LITMIR.BIZ

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about anything that wasn’t Quinn. I trotted downstairs, opened the door and then stared. Like a creeper. Because the most beautiful boy in the world stood on the doorstep holding delicious food and Pepsi.

      I’d loved Shawn Willis for years. Or, well, not loved, but crushed on him from afar. He’s five feet ten inches and solid—thick through the shoulders with a tapered waist. Great calves when he wears shorts. His body looks cut from stone, and I know that because he wears clingy T-shirts. His skin is rich brown, his eyelashes are ridiculously long, fringing eyes so dark they look black from across the room.

      “Emma! Hey!” He smiled at me. I gawked like a weirdo, the money clasped in my hand. His jeans looked shabby, like he’d picked them up in a secondhand store, but the current style was to buy them prefaded and riddled with holes, so they could have been brand-new. His sneakers were bright white, matching his polo shirt, and his hair was freshly buzzed, almost down to the scalp. The way he smiled at me called attention to his ridiculous cheekbones and more ridiculous lips and dimples.

      Dear God, he has dimples. It’s just not fair.

      “You ordered pizza, right?” he asked, looking from me to the receipt. In all the weeks we’d ordered pizza, Shawn had never before been our delivery guy.

      “Yeah, I... Sorry.” I traded him the cash for the boxes. “You’re working at Papa Antonio’s now?”

      “Got the job last week. Cash money is a good deal.”

      “Cool. Hope you like it.” When he tried to make change from my twenties, I waved him off. “Keep the tip.”

      “Thanks. Nice T-shirt. I loved that movie.”

      Shawn pointed at my chest before he turned and walked back to the car. For a moment, I pretended he wasn’t eyeballing the Shaun of the Dead logo and the large, gnashy-toothed zombie on it and instead was transfixed by my charm. And by charm, I mean boobs.

      “Thanks!” I called after his back.

      He lifted a hand but didn’t turn around.

      I gazed at the curb long after his car pulled away, ignoring the cold until Nikki waddled out of the house, the foam pedicure thingies still affixed to her feet. “Are you communing with the pizza? We’re hungry.”

      “Shawn Willis,” I croaked.

      “What about him?”

      “He delivered our food.”

      Nikki giggled and swung an arm around my shoulders, guiding me back into the house. “The Shawn Effect, huh? You should ask him out.”

      “He likes Shaun of the Dead. And no.”

      “Why not?”

      I didn’t answer because the truth embarrassed me. I breathed my air, Shawn Willis breathed air from a different stratosphere. Quinn’s stratosphere, where thin, pretty people did thin, pretty people things and chubby nerd girls were ignored.

      * * *

      Quinn was a resilient creature. I expected her to mope around the house lamenting the loss of her silver-tipped baby and his donut-y goodness. Instead, she engaged in hard-core retail therapy wherein she outfitted Versace with enough tiny sweaters to last him sixty New England winters. She also wrote Josh Winters off completely. He’d been low-ish on her priority list before, but now he was somewhere around toilet-level.

      I only knew the last because she announced it as we followed my mother around the grocery store, dragged there together after a half-day school pickup. We were far enough behind Mom she couldn’t hear us, but close enough we could see her Patriots sweatshirt as she pushed the carriage through the aisle.

      “I think Josh suspects the thing with his dad. He’s been avoiding me, but you know what? He only got me the job because he wanted to do me. Not gonna shed any tears for him.” The words were for me but her attention was on her phone.

      “Eh. I feel sorry for any kid whose parents divorce. What happened to you sucked, but it’s not Josh’s fault. I wouldn’t wish our situation on anyone,” I said.

      Quinn’s head jerked up, her eyes big like I’d said something completely out there. “You aren’t happy at home? I thought you were. Like, our moms love the shit out of you.”

      “Not really. I mean, they do, but I’m not always happy.” I could have mentioned she made me miserable when she did mean and selfish things, or that I missed my dad and that got worse the closer we got to Christmas, or that Karen’s way of nonparenting drove me crazy, but that would open Pandora’s box and I liked Pandora contained and tidy in her packaging.

      Quinn’s noticing someone else’s feelings for the first time in...forever. That’s improvement, right?

      “Huh. You never seem down. I kinda hate it here. I miss my old school. My old friends. Dad’s house has seven bedrooms. None of this three-bedroom shit. And I miss my dad, too, of course.” She glanced back at her phone and managed a smile, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t for me or our conversation. She kept talking in my direction anyway. “I wish he hadn’t married that bitch. She only wants his money and he only wants her tits, which are totally fake. She says they’re not, but I saw the ridge when she was sunbathing. Of, like, the saline bags? So, yeah. Whatever. She needs to go.”

      “Oh.”

      Because that was the only available answer. We’d gone from my feelings to hers. Again.

      She ignored me after that, texting to her heart’s content, but I didn’t care. The conversation made me think about things I didn’t like to think about, like my own parents’ divorce and the resulting living situation. Grocery shopping became a thing of torture that would never end. When we got home, I helped Mom with the bags while Quinn escaped to her room to avoid manual labor.

      “I need your help with the Christmas tree this week,” Mom announced. “Karen’s leaving for a conference on Tuesday. I wouldn’t put one up at all with you girls being older, but your grandmother will have a fit if there’s nothing festive in the house. You know how she g—Are you all right?” Mom punctuated the question with a slam, the ham in her hands crashing into the empty sink.

      I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Y-yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking about Dad.”

      “Oh?”

      I shrugged. “I probably won’t get to see him on Christmas with his flight contract. It’s bumming me out.”

      “Oh, honey.” Mom crossed the kitchen to hug me tight, her chin perched on my shoulder. “The holidays are hard. Why don’t you go give him a buzz?”

      “I will.”

      “That’s my girl.” Mom’s hand clapped against my butt in an affectionate, football-player-esque slap. I swatted her away and climbed the stairs, reaching into my pocket for my phone as I crossed into my room. I had no idea where in the world Dad was or which important person he might be carting around. If he was midflight, he wouldn’t answer, but I wanted to connect if I could.

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