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My feet carry me over to the stairs. I drop my bag at my feet and collapse onto the first step, dig my fingers into the soft, cream-colored carpet as tears pour from my eyes like rain furiously falling from the sky.
The doorknob turns and I can hear Matt yelling on the other side of the wood. "Jen! Come on! Open up!"
When he realizes the door is locked, he starts pounding on it, the sound echoing through the entryway. "Jen!"
Mom rushes into the room, looks from me to the door where Matt is relentlessly assaulting the wood.
"Make him leave, p-please," I choke out.
Mom strides over to the door, her maroon dress trailing behind her. I'm so glad she's home early from work today.
"Matt, honey," she says as she opens the door. "Now's not a good time."
I can't see him from where I'm perched on the stairs, but I can hear the anguish in his voice. It almost makes me feel bad for shutting him out completely.
"Please, Mrs. Kearns," he begs. "I just need to...I need to...please. I need to talk to her."
Mom slyly looks in my direction from beside the door, her worried hazel eyes silently asking me what I want to do. I shake my head and mouth make him leave.
She sighs heavily. "She doesn't want to talk right now. Give her some space. She'll come see you when she's ready."
My heart feels like it's ripping in two as she shuts the door and walks over to me, the carpet swallowing the sounds of her black heels. She sits down beside me and tucks a strand of damp blond hair behind my ear.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks.
I shake my head and fall into her open arms. She runs her hands through my hair as I lay my head in her lap. The tears don't stop flowing as I let the hurt and rejection and heartache cascade down my face, an endless stream of frustration and misery soaking Mom's dress.
When the tears run dry, I sit up and wipe my face.
"What happened, baby?" Mom asks.
I finally meet her troubled eyes, shimmering gold and deep green assessing me with apprehension. Mom is beautiful, even as her forehead furrows and her lips purse and she chews on the inside of her cheek. I wish I looked more like her. Maybe Matt would want me then.
She's a few inches shorter than I am, curvier, making it easy to fill out clothes the way I wish I could. Her skin is flawless, even without make-up. And her hair! What I'd give for the silky straight strands that frame her heart-shaped face. Right now, her hair is a pretty shade of amber with subtle pearl-colored highlights. She always looks so put together. The opposite of me in every way.
"He, um…" I trail off, not sure how much I want to divulge. My parents aren't like normal parents. They're cool. They talk about sex and condoms and how it's perfectly normal to experiment at my age. It's almost unnerving how lax they are about it. Then again, they did raise my two older half-brothers. They're Dad's sons, but Mom literally took Tommy to the doctor for an STD his senior year of high school. She's definitely the parent you would want to go to if you had one of those. She doesn't judge and just, well, deals with it in the coolest way possible. She bought him enough condoms to practice safe sex for a very long time.
Like I said, they're cool parents.
"He kissed me," I finally blurt out. "Then he told me he didn't want me."
I leave out the part where he touched my boobs, and it was the best feeling in the entire world. Until he had to kiss me and ruin it.
Mom frowns. "That doesn't sound like Matt. You guys have been best friends for years. I'm sure whatever happened, you'll work it out."
Um, he rejected me. After I exposed my never-before-been-touched breasts to him. His hands were literally on my boobs. Chest? Breasts? Why is picking a word to call them so difficult?
Honestly, I just wish I could forget the whole thing happened.
"Why don't you head upstairs and take a few moments to collect your thoughts? Danny, Nora and the boys will be over for dinner soon," Mom informs me as she wraps an arm over my slumped shoulders, squeezes lightly. "Matt sounded horrible so maybe...call him?"
I shake my head, annoyed. "I'm not ready to talk to him yet."
"Don't forget he's going to UCLA in the fall," she reminds me. "He's going to be 16 hours away from you. Maybe he's trying to do the right thing here."
"I haven't gotten into Boulder yet," I shrug.
"We both know you will," she raises her eyebrows, silently chastising me. She hates when I talk down on myself. But with my grades and lack of extracurriculars, it's kind of iffy at this point.
