Wild

I drifted off to sleep, feeling angry at myself, which was probably a bad idea. I slept fitfully, weird images plaguing me.

I was drowning in my dream, tangled up in an ocean full of pearls. I kept waving to the lifeguard standing on shore, who was Harris one moment and then Logan in the next. Finally hearing my cries, Logan dove into the pearls and swam out to me, but before he could reach me I went down, choking, lost in a sea of pearls.

MONDAY ROLLED AROUND AND I got so busy that I didn’t get around to calling Mr. Berenger. At least that’s what I told myself. Tuesday arrived, though, and I still didn’t call him.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Reece’s offer to stay in the apartment above Mulvaney’s. It tiptoed around me, gnawing at the edges of my thoughts every day. I turned it around in my head, trying to rationalize how I could make it work, how I could do something like that without my parents totally flipping out on me. Simple. I couldn’t.

When Mom called Wednesday night to check on whether I had called about the bank job, my excuse sounded lame even to my ears.

“Sorry, Mom. My study group ran late. By the time I got out it was past five.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror hanging on my door. I was a horrible liar. If Mom could see me, she’d know. My brown eyes had gone really big under my eyebrows and the color faded from my skin—like I was surprised at the words coming out of my mouth.

“This isn’t like you, Georgia. I asked you to call him on Monday. I’m starting to wonder if you even want this job.”

“I do,” I insisted, grimacing a little at my lying reflection. My bothersome eyebrows, several shades darker than my blond hair, lifted high as I made my excuses.

“Well, I certainly hope so. Because your father and I certainly aren’t going to let you sit around all summer, hanging out by the pool and getting pedicures. Even Amber has her summer lined up lifeguarding at the neighborhood pool. Responsibility, Georgia. We expect nothing less from you.”

When have I ever done anything less than be responsible?

I bit back the caustic reply . . . and others that scalded the back of my throat. I’ve been the perfect daughter. I’ve done everything my parents ever told me to do. Everything they expected. In high school, when Mom insisted that I give up the guitar and drop out of choir for the debate team, I did. When they said I should be a business major, I did that, too. When had I ever given her a reason to think I needed a lecture on responsibility?

“I’ll call him in the morning,” I promised.

“I hope so.” She sighed. “Don’t disappoint me, Georgia.” Laced beneath the words I hear the words she never says, but are there just the same.

Don’t fail me like your father did.

My real father. Not the man she married when I was three. No. The father who left me when I was two months old because he couldn’t handle the responsibilities of a wife, child, marriage, and job.

My birth father had been a musician. I never met him. He took gigs anywhere he could get them and lived in his van. When I showed an aptitude for music, Mom only allowed me to pursue it until high school. She insisted that with my heavy course load, something had to go and music was it. I knew, though, deep down, that Mom hated that part of me because it reminded her of my father. So I had let that part of myself go, almost ashamed of it, wanting only to please my mother and stepfather.

Don’t be him. That’s what she was saying. Without saying the words, that’s what she always managed to say. What I always heard.

And I wouldn’t. Long ago, I had vowed to be the opposite of that man. The kind of daughter Mom needed me to be. Someone she could be proud of. Responsible and solid. The kind of girl who went to college and married a lawyer or doctor and took summer internships at a bank.

Harris’s voice echoed in my mind right then. Boring.

Sounds from the room next door drew my attention and I knocked lightly before entering Pepper’s room. She was changing from her work clothes into a pair of frayed denim shorts.

“Hey,” she said, snapping up her shorts. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Where are you headed?”

“I’m meeting Reece at Mulvaney’s. We’re going to Logan’s game.”

Everything inside me tightened at the mention of Logan. “He plays baseball, right?”

“Yeah. It’s the playoffs. We missed the last couple games . . . been so busy with opening the new Mulvaney’s. I think Reece feels bad he hasn’t been there for him lately. He can’t miss this one.” Her freckled nose wrinkled as though she smelled something foul. “Their father won’t be there. I don’t think he’s left the house in months.”

Reece and Logan’s father was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident several years ago Not that that was the reason he wouldn’t go to his son’s game. He was a bitter man who spent most of his time drinking, and wasn’t the most supportive or attentive father even before the accident that put him in a wheelchair.

Pepper grabbed her messenger bag and paused on the way to the door. “What do you have going on tonight?”

I shrugged. “Pretty studied out for exams. Guess I’ll just start packing up a couple boxes.”

“Oh. Want to come?”

Did I want to go to a high school baseball game? Did I want to sit in the stands with a bunch of parents and high school kids and gawk at a teenage boy like some kind of cougar reliving the moment I had kissed him and he had kissed me back?

With another shrug, I nodded once. “Sure.”

Chapter 5

THE GAME HAD JUST started when we arrived, and I could tell Reece was anxious to get a seat in the stands. Not an easy feat. It was loud and crowded and we had to climb to almost the very top of the stands and squeeze in between students.

“There he is.” Pepper motioned to the field, pointing eagerly and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

I searched, my heart hammering in my chest and then seizing altogether when I spotted him. I didn’t know a lot about baseball, but I knew he was the pitcher. Standing on the mound, he stared intently at the player coming up to hit. I’d never seen him wearing a baseball cap before and damn if it wasn’t a good look for him.

He rotated a baseball behind his back with the sure movement of his fingers. He held himself still, waiting with seeming idleness, but there was a coiled energy about him that brought to mind the explosiveness of our kiss with a rush of awareness that left me breathless and turned on sitting there on the hard bleacher seat.