A relieved smile relaxed her face and body. “I’m always so sweet to you, and yet you say stuff like that to me.”
I leaned closer and angled my head. “Right in the left tear duct. That one gushed when I read the last paragraph.”
Jolene smushed her ice-cream cone in my nose.
I licked at a gummy bear that started to slide down my cheek. “Yeah, you’re a sweetheart.”
It was cold, but she was laughing, and I’d been the one to make her laugh.
“Really though,” she said a few minutes later, leaning toward me and scrutinizing a place on my jaw that she’d wiped clean with a napkin. “You didn’t hate it?”
I stilled her hand with my own. There were a few sentences that could be smoothed out, and her opening paragraph was a little scattered, but the heart of her essay—Jolene’s heart—beat beautifully through the whole thing.
“No, I didn’t.”
She gave me a funny look and sat back. “Will you help me though, just a little? I need the film program people not to hate it either.”
We spent the next hour going over it on her phone. I made a few suggestions, but I’d meant what I’d said: it was good already.
Somehow, Jolene wasn’t frozen after all the ice cream she’d eaten, but that didn’t stop her from shivering in her uniform the second we walked outside. Neither of us were dressed for spending extended time in the cold, but I gave her my jacket and stoically tried to keep my teeth from chattering while she filmed the snowflakes that floated down around us as we walked. She filmed me, too, and when I asked her if she was ever going to tell me about the movie I was kind of starring in, she smiled and shook her head.
“I had this idea for...something. I’m not sure yet but, I think...” She lifted her camera back to her eye and backed away from me, stepping off the curb and into the side of a parked car. She gasped and then lifted her foot from the several inches of icy slush it had sunk into and laughed. “And impossibly, I’m colder than I was a second ago.”
After that she let me talk her into going back inside a heated building, a diner where we drank hot chocolate while we waited for Cherry and Meneik to pick us up. The afternoon ended up being less Ferris Bueller and more whatever movie has the cast wandering around my small, sleepy town and narrowly avoiding frostbite.
It was one of the best days of my life.
Jolene
Tom was at the house to pick up Mom when I got home from my ditch day with Adam, and when he greeted me with a “there’s my girl,” I nearly spun on my heel and headed right back out.
Tom tended to leer in a way he thought was charming to women of all ages. I tended to throw up in my mouth each time. We’d spoken a handful of times, all at different levels of awkward, because he almost always tried to turn the conversation around to money: my mom didn’t have enough and my dad had too much. How easy it would be for me to help balance things if I would only poke around. And sure enough, he wasted no time that day.
“I’d wager you’re looking forward to spending some time with your dad next weekend.”
“Then I hope you’re not a betting man, Tom.” I walked past him to the kitchen and grabbed an apple from the crisper, lamenting the fact that I’d finished off the fried, syrupy spiraljalebithat Mrs. Cho had made me the day before. (I’d suggestedThe Best Exotic Marigold HotelandSlumdog Millionairefor her to watch last week and she’d been trying out Indian desserts on me ever since.)
“You know, we’ve never really talked.”
“Nice, isn’t it?”
Tom chuckled. It was hella creepy. “Guess I’m gonna have to stay on my toes around you.”
I bit my apple.
“Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Are you white meat or dark meat when it comes to turkey?”
I chewed my apple.
“Hey,” Tom said, raising his faux-tan-stained palms. “Look, I get it. I’m your mom’s boyfriend. It’s awkward. I remember how rough it was splitting holidays between my parents but I want you to know that I will never try to replace your dad.”
“Thank you for saying that, Tom. You can’t understand what that means to me.”
Tom inclined his head. “Sure thing.” Then he started to walk away before snapping his fingers as though some idea had just occurred to him.Yeah, right.“Hey, next time you’re at your dad’s, maybe keep an eye out for—” he gestured vaguely like he was coming up with all this from the top of his head “...I don’t know, bank accounts or financial statements. Snap a few pics and that’s it. It’d really help out.” He pulled a business card from his wallet and offered it to me.
I looked at it and took another bite of my apple, chewing slowly.
Tom’s mouth tightened. “Come on, Jolene. It’s time to be a team player. Your mom is getting stretched thin here, and we know your dad is hiding money. If he can afford to pay more to make sure you and your mom are taken care of, don’t you think he should?”
