Page 31 of Absorbed

“Am not! You’re the cheater, not me!”

“I know how to get the truth out of her.” Jessie squeezed Stacey’s thigh above her knee. She squealed and wriggled with delight. He grabbed her wrists and held them together with one hand while he reached around to grope her pockets with his free hand.

“Get off her, Jess,” Tiffany said, swatting his hands away from Stacey’s wrists. “I thought you had smoother moves than that to grab a girl’s butt.”

Jessie let go, nodding, his eyes locked on Stacey’s. “Oh, believe me…I do.”

Although she’d secretly loved Jessie’s wrestling with her, Stacey was grateful for Tiffany’s solidarity. An hour had passed quickly, and her cheeks and stomach hurt from laughing so hard.

“Why aren’t they back with the food yet?” Mark demanded, uncovering two cards from beneath the towel. “I’m starving.” He dropped his stack of cards onto the discard pile.

Jessie added what was left of his cards to the pile as well. “You should go find them.” He leaned back against the stucco wall.

“We can stay and save our spot,” Stacey said.

Mark nudged Tiffany with his elbow. “Want to be on my search and rescue team?”

Tiffany nodded and they both stood. “If they come back without us, make them stand in line so you can come find us at Hot Dog on a Stick.”

Stacey nodded, scooching back to lean against the wall next to Jessie. Ever since the treading water contest, she felt more relaxed around Jessie: gorgeous, guitar-strumming, skater-boy Jessie, with golden hair and washboard abs. As Mark andTiffany walked away, Stacey reminded herself to be cool.No awkward rambling, Chapman.

She unwrapped a piece of gum and put it in her mouth, then offered Jessie the green Wrigley pack. He took a piece, and Stacey shoved the pack back in her pocket.

Jessie slid over until he was shoulder to shoulder with her, twirling the silver gum wrapper around his finger. “So, how old were you when your parents split up?” he asked.

It took her a second to respond. “Um… I was a baby, actually. You?” She stuttered, confused about the sudden seriousness of the conversation.

“I was nine.”

“I’m sorry. I bet that was hard. I don’t even remember my parents together.”

“Mine weren’t ever happy.”

“Mine still fight, too, and they’ve been apart for like 16 years.”

Jessie exhaled. “We haven’t heard from my mom since she left.”

Stacey looked at Jessie, shocked. “You haven’t heard from your mom since you were nine?” The idea of a mom being the one to leave seemed unimaginable to her.

Jessie shrugged. “My dad had like three girlfriends—that I knew of—before she left. And he drinks a lot. I guess she got fed up.”

Why didn’t she take you and your brother with her?

Stacey was afraid there was no good answer. If Jessie had a mom that would walk out the door and leave him and his brother behind, especially with a dad who drank too much, he probably didn’t want to talk about her.

“I’m really sorry, Jessie,” was all she could think to say. Then, as an afterthought: “Maybe some people aren’t meant for monogamy. Or motherhood.”

“That’s what I think, too. She sends cards every once in awhile, on, like, birthdays or Christmas. Sometimes with money.” He shrugged, folding the smoothed gum wrapper into a tiny airplane. “There’s never a return address, but the last few times they were postmarked in St. Louis.”

“Do you have other family there?”

“Not that I know of.” Jessie stared out at the cars in the parking lot. He was close enough that Stacey could smell the chlorine seeping from his pores. “My little brother wouldn’t shut up about how he missed her. Once our dad smacked him hard for it. Told him he was too old for that shit. He was twelve.” He flung the gum wrapper plane into the gutter. “She clearly didn’t love us anyway. After that, we both stopped talking about her.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see how angry and hurt he was. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t care, but she wasn’t sure what else to say. They sat, quiet, for a long time, until eventually Jessie started talking about his trip to the beach the weekend before, with Melissa and Chad.

“It totally sucked you bailed on us,” Jessie told her. “You’d have had fun.”

Stacey’s stomach fluttered. “Yeah…I got my days mixed up. I made plans like a month before to go to a concert.” She didn’t want to mention Gabe, or how badly that day had gone. “When did you learn to surf?”

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