Becoming Mila by Estelle Maskame
19
We don’t go to church that Sunday morning.
Popeye is tired, so Sheri decides it’s best if the three of us stay home today. She doesn’t realize how much of a relief this is – I don’t think I could face the Averys so soon after last night’s bombshell revelation.
It’s mid-afternoon and I’m back in my room after washing the dishes after lunch, sprawled out on my bed, and staring blankly at the ceiling. My phone is turned off and shut away in a drawer. The whir of the rotating fan on my wall is oddly soothing as the cool air brushes over my skin every five seconds. I don’t have the energy to move. Even just thinking feels like too much effort. It feels as though I’m carrying the weight of a thousand bricks inside my head.
All my life, I thought my parents connected naturally at school and fell in love in that perfect, old-fashioned sort of way. But how could LeAnne know that my parents met at Belmont if what she told me wasn’t true? How could she know Ruben’s name?
Well, all that information can be easily found on the internet, I tell myself. But yet, I know somewhere deep within me, in that same part of me where I hold on to the resentment of feeling second-best to Dad’s career, that LeAnne’s words aren’t vicious lies.
I feel shaken to the core by the idea of Dad cheating on someone, not even on an early girlfriend, but on his fiancée,and that Mom was complicit. And then Dad was so worried about his career, about the consequences of what he’d done, that he attempted to buy LeAnne’s silence, even though she didn’t need any convincing to be quiet. If the past month has taught me anything, it’s that there are seemingly no limits to the lengths to which Dad will go to remain adored by Hollywood – and squeaky clean in the eyes of the public.
“Mila?” Sheri says, knocking on my door and then pushing it open anyway.
“What?” I say without bothering to tear my eyes from the ceiling.
I don’t mean to be abrupt or cold with Sheri and Popeye, but today I can’t help it. It’s obvious they know the truth – how could they not? – that’s why Sheri was clearly uncomfortable and encouraged me to speak to my parents, not her, about LeAnne Avery. I don’t want to tell them that it was, in fact, LeAnne herself who told me the truth as to why us Hardings and the Averys can’t be friends. If I discuss this with Sheri . . . It would be like I’m admitting that I believe LeAnne’s story. Admitting that my parents have lied to me about how they met. And admitting that I honestly don’t know who Dad is anymore.
“You have a visitor,” says Sheri, flipping a dish towel over her shoulder and folding her arms. She leans back against the door frame with a sigh. “Blake buzzed the gate. I let him in.”
“You did?” I pull myself upright and blink at her in surprise. “Why? I thought you told me you didn’t think it was a good idea for Blake and me to hang out together.”
“Well, it’s not a good idea,” she says, and then she smiles in her usual soft, warm way that lets me know she’s on my side. “But I’m not going to stop you from seeing a boy you like.”
I rise from my bed and slip on a pair of flip flops, then brush past Sheri with an embarrassed grin. And as I run downstairs, I realize that for the first time I didn’t argue the point of Blake being a boy who I like.
Outside in the blistering heat, he waits.
The gate is shut again, but Blake’s truck is parked next to Sheri’s van, and at the foot of the porch steps Blake stands with Bailey’s leash wrapped tightly around one hand and the other slid into the pocket of his shorts. Bailey sits on his haunches, tail wagging and tongue hanging out. The sight of the two of them immediately eases the tightness I’ve felt in my chest since last night. They are so cute.
“You weren’t at church, and you weren’t replying to my texts,” Blake says as I skip down the porch steps to meet them. “I got worried. I thought . . .”
I kneel down to rake my hands through Bailey’s fur. “You thought . . .?”
“I thought you packed up and went home,” Blake says, looking down. He’s changed from his church slacks to a Tennessee Titans jersey, and he fiddles anxiously with the hem. “After what my mom told you.”
Oh.He knows.
I mean, he already knew about his mom’s history with my dad. But I didn’t expect him to know that LeAnne told me the truth last night. It’s a relief, I guess. It saves me the discomfort of having to tell him what happened.
Still, I have no idea what to say in response. I just stare into Bailey’s huge glossy eyes and continue scratching behind his ears in silence. My face burns.
“How about a walk?” Blake suggests after a minute.
I hesitantly nod. After our kiss last night, I should be thrilled to see Blake again. We should be giddy and shy, but LeAnne’s revelations have ruined everything. How am I supposed to feel excited and flirty around Blake when I feel like my head might just combust from the pressure that’s mounting inside it? This isn’t how the morning after is supposed to be.
I straighten up and follow Blake back to the gate where I let us out. We head out onto the empty country roads together, the two of us side-by-side, while Bailey tugs on the leash to sniff at the grass overgrowing from the surrounding fields. Our steps are slow, and neither of us says anything for the first few minutes. We just stare ahead, squinting into the sunlight and mulling over the different thoughts inside our heads.
Finally, Blake says, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” is all I respond in a quiet voice. I hug my arms around me and fight the burning at the corners of my eyes. Here they come again, all these thoughts about Dad . . . A cheater . . . A liar . . . A fraud.
“Have you spoken to your parents?”
“No. I don’t think . . .” I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes shut. “I don’t think I can face them. Not yet. I need to process all of this first.”
“My mom shouldn’t have told you,” Blake says, shaking his head. He glares up at the clear blue sky. “That was so wrong to ambush you last night like that. It’s something you should have only ever found out from your parents themselves.”
“I don’t think my parents would have ever told me,” I mumble. When I questioned them about LeAnne Avery, that was their opening. That was their opportunity to tell me the truth, but they chose to keep silent. I don’t believe for a second that this was a secret of theirs they ever intended on sharing.
“Probably because it’s not something you needed to know,” Blake says. We stop walking to wait for Bailey to finish exploring a patch of thorn bushes, and Blake rubs his hand over the back of his neck in his usual frustrated way. “Me and my mom aren’t talking anymore. Not that things were exactly great between us. I didn’t get home until two last night because I stayed until the fire was out and the ash had cooled, and she was in the kitchen waiting for me. She told me what happened when she dropped you off.”
“Does she know you’re here right now?” I ask as we begin to walk again. Our pace feels slower and slower with each step we take. We have barely made any progress; the walls of the Harding Estate still run parallel to us.
“No, she thinks I took Bailey to the park,” he says. Then, with a faint smile, he adds, “And I blocked her from checking my location, which is something I should have done forever ago.”
The frown on my face doesn’t waver. My head feels even heavier as if it really is weighed down by bricks. I am learning too many secrets recently, and there’s no room left to deal with all of these conflicting emotions of hurt and betrayal and confusion.
“She doesn’t want you to see me,” I say.
“I know.”
“Then why did you come?”
Blake halts and turns to face me. His eyes narrow as they run over me, taking me in. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“But—”
“No. Listen,” he says abruptly. He steps forward and places his hand on my hip, bowing his head to look at me solemnly from beneath his eyelashes. “I don’t care, not one bit, about what happened in the past. That’s between my mom and your parents. Not us. So please don’t think for even a second that I’m going to lose interest in you simply because my mom is holding a grudge.”
I only absorb a couple of his words, but they are the most important ones. “So . . .” I can’t help but tease, “you’re interested in me?”
“Oh, c’mon, Mila,” he says, kicking self-consciously at the dirt. “You should know by now that I was interested as soon as you opened my truck door that first weekend. Catching your eye in the rearview and you giving me this shy, timid smile while you blushed. Yeah, exactly like that!”
My hands fly to my face to hide the color that has risen in my cheeks. Honestly, I have zero hope of ever hiding how Blake makes me feel. It’s so uncontrollable, and it gets one hundred times worse once I become aware of it.
“Miss Mila, let me see that cute blushing of yours,” Blake says. His hands reach for mine, Bailey’s leash around his wrist, and he pulls them away from my face, revealing my burning, freckled cheeks again. He beams, his dimples flashing. “There we go. You’d miss me making you blush if we stopped seeing each other, right?”
I nod, biting my lip to stop myself from grinning too wide. My hands are still in his. “Maybe.”
“Then stop worrying about what my mom said, because I’m not going anywhere.”
Our gazes lock on to one another a little stronger. Our hands are held together between our chests, and Blake ignores Bailey tugging on his leash. We are standing in the road with the sun shining down upon us and no cars in sight, just Blake and me in the Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee. The Nashville-dreaming musician and the girl who one day wants to be more than just Everett Harding’s daughter. Two people trying to live in their parents’ shadows; two people who aren’t going to be told what to do.
Blake edges closer.
“Wait,” I whisper. “Not right now.”
I would love to kiss Blake again, but my head is a mess. I want the next time I kiss him to be perfect and with no random interruptions; I want to be able to focus entirely on only him. This isn’t the right moment; not when the ground has just been knocked out from under me and I have so many questions that still need answers.
“Okay, Miss Mila,” Blake murmurs, and he lightly presses his soft lips against my cheek instead.