Confessions of a Kleptomaniac

  I sit up on my bed and text Wynter the details—well, the ones I feel like sharing. I tell her about kissing Grey and how he stood up for me when Piper and Logan attacked me when we were trying to leave.

  Wynter: God, she’s always been such a bitch. Even when we were in kindergarten, she was the one stealing everyone’s glue and crayons and blaming it on the shyest person in the class.

  Me: That shyest person in the class was me. I was grounded for, like, two weeks when the Ms. Mayfaring told my mom I was stealing everyone’s stuff.

  I pause, rereading my text, the words really sinking in.

  She probably thought I was a klepto back then. No wonder she jumped to that conclusion when she found all that stuff in the floorboards.

  Wynter: I think we should get her back for all the nasty stuff she’s done.

  Me: I think we should just leave her alone. You know she’ll come after us if we do, and I hate dealing with drama.

  Wynter: Fine, I’ll let it go for now, but if she comes after you again, mama bear is going to be pissed.

  Me: All right, mama bear, but don’t go looking for trouble, okay?

  Wynter: Fine. But for the record, I hate her.

  Me: I kind of do, too.

  Wynter: Good girl. Now if we could just get you to realize what a bunch of asshats your parents are, then we’d be making real progress.

  Me: I know they’re asshats. I just don’t know what to do about their asshatness.

  Wynter: Move in with me? The pool house was just remodeled and it’s free rent.

  Me: I don’t want to live for free there. I’d want to pay my way.

  Wynter: Holy shit!!! Does that mean you’re actually considering it?

  Me: Maybe. If you’re being serious about it.

  Wynter: Duh. I’m always serious.

  Me: Liar.

  Wynter: Okay, you might be right about that, but I do want you to move in with me.

  Me: Let me see what I can do about a job, and then we’ll talk.

  Wynter: Deal. YAY!!! SO STOKED!

  Chuckling, I erase the messages so my mom won’t see them when she goes through my phone after she gets home. I may be considering moving out, but the last thing I want is for them to find out before I get stuff set up. And after what happened with my dad . . .

  I gulp as I stare at my bruised wrist, knowing it’s going to be intense when I tell them I’m leaving.

  I spend the next hour getting ready to go to Benny’s. Knowing I’m going to see Grey, I probably primp more than I normally would. Unsure what to wear, I put on a pair of jeans and a fitted, grey T-shirt, and then cover myself up with my hoodie so I can get out of the house without my grandma scrutinizing me.

  I check my email before I head out, and my heart misses a beat when I see I have a reply from Aunt Ashlynn.

  Hey,

  I’m so glad you responded to me. I was so worried you’d just delete the email . . . or that they’d get to it and delete it before you read it. I really want to meet you, too. I’m going to be in Fairs Hollow next Friday to do some stuff at the college, which is only a few hours away from Ridgefield. I was thinking of driving out there, and maybe we could meet somewhere and have lunch? Let me know. I hope you’ll say yes, though. I really, really want to see you.

  Ashlynn.

  And P.S., to your weird but very entertaining question, my birthday is July 25th.

  “It’s her!” I shout then slap my hand over my mouth.

  Moments later, my bedroom door flies open, and my grandma races in. “What on earth is all that yelling about?”

  “I . . . um.” I scratch at the side of my nose. “I thought I saw a bat, but it turned out just to be a moth.”

  She glares at me before walking out, muttering, “Stupid girl. Bats don’t look like moths and anyone who thinks so is an idiot. Great. All my grandkids are turning out to be morons.”

  Once she’s gone, I type Aunt Ashlynn a quick reply that I’d love to meet her and to email me the restaurant’s address. Then I skip out of the house and drive to Benny and Gale’s Corner Store.

  Grey is stacking shelves a few aisles from the front door when I walk inside. His jeans hang low on his waist, and every time he reaches up, his shirt lifts up, revealing a speck of skin. I don’t get much time to appreciate the view of him, though, because Benny motions for me to come over.

  “It’s so nice of you to do this,” he thanks me as he meets me at the front of the register. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like you to work in the office. My wife’s been on my case about shredding old receipts and stuff, but I haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “Whatever you need help with, I’m your girl,” I tell him, but I’m already nervous about being in a store.

  He smiles then escorts me toward the back of the store. I try not to pay attention to anything on the shelves, but as we pass by the nail polish section, I’m forced to remember what I was doing here only a couple of weeks ago.

  But you’re not here for that now. You’re here to try to make up for what you’ve done, and that has to be a start of something new, right?

  That’s what I try to convince myself, but I still feel guilty every time Benny smiles at me as he explains what boxes of papers need to be shredded. After he’s done giving me the rundown, he leaves me alone to go back to the counter, putting all of his trust in me, believing I’m a good person.

  I’m going to be. I won’t steal, no matter what.

  Benny wasn’t joking about not getting around to shredding papers. Two hours and five paper cuts later, I still have countless boxes to go through that are filled with papers and receipts dated all the way back to the 1970s.

  “I can’t believe he’s kept all of these receipts for this long,” I say as I lift the lid off another box.

  “It’s that bad, huh?” Grey’s voice floats over my shoulder. He’s leaning against the doorway with a backpack slung over his shoulder, gaping at the boxes and papers covering almost every inch of the small space.

  Smiling, I set the lid down and turn around. “It’s crazy. There are papers in here that are fifty years old.”

  “This looks just like my mom’s office.”

  “Is she a pack rat?” I straighten my legs to stand up.

  “She used to be,” he says, rubbing his scruffy jawline dotted with a fresh bruise. “But she’s been selling off a lot of stuff lately, so the house is pretty empty except for her office. She uses that to sort of hide all the clutter, I guess.”

  “When I was little, I used to sweep all the stuff on the kitchen floor under the fridge when my mom asked me to clean up.” I weave around the boxes, making my way over to him.

  “Why didn’t you just use the dust pan?”

  “I don’t know. At the time, I probably thought it just took too much time to get the dustpan out. Now I wonder if I might’ve got a twisted sense of gratification when I hid all those crumbs where my mom couldn’t see them, yet they were still there.”

  “You little rebel,” he teases with a grin.

  “I guess I kind of was, wasn’t I?” I stop just short of him. “What are you doing back here? Or did you just sneak back to see me?”

  “I’m actually getting ready to take my lunch break,” he says. “And Benny told me to come back here and see if you needed a break, too. In fact, he seemed really persistent that you not only take a break with me, but that you go eat lunch with me.”

  “He said those exact words to you?” I question.

  “I might have embellished a little bit.” He peeks out in the store before stepping into the room.

  He keeps walking, even when he reaches me and forces me to back up until my back bumps into a shelf. Then his lips come down on mine, and he kisses me fervently as his fingers splay across the side of my neck. I tangle my fingers through his hair and devour him, pulling him closer.

  “Come to lunch with me,” he murmurs between kisses, and I nod.

  With one last tangle of our tongues, he pulls away
, blinking dazedly.

  “I wanted to do that the second you walked in the store, but I didn’t think it’d be good a good idea to fondle my girlfriend in front of the customers on my first day.”

  “Yeah, that’s definitely more fifth day stuff,” I joke lightly, but inside, my heart is hammering.

  Girlfriend? He just called me his girlfriend. I know we had that talk last night and everything, but I didn’t expect him to just throw the title out there the next day.

  “What’s that smile for?” Grey asked.

  “It’s nothing.” I try to change the subject. “How’s your face feeling?”

  “My face is fine. Now fess up. What’s the smile for?” He pinches my side, tickling me.

  “No way.” I skitter to the side, hop over boxes, and barrel out of the room with him chasing after me.

  The second we enter the store area, though, we play it cool and calmly walk up to the register. We tell Benny we’re clocking out, and he waves at us, but seems distracted with banging the mouse against the counter. Grey takes the mouse from him and turns it on before giving it back to him.

  “I did that the day he hired me,” he says after we’ve pushed out the front doors and stepped outside. “I showed him how to turn it on, but I think he forgets things pretty easily. I think it might just be because he’s old, though. My grandma got that way right before she passed away.”

  “My grandma is totally the opposite,” I tell him as we stroll down the sidewalk past the quaint secondhand shops, the bookstore, and the coffee house. “She remembers everything. And I mean, everything. If I so much as even change my earrings, she’s like, ‘Why’d you put those in when you had a perfectly good pair in already?’ ”

  Grey glances left then right before he steps off the curb. “Is your grandma as intense as your parents?”

  I nod. “She’s pretty much like my mom, which I guess kind of makes sense since she raised her.”

  “But you’re nothing like your parents, and they raised you.” He reaches out to take my hand. “I don’t really believe the whole, ‘like mother, like daughter,’ ‘like father, like son’ saying is true. I think sometimes kids end up like their parents, but sometimes they take a totally different route in life.”

  When I take his offered hand, he veers right and heads toward the park in the center of the town square.

  “I hope I can. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever ended up like my parents. I hope, if I have kids, I treat them better.”

  “You will,” he says simply. “You’re too nice to ever become them.”

  I smile at that and let him lead the way past the swings and to the back of the park where picnic tables are tucked beneath the canopy of trees.

  “What are we doing back here?” I ask as he releases my hand.

  He sets his backpack down on the table and drags the zipper open. “Eating lunch.”

  “But I didn’t bring a lunch with me.”

  “I know. I made you one.”

  “You made me a lunch?” God, if Wynter heard this, she’d die. She’s always telling fantasy stories about how one day she’s going to meet a hot guy who takes care of her, treats her right, and cooks her dinner.

  “It’s not fancy or anything.” He takes out two sandwiches, two bottles of orange juice, a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a bag of chips.

  “How’d you know I was going to eat lunch with you?” I ask, sitting down.

  “I didn’t know, just hoped.” He sits down across from me. “And if you didn’t, I’d just eat all the food myself.”

  “You could eat all this food?” I ask, gaping at the spread.

  He grins proudly. “And then some.”

  He hands me a sandwich, and I dive in, watching as two kids push each other on the swing set while another one watches from the sidelines. It reminds me of the days when Beck, Wynter, and I would take turns pushing each other. Only, one of us would have to be the third wheel and sit on the swing, lamely rocking by ourselves.

  “What’s so funny?” Grey asks, flicking a bug away from the food.

  “It’s nothing.” I pick up my sandwich and take a bite. “I was just thinking about Beck and Wynter and how we used to play at the park sometimes when we were kids. I’d have to lie to my mom and tell her I was going to church activities. It worked until the leader of the church activities ratted me out.”

  “What happened when they found out?” he asks, popping open the bag of chips.

  “They wouldn’t let me see my friends for a week straight.” I lick a drop of mayo off my bottom lip and catch him watching me. “They even kept me home from school just so I couldn’t see them there.”

  He scoops up a handful of chips from the bag. “If my parents punished me every time I snuck off with my friends, I’d be punished all the time.” He grins as he pops a chip into his mouth. “Thankfully, I won’t have that problem anymore.”

  “You still have friends, Grey.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think I ever really did.”

  “Well, mis amigos son tus amigos.”

  He blinks at me. “Come again?”

  I giggle. “It means my friends are your friends.”

  “You’re going to share your friends with me?” He seems entertained by the idea.

  “Of course. Isn’t that what good girlfriends do?” I smile then take a big bite out of my sandwich.

  “I’ve never had a good girlfriend, so I have no idea.” He opens the bag of cookies. “I’ll take your word for it, though.”

  “Good. Consider yourself an official member of the misfits and rebels circle.”

  “You guys named yourselves?” he questions, crooking his brow.

  “We did when we were younger,” I say, reaching for the bag of chips. “We don’t really call ourselves that now.”

  “So which of you are the rebels and which ones are the misfits?”

  “Beck and Wynter were the rebels. Willow and I wanted to be misfits. Ari wasn’t around when we were going through that phase, so he never got a title, but if I had to give him one, I’d say he was a misfit.”

  He slides a chip into his mouth. “What about me?”

  “Hmm . . . I don’t know.” I set the sandwich down and assess him with my head tipped to the side. “After that punch you threw last night and with that whole bad-boy smile you give sometimes, I’m going to have to go with a rebel.”

  “Bad-boy smile?” He pretends to have no clue what I’m talking about. I know he does, though.

  “That half smile you sometimes do when you’re trying to fluster people.”

  “Does it fluster you?” he wonders.

  I roll my eyes. “You know it does.”

  He dazzles me with the smile, and I throw a chip at him, getting flustered.

  He laughs as the chip pegs him in the forehead. “So vicious.”

  “Think about that the next time you try to play me for a sucker,” I say, twisting the cap off the bottle of juice.

  “I’d never play you for a sucker,” he promises. “I just like teasing you because it gets you to smile, and I like when you smile. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right.”

  “I like when you make me smile. I don’t get to do that a lot on the weekends, because I’m always trapped at my house for almost three days straight.” I shrug off the depression crashing down on me. “When I move out, though, hopefully that’ll change.”

  He stops mid-bite. “When you move out? As in, you’re going to move out?”

  I nod. “As soon as I get a job, I think I’m going to move into Wynter’s pool house with her.”

  “Good. I’m glad. I hate the thought of you being in that house with all that verbal”—he looks down at my wrist—“and physical abuse.”

  “It’s the first time he’s hurt me like that,” I feel the need to say.

  “And it’ll be his last,” he presses, “because, if he does it again, I’ll beat his ass. I don’t care if the guy’s old.”

&nbs
p; I hate fighting. I really do. But I like the idea that Grey likes me enough to want to protect me.

  “I do have some good news, though, in the midst of all this craziness. That email ended up being from my aunt Ashlynn.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “I asked her when her birth date is. I didn’t even know it until last night, so it has to be her.”

  He grabs his unopened bottle of juice. “Are you going to meet her?”

  “Yeah. Next Friday . . . I’m a little nervous but excited. I mean, I know I’ve only emailed her once and gotten two from her, but she seems nice.”

  “If she’s anything like you, then I’m sure she is.”

  I smile at that.

  “Totally off the subject,” he says, balling an empty sandwich bag up. “But I have to take my sister out tonight, and I was thinking that maybe you could come with us. I know it’s kind of lame, but it’ll give us more time to hang out.”

  “I might be able to do that. My grandma’s going to be around until tomorrow, so I could probably get away with making up an excuse to get out of the house.” I smile as I finish off the sandwich, trying not to get too excited that I’m going out with Grey tonight. But I can’t help it. My stomach is so bubbly it feels like a bouncy house.

  We finish the rest of our lunch then clean up the garbage and head back to the store, holding hands. I feel like I’m walking on rainbows until I receive a message from my mother.

  Mom: We’re coming home early. Make sure to come home the moment you get off work.

  I frown as I read the text again.

  “I think I might have to take a rain check for tonight. My parents are coming home earlier.”

  “That’s okay,” he says. “We’ll have plenty of time to go out after you move out, right?”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I start to put my phone away, but another text buzzes through.

  Mom: I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone, but I feel like, if I don’t say something now, you might be ruined by the time we get home. We know about the guy, Luna. Mary Pepersoon saw you two holding hands today when you were supposed to be at the store.