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“Dare’s under a lot of pressure right now and it means a lot that we can be there for his family.”
“I see.” She arches a brow. “You know, it’s strange that I’m meeting his niece before I meet this mysterious Mr. Sullivan.”
“You and dad will get to grill him as soon as he gets back, okay? Promise.”
I wave to Talia to get her attention and gesture for her to follow me. She’s sullen when I show her around Dejonae’s old room and shrugs when I write a note asking if she’d like my help to unpack.
She seems withdrawn, and I assume that’s a result of being thrust into a new environment.
But that shyness doesn’t last long.
Tyrant Talia rears her villainous head when mom instructs her to help with dinner that evening.
It happens again later that night when Talia’s ‘forced’ to eat around the dining room table instead of around the TV ‘like she does with Uncle Dare’.
It happens the next morning when she refuses to get up for school after her alarm rings.
And again when mom tells her we’re having cereal for breakfast—‘Uncle Dare always buys me breakfast’. To which mom unleashes her eyeball of doom and responds in a way that has Talia sinking her spoon into a bowl of cereal and milk.
José and I escort her to school. She sits in the backseat with her arms folded, mumbling what I can only assume are curses against my mother. I get offended by her body language and write a long-winded note about her attitude, an essay that takes me the entire car ride to complete.
As the days pass, Talia’s stubbornness remains, and it doesn’t help that Dare and I barely text anymore.
‘I’ll wrap this up as soon as I can.’
‘It won’t be long now.’
‘I’ll be back before you know it.’
More days pass and, still, he makes the promise.‘I’ll be home soon’.
But ‘soon’ in Dare Land is two weeks and counting.
And eventually the words stop coming and he can’t even be bothered to make the promise.
I assume it’s because he doesn’t want to repeat himself.
But I was wrong.
Exactly three weeks, five days, and four hours after Dare left (not that I’m counting), I get a text from him.
I stare at my phone in abject horror, my gym bag falling off my shoulder and smattering to the concrete in the parking lot.
Dare:I don’t know when this will be over. I think we should stop texting for a while.
Stop texting?
As in break up?
My stomach flips anxiously.
This was inevitable. You never should have gotten with a hearing person.
That tiny voice is back. The one I thought I’d vanquished when I decided to give Dare a shot. But I guess I hadn’t exterminated the little rat. It was living in my heart, buried under the flooring, biding its time.
I’m clenching my cell phone, unable to breathe and having what I think is a mild version of a panic attack, when two strong arms close around me.
I shake the person off angrily, whipping my head up to give them an angryI have a boyfriendglare. And then I stop mid-chin lift. Do I have a boyfriend? Am I in-between boyfriends? Is Dare trying to let me down easy because he won’t be able to come back for months? Years? What then?