Page 44 of Regretting You

He even smells like my dad a little. Like fresh-cut grass in a thunderstorm.

When his hug doesn’t ease up at all, I start to cry.

Even Jonah’s hand against the back of my head feels just like my dad’s.

I hate myself for this, but I lean into him and let him hug me while I cry.

I miss my dad so much. I feel more sadness than anger right now, so I let Jonah hug me because it feels better than fighting.

I miss him so much.

I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know how I went from throwing my phone across the room to sobbing against his chest, but I’m just glad he’s not dragging me to the office. He waits until I’ve calmed down a little, and then he presses his cheek to the top of my head.

“I’m sorry, Clara. We both are.”

I don’t know how truthful he’s being, but even if he is sorry, I don’t think it’s going to change anything. He should be sorry. Being sorry is the least he could do to right his wrong.

I just can’t understand this level of betrayal. I can’t understand how my mother can walk around one minute, supposedly full of grief because she lost her soul mate, but then the next minute, her tongue is down his best friend’s throat.

“It’s like neither of you even cared about them.”

Maybe I wouldn’t be this mad if I had walked in on my mother kissing a random stranger. But Jonah isn’t a stranger. He’s Jonah. He’s Jenny’s Jonah.

He pulls back, dropping his hands to my shoulders. “Of course we care about them. What you saw ... that had nothing to do with them.”

I pull away from his hands. “It had everything to do with them.”

Jonah sighs, folding his arms over his chest. He really does look remorseful. A small part of me wants to stop being so angry, just so he won’t have that look on his face anymore.

“Your mom and I ... we just ... I don’t know.

I can’t explain what happened last night.

And honestly, I don’t want to. That’s for you and your mother to discuss.

” He takes a step forward. “But that’s the thing, Clara.

You need to discuss it with her. You can’t lock yourself in your bedroom forever.

I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be, but promise me you’ll talk to her about this. ”

I nod, but only because he seems so sincere about it. Not because I’m actually going to talk to my mother about it.

I don’t feel quite as angry with Jonah as I am with my mother, because this really isn’t even his fault.

I feel like 90 percent of my anger is placed on my mother.

Jonah and Jenny weren’t even married. They hadn’t even been dating that long.

And my dad isn’t Jonah’s brother, so his betrayal and my mother’s betrayal are on two different levels. Two different continents .

Jonah should feel guilty, but my mother should feel like scum.

I look up at the ceiling and run my hands down my face. I drop them to my hips. “I can’t believe I threw my phone.”

“It’s your birthday. You get a free outburst. Just don’t tell the other students.”

I’m surprised, but I actually find it in me to laugh at that. Then I sigh heavily. “It sure doesn’t feel like my birthday.”

It’s hard for today to feel like my birthday when my own mother forgot about it. Guess that means our traditional birthday dinners are over for good.

Jonah points to the classroom door. “I have to get back in there. Go wait out the rest of this period in your car. I at least need the class to think I punished you.”

I nod and take a step away from him. He walks back toward his classroom, and part of me wants to tell him thank you, but I have a feeling I’d immediately regret that. I don’t really have anything to thank him for. If we’re keeping score, he still owes me about a million free passes.

The next three class periods sail by without a single assault. Progress.

I haven’t seen Miller since first thing this morning, and it’s kind of killing me.

We usually text each other throughout the day, but my phone is probably at the bottom of Jonah’s wastebasket.

When I finally make it to the cafeteria for lunch, I can see the relief spread across Miller’s face when I approach the table.

He scoots over and puts space between him and Efren.

“You okay?” he asks as I take a seat. “Rumor has it you threw your phone at Mr. Sullivan.”

“I might have hurled it in his general direction, but I was aiming for the trash can.”

“Did you get detention?”

“No. He took me out to the hallway and gave me a hug.”

“Hold up,” Lexie says. “You threw your phone, and he hugged you?”

“Don’t tell anyone. I had to pretend I got punished.”

“I wish I had an Uncle Teacher,” Lexie says. “Unfair.”

Miller presses his lips to my shoulder and then rests his chin there. “You okay, though?” he whispers.

I nod because I want to be okay, but the truth is today sucks. Last night sucked. These past few months have sucked, and I can’t seem to catch a break. I can feel heat behind my eyes, and then Miller brings a hand up and squeezes the back of my neck. “It’s nice out. Wanna go for a drive in Nora?”

That’s the only thing that could probably make me feel any sense of relief right now. “I would love that.”

I’ve skipped a funeral with him, done drugs with him, gotten detention with him, snuck him into my bedroom, lost my virginity to him. In comparison, skipping half a day of school seems like an improvement in my behavior.

Miller drove us to the city park. It edges a large pond—one my dad used to take me fishing at on days like this.

Miller sits under a shade tree and spreads his legs, patting the ground between them.

I sit down with my back against his chest, and he wraps his arms around me as I adjust myself until I’m comfortable.

My head is leaning against his shoulder, and his cheek rests against the top of my head when he says, “What was your father like?”

It hasn’t been that long, but I still feel like I have to jog my memory to answer his question.

“He had such a great laugh. It was loud and filled up the entire room. Sometimes it would embarrass my mother in public because people would turn and look at us when he laughed. And he laughed at everything . He worked a lot, but I never held it against him. Probably because when we were together, he was actually present. Wanted to know about my day, would always tell me about his.” I sigh.

“I miss that. I miss telling him about my day, even when there was nothing to tell.”

“He sounds great.”

I nod. “What about yours?”

I feel a movement in Miller’s chest, like a silent, unconvincing laugh. “He’s not like your dad was. At all.”

“Did he raise you?”

I can feel Miller shake his head. “No. I spent time with him here and there growing up, but he was in and out of jail. Finally caught up to him when I was fifteen, and he got a longer sentence. He’ll be out in a couple of years, but I doubt I’ll have anything to do with him when he gets out.

It had been a while since I’d seen him when he got arrested, anyway. ”

So that’s why my father made that comment about Miller’s dad, about the apple not falling far from the tree. My father was wrong, obviously.

“Do you keep in touch at all?”

“No,” Miller says. “I mean ... I don’t hate him. I just realize some people are good at being parents and some people aren’t. I don’t take it personally. I’d just rather not have a relationship with him.”

“And your mom?” I ask. “What was she like?”

I feel him deflate a little before he says, “I don’t remember her very well, but I don’t have any negative memories of her.

” He wraps one of his legs around my ankle.

“You know, I think that’s where my love for photography came from.

After she died ... I had nothing to remember her by.

She hated the camera, so there are very few pictures of her.

Not much video. It wasn’t long after that when I asked Gramps for my first camera. I’ve had it in his face ever since.”

“You could probably make an entire movie just of him.”

Miller laughs. “I could. I might. Even if it’s just something I do for myself.”

“So ... what happens when he—”

“I’ll be okay,” he says with finality, like he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. I understand why. A father in prison, a dead mom, a grandpa with terminal cancer. I get it. I wouldn’t want to talk about it either.

We sit in silence for a while before Miller says, “Crap. I keep forgetting.” He pushes me forward a little and then jogs back to his truck. He comes back with his camera and a tripod, then sets it up several feet away from us.

He slips between me and the tree and resumes our position. “Don’t stare at it this time.”

I’m staring at it when he says that, so I look out at the water. “Maybe we should just cancel the project.”

“Why?”

“My mind is all over the place. I’ve been in a perpetual bad mood.”

“How bad do you want to be an actress, Clara?”

“It’s the only thing I want to be.”

“You’re in for a rude awakening if you think you’re gonna show up on set in a good mood every day.”

I exhale. “I hate it when you’re right.”

He laughs and kisses the side of my head. “You must really hate me, then.”

I shake my head gently. “Not even a little bit.”

It’s quiet again. Across the lake, there’s a man with two little boys. He’s teaching them how to fish. I watch him, wondering if he’s cheating on their mom.

Then I feel the anger return because now I feel like I’m going to be looking for the worst in people for the rest of my life.

I don’t want to talk about Aunt Jenny or my dad, or Mom and Jonah, but the words pour out of me anyway.

“The way Jonah talked today ... he really did sound remorseful. Like maybe their kiss was an accident or a onetime thing. I want to ask her about it, but I’m scared she’ll be honest and tell me it’s way more than that.

I kind of think it is because I know they went to a hotel not even a week after the accident. ”

“How do you know that?”

“The app. Why else would they have been there if they weren’t already involved?”

“Either way, you need to talk to her about it. There’s really no way around it.”

“I know.” I blow out a rush of air. “You know, it doesn’t surprise me that Jonah would do something like that.

He only moved back here and started dating Jenny because he got her pregnant.

Not because they were madly in love. But my mother .

.. her and Dad have been together since high school.

It’s like she had absolutely no respect for my father. ”

“You don’t know that. Maybe she and Jonah are just grieving.”

“That didn’t look like grief to me.”

“Maybe finding solace in each other helps with the grief.”

I don’t even want to think about that. It’s a weird way to grieve. “Well. Me skipping school helps with my grief. So thank you.”

“Anytime. Well, anytime except last period. I have a test, so I need to get back soon.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“You doing anything for your birthday tonight?”

I shrug. “It’s always been tradition to do family birthday dinners. But I guess that’s out. We barely have a family left.”

Miller’s arms tighten around me. It makes me miss my father’s hugs. Even Jonah’s hug today made me miss him. “Well, if your mom will let you, I’ll take you out.”

“I highly doubt she’s going to let me leave, and I might be too tired to fight her on it.”

“It makes me sad to think you might spend your birthday alone in your room.”

“Yeah, well. It’s just another day.”

I wonder what my father would think about seeing me so sad on my birthday. He’d probably be disappointed we aren’t continuing the family birthday dinner. I bet Aunt Jenny would be disappointed about it too. We’ve never missed one for as far back as I can remember.

It makes me wonder why I automatically assumed the tradition would stop with their deaths. They wouldn’t want it to stop.

Even though my mother seems to have lost her respect for the tradition, that doesn’t necessarily mean the tradition shouldn’t continue. At least this way, I could see Miller tonight.

I sit up and look at him. “You know what? I do want a birthday dinner tonight. And I want you to come.”

He raises a cautious eyebrow. “I don’t know. Your mom didn’t seem like she’d ever welcome me back into your house.”

“I’ll talk to her when I get home. If she has an issue with it, I’ll call you.”

“You don’t have a phone.”

“I’ll call you from our home phone.”

“People still have those?”

I laugh. “She’s only thirty-four, but she’s an ancient thirty-four-year-old.”

I lean back against him, thinking about my birthday.

It really isn’t fair if she tries to ground me.

If she does, I might throw the Langford in her face.

I let a slow roll of air pass through my lungs.

The more I think about it, the angrier I get.

The idea that the two of them were having a hotel tryst just a week after the accident makes me want revenge.

I try not to think about it. I turn around and straddle Miller, and then I kiss him for several minutes. It’s a good distraction, but he eventually has to drive us back to the school.

I wait out the final class period in my car before going home, which is probably a bad idea, because the entire time I sit in my car, I think about all the ways I can fight for the vengeance my dad and Jenny deserve.

I head home, even angrier than when I left for school this morning.