Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy

  ~~~~~~~~

  It was a couple of days before she found herself again in what had become her safe spot (the McKee family sofa). Her lap was full of an English assignment. She and Kyle chatted casually off and on as they both tackled schoolwork. Anna wasn’t home yet. Kyle had told her that she would be bringing take out and Connor with her when she did come home. Lia couldn’t help but think that it would be like a family dinner. She shook off the thought.

  She had something more important to focus on right now. This was her first opportunity to talk to him since her altercation with Meredyth. It was only fair that he know what Meredyth had done to him. She thought it would probably be easier to break the news without an audience. It was just hard to start. She felt guilty that her sister was actively violating his privacy.

  That was enough of that. She just needed to go ahead and tell him. It wasn’t her fault that her sister was checking up on him -- except that it kind of was. That made her kind of responsible. She really didn’t like being responsible for that because she spent most of her life not drawing attention from Meredyth and now she was drawing Meredyth’s attention on someone else. Okay, that sort of thinking had to stop.

  “I think that you should tell me about Shelby Cross,” she told him. She maybe should have led into that conversation a little better.

  “What?” Yeah, she definitely should have led into that a little better. Kyle was blinking at her as if he was trying to reconcile her words with the math homework he had been finishing.

  “Shelby Cross, your date to the prom?” She prompted as if offering him a line out of the sea of confusion he seemed to be adrift on (wasn’t she just full of pretty mental imagery tonight). “If it helps to jog your memory, then she wore a yellow dress.”

  “And you know this how,” he had caught up with her conversational lead. “Because I’m a little creeped out right now.”

  “You should be.” She offered with a little bit of a snort. Having someone hire someone to follow you around to take pictures without your knowledge deserved to be headlined with the word creepy.

  “Huh?” Kyle actually looked startled. She replayed what she had just said in her head and took a moment to think about how it sounded. Startled was probably the best reaction she could hope for given that. She really needed to do more thinking before speaking.

  “I’m not the one stalking you,” she reassured (although how reassuring it was given that she was practically giggling was debatable). She needed to get this little chat back on an appropriate track.

  “That’s why you should be creeped out,” she offered as if it somehow would have been all okay if she had been the one doing the stalking. That was no good. “You had your very own, personal photographer for prom night. Not every attendee can boast that.” She kept a light lilt to her voice. She figured humor was the way to go to break this to him.

  “You are making no sense.” Kyle told her with what she could only classify as a tolerant smile. That was probably better than startled, but she figured it was maybe because he wasn’t actually taking her seriously.

  “Meredyth had you followed.” That was abrupt. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so abrupt. Maybe she should have found a gentler way to say it. She needed him to catch on though (and to take her seriously).

  “What?” If the tone of that question was any indication, then catching on was not yet making an appearance on the horizon. He had known this was a possibility, hadn’t he? If he had, then the somewhat horrified sound that he had emitted didn’t show it.

  “Don’t worry too much.” She told him. She wanted him to be aware; she didn’t want him to sound horrified. Horrified was bad. There was no reason for anyone to be horrified. Horrified could quite possibly lead to quitting, and she really, really didn’t want there to be any quitting. “It wasn’t really about you. She’s suspicious for all of the right reasons.”

  “Would it kill you to just spit the whole story out at once?” He sounded impatient. Impatient was better than horrified. She could work with impatient. She would even encourage impatient if it kept everyone well away from horrified (and from quitting -- she was still very adamantly against there being any quitting).

  “I doubt it.” Okay, maybe she was pushing the impatience card a little further than it should be pushed. That might be slightly motivated by the fact that she was figuring out that the somewhat angry flush (while not as good as a regular blush) was up there on the cute on Kyle scale. There was something wrong with her.

  “Could you do that then?” He was doing everything short of foot tapping at her (which would have been somewhat awkward to accomplish given that he was still seated). She supposed it could have been done, but it would likely have been rather uncomfortable. She shook her head. Focus. She needed to focus.

  “Sure,” she agreed. She gathered her thoughts for a millisecond before she launched into her slightly more detailed explanation (there really was no need to go into a very detailed one). “Let’s go for summation. Meredyth doesn’t like my involvement with you. This we have already established and have applauded as a positive step toward our long term goals.” She paused and checked to be sure that he was following her. He nodded at her. She took that as a sign that he was.

  “Meredyth decided to dissuade me from further interest by proving your unworthiness by presenting me with a series of casual shots of you and your prom date, the aforementioned Shelby Cross, as proof of your general infidelity.” She announced. She found herself smiling because she had managed to execute speaking that sentence without getting tongue tied and tripping over her words. She was impressed with her. Kyle, however, probably didn’t share her generally impressed air, so she attempted to keep the smile toned down.

  “You made that overly wordy on purpose, didn’t you?” He looked amused. That was even better than impatient.

  “Yep,” she agreed popping the p as she did so.

  “So, Meredyth had me followed on my date,” he summarized in turn. “Complete with voyeuristic photography, but I shouldn’t be concerned because it’s all in line with our plan to keep her focused on her dislike of your teenage rebellion dating habits instead of noticing any information that may or may not be being funneled out of her home?”

  “Exactly! I’ve told you that wordiness is fun.” Lia offered him her best proud smile.

  “I’m sorry.” The two words sounded so honestly regretful that it was Lia’s turn to be startled. (It was also, apparently, her turn to blink at him in confusion.) He had lost her in whatever conversational turn it was that he had just taken.

  “You’re sorry about what?” She asked searching her brain in an attempt to figure out where he was going with that.

  “I should have mentioned the Shelby Cross/prom thing to you.” He explained. (Did it count as an explanation if she still had absolutely no idea where it was he was coming from with his statement?) He must have read the confusion on her face because he chose to offer further enlightenment. “Then, Meredyth wouldn’t have caught you off guard,” he prompted like she should already have known that.

  “Meredyth’s overbearing tendencies are hardly your fault,” she reminded him. How sad was it that that was something that someone had to be reminded about? “Besides, I covered just fine.” She waved it off with her hand in emphasis.

  “Still,” he stated before the second part of her statement seemed to sink in for him. “Wait.” He held up a hand and a crease appeared in his forehead. “How exactly did you cover?”

  She realized that she had sort of skipped over that part in her explanation. She hadn’t really thought that it was an important part of the story. Either Kyle did, or he was merely curious. It wasn’t like it was a big secret. She had covered. Meredyth had bought it. That was the end of the story. (Except that it wasn’t, but no one else needed to know how the conversation between her sister and herself had come to a conclusion. She was do
ing her best not to think about it herself.)

  “I gave her a spiel about how I couldn’t expect you to not go to school functions just because I wasn’t allowed to go with you.” She offered in response. It was a summarization again, but it covered the high points. She was not going to offer a line by line replay of their dialogue.

  “I guess that works.” He replied. He still looked like something might be bothering him. Lia opted to make a drastic shift in topic. Meredyth and her machinations had taken up enough time.

  “So . . .,” she drew out the word and waited for him to bite.

  “What?”

  “Well, I did ask you to tell me about Shelby Cross.” She reminded him.

  “You aren’t serious?” She just looked at him. He looked back. Clearly, nonverbal cues were not conveying enough encouragement.

  “Sure,” she prompted. “What’s she like?”

  “She’s n . . . pleasant,” he told her nodding his head after he settled on the word choice. “She’s pleasant,” he repeated. “We had an okay time.”

  “Did you just censor yourself from using the term ‘nice’ in reference to describing Shelby Cross’s personality?”

  “I . . . um . . . maybe?” Had he really just asked that as a question? He had. She would answer it.

  “You did,” she assured him. “Was there a particular reason for that self-editing of your vocabulary?”

  He mumbled something in response.

  “I didn’t catch that.” She responded to his mumbling. She wasn’t going out of her way to make him repeat something he was clearly uncomfortable saying. She really hadn’t made out whatever it was that he had said.

  “I said it’s kind of our word.” He repeated a little bit huffily (not, she noticed, making eye contact with her as he did so).

  “Our word?” She questioned. The words felt good to say somehow.

  “Never mind,” he said shaking his head as if he could convince her to not press the matter further by means of the use of the negative gesture. She kept the scoffing laugh confined to the inside of her head. Like that was going to happen.

  “Not a chance,” she told him. “Nice is our word?”

  “I said never mind,” he actually sounded insistent.

  He had to know that that was not going to work. He lived with Anna, didn’t he? He should have known better. If he didn’t want it noticed, then he should have kept the thought to himself. There was no possible way that she was going to let this drop -- not that she wanted him to have kept those words to himself. She was happy to have heard them. They were positively giving her a case of the warm fuzzies (which was probably even more evidence that there was something deeply wrong with her).

  “Are you blushing?” Lia asked him as she watched the color spread across his features (despite the up and down of circumstances over the course of the evening, that sight never got old). “You are blushing,” she told him. (She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know that he was blushing; she was pretty certain that he had to notice.)

  “You decided that we have a word?” She prompted. When he didn’t reply, she continued. “That’s so cute.”

  “You are such a girl,” he deflected with a roll of his eyes. He even turned so that he was facing slightly away from her. It didn’t work. He could try the deflecting all he wanted; that didn’t change the fact that the blush wasn’t going away. She could still see it. “Knock off the gushing.”

  “Are you complaining that I’m a girl?” She asked him with lifted eyebrow. He actually ducked his head down. “That’s what I thought,” she continued. He looked abashed. There was no reason for him to look like that. “Really, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about that. It really is cute that you have a mental block on descriptive words that apply only to us.”

  “When you say it like that it sounds weird.” He sounded a little concerned by that fact. He shouldn’t be. There was nothing to be concerned about. Hadn’t she just told him that it was cute? Did he not listen to her when she was talking?

  “I’m okay with weird,” she admitted in an undertone. He still heard her. She was sure of it because the fading blush suddenly reappeared. She considered her options for a moment. It might be pushy on her part. It might even be inappropriate considering that they had been discussing his date with another girl just a little bit before. She was going to do it anyway.

  She shifted over slightly and slid her books off of her lap and onto the sofa beside her. That gave her an excuse to scoot over a little further in Kyle’s direction. She hadn’t moved enough that they were touching. They were just very close to it. She looked up at him and grinned. He grinned back (the last of the blush still lingered just barely on his face). They both went back to their homework. They were still sitting in a comfortable silence when Anna and Connor came in the door.