Page 27 of Under My Skin

Chapter Twenty-Seven

LUCY

Everett’s demeanor immediately shifts. His shoulders tense as he gets to his feet. “I have to take this,” he says half a second before swiping to answer. “Hey. Everything okay?”

I do my best to give him privacy, but it’s not like I can’t hear him. This room is only so big, and there are only so many places I can go. He listens for a while on the phone, and I sneak a glance his way to find him rubbing the back of his neck as he stands with his back to me.

“Yeah, I am,” he says in a low voice.

The person on the phone says something, and even though I can’t make out the words, it sounds like the voice of a woman coming through the muffled speaker.

His eyes dart in my direction, and I quickly look away.

I sift through the books to the bottom of the box where a few notebooks and journals left over from my teenage years lay scattered at the bottom.

Who knows what’s written in them. I’d probably be better off burning them than reliving any thoughts I had back then.

“Sure,” Everett says, keeping his voice down. “I can do that. I’ll be there soon.”

This piques my interest, and I dare to look at him again.

He ends the call and turns to face me as he slips his phone back in his pocket. “Sorry.”

I shake my head. For some reason I feel like I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s not like he said much during that call, but I can see how it affected him. Being in the same room while he spoke felt like invading his private moment. “Everything okay?”

He scratches the side of his head. “Uh, yeah. I just have to go help my mom with something. She saw my bike parked out front on her way home from the store.”

“Oh.” I blink. Based on his reaction to the call, I thought it was someone else. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you later?”

He nods, but he looks like his mind is somewhere else. Scanning the room, he points to my closet. “Do you need help taking anything else down before I go?”

I shake my head, my fingers absently thumbing the pages of my copy of Looking for Alaska . “No, I’ll manage. Go help your mom.”

He blinks and some clarity returns to his eyes. Walking over to my closet, he reaches up and takes down another box sitting on the top wire rack.

“What are you doing?” I ask with a light laugh.

He sets down the box on the floor before reaching up to grab the one next to it. “Making sure you don’t stand on that chair again.”

“Spider-Man saves the day,” I mutter in amusement.

He doesn’t acknowledge my comment, but the corner of his lips lift. As soon as he’s done, he heads toward the door. “Later, Luce.”

“Later,” I say with a bemused smile. He leaves, and I can’t help shaking my head as I look at the boxes he carefully stacked on the floor for me.

Movement in the doorway catches my eye, and I look up to find Everett popping his head in, his tattooed hand resting on the frame. “If you’re free later, stop by the shop. I wanted to run a few things by you. The back door will be unlocked.”

Excitement thrums in my chest, and I hug the book like it will somehow drown out my beating heart. “Sure. Okay.”

He smiles, and I’m relieved to see it looks genuine. Whatever funk that call put him in seems to have worn off. His eyes are bright as he pats the doorframe before walking away, and I have to bite my lip to suppress a grin.

When I hear Everett’s voice again, he’s telling Simon he has to go. And when he goes downstairs, my parents sound disappointed about his leaving. By how tightly my mother hugged him this morning, I don’t think they’ve seen him in a while. Simon had to tap her on the shoulder to make her let go.

As soon as the front door closes, I rush toward my window overlooking the tree-lined street below and stay back just enough to be out of view. The last thing I need is for him to catch me watching, but I can’t miss an opportunity to take him in.

His thumbs drum against the sides of his legs as he walks toward his bike at the bottom of the driveway. The anxious rhythm has me biting my thumbnail even though I have nothing to worry about. Whatever he’s feeling is palpable, even from up here.

He reaches his bike, runs his hand over the seat, and effortlessly swings his leg over. With a turn of the key, the bike comes to life, and he reaches for his helmet. He doesn’t put it on right away, though. He pauses, his head tilting up ever so slightly as he looks directly at my bedroom window.

My breath catches in my throat. There’s no way he can see me from here. Watching the street from this room is something I have down to a science at this point. Part of me is tempted to open the window and ask him if he’s forgotten something, but I keep my feet firmly planted where they are.

When Everett’s eyes finally pull away, he looks down at his helmet in his hands and shakes his head.

He can’t see me.

But he was staring up at my bedroom window.

And he’s smiling to himself about it.

Hope flutters in my chest. Maybe I’m not stupid for putting myself out there.

Stupid because I don’t live here? Without a doubt.

But stupid because he doesn’t feel the same?

I don’t think so. Because I’ve seen that smile before—I’ve felt it.

In fact, it’s the same smile stretching across my own lips as he rolls back the bike and heads off down the street.

“What are you doing?” Simon’s deep voice jolts me from my thoughts, and I spin on my heels.

“Going through my stuff.” My eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”

“Watching you stand in your secret hiding spot and stare out the window like a creep.”

My lips lift at that. “It’s not so secret if you know about it.”

Simon walks further into the room, and there’s something about being in my childhood bedroom with my brother that makes us seem so much older.

The room practically shrinks as he walks into it as a full-grown man approaching thirty, and it makes me miss all the times he’d run in here just to squirt me with a water gun before running away.

Okay, maybe I don’t miss the water gun, but the sentiment is there.

“You used to tell me all your secrets,” he says casually as he lifts one of the boxes on the floor and sets it on my bed next to the box of books.

He opens the flap to reveal a stack of yearbooks shuffled and overlapping one another, some of the pages undoubtedly bent.

“Do you still have that one yearbook where I helped you label all the girls who were mean to you?”

I grin at the memory. “Yeah, I think it was seventh grade. I just wanted to put an X by their name, but you felt the need to write CUNT in red Sharpie over their faces. Mom and Dad were pissed.”

Simon smiles. “Yeah, I think I was grounded and had to pay them back the money they spent on the yearbook or something.” His eyes flick up to meet mine, his smile growing. “Worth it.”

I laugh at that, and even Simon lets out a chuckle.

“You two are both in here?” Mom asks as she leans against the doorframe. “What are you giggling about?”

“This,” Simon says as he holds the yearbook open to a page with two girls branded in red marker.

A bemused smile spreads across Mom’s lips, her eyes crinkling slightly. “Ah, yes. The year of the cunts.”

“Mom!” I say with a bewildered laugh.

“What?” she asks innocently. “I loved Simon’s idea, but I couldn’t raise my son thinking it’s okay to go around branding girls in such a way. Men are already responsible for most of our world’s problems.”

Simon tosses the yearbook back into the box. “Can’t argue with that.”

I know she isn’t referring to my dad, but a frown still settles on my lips anyway. What problems did he cause for her? And her for him? What happened between them that was so bad they’d throw everything away?

“Oh, stop,” she says, taking in my somber expression with her lips pressed into a sympathetic smile. “You know I was not talking about your father.”

“I know,” I answer too quickly, my shoulders squaring.

Her eyes jump between Simon and me before she walks further into the room.

She rests a hand on each of our cheeks. “Raising you two has not only been my greatest accomplishment but also my greatest privilege. And your dad was the best partner I could have had throughout all of it.” She rolls her eyes adoringly.

“Even with his early morning pancake serenades on weekends.”

I huff a laugh, but my eyes burn.

Simon groans. “Those were the worst.”

Mom brushes her thumb affectionately across my cheek before dropping her hands with a shake of her head.

“The man doesn’t know how to sleep in to save his life.

” Taking a step back, her eyes scan over each of our faces in a way that only moms can before she beckons for us to follow her. “Come on, lunch is ready.”

The thought of the four of us sitting around the table and eating a meal together brings an unwanted pang to my chest—even if it is just lunch. I wonder if it will be weird, or maybe it will be even weirder by the fact that it’s not weird at all.