Standing for Weirdo

Chapter 33

Sunday awoke overcast and grim, and the smell of rain lingered in the air. I wrapped the portrait I had shamelessly filched from the auditorium in a plastic bag and then stuffed it into my handbag.

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t get ruined if we end up facing the mother of all storms.

Staying put at home was out of the question, but I was still nervous about the task for the day.

The tone from my cell snapped me out of the moodiness. I raced down the stairs, shouted a hasty good-bye to my puzzled parents, and rushed to the driveway to meet Trevor.

He smiled when he saw me and it made a knot form in my chest. He looked better than yesterday night, but definitely worse than he usually did. The papery-thin texture the skin over his cheekbones had acquired made me think of someone who had been a long time in a hospital, and the purplish marks under his eyes were all the more obvious in the light. I hugged him anyway.

“Hey,” he said quietly against the side of my neck.

“Hey, yourself.” It felt good to be buried in the crook of his neck, that infamous dyed hair of his softly caressing my cheeks and tickling my nose.

“Alice?” There was a note of horror in the befuddled tone of my father, right behind us, and I felt Trevor tensing and letting me go at once.

I didn’t. It had taken me much too long to accept him, and I was past worrying about what others thought of us now, even if those others were my parents.

“Dad,” I said, stepping aside but keeping a comfortable proximity with him. “You remember Trevor, don’t you?”

“Mr. Jones. A pleasure to see you,” Trevor said politely, reaching out a hand to my father.

He shook it and then opened his mouth and closed it a few times. The name was obviously familiar, but he failed to reconcile it with the face in front of him.

“So this is the, um, friend you’re going out with today?” he asked at length.

“Yes.” I eyed him, suspiciously. If he so much as complained, things were going to get ugly, fast.

“Oh. Yes, I see.”

“Did you want something, Dad?”

My mom chose that moment to appear behind him on the door and I swallowed a groan.

If things could get more awkward…

But to my surprise, mom only did a very subtle double take when she saw Trevor. In a flash, I remembered the conversation about chances we’d had what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Oh, hello,” she said, beaming her best smile. “You must be Trevor Bennett, right? It’s so good to see you again!”

Trevor seemed taken aback by the full wattage of Mom’s smile, but he recovered quickly enough with a sincere smile of his own. “Mrs. Jones. I’m glad to see you again too.”

The brief exchange must have reset my Dad’s flailing brain, because he shook himself and turned to me.

“You said you were going to have lunch together, and I thought that I should treat you to celebrate the play’s success,” he said, handing me a few bills, and I felt all my nerves melt away.