“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, squaring my shoulders. He opens his mouth to say something when the door clicks open with a loud buzz, and the two criminals wander through.
Kaia’s sporting a nasty bruised cheek and wearing an oversized t-shirt that is clearly Boone’s because he’s in a dirty black tank top and looks much more pleased with himself than Brighton.
“You brought him?” Kaia whines. “Now we’re going to be in trouble!”
“You got thrown in jail, Kaia. You were already in trouble,” Brighton snips. “What were you thinking?”
“Probably shouldn’t admit to anything inside the police station,” Boone whistles and throws his arm around Kaia before parading out the front doors. Once we’re in the parking lot, Brighton asks again and pops the tail on his truck. “Up.” He pats the tailgate, and Kaia obeys without hesitation. In true fashion, he has a first aid kit in the emergency duffle and grabs her by the chin to look at the cut on her cheek.
“Explain. Now,” he barks.
“Turns out the reason Garth is a shit head is that it runs in the family. Ricky wasn’t very remorseful about his son's actions. He assaulted Lori.” Boone leans against the truck and watches his brother carefully as he cleans the cut.
"He admitted that?" I ask.
"Sort of," Kaia tries to look at me and Brighton turns her face back to him. "He referred to it as a private misunderstanding and that boys will be boys."
“So you punched the mayor?” Brighton growls.
“Kaia punched the mayor,” he corrects, and Kaia smiles brightly. “I punched his security officer,” he admits.
“What did you say to him?” I ask them both.
“Well, after we egged his Mercedes—” Kaia starts, and Brighton tightens his grip on her face. “Ow.” She snaps, and he lets her go. “He came out hot and denied his son's involvement in anything that Lori is claiming. Which means something bad happened, but after he was punched it loosened up his jaw muscles. Boone reminded him how much of a motormouth I am. And that if he pressed charges, I’d make sure that everyone knew what kind of person his son is.”
“Turns out Garth is on his last strike,” Boone says, angling Kaia’s face with a finger under her chin as Brighton backs away. “He’s being sent to boarding school at the end of the semester.” He inspects the cut, and his eyes meet mine. “Problem solved.”
“So why did they throw you in jail?” Brighton asks.
“For show. Can’t punch the mayor without consequences, Brighty,” Kaia purrs.
“Don’t call me that,” he grumbles. “And get in the truck.”
Boone helps Kaia down, and they wander around to climb into the back together as Brighton closes the back with a loud slam.
“Thank you,” he says, wetting his bottom lip like it costs him. I don’t say anything back because I’m still upset with his nonsense, but I let him open the passenger door for me, and this time he doesn’t close it in anger.
“Oh, Rhea, I love that color!” Mom coos from the other side of the video call. The phone is propped up on the dresser as I slip into the floor-length dark blue satin dress. It hugs everything, and the thin straps at the top crisscross over my exposed back, connecting to the swooping waistline around my hips that settles just above my tailbone. I can tell she doesn’t like how much skin it shows, but I work hard for this body, and I want to make sure everyone else knows it, too.
The muscles in my back are tense from being nervous, and there’s about fifteen crumpled pages on my bed from trying to write some speech that would make people remember my face. Everything sounds so stupid and so fake, and I gave up hours ago before getting ready for the awards.
“What are the other girls wearing?” Mom asks, and if she’d ever made time to come to these things, she’d know that every year we pick a color and all find dresses that match the color. This year is blue.
“Other shades of blue,” I say as I change out the plastic spacers in my ears for something fancier.
“Oh, you’ll all look so pretty,” she says, her focus on something else as she talks. “I’m so sorry we can’t be there, Rhea. You just know how expensive the tables are, and Gabe is at work, so there’s no one to watch the kids while I’m out.” I tune out her excuses as she continues to talk and make sure that all the pieces of my dark hair are lying right in the soft curls I formed them into.
“It’s okay, Mom. I get it.” I say, trying to sound sympathetic to her guilt. “It’s not that big of a deal anyway, it’s the same as every year. Stuffy speeches about sports, drunk hockey players hitting on people, the coaches all hogging the karaoke machine at midnight,” I talk until she stops whining about not being able to come, and expertly hide how much it is bothering me that she’s not. But if she knew about the award, then she’d make this ten times worse and still not have the time to show up for it. But in reality, winning Best Female Athlete is a big deal,a really big deal.
“What shoes did you pick out?” she asks after a few moments of me shuffling around, looking for my necklace without luck.
“I was thinking about wearing my heels, the black ones,” I say, wandering out to the living room to grab them from the closet. I had them all in my room, but the Terminator took them all and organized them into their own space at the front door. Part of me is grateful; the ones I did save from the condo were crushed in a cardboard box at the foot of my bed.I just wish he’d ask before he went all Marie Kondo on my belongings.
I grab the heels from the closet and set them out.
“The four-inch ones that you wore to graduation?” she asks me. “Those made you tower over everyone in every picture you took, Ree,” she says, meaning well, but it feels like I’ve been pinched. “Don’t you want to look nice in photos tonight? If you wear those, most of the girls will look like twelve-year-olds next to you. Where are the flats that we bought you for the wedding?”
“When I was a teenager, Mom? In the garbage.” I laugh.
