Chapter 10 - Heather

Chapter 10

Heather

Cusco, Peru

"What are you doing here?" Heather said coldly, refusing to take the lilies from him. She had goose bumps, and all the hair was standing up on the back of her neck.

"I heard about your dad," he said quietly, stepping toward her.

She took a step back.

"And I thought you might need me."

Right. Heather wasn't sure how she was feeling right now, but it was a big, cold, black feeling. She turned on her mother. "How did he know where I was?"

Mom didn't look guilty. In fact, she seemed to think this was a wonderful surprise. "He was so worried when you didn't answer his calls." Mom seemed caught up in the romance of it all. A romance that Heather wasn't feeling. "I thought he'd feel better if he knew where you were."

"You thought he'd feel better," Heather said numbly.

"He just wants to make you happy," Mom told her earnestly.

"You are so far out of line that the line isn't even in sight anymore," Heather said fiercely.

Mom blinked at that. "He came three and a half thousand miles. For you," she said. She seemed genuinely taken aback by the fact that Heather wasn't melting with joy.

Hadn't she heard a word Heather had said? And what about Owen?

Oh God, Owen. He was coming back soon.

"He came all this way for you, Heather," Mom pleaded.

"Like a stalker," Heather's voice was flat, but only because she couldn't take the reins off her rage for fear it would be too much for her to handle.

"A stalker!" Mom was offended on Shawn's behalf.

"It's okay, Mrs. Russo," Shawn said patiently, "she's going through a lot right now. I understand."

"Don't call her that," Heather snapped. "She's not Mrs. Russo anymore."

Mom flinched.

"What the hell have you done, Sandra?" Bon was drawn from the check-in desk by all the drama. "And stop shouting in public. We're not acting like trash in front of these fancy people. Go sit your asses down in the breakfast room and get some coffee. I'll be right there, and we'll sort this mess out."

"There's nothing to sort out," Heather said, "Shawn's leaving."

Shawn blanched. Heather refused to feel sorry for him. Who turned up on someone's vacation, uninvited?

Only he had been invited, hadn't he? By her damn mother.

"Maybe it's best if Heather and I talk alone?" Shawn suggested as Bon went back to the check-in desk, glaring at them over her shoulder.

"There's nothing to talk about," Heather insisted. What was he not getting? She didn't want him there. She didn't want him, period. She'd been right to listen to that little voice screaming Get out, she realized as she watched him standing there holding a fistful of unasked-for Peruvian lilies. That little voice had been right. Maybe the urge to run wasn't a flaw in her character . . . maybe the little voice belonged to her better self, and it was looking out for her. Because Shawn was quite clearly a creep.

"Ah, sorry to interrupt . . ." A nervous voice came from the door next to the check-in desk.

Heather couldn't believe it. Kyle was here too?

Shawn's roommate Kyle was looking exceedingly sheepish as he hulked in the doorway, resembling a Saint Barnard more than ever. "Sorry," he rumbled. "But they're going to clear off the breakfast buffet in a minute. Did you still want me to hold the table?"

"What's he doing here?" Heather demanded.

"I asked him to hold us a table," Shawn said quietly. "I thought you'd be hungry after your all-night bus trip."

"How thoughtful," Mom gushed.

Heather felt like pushing her. She took a few steps away, worried she wouldn't be able to restrain herself. "I meant in Peru."

"I came just in case." Kyle scratched his beard and didn't seem to know where to look.

"Just in case what?" Heather asked tightly.

"Just in case it went like this." He gave Heather a sympathetic look.

Abruptly, Heather wanted to cry. It was his sympathy that did it. It helped when someone else saw the crazy.

"Guess you haven't slept," Kyle rumbled. "Buses aren't great for sleeping."

No. But Owen was the reason she hadn't slept, not the bus. Oh God, Owen. She needed to get this sorted and get Shawn out of here before Owen turned up. Heather pulled her phone out and sent him a quick message.

Going to breakfast before we go up to the room. Give us a few hours?

She felt oily with guilt as she sent it. She felt like she was cheating on him to be standing here with Shawn, who was still holding out the purplish-red lilies.

Going that well with your mom, huh?

Heather swallowed. How the hell was she going to explain this?

"Look, the table's just through here," Kyle coaxed. "There's coffee and food. Everything will seem manageable with some food in your stomach." Heather wasn't sure if he was talking to her or to Shawn.

Heather didn't want to go sit down with Shawn. She wanted to storm off and pretend that he didn't exist. But she needed to get rid of him before Owen showed up.

"Fine," she said, but she still stormed a little, stalking past Shawn without taking his lilies.

"Oh, isn't this place romantic?" Mom said as they stepped into the central courtyard, where the breakfast tables were set out under wide umbrellas. The two-story casa cradled the courtyard, which glowed with golden morning light.

Heather sat at the table Kyle had reserved for them, ordered a strong black coffee and put her sunglasses on, to hide her anger.

"Would you like a vase for the flowers?" the waiter asked politely, in accented English. She gently took the lilies from Shawn as Mom ushered him into the seat opposite Heather. Mom kept giving Heather the most infuriating encouraging looks. They were awful in their wrongheaded empathy. Mom clearly thought Heather was, or should be, overcome with the romance of Shawn's gesture. But, in Heather's opinion, Mom had always had a misplaced sense of romance.

"Why don't we get food for the table?" Mom said to Kyle. She hadn't even been introduced to him yet and she was bossing him around.

Heather found herself alone with Shawn at the linen-covered table in the romantic Peruvian courtyard.

He was looking nervous. As well he should.

"I know you're mad at me," he said softly.

"Mad doesn't even begin to cover it," she told him, crossing her arms.

His hazel eyes were pained. "I didn't mean to show up out of the blue—but you didn't answer my messages."

"I got a Peruvian SIM, to save money," she told him shortly. "I haven't been getting your messages."

"I didn't know that." He was staring at her with enormous tenderness. Tenderness she didn't want.

"You didn't have to know that. We're not together."

Shawn flushed. "If we're not together, why do we keep ending up together?"

"We don't. You keep chasing me. It's different." Ending up together was her and Owen, in adjoining rooms, with adjoining grandmothers, thrown together even though they didn't know each other's names. Shawn was something else. "And sex isn't ending up together, Shawn. Sometimes it's just sex."

"Heather," he said patiently. "You arrived in my life, in my corridor, at my coffee shop, and life has never been the same since. It was like being struck by lightning."

Heather flinched. "Don't say that."

"Like what? I'm just telling the truth. Remember the weekend we met?"

Of course she did. It was only a few months ago. He kept talking like they were in some grand affair, but they'd only dated for three and a half months. With a few slips afterward.

They'd moved into the building on the same day, three doors down from one another, and the super kept mixing up their boxes. He'd delivered all Shawn's records to Heather's place, and all Heather's computer hardware to Shawn's place.

Heather had been dreaming about the move to the new apartment, desperate to step into a new life, and immediately the new life had come with a charming neighbor who wore designer clothes and collected vintage records, who seemed to think she belonged there, in the fancy building. With him. She softened. It wasn't Shawn's fault she didn't feel like she'd been struck by lightning.

Maybe it was possible for one person to be struck, and the other to be immune?

"You were upset," he continued, "because your mom had just found out your dad was cheating on her."

She'd been on the phone with Mom as she'd packed her boxes in the old place, and by the time she got to the new place she'd been enervated and edgy. Shawn had come in like a welcome distraction.

"We spent the whole weekend together, remember?"

He'd helped her unpack, putting together her flatpack desk, stacking her books on her new bookshelf, setting up her TV. And he'd ordered food, and rubbed the kinks out of her back, and played her some of his records, sticking to the low-key stuff: Elliott Smith, Jeff Beck, Mazzy Star. He liked 90s music, and he almost shook with excitement when she said her dad had been in a mildly successful 90s band called Torn. She'd been surprised to find he'd heard of them. And even more surprised that he was desperate for a copy of their first album, Chosen, which he'd been scouring eBay for.

"I can get you a copy," Heather had said. "Mom has a box of them in the garage."

Torn had been a pretty average band, in Heather's opinion. And they'd done only three albums before they broke up. It was something Dad had done in the pre-Heather world, and she found the old posters Mom hung in the TV room kind of embarrassing. There were a couple of Lollapalooza posters from the mid-1990s and some really cringy posters of the Torn album covers. The worst one showed her dad posing like some kind of sleazy grunge heartthrob.

Shawn had assumed she must love music and had started dragging her to gigs, in all these seedy clubs, with bands who were trying to be the new century's Nirvana. She wasn't really into it. And she was pretty clear, pretty quickly, that she wasn't into Shawn either.

As Shawn reminisced about their early days, listing good times at gigs (which she'd hated) and listening to records at home (which she tired of quickly) and being able to pop in for coffee during the workday (oh, he was suffocating), Heather's mind drifted to Owen. Who, unlike Shawn, was not good on paper. He was rootless, always traveling, often in dangerous situations, and out of her league . . .

But lightning.

"Did you really feel like you were struck by lightning when you met me?" Heather blurted. Did he actually mean it? Or was it one of those sweeping romantic proclamations he was prone to, like he was to sending flowers and delivering grand gestures. Grand gestures like flying three and a half thousand miles to surprise her in Peru.

Shawn didn't get a chance to answer her question, because Mom and Kyle returned with the food.

"The waitress is bringing toast," Kyle said, as he put down plates loaded with bacon and scrambled eggs.

"Look at this, they have rice pudding for breakfast!" Mom set the little glasses of pudding on the table.

"Arroz con leche," Heather sighed. The fight was draining out of her. She wished it wouldn't, but waves of adrenaline were always followed by low chemical ebb.

Casa Suerte had served arroz con leche for breakfast, she thought tiredly. And Romeo had also taken Heather to a little family place in the neighborhood that made the traditional rice pudding, sweet but with a cinnamon and lemon zest edge, and they'd shared it, along with an empanada and strong black coffee. She wanted to keep the magic of Barranco, but with Mom and Shawn at the table, it was getting harder.

"Well, this is becoming a regular party, isn't it," Bon drawled as she joined them. She stood at the head of the table, looking unimpressed. "And from memory, this is supposed to be my party."

Shawn's chair scraped on the flagstones as he stood. "I'm so sorry," he said, all charm. "I didn't mean to cause such a fuss. I thought Heather would be glad to see me."

Bon frowned. "Why?"

Shawn was nonplussed. "What do you mean, why?"

"I mean, why did you think she'd be glad to see you?"

Heather's phone vibrated. Owen was calling. "Excuse me." She all but ran from the table. "Hey," she said breathlessly, escaping the courtyard and heading out through the foyer to the street. "Where are you?"

"At my casa." He sounded guarded. "So, how's it going there?"

"Horrible," Heather wailed. "You'll never guess what happened!"

"Shawn turned up." His guardedness softened a bit. "Bonnie told me."

"Bon told you! She knew he was coming too?" Heather was outraged.

"No. She called a few minutes ago to warn me. She didn't want me walking in on it all."

"Oh, thank God. For a minute I thought she was in on it."

"In on what, exactly?" He was careful.

It didn't look great, she had to admit. She tried to imagine if his ex-girlfriend had come crashing in.

"My mom's scheming," Heather told him.

"Your mom's scheming, with your boyfriend Shawn . . . ," he said softly.

"With my ex-boyfriend Shawn," she corrected. "Who I dated for about five minutes, by the way."

"This is a long way to come after five minutes of dating . . ." He cleared his throat. "Expensive too."

Heather wished she could see him. She couldn't read his voice. "Where are you? Can I just come there now and explain?"

"Leaving your ex-boyfriend of five minutes with your mom and Bonnie?"

Heather groaned.

"Maybe it's best if you get your side of things sorted out first?"

Heather could feel the Barranco magic slipping further and further away. She didn't like it. "Romeo—"

"We haven't slept," he interrupted. "Everything's a bit heightened. Let's take the day to get things in order, huh? I'll grab food and sleep and you . . . do what you need to do. I'll call you later, okay?"

No. Not okay. Not okay at all. Heather was feeling exposed and stressed, and she couldn't read him, and today had just gone to hell and back.

"Juliet?" he prodded, his voice husky. "Okay?"

"Okay," she said miserably.

He took pity on her. "It will be okay, weirdo. It's just a lot."

"It's always a lot," she sighed, rubbing her face. "I warned you."

"Maybe when we catch up you can fill me in on this guy you dated for five minutes, and why everyone keeps saying you're sexting him," Owen said quietly.

"I'm not sexting him!" Heather felt like strangling her mother and Bon. "I was messaging you."

"It's a pretty big deal for a guy to turn up in Peru like this."

"I swear on my mother's grave that I have zero interest in Shawn. I broke up with him and he's being a total stalker right now. Like that Cami Walker girl in your photography club."

"Your mother's grave? She isn't dead."

"She's about to be."

She was trying to make him laugh, but Owen sighed, and it was a weary, exasperated sound that filled Heather with dread.

"Alright," Heather said quickly. "I'll handle it and call you later."

"Good luck." He was wry.

"Owen . . . ?"

"Yeah?"

"You can trust me," she said quietly.

"I know."

"You do? How do you know?" Her heart was squeezing.

"Because you answered my call. And you were going to tell me straight up." He paused. "And Bonnie told me I could trust you. She said you were furious. And that you wouldn't take his flowers."

"I am furious. And I didn't take his flowers." Not this time.

"And you wanted to come straight here, to me."

"I do."

"So, relax, Juliet. What will be will be."

"Relaxing isn't natural to me," she admitted.

"Makes sense." There was a smile in his voice. "You spend your life imagining possible problems."

"And their solutions," she reminded him. "I'll fix this. I promise."

But, of course, it wasn't that easy. Because people were less predictable than software.

* * *

When she got back to the table, only Kyle remained.

"Where is everyone?" she asked, surprised.

The courtyard was empty, the tables all cleared away, except for theirs. Kyle was picking at the fruit platter and finishing his coffee.

"Ah, it all blew up," he said in his usual sleepy way. You'd never know Kyle was like Animal the Muppet on a drumkit. Off the kit, Kyle was slow moving and sweet. His big brown eyes looked up at her over the coffee cup. "Your grandmother really let your mom have it. I'm surprised you didn't hear it."

"She deserves it," Heather said bluntly.

"Yeah, well, your mom ran off crying to her room. And your grandmother said she was going to have a long bath and forget that we all exist."

"And Shawn?"

Kyle sighed. "I don't know. He went upstairs to our room. Maybe he's writing you a love haiku or something."

Heather gave a startled laugh.

"Want some fruit?" Kyle asked, pushing the remains of the platter toward her. "You haven't eaten."

Heather took a slice of pineapple and collapsed in a chair. "What a day."

"And it's only nine a.m."

"What the hell are you guys doing here, Kyle?" Heather moaned. "I mean, seriously?"

"I know. It's nuts." He shook his shaggy head. "But I couldn't let him come alone."

"You shouldn't have let him come at all!"

"I'm not his keeper, Heather. I'm just his buddy." Kyle took a slice of pineapple too.

"What's his deal?" Heather asked. "Why won't he take no for an answer?"

Kyle cocked an eyebrow and fixed her with a disbelieving look.

Heather huffed. "Fine. It's my fault for sleeping with him. But I never promised him anything. In fact, I told him not to have any hope."

"And then you slept with him. Again."

"Yeah." Heather slumped. "It was dumb. But he kept chasing. Every time there's a knock at my door, it's him, bearing gifts."

Kyle held his hands up. "We're only human, right? I'm just telling you why. I'm not judging."

"I'm judging," she grumbled, snatching a bunch of grapes off the platter. Now that she'd eaten something, she realized how hungry she was. "I don't know why I keep doing it."

"You don't think he's right? That you actually like him? That you're just skittish because of your folks' issues and stuff?"

Heather shook her head. "No." She picked at the grapes. "I think it's more that I have issues of my own." Heather felt a wave of exhaustion rising. "I think he just turns up when I'm lonely and I'm scared and I'm having a really hard time, you know? And I . . ." Heather swallowed hard. "I'm using him."

Kyle sighed.

"Do you think that makes me a horrible person?" she whispered, scared to look him in the eye. But she did, and all she saw was kindness.

"Nah," Kyle said. "He's using you too, so it all balances out."

Heather frowned. "What do you mean?"

Kyle shrugged. "I love him, you know I do. He's one of my oldest friends. But he's also forever falling madly in love with women who don't want him. That's his issue. And he chases and chases, like a moth flinging himself at a flame. You're not the first."

For some reason that stung. "Oh," she said. Like Dad, she thought. Dad's adoration wasn't unique either—or at least not singular. Dad just loved women loving him; Mom had loved him the hardest and the longest, but it hadn't kept him. Heather loved him too, and her love was genuinely unique (unless he had another daughter out there somewhere, which honestly, at this point, she wouldn't put past him) and it still didn't keep him. Love poured into Dad and poured right back out again, like he was a bucket with a hole.

She wasn't special to Dad, and she wasn't special to Shawn.

"It will pass. If you stop giving him hope," Kyle said significantly.

"I'm done," Heather assured him, feeling stupidly heavy with rejection, even though she was the one doing the rejecting.

"Good. Because it would be nice for him to find someone who likes him back." Kyle cleared his throat. "He might need to work on the stalker behavior first, though."

"Definitely."

"Hey," Kyle said with studied casualness. "Can I ask you a question?"

"As long as it doesn't involve me and Shawn." Heather smiled wanly.

"No. I was just wondering . . . your mom . . . she's the Sandy from the song, right?"

Heather groaned. "Not you too. Shawn was always wanting to talk about Dad's band."

"I love that song."

"Yeah, so did Mom."

Kyle grinned. "I mean, it's no ‘Sally Cinnamon,' but it's pretty cool."

"I don't know what that is."

"The Stone Roses?"

"Kyle, you've got the wrong girl. Talk to my mom if you want nineties music trivia."

"Man, your mom is the ‘Sandy Swears.'"

"You want her? You can have her," Heather offered. She yawned. "I'm going to go catch a nap."

"Oh, here, your grandma left this for you." He tossed her a swipe card.

"Thanks."

"You think your mom would autograph my CD?"

"She didn't write the thing, Kyle. She's just the muse." Heather got to her feet. "I guess I'll have to talk to Shawn today, huh?"

"Yeah. You want a chaperone, so you don't go sleeping with him?"

"Fuck off, Kyle," Heather said kindly, blowing him a kiss. "Thanks for the pineapple. And, you know, for being you." She squeezed his arm. "Still good neighbors after this?"

"Sure. I'd do anything for that autograph."

She laughed. "See you later. Tell Shawn to book flights home and I'll talk to you when I'm rested."

"I mean it about the autograph," he called after her as she left the courtyard.

* * *

Bon had put Heather in with mom again. She was either hoping they'd sort it out or she was sick to death of them. Heather sighed as she saw her mother stretched out on the bed closest to French doors, which were open to a sunny terrace.

It was a nice room. It had more character than the Resort World places Bon usually booked. It was a simple sunny whitewashed room, with a beamed roof, Spanish-style wooden furniture and Peruvian cloth cushions on the beds.

Mom heard her come in and turned. She'd been crying again.

Heather sighed. She heard Kyle's voice in her head. We're only human, right?

"Mom?" Heather sat heavily on her bed, her mind tumbling over the events of the morning. Her anger had calcified, and her knotty emotions were bunched up, low in the pit of her stomach. As she stared at her mom, who was still crying, she felt deeply afraid.

Was this her future? Didn't it get better? Couldn't you grow up and find solid ground?

If only she could know which choices were right, and which were wrong.

"Mom?" She took a deep breath. "Did you feel like you were struck by lightning when you met Dad?"

Mom was confused. "What?" She'd obviously not been expecting Heather to be talking to her at all, let alone to be asking her about Dad.

"Did you know he was The One?" It seemed desperately important all of a sudden to know. Did Mom get struck, the way Bon had been by Jimmy Keays, the way Heather felt struck by Owen?

Because it hadn't worked out well for Bon and Jimmy, and she knew it hadn't worked out well for Mom and Dad. . . .

"Or," Heather said quietly, "did you talk yourself into it . . . ?"

Was Dad Romeo? Or was he Shawn? Which fucked-up issues were at play in her parents? And what did she need to watch out for in herself?

Mom raised herself up on one elbow.

"Please," Heather asked. "I just need to know. Please tell me."