Unexpected

  UNEXPECTED

  BY

  MEG JOLIE

  This work is legally copyrighted.

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  1

  “I do look fat, don’t I?” Mom asked yet again. “My butt? It looks like a marshmallow. A big. Fat. Pink. Marshmallow.” Her voice was full of despair. “I should’ve gone with black. Black is slimming. But I thought pink would be fun. Cute. Who am I kidding? I am too old for cute!”

  At this point, I was fairly sure she was no longer talking to me. She’d probably forgotten I was even in the room.

  “Mom.”

  I was perched on the side of her bed. It was a few days after Christmas and we were both still on break for the holidays. Me, from high school, of course. Her, from the local university where she taught. We’d spent the morning shopping. Taking advantage of some fabulous sales. The outrageous evidence of our shopping spree was piled up at the foot of Mom’s bed.

  She turned away from her full length mirror to look at me. Her expression was clearly fretful.

  “You asked me for my opinion so I’m telling you, you look great. Not that it matters,” I said with a shrug. “Because aren’t you always telling me that if a man is only interested in looks, he isn’t worth being interested in at all?” I made an innocently questioning face.

  She pursed her lips, sealing in whatever argument was running through her head. I had her verbally cornered.

  She blew out a breath. “Right. You’re right. It’s just…”

  I forced a smile. “I know Mom. Believe me, I know.” This was the first time in a really long time that my mother had a boyfriend after leaving my dad…and I was single. Thanks to my boyfriend, Corey…Ugh, ex-boyfriend, Corey, dumping me right after Thanksgiving break. My long-term relationship had ended with a bang. Or make that a splatter. Because that’s what my heart did. It got torn out and splattered at my feet.

  But Mom’s current relationship? Apparently it was still going full steam ahead.

  I was glad. She deserved to be happy after what my jerk of a dad had done to her.

  Dad left for greener pastures—in the form of Dori Miller. He found out quickly that if you can’t afford the manure––in the form of jewelry, flowers and fancy hotel rooms—the pasture dries up pretty quickly. Meaning? Dori left him when the judge handed his balls—in the form of alimony and child support—to Mom on a silver platter.

  Dad’s balls on a silver platter? Those were Mom’s words, not mine.

  It had been over two years since Dad left us. Mom’s always saying he left her, not me, because that’s what good moms do. And my mom? She’s the best. Even if she is wrong on a rare occasion.

  At first, I didn’t see my dad much at all. It was my choice. I needed space. He hadn’t argued. After some time had passed, Mom insisted that what happened was between the two of them. She wanted me to try to rebuild our damaged relationship. As far as I was concerned, our relationship was tattered beyond repair.

  Sometime before the holidays, he must’ve finally been struck by his guilty conscience because he started calling more than ever. Just because he’d decided to make that kind of change didn’t mean that I had to accept it. After half a dozen or so ignored calls I decided to make things easier on myself. I blocked his number from my phone. I wasn’t sure if he’d still been trying lately or not.

  I didn’t know.

  And I didn’t care.

  That’s what happens when your dad becomes a real life cliché. Cheating on his wife with his secretary of all people. If that weren’t bad enough, I had the misfortune of being the one to catch him with his secretary. Only not at his office…On his desk…At his architectural firm.

  It was in our living room. On my mom’s couch.

  So much worse.

  The couch is long gone. So is my dad.

  Although the visual scars from that day remain.

  It was Mom’s night to teach her night class. I was supposed to go to dinner with my team after volleyball practice. I’d caught a flu bug and had skipped practice altogether. Worst timing ever.

  Still, Mom and I have moved on.

  I mentally threw my shoulders back and took a deep breath. “I think I might have to meet him soon.”

  “Who?” Mom carefully asked, though I was sure she knew. She just didn’t want to be wrong. She carefully wriggled out of the cute, puffy pink ski pants. She’d been trying them on for her upcoming romantic getaway.

  “This dreamy guy of yours,” I teased.

  As a rule, I didn’t meet the men my mom dated. We’d decided neither of us needed that complication. And to be honest, barging in on one parental tryst in my lifetime had left me a little leery about being even remotely aware of my parents’—separate—romantic exploits.

  I wanted her to date. I just didn’t want to think about it. Or anything it may entail. If I didn’t have to. Or be involved in it in any way. That included meeting whomever she was with. And there’d been quite a few over the last two years.

  To borrow my grandma’s terminology, Mom was a catch.

  Also in the wise words of Grandma, Dad left Mom for a hussy. A tramp. A floozy. Or, well, basically a home-wrecking trollop.

  The trollop had done her job, wrecked my family, and then hadn’t stuck around to assess the damages. She’d just hightailed it out of Dad’s life. I had no interest in his current dating status. Keeping track of Mom’s was more than enough.

  The first man she dated after my dad was Joe Sandstrom. While that in itself may not be so bad, his daughter, Heidi made it less than desirable. She’s a year younger than me. She’s the kind of girl that seems so cute and sweet from afar. But get too close and she’s like a little hedgehog. Adorable on the outside but prickly as can be the second you get close enough to touch.

  I know this because I’d made the mistake of trying to befriend her. I realized now how dumb that was. I mean, it wasn’t as if I really thought anything would come of our parents together. But I’d wanted to reach out just in case. On that teeny, tiny miniscule little chance that we’d be step-siblings someday.

  She had not appreciated the effort on my part. After that, I’d decided I was better off not knowing whom Mom was dating for a multitude of reasons. Avoiding the odd desire to ingratiate myself to people that didn’t want to have anything to do with me, being the biggest.

  On top of the Heidi issue, I thought there was a good chance Mom had dated my volleyball coach. One afternoon last fall, I’d twisted my ankle. He’d had to call her in. There had been an excessive amount of flirting on his part. She’d started seeing someone shortly after that. I did not want to know if she’d been seeing him.

  Because he was also my World Literature teacher. And thinking about him and my mom together would’ve been too much of a distraction. Dissecting literary masterpieces was hard enough without imagining how he was entertaining my mom every Friday night.

  So, neither of us saw the sense in me meeting her dates. The exception would be if she ever got serious enough that she thought she was dating The One. To me, that just seemed logical. Personally, I thought this current guy just might be that one. I hoped so because my mom had never been so happy. Not even with my dad.

  At least, not that I ever remembered.

  She smiled, her nose crinkling just a little. “Did you just call him dreamy?” she mocked.

  I nodded. “I think I’m ready to meet him. Soon. Anyone that makes you this happy? I like him already.” They’d been dating since this past fall. Four months, give or take. She had even disappeared for a while Christmas morning to see him for a bit. I hadn’t minded. I had things to do, mys
elf. I’d walked over to my best friend’s house so we could exchange gifts.

  “I’m happy to hear that.” Mom’s face melted into a smile.

  I wondered, for the millionth time, what the hell my dad was thinking when he left her. Dr. Lila Monroe was beautiful with long, strawberry blond hair. She had incredible ocean-blue eyes. I looked like a younger, shorter, but completely washed out version of her. Well, that was my opinion, anyway.

  Maybe I didn’t look like her at all.

  And she was smart, too. An Economics professor at our local university and furthermore, smart enough to leave her lying, cheating husband.

  Without a backward glance.

  His loss, no doubt.

  Mom still had that goofy look on her face, and I thought maybe she had more to say but she didn’t. She just stood there, gazing off into nothing. Her chest heaved under a sigh. She was probably already thinking of her upcoming weekend.

  “Just smile like that,” I teased her. “And you won’t have to worry about him checking out your butt at all.”

  I was rewarded with having her snow pants whipped at me. I caught them and tossed them back.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with me going away?” she asked. She folded up the snow pants and placed them beside me on the king-sized bed. She’d moved on to a bag that held two new pairs of shoes. “I mean, Powder Ridge is a few hours away. It’s not like I’d just be able to jump in the car and be here if something came up.”

  I nodded. “Of course it’s fine. If anything comes up, I’ll call the Jacobs. I think you need a weekend away.” Mom put in a lot of hours at the university. She also put in a lot of hours at home because she was always bringing work back to the house with her. “Seriously, if anyone deserves some fun, it’s you. And I know you haven’t been skiing in forever.” I didn’t throw in that she hadn’t gone skiing since my dad left. Skiing used to be their “thing”. It’s how they met. I was also pretty sure that’s why she hadn’t gone skiing since he disappeared from our lives. Because it reminded her too much of him. And neither one of us needed that. But since I knew she enjoyed it, I was glad she wasn’t letting him stop her anymore.

  “I know. It’s just…” She faded off. She’d never left me home alone before. Not overnight, anyway and definitely not for the whole weekend.

  “Mom, I’m seventeen!” And a senior. And the youngest of my friends thanks to a late-July birthday. But there was no reason to point that out. “Next year at this time, I’ll be on my own.” I didn’t point out I’d be on the other end of the country, going to college in Florida. I was excited about it. She was not.

  She slowly nodded and gave me “the look”. The wistful, sad one that said her baby was growing up way too fast. That look made me squirm. It’s not like it was my fault that time insisted on creeping by.

  “I know,” she finally said.

  Before she could delve any deeper into those thoughts I jumped up. “So, this was fun. Thanks for lunch and all of the clothes but I think I’m going to head over to Jamie’s. Okay?”

  She nodded. “Alright. I’ll just be here, dealing with this…” she said. She motioned to the mountainous heap of bags.

  I dropped a kiss on her cheek and bounded down the stairs. I stuffed my feet into a pair of boots, threw on my thick, winter jacket and a pair of gloves. Winters in Wisconsin could be brutal. Luckily, today wasn’t too bad.

  Jamie Jacobs had been my best friend since the fifth grade. She lived four houses away, in the same housing development. The blocks weren’t distinct as they typically are in housing developments. Our houses were scattered across wide, tree filled lots. Each one nestled back at the end of long, tarred driveways. Our development was annoyingly and deceptively named Secluded Pines—despite the fact that majority of the trees were of the leafless, scraggly variety. This time of year they looked like snow-covered, skeletal remains of their former summer glory.

  Still, it was easily one of the nicest areas to live in town.

  I say this without being immodest. It’s simply that I appreciated what we had. I had seen how quickly it could all come crashing down. My other best friend was Willow Krieger. Her family had just gone through a major financial upheaval. When our country’s economy took the great swan dive, her parents’ art gallery did an encore performance.

  They no longer lived in the majestic, fully and beautifully restored Victorian home she’d lived in since childhood. They now rented a small, battered house near the warehouse district. Apparently when parents in our lovely little town of Laughlin had to make a choice between putting shoes on their kids’ feet or metal sculptures in their front yards, the sculptures—and therefore the Kriegers—lost out.

  I quickly covered the few blocks to Jamie’s. The road had been plowed but my feet still crunched along as I trekked through the snow at a pace that helped me to keep warm. There were a few snowflakes floating through the air. Not enough to amount to anything substantial.

  Robert Jacobs was a pediatrician and Anna was co-owner of Tranquility. It was the one and only spa in Laughlin.

  They could possibly be our town’s most mismatched couple, at first glance, anyway. She was Korean, adopted by a family from Florida when she was a baby. She was petite, beautiful and always, always impeccably dressed. I was sure I’d never seen her leave the house without high heels and layered in jewelry.

  This was in large part due to the image she felt she needed to portray as co-owner of Tranquility. It just wouldn’t do for her to be spotted out and about in frayed jeans and flip-flops. Come to think of it, I was not sure she even owned jeans, let alone flip-flops.

  Robert, on the other hand, was likely over six feet tall. His red hair was kept neatly trimmed because as soon as it got too long, it got completely out of hand. It sprouted from his head like crazy brambles sprouting from a bush. Unlike his wife, his clothing, in my opinion, was rather questionable. He typically wore thick-soled sneakers and thick, black framed glasses. They didn’t look as though they were a funky retro fifties style. They looked more like actual fifties relics. And he always wore a bowtie. Why? I’ve no idea other than I think he just liked to prove that he could. If not for Robert, I would’ve thought bowties to be extinct. Perhaps he was singlehandedly trying to revive them. Or perhaps because he worked with children, he felt it gave him license to always look… a bit silly?

  My guess was that he was an attractive man. However, it was hard to see past the wonky ties and the gaudy glasses.

  Both Jamie and Tristan took after their mother. No thick-soled sneakers, wonky accessories or gaudy glasses for either of them.

  The Jacobs’ house was easily one of the largest in all of Secluded Pines. It was nestled back, far off the tarred road that looped around the entirety of the development. The large red brick structure stood out against the snow. I traipsed down the driveway, stamping the snow off of my boots the last few feet.

  I rang the bell to announce my arrival. After a few seconds I let myself into the Jacobs’ house because that’s what I’d been doing for years. I was greeted with the sound of classical music. It was so glorious, so perfect, so incredibly breathtaking that if I hadn’t known better, I’d think it was floating through the speakers as a CD played.

  But I knew better.

  The haunting, beautiful and now-familiar chords of Moonlight Sonata floated down the hall to greet me. I wouldn’t have known what the piece was called if Tristan hadn’t told me. He had been practicing one day last summer and for some reason, the piece had gripped me. I had asked him to play it over and over again.

  He had, without complaint.

  I slid my outdoor gear off. Instead of heading up to Jamie’s bedroom, I followed the sound of the melody.

  I stood outside of the music room for a minute, just listening to Tristan. The way he played always amazed me. It wasn’t just because I had the musical ineptitude of a preschooler. It was because he was truly phenomenal. I loved to hear him play.

  I waited for a break in
the music before poking my head around the door.

  “That was beautiful,” I said as I made my way into the room. I loved this room with its cherry flooring and burgundy, faux-suede painted walls. There was a mocha colored overstuffed sofa off to the side of the room. It had been placed there for company when Mrs. Jacobs insisted Tristan play for them. I never used it.

  Tristan grinned at me, his hand frozen on the page he was going to turn. “Hey, Britta. Thanks. I can play it again,” he offered as he put his hand down in his lap.

  “Okay,” I accepted, grinning back. I crossed the room, bypassing the leather couch. I slid onto the bench next to him. As always, I probably made it harder for him to play. He never complained.

  He leaned toward me, reaching up to push a strand of my wind-blown hair off of my face.

  I was freezing from my walk and I could feel the heat coming off of him. I was tempted to lean into him. Instead, I shivered.

  “Cold?” He didn’t wait for an answer to the rhetorical question. He pulled me into a sideways hug.

  “Just a little,” I said. He rubbed my arm, warming it with the friction. My other arm was tucked cozily between us.

  A smile tugged at my lips because as always, he looked like a complete contradiction. From the doorway, where I could only see him from the chest down, he looked so stuffy and proper behind Anna’s baby grand. But sitting next to him, I had a clear view of his ripped up jeans and his vintage Cinderella t-shirt. Cinderella as in the rock group, not the Disney movie. Obviously.

  “Britta! You were supposed to come upstairs!” Jamie called from the doorway. “How was shopping?” she asked as she came in. Willow was right behind her.

  “Did your mom go crazy?” Willow wanted to know.

  “Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “She did.” My mom was a notorious shopaholic.

  “Well, come on,” Jamie urged. “We were just heading into the kitchen.”

  I glanced at Tristan. He shrugged as his arm slid away. “I can play it later.”

  “Okay,” I said with a nod.