In Summertime Saga

I woke up and the pillow next to me smelled like coconut and Jenny wasn't on it.

The bed was warm where she'd been. She'd left recently, probably when the sky started getting light, slipping out before Debbie's alarm went off. Smart. The kind of move I'd have made in my past life. Leave before the house wakes up. Preserve the story.

My dresser drawer was open. Second drawer, the one with t-shirts. She'd taken one on her way out.

I lay there for a minute looking at the open drawer and the dented pillow and the sheet that was pulled sideways to her side of the bed. My body was sore in places that made me want to smile. The scratches on my back stung against the mattress. My shoulder had a bruise where her teeth had been. My hand ached from gripping her hip and the joints were stiff when I made a fist.

I got up. Pulled on shorts and a clean shirt and went to the bathroom. The mirror showed a person who'd had a night. Scratch marks across my left shoulder blade that I could just see if I turned. A bruise on my collarbone that was already going purple at the edges. My hair was a mess but my hair was always a mess so that was free. I splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth and paused with the toothbrush in my mouth and looked at myself. Brown hair, regular face, the start of muscle definition in my arms from the gym. The face of an eighteen-year-old kid who'd fucked the woman down the hall last night and was about to go eat breakfast with her mother. In my past life I'd have been out the door before dawn. I'd have been dressed and gone and the note I'd leave would say nothing useful. Here there was nowhere to go. The kitchen was downstairs and both of them were in it.

I went downstairs.

The kitchen smelled like coffee and eggs. Debbie was at the stove in her usual morning setup: floral apron over a white blouse, hair brushed, already dressed like the house required a uniform. She did this every day. The kitchen was her office and she showed up in full.

"Good morning, sweetie. Sleep well?"

The question was automatic, the kind she asked every morning, and I almost answered automatically before I caught the half-second pause she'd put between "sleep" and "well." A pause that might have been nothing. A pause that might have been a woman who'd been in the next room last night and heard things through thin walls.

"Like a rock," I said.

"Good. There's coffee."

I poured coffee. The mug was the blue one with the chipped handle. Debbie's mugs were all old. I drank.

Jenny was at the table.

She was eating cereal from a bowl with the spoon in her left hand and her phone in her right and she was wearing my shirt. A grey cotton t-shirt, too big for her, hanging off one shoulder, the hem at mid-thigh. No bra underneath it. No shorts. She was sitting at the kitchen table eating Froot Loops in my shirt at nine in the morning with her mother three feet away.

Her hair was in a messy bun. The kind you make in thirty seconds by twisting and shoving a scrunchie around it. No makeup. She looked like she'd rolled out of bed and walked straight to the cereal.

"Morning," she said without looking up from her phone.

"Morning."

I sat down across from her. Debbie put a plate of eggs and toast on the counter and said "help yourself, there's plenty" and I got up and grabbed the plate and sat back down. The kitchen was quiet except for Debbie's spatula and Jenny's spoon and the coffee maker gurgling.

The orange cat was sitting on the third step of the staircase looking into the kitchen with the expression of an animal that wanted food but refused to enter a room with this many people in it. It was there every morning. Nobody acknowledged it.

Debbie sat down with her own plate. She ate her eggs and sipped her coffee and looked at the window where the morning light was coming in. She'd seen the shirt. She'd looked at Jenny when I came downstairs and her eyes had moved from Jenny's face to the shoulder where the collar was hanging loose and she'd registered the grey cotton and she'd turned back to her eggs and she hadn't said a word.

"These are good," I said, because the eggs were good and because someone had to say something.

"Thank you, sweetie. I added a little paprika this time. Jenny, eat something real. Cereal isn't breakfast."

"Cereal is literally breakfast food, Mom. It's in the name. Break. Fast."

"It's sugar and food coloring."

"It's delicious sugar and food coloring."

Debbie sighed the sigh of a woman who'd had this conversation a thousand times and had lost every single one and would have it again tomorrow. She ate her eggs.

I ate my toast. Jenny ate her cereal. The table was small enough that my knee was near Jenny's knee and at some point her bare foot pressed against the outside of my ankle and stayed there.

"Do you have work today, sweetie?" Debbie asked.

"Delivery run later. Afternoon probably."

"On a Sunday?"

"Tony does Sunday lunch specials." This was true. Tips were better on Sundays because people ordering lunch pizza were in a better mood than people ordering Tuesday night pizza. And I needed the money. The drawer at home had five hundred and change in it and the bike was earning but the stats needed training and the training needed time and the time cost delivery shifts and I was running all of it in my head constantly, the math of getting ahead in a world that charged you for everything.

"That's good." Debbie nodded. "You've been working so hard lately. I want you to know I notice that." She paused. "Both of you. Jenny's been very focused on her, um, online business."

"It's a real business, Mom." Jenny didn't look up from her phone.

"I know it is, honey. I'm just saying I notice."

The table went quiet for a few seconds. Debbie drank her coffee. I ate my eggs. Jenny scrolled. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, someone on the street was washing their car and the sound of the hose carried through the kitchen window.

Debbie was holding the coffee mug close to her chest with both hands. She did that when she was sitting on a thought she wasn't going to say.

"Thanks, Debbie."

Under the table, Jenny's foot moved up from my ankle to my calf. Her toes were cold against my skin.

"I was thinking," Jenny said, still looking at her phone, scrolling with her thumb. "Do you want to shoot some content this afternoon? Before your delivery."

Debbie's spatula stopped. She was rinsing it at the sink and she paused for a half-second and then kept rinsing.

"Content?" Debbie said.

"Promotional stuff." Jenny looked up from her phone and looked directly at Debbie. "He's been helping me with social media marketing. For my page. The photos he takes are really good and I want to do some video teasers."

"Oh." Debbie turned off the faucet. "That's nice of you, sweetie." She was talking to me but looking at Jenny and her voice was the same gentle Debbie voice it always was and the only difference was a small tightness at the corners of her mouth.

"He's got a good eye," Jenny said. "For framing and stuff."

"I'm sure he does."

Jenny's foot was flat against my calf now. Warm from the contact, the toes still cool at the tips. She took another bite of cereal and scrolled her phone and the shirt hung off her shoulder and the bare skin caught the morning light. She knew what she was doing. She'd picked the shirt, picked the moment, picked the phrasing.

Debbie turned back to the dishes. She was rinsing the pan she'd used for the eggs and she scrubbed it and kept scrubbing and the hot water was steaming and her shoulders were tight under the apron straps.

"I saw your follower count went up," Debbie said. She said it to the dishes. "On your little page."

Jenny looked up from her phone. "You follow my Sluttygram?"

"I just check sometimes. To make sure you're being safe."

"It's called being supportive, Mom. And yeah, the numbers are up. Because the content is better. Because of him." She pointed at me with her spoon. A drop of purple milk landed on the table.

I ate my eggs and said nothing. Under the table Jenny's foot pressed harder against my calf. She was marking territory at the breakfast table and enjoying it and I was letting her because it was funny and because the eggs were good and because the sun was coming through the window and this was my life now.

"More coffee?" Debbie asked.

"Please."

She refilled my mug. Her hand brushed my shoulder when she reached across and she pulled it back quickly and went back to the counter. I drank the coffee and the morning sun was coming through the window and the cat on the stairs had left and Jenny's foot was on my leg and Debbie was doing dishes.

Jenny finished her cereal. Stood up. The shirt came to mid-thigh and her legs were bare and she walked to the sink and put her bowl in and Debbie was right there and they stood next to each other for a second, mother and daughter, one in a floral apron and one in a stolen t-shirt, and Debbie looked at the shirt and Jenny looked at Debbie looking at the shirt and Debbie said "you should put some shorts on, honey. It's chilly" and Jenny said "I'm fine" and went upstairs. Her bare feet on the stairs, two at a time, and the bathroom door closing and the shower turning on.

I finished my eggs. Washed my plate. Debbie was wiping down the counter and the kitchen was quiet and the shower was running upstairs and the morning sun had moved from the window to the floor and the square of light was on the linoleum near my feet.

"She seems happy lately," Debbie said to the counter. Her hand was moving the cloth in small circles and her shoulders were set. "I'm glad you two are getting along. She hasn't been this animated in a while. Since before Frank."

She said Frank's name with that small dip at the end she always gave it. The kitchen was quiet after she said it. Frank's name did that to rooms.

"She's a good kid," Debbie said. "Under all the... you know." She gestured vaguely at the upstairs, which covered Jenny's entire personality in one wave of a dishcloth.

"Yeah," I said. "She is."

Debbie looked at me. Her grey eyes held mine and she pressed her lips together and nodded once and left the kitchen. I heard her go upstairs. Her bedroom door closed softly.

I stood at the sink and drank the rest of my coffee. Jenny's cereal bowl was in the sink with mine and the Froot Loops at the bottom were turning the milk purple.

My phone buzzed. Jenny: "2pm. My room. Bring the lamp."

I put the phone in my pocket and went upstairs to shower.