Reviewing this advice, Garrett felt a little better. He’d followed it to a “T.” He wasn’t sure what his mother’s problem was. He’d done nothing wrong.
He wasn’t surprised, though, when all hell broke loose the next day. Marcus went to the beach early to swim in the waves, and as soon as he left, Beth began to lecture Garrett and Winnie about sexual responsibility.
“It’s a private thing, an intimate thing between two people,” she said. “It’s not something you flaunt in front of your mother or anyone else.”
“I hear you, Mom,” Garrett said. “But you walked into Piper’s house. You were, technically, trespassing.”
This sent Beth into a flurry of expletives, at the end of which she grounded him from the car. Two weeks.
“Good,” Winnie said. “Because I want to go for my license and I can’t practice with Garrett hogging the car.”
“What about Winnie?” Garrett challenged. “Not flaunting sex in front of Mom’s face means Winnie can’t have sex with Marcus.”
“We’re not having sex,” Winnie said. “Why don’t you figure out what you’re talking about before you open your big mouth, lover boy.”
“This is bullshit,” Garrett said. He walked out the front door and considered taking the car-but that was a line even he wouldn’t cross-so he hopped on a bike and pedaled to Piper’s. Garrett rode as hard as he could, over the dirt road, hitting all the bumps on purpose. He hadn’t ridden a bike since the year before, and it felt good to get the exercise. He’d have to be in shape for soccer in September. He should start jogging, like his mother. But Garrett didn’t want to think about his mother or September, when he would be separated from Piper. Nor did he want to think about the sex in the bathroom, although his mind kept returning to the subject, as he tried to gauge how much of an ass he’d made of himself. Pushing Piper away, disengaging, fumbling with the condom, trying to hide the evidence as he heard his mother pounding on the door. At the time he hadn’t thought of Beth as trespassing; he’d thought of his mother catching him having sex with his girlfriend. That was enough to make anyone act like a moron.
He reached Piper’s house in less than ten minutes, but when he arrived, he was chagrined to see that both David’s pickup and the painting van were in the driveway. Meaning, David was home.
And not only home, but right there in the kitchen, sitting at the island with Piper and Peyton, the three of them drinking coffee. Garrett knocked on the frame of the screen door, although he had an urge to eavesdrop on the conversation. It looked serious-it was serious, definitely, if David stayed home from work.
All three of the Ronans looked up at the knock. Garrett expected Piper to run to the door, but seeing him seemed to cause her physical pain. She winced.
David was the first to speak. “Come on in here for a second, Garrett.”
Garrett sensed that his timing was bad. “I’m interrupting?”
“Not at all,” David said. “Because we have something to tell you. Both girls are leaving this morning to see their mom in Wellfleet. They’ll be gone until the fifteenth.”
“The fifteenth?” Garrett repeated. He tried to locate himself in the month. Yesterday was the fourth, today the fifth. The fifteenth was ten days away-ten precious summer days that he would not be spending with Piper. He gazed at her, asking her with his eyes if this was anything she had control over, but her face was deep in her coffee cup. So he guessed not. This was more parenting gone haywire.
“You and Piper may talk for five minutes in the driveway, alone,” David said. “And then she’s going upstairs to pack and I’m taking her and Peyton to the airport.” He checked his watch and carried his coffee cup to the sink. “Understood?”
Garrett, speechless, was already outside. He kicked at the pebbles of the driveway and waited for Piper to follow him out. Instinctively, they walked to the very end of the driveway, which was shielded from the house by a Spanish olive tree. Garrett took her in his arms and noticed for the first time that she’d taken the diamond stud out of her nose, revealing a sore-looking divot.
“What happened?” he said.
“I have to go. He’s seriously pissed this time. Because you and I were upstairs, but also because of Peyton. He thinks you and I, whatever, our behavior was one of the reasons Peyton ran away last night. He called Mom and they talked for, like, two hours. They both think this is the best thing.”
“You don’t think it’s the best thing, do you?”
She dropped her chin to her chest. “I don’t know, Garrett.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” he said. “Do you want to be separated for ten days?”
“Not really.”
Not really? Garrett felt like his heart was going to explode. He wondered if she thought less of him because he acted like such a buffoon in the bathroom.
“I love you,” he said, and his father’s words popped into his mind: Don’t mistake sex for love. But Garrett wasn’t mistaken here. He did love Piper. Just the thought of not seeing her for ten days made him want to do something drastic.
She didn’t respond to his declaration. He’d always been good at reading other people’s thoughts, but here he was drawing a blank.
“You love me, too, don’t you?” he asked.
She touched her nose. “Yes.”
Garrett let out a long stream of highly relieved air. Then, he felt buoyant. They were in love!
“Five minutes is up!” David yelled from the house, though clearly it had only been three or four minutes. “Inside, Piper. Pronto!”
Piper kissed Garrett on the mouth, but chastely. “I’ll see you when I get back,” she said.
“Wait,” he said. “Give me your mom’s phone number. I’ll call you from town. I’ll call every day.”
She took a few steps backward, shaking her head. “I don’t think you should,” she said. “I’ll see you when I get back.” She waved, but in a way that looked like shooing.
Garrett watched her retreat to the house. His lungs ached; he felt like a scuba diver descending deeper and deeper where the pressure of the water was unbearable and there wasn’t enough oxygen to survive. Ten days! He waited until Piper reached the door, hoping she would turn and wave, but she didn’t. She stepped into the house-or was pulled in, Garrett couldn’t tell- and the door closed very tightly behind her, leaving him with nothing to do but climb on his bike and pedal morosely away.
Under certain circumstances, ten days could seem like a very long time. For example, Garrett imagined that ten days in prison would seem like a long time. Ten days of hard manual labor would seem like a long time. The first ten days after Garrett’s father died had seemed like an eternity. But even that didn’t drag on quite as long as ten days without Piper. Especially when Gar-rett’s favorite pastime became reviewing those minutes with her in the driveway in his mind.
On the bright side, Piper had told him she loved him. On the dark side was her response of not really, when asked if she wanted to be separated for ten days, and the fact that she didn’t want him to call her, and the more awful fact that when she left she didn’t kiss him with any kind of passion. The conclusion Garrett drew-the only conclusion he could live with for ten days-was that David had said or done something to scare Piper right out of her normal personality. She was sheepish, she was timid. Without the diamond in her nose she hadn’t even looked like herself; she was Wonder Woman without her magic bracelets. The only part of the conversation Garrett could really take to heart was the part when Piper said she loved him-because that one word, “yes,” had sounded completely sincere.