“Sounds like the perfect job.”

“You ever been there?” I question.

“No. I don’t really ever go out.” She smiles and adds, “I’m sort of a workaholic. Jase is always nagging me about that.”

“Well, you should stop by sometime.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” she says, but I know she doesn’t mean it.

Laughing, I joke, “You’re full of shit, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Maybe,” she repeats as she laughs with me. Her smile is perfect and that shallow dimple makes it hard to not lean over and kiss her, but this girl has walls—unbreakable ones—that I’m determined to start chipping away at.

Getting back to Mark’s house, we each take our time showering and cleaning up.

Mark and I tune in to the Washington vs. Colorado football game. Mark throws a couple of logs onto the fire, and when I pull out my cell to order some pizzas, I see Candace walking through the room and straight into the kitchen. I’m distracted when the line is answered and I’m putting in the order.

“What kind of pizza do you want, Candace?” I holler into the kitchen.

“I don’t care. I’ll eat anything at this point,” she tells me as I order the pizza.

She walks back into the room carrying a bottle of wine to share with Mark. Those two have proven to be the wine drinkers of the group while Jase and I watch the game and toss back a couple beers, but apparently I haven’t kept that good a count ‘cause Jase has definitely had more than a couple when he starts screaming at the penalty that was just called.

We all laugh at him when he runs into the kitchen to answer Candace’s phone that starts to go off.

He walks back in, total mood shift, mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ as he hands Candace the phone.

“Who is it?” she asks quietly.

“Your mother.”

She looks irritated when she heads outside to the patio to take the call.

“What’s that all about?” I ask Jase.

“Her parents are assholes to her,” he blurts out and Mark butts in, almost scolding when he calls his name, “Jase.”

He looks to Mark and says, “What? They are. They treat her like shit and she doesn’t deserve it.”

Getting up from the couch, I head into the other room where I watch her through the glass French doors. I can hear her yelling, “Of course this is my fault, right? You are unbelievable, Mother!”

“It’s not my fault. I swear.”

I watch my father’s glare as he spits out, “It’s never your fault, you piece of shit,” before grabbing the broom and whacking the wooden handle into my back. I hear the wood splinter and crack when it slaps across my skin, sending shards of heated pain up my spine.

“Get your ass up and walk to school. Don’t ask me to drive you again. You miss the bus, you walk.”

Coming out of my thoughts, I fight the urge to storm out there and take the phone from her so she doesn’t have to listen to whatever her mother is saying to her that’s making her so upset. Instead, I stand here and watch her. When she hangs up and shoves the phone in her pocket, she sits back in one of the chairs and stares up into the sky. She’s sad. And it’s not just tonight. Underneath the few conversations that we’ve had, I can see it buried in her. On the drive to Mount Rainier this morning, she must have had a nightmare or something when she fell asleep in the back seat of the car while Mark and I were up front. I didn’t want to give it too much attention because I didn’t want to embarrass her, but she was scared. She was in Jase’s arms in a matter of seconds, and now, watching her staring into the blackness, I feel there’s more to her than she lets on.

When she stands and turns, she catches me watching her, but I don’t even care. I open the door and ask, “You okay?” because I really need to know.

But when she blows it off and says with mock humor, “My mother’s lost her mind, that’s all,” I see her walls.

“Wanna talk about it?” I keep on, trying to chip as she walks past me.

Turning to face me, she casually says, “Nothing to really talk about.”

I want to touch her, just brush her cheek, something, but I don’t. Being with her today, talking with her, laughing with her—she’s different. Sweet, funny, athletic, and soft. God, she’s soft. But it’s more than that; she has depth to her. A depth I’ve never seen with the girls I’ve been with. Not that I’ve been with them in a way to even notice if they did, but they all seemed so shallow. Even though she doesn’t mean to let on, I can tell there’s a lot going on under her exterior, and I feel this eagerness to explore.

When she walks back to Jase and lies down with her head in his lap, he asks, “What did she want?”

“She wanted to know when I would be home for Thanksgiving.”

“When are you going to leave?” Mark asks.

“I told her I would be there Wednesday night. I’ll probably leave Saturday morning,” she answers as I walk across the room and take a seat on the stoop of the fireplace.

“When are you and Mark heading out?” she questions Jase.

“Our flight leaves around noon on Tuesday,” he tells her.

“When do you guys get back?”

“Late Sunday afternoon.”

“What about you?” she asks me as she rolls onto her side to look at me.

“I’m going to go spend a few days with my family down in Cannon Beach in Oregon. My aunts and uncles always come to my mother’s house with my cousins for a big dinner.”

“Will you be there for the weekend?”

“Nah,” I tell her. “I’ll come back home that night. My mom and her sisters spend the day plotting for Black Friday, so I always come back home and just lay low.”

“Sounds like you have a big family,” Jase says.

“Yeah, man, three cousins and between them they have seven little kids. I love them, but shit they’re loud,” I say as I laugh.

“Must be nice though. I’m an only child with no cousins. Small family,” she tells me.

“So, it’s just you and your parents?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“They live very far?” I ask her.

“No. They still live in Shoreline where I grew up.”

Knowing that Jase is going home with Mark to Ohio for the holiday, I offer, “Well, I’ll be around.”

When I see a hint of a smile, I feel like maybe I’ve finally made a nick in her exterior.

When I pull into my mom’s driveway, I see my family’s cars littering the street. I’m the last one to get here, and when I walk in, the noise confirms it. I make my way through the foyer to the back of the house, and the scene looks the same as always. The guys are drinking beer and watching football while the kids run around and play. The girls are all in the kitchen with the babies, laughing and gossiping.

“Sweetheart!” my mom squeals when she notices me walking into the kitchen. She gives me a big hug, and I wrap my arms around her. I feel like a lot has changed since I last saw her, so I take the embrace I feel like I’ve been missing for these past few months.

We exchange our ‘I love you’s’ and ‘I’ve missed you’s’ before I say hi to everyone else. The kids are running wild, excited to see me, as I hand Tori the keys to my jeep so she can go bring in the bags of gifts that I always have every time I see the kids. I love spoiling them, but it’s also my method of distracting them, and giving them new shit to play with keeps them occupied and out of their parents’ hair for a while.

When Tori walks back in, arms full of gifts, she mouths ‘thank you,’ desperate for the reprieve. I laugh and follow her into the living room where all the kids are. I sit on the floor with them as they rip through the paper, finding puzzles, toy cars, dolls, and a small bubble machine that is sure to keep these kids entertained by the hour.

“And where did you plan on the kids playing with that?” my mother gently nags, in only the way a mom can do.