How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [45]
I was so much younger than he was that it seemed there couldn’t be anything I could possibly say, but I couldn’t leave it at that. “Maybe it’s just like you told me, though. It’s something extraordinary.”
He nodded, but sadly, as if he’d said that to himself before and hadn’t figured out how to believe it. “Maybe.” He started to say something, stopped.
“You can say it.”
He leaned forward on the stool, propping himself on his palms, his elbows cocked outward. “Sometimes it feels like there’s no point. Why did I have that big dream, just to lose it in a single second?” He snapped his fingers. “Everything gone in the amount of time it takes to fill your lungs with air one time. Years of study and practice. Gone.”
I looked at his right hand. Whole. He had made adjustments. “Can’t you play guitar with your other hand?”
He went very still, and for a long minute he frowned at me. I worried that I’d said the wrong thing, and began, “I’m sorry. What do I—”
Jonah put his finger to his lips. “Don’t apologize. My heart is pounding so hard I think you must be an angel talking for God.” There was something so fierce in the air, so strange and brilliant and wild, that I felt it dancing on my scalp and the nape of my neck and over my hands, which wanted to press themselves into his face. He wasn’t handsome. I could see that. He had a big nose and a broad forehead and a long throat with an Adam’s apple that was too prominent. It was a face I really liked anyway. The honey color of his eyes, his full bottom lip, the thoughtfulness over that high brow. He stared at me intently, and I could see he was thinking very hard about what I said.
“Didn’t you ever think of that before?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head. “No.” And then he smiled and took my hand. “Thank you, my friend.”
The door swung open and in came my mother. I yanked my hand away instinctively, but she’d already seen. “What are you doing, young man?” she said, storming up to the counter. “Do you know how old she is?” Without stopping for an answer, she turned her fury in my direction. “What are you doing, Ramona? Didn’t you learn anything?”
I stared at my mother in horror, my entire body frozen with surprise and humiliation. Jonah slowly came to his feet, a quizzical expression on his brow. Before he could say anything, my mother spewed out more of her fury.
“Is there something wrong with you, Ramona? Are you—”
“Lily!” Poppy shouted from the door, hurrying so much that she had to put a hand on her big chest to keep her breasts from bouncing too much. “Mind your tongue, or you’ll say something you don’t mean.”
My heart pounded. “Too late,” I said, standing up. My face and my ears were burning, and my knees shook with humiliation. “Sorry,” I whispered to Jonah.
He glanced at her, raising his good hand in a peaceful gesture, and said, “I think you misunderstood, Mother. We were only talking.” His mild, resonant voice brought a quiet into the room. “She’s just helped me figure out something important.”
My mother looked as if she might cry. “Let’s go, Ramona. We have some shopping to do.”
I glanced at Jonah. He gave me a single, nearly imperceptible nod. As I put down my Dr Pepper can and rounded the counter, it felt as if every bone in my spine was on fire; I could barely walk. I didn’t look at my mother, who put her hand on my back as if to hurry me out the door. I shook her off, shooting her the purest look of hatred I could muster. When we were outside, I said it, too. “I hate you.”
Her chin came up and she marched down the sidewalk, stiff as a broom. “We will discuss it in the car.”
“Oh!” I cried. “You can humiliate me to death, but I can’t embarrass you? Is that it?”
“Ramona,” she said, in a deadly quiet voice, taking my arm in a firm, sharp grip that brooked no resistance. “Don’t make me slap you in front of all these people.”
There was no stopping the tears then. They poured out of my eyes in a hot, steady stream, piling another humiliation