Page 24 of Regretting You

Chapter Fourteen

Clara

I finished my first-ever full cup of coffee about two weeks ago, the morning after my mother knocked a random hole in our kitchen door. Since then, I’ve discovered the one thing that just might save me from my monthlong depression.

Starbucks.

Not that I’ve never been to a Starbucks before.

I’ve just always been that teenager who orders tea at coffee shops.

But now that I know what it’s like to be sleep deprived, I’ve been through almost every drink on the menu and know exactly which one is my favorite.

The classic Venti Caramel Macchiato, no substitutions.

I take my drink to an empty corner table, one that I’ve sat at almost daily for the last two weeks.

When I’m not at Lexie’s house after school, I’m here.

Things have gotten so tense at home I don’t even want to be there.

My curfew on school nights is ten, as long as I don’t have homework.

My curfew on weekends is midnight. Suffice it to say, I haven’t been home before ten p.m. since the last argument my mother and I got into.

If she’s not demanding to know where I am and who I’m with or sniffing me for signs of drug use, she’s moping around the house, knocking random holes in the doors.

And then there’s everything we haven’t talked about.

The fact that I was texting Jenny when they died.

And I know where she and Jonah went when they left the house together—the Langford.

I saw it on the app. I asked her that night where they’d gone, but she wouldn’t tell me.

If I brought it up to her now, I have a feeling she’d lie to me.

Things just feel uneven with her. We aren’t on the same page. We don’t know how to talk to each other now that Dad and Jenny are gone.

Or maybe it’s me. I don’t know. I just know I can’t take being in our house right now.

I hate the feeling I get when I’m there.

It feels weird without my father there, and I’m scared it’ll never go back to the way it used to be.

It used to feel like home. Now it feels like an institution, and my mom and I are the only patients.

It’s sad that I feel more comfortable at Starbucks than in my own home. Lexie works at Taco Bell five days a week, and tonight she’s back at it, so I get comfortable in my quiet little corner of Caffeine Land and open a book.

I’m only a few pages in when my phone vibrates on the table. I flip it over to look at the new Instagram notification.

Miller Adams started following you.

I stare at the notification, allowing the meaning of it to soak in for a moment. Did Shelby break up with him again? Is this his way of getting back at her?

I feel a smile attempting to form on my lips, but I bite it back because I’m kind of getting whiplash. Get in my truck. Get out of my truck. Let’s be friends on Instagram. No, let’s not be friends. Okay, yeah, let’s be friends.

I won’t allow myself to feel happy about this until I know what the hell he’s up to. I open our Instagram messages, since I deleted his number, and I send him one.

Me: Get your heart broken again?

Miller: I think I did the breaking this time.

There’s no biting back my smile this time. It’s too big to fight.

Miller: What are you doing right now?

Me: Nothing.

Miller: Can I come over?

My house is the last place I want him.

Me: Meet me at Starbucks.

Miller: On my way.

I set my phone down and pick up my book again, but I know I won’t be able to concentrate on the words while I wait for him.

It doesn’t matter, though, because five seconds later, Miller is pulling an empty chair over to my table.

He sits, straddling the chair backward. I pull my book to my chest and stare at him.

“You were already here?”

He grins. “I was standing in line to get coffee when I messaged you.”

Which means he probably saw me grinning like an idiot. “That feels like an invasion of privacy.”

“It’s not my fault you’re severely unaware of your surroundings.”

He’s right. When I’m here, I don’t have a clue what’s going on around me. Sometimes I sit here for two hours reading, and when I close the book, I’m surprised to look up and see that I’m not at home.

I slide the book into my bag and take a sip of my coffee.

Then I lean back in my chair, my gaze rolling over Miller.

He looks better. Not so heartbroken this time.

He actually looks content, but I have no idea how long that’ll last before he realizes how much he misses Shelby and unfollows me on Instagram again.

“I don’t know how I feel about being your backup plan every time things go south with your girlfriend.”

He smiles gently. “You aren’t a backup plan. I like talking to you. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore, so I no longer feel guilty talking to you.”

“That’s essentially what a backup plan is. Priority doesn’t work out ... move on to second tier.”

A barista calls Miller’s name, but he stares at me for five long seconds before he scoots his chair away from the table and goes to retrieve his coffee. When he comes back, he doesn’t revisit the conversation. He changes the subject entirely.

“Feel like going for a ride?” He takes a sip of his coffee, and I have no idea how something as simple as a cute guy sipping coffee could be appealing, but it is, so I grab my bag and stand up.

“Sure.”

Aside from a few dates I went on with a guy named Aaron last year without my parents’ permission, I’ve never been on a date with anyone else.

Not that I consider whatever this is we’re doing an actual date, but I can’t help but compare it to what little experience I’ve had in the past. My parents have been extremely overprotective, so I never even bothered asking if I could go out with a guy.

The rule has always been that I could date at sixteen, but I’ve been sixteen for almost a whole year and have avoided it.

The idea of bringing a guy into my house to meet my parents always sounded dreadful, so if I wanted to hang out with a guy, I usually just did it behind their backs with Lexie’s help.

I do know enough to know that silence is your enemy on dates. You try to fill that silence by asking trivial questions that no one really wants to answer, and then, if you can get past the terrible answers, you might get to make out at the end of the night.

But whatever this is between me and Miller is not a date.

Not even close. We haven’t said one word to each other since we got into his truck, even though that was over half an hour ago.

He isn’t forcing me to answer questions I don’t want to be asked, and I’m not forcing every ounce of information out of him about his breakup with Shelby.

It’s just two people, listening to music, enjoying the silence.

I love it. It might even beat my cozy corner in Starbucks.

“This was Gramps’s truck,” Miller says, breaking our comfortable silence. But I’m not annoyed by the break. I’ve actually been wondering why he drives such an old truck and if there’s a story behind it. “He bought it brand new when he was twenty-five. Drove it his whole life.”

“How many miles are on it?”

“There were just over two hundred thousand before it was gutted and everything was replaced. Now there are ...” He lifts his hand to look at the dash behind his steering wheel. “Nineteen thousand, two hundred and twelve.”

“Does he still drive it?”

Miller shakes his head. “No. He’s not in any shape to drive.”

“He seemed like he was in pretty good shape to me.”

Miller scratches his jaw. “He has cancer. The doctors are giving him six months, tops.”

That feels like a brutal punch to my gut, and I’ve only met the man once.

“He likes to pretend it isn’t happening and that he’s fine. But I can tell he’s scared.”

It makes me wonder more about Miller’s family. Like what his mother is like, and why my father seemed to hate his father so much.

“Are the two of you very close?”

Miller just nods. I can tell by his refusal to verbally answer that question that he’s going to take it hard when it does happen. That makes me sad for him.

“You should write everything down.”

He gives me a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

“Write it all down. Everything you want to remember about him. You’ll be surprised how soon you start to forget everything.”

Miller smiles at me appreciatively. “I will,” he says. “I promise. But I also have a camera in his face most of the time for that very reason.”

I smile back and then stare out the window. That’s all that’s said between us until he pulls back into the Starbucks parking lot fifteen minutes later.

I stretch my back and then my arms before unbuckling my seat belt. “Thank you. I needed that.”

“Me too,” Miller says. He’s leaning against his driver’s-side door, his head resting on his hand as he watches me gather my bag and open my door.

“You have good taste in music.”

“I know,” he says, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“See you at school tomorrow?”

“See ya.”

The way he’s looking at me makes me think he doesn’t want me to go, but he’s not saying anything to indicate otherwise, so I exit his truck. I shut the door and turn to my car, but I can hear him scrambling out of his truck while I search for my keys.

He’s next to me now, leaning against my car. Miller’s stare is intense. I feel it everywhere. “We should hang out again. You busy tomorrow night?”

I halt the search for my keys and make eye contact with him. Tomorrow night sounds good, but tonight sounds even better. It’s still another hour before I have to be home. “Let’s just hang out right now.”

“Where do you want to go?”

I glance at the doors to Starbucks, already craving more caffeine. “Another coffee sounds really good.”

All the smaller tables were taken, which meant we were left choosing between a table with six chairs or the love seat.