She and River?”
“Still going to homecoming together,” Miller said miserably. He sat up and hurled a pebble into the fire. “Screw it. I’ll ask Amber to the dance. Maybe start something with her and try to just…let Violet go.” His heavy glance went to Ronan. “You going to go?”
“No.”
“What about you?” Miller asked me, and I could see he hoped that at least one of us would back him up.
“No,” I said, ideas whirring in my head—one of them possibly a good one. “I have other plans.”
Seven
River
Saturday morning, I came down to breakfast to find Mom sitting with Dad and Amelia at the table and Dazia bustling around in the kitchen.
“Heya, River!” Dad said, his voice and smile both strained. “Ready for the big game today? Coach Kimball tells me scouts from three—three—colleges have confirmed and will be there. All elite football schools.”
“Dear, let him have some breakfast first,” Mom reprimanded gently. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her skin was more pallid today than it had been yesterday when she said she felt well enough to come to the homecoming festivities.
“I know, I know. But this is it. The game we’ve been working for.” Dad chucked me on the arm. “I think I’m more excited than he is.”
That’s the damn truth.
“River, darling,” Dazia called from the stove. “Eggs? Bacon? Or boring cold cereal like your sister, the little rebel.”
“Eggs and bacon would be great.”
I took my seat beside Mom, my stomach twisting in knots that had nothing to do with scouts or “the big game.”
“Hey,” I said quietly. “How you doing?”
She managed a small smile. “Hanging in there.”
Dad’s bluster faded, and he silently reached over to take her hand. She gave it a squeeze, and I watched an ocean of pain wash over them. Amelia,sitting hunched over her cereal bowl, looked up at me from behind a wall of dark hair. She shook her head slowly, then retreated again.
My stomach clenched, and it felt as if an unseen hand were pressing me between the shoulder blades.
When Mom’s gone, the spokes are going to fly off this wheel, and who the hell knows where we’ll land.
Dazia breezed over with her arms laden with plates like a waitress at a diner. “Here we are, Whitmores. Breakfast is served.”
“You’re too good to us,” Dad said brightly but then hesitated over his plate a moment before diving in. Eating his food without tasting it. A job to get done.
