Four Letter Word, page 4
“Maybe I could take you?” Jake pressed. “For a tour of the campus. You might—”
They’d reached the restaurant, and Izzy stopped on the corner as Hunter and Peyton ducked inside. “Yeah, no. I’m the third wheel around here enough already.”
“Third wheel?” He cocked his head. “Izzy, that’s not what I meant.”
“Sure sounded like it.” She yanked open the brightly painted front door of the taco restaurant and dashed inside.
The restaurant’s interior was a mishmash of decor that always made Izzy wonder if she’d just entered a fast-food joint or someone’s living room. Tables and chairs were a mix of street finds like an old Formica breakfast table with chrome legs and a long wooden dining room monstrosity with intricately carved pedestals that was surrounded by six wooden school chairs from the early part of the last century. Then there was the industrial fast-food garbage can with the words “Thank you” engraved on the swinging refuse door that Izzy was relatively sure had been picked up from the old Burger King when it went out of business several years ago and a granite counter mounted on plywood. But whatever. The tacos were amazing. And cheap.
The restaurant was empty other than Hunter and Peyton. He was paying for their order at the counter, and she had taken up residence at the chrome-legged table that reminded Izzy of something her grandmother would have owned.
“Hey!” Jake said, following close behind. “Can we talk?”
Izzy ignored him, perusing the menu instead. As if she didn’t have it memorized. “Carnitas or al pastor,” she mused, then smiled at the cashier, a fifty-something Latina with blue eyeshadow and deep burgundy lips. “I’ll take three al pastor tacos.”
“I can get this,” Jake said as the cashier rang Izzy up.
Izzy arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Just, um—”
She didn’t need his guilt money. “I can pay for my own lunch.”
“But, I uh…” He swallowed whatever words were to follow. Good. She’d heard enough.
Izzy turned back to the cashier, who was smirking at her as if she had an amusing secret she wasn’t about to share. Izzy slapped some bills on the counter, half convinced the thing would collapse on impact, grabbed her order number, and retreated to the table. As she went, she heard the cashier say something to Jake in Spanish. He laughed and replied, but Izzy’s two years of Spanish classes hadn’t helped her much and she had no clue what they were saying.
“You still going to the bonfire Friday?” Hunter asked the moment Izzy sat down. “Even with that Italian dude staying with you?”
“Of course she’s going,” Peyton said. “I wouldn’t let my boo miss it. I don’t care who’s living at her house.”
The traditional Eureka High School summer-ending beach bash was one of the parties of the year. Peyton dragged her along every year, though Izzy had to admit she always had fun.
“Cool, cool,” Hunter said, smiling at Izzy as if she’d been the one to actually respond to his question. “How’s the Italian going?”
“Good,” she lied. “I’m on the intermediate course already.”
“Dude, can you say something?” Hunter leaned forward on his elbows. “Like, ask me how my day went?”
Izzy’s mouth went dry. “Um…I could. But I’m pretty sure I know how your day went.”
“Come on,” Peyton said, backing up her boyfriend. “If you can’t speak it in front of us, how will you be able to practice with Alberto?”
Jake slid into the seat beside her, and Izzy did her best to ignore him.
“Say anything,” Peyton pleaded, patting her hand on the tabletop in anticipation. “Please?”
“Dude, it’s not like we’ll even know what it means,” Hunter added.
He had a point. Clearly there was no getting out of this, and it was true that in a few hours she was going to have to get over her reticence and actually converse in Italian with Alberto. Izzy took a breath, trying to quell the panic seizing her central nervous system. “Com’è stata la tua giornata?”
She wasn’t sure exactly what she sounded like, since the pounding of blood in her ears drowned out all other sounds, but judging by her friends’ faces, which had suddenly gone rigid, she was pretty sure even they knew she’d just mercilessly butchered a romance language.
“Good job,” Jake said, breaking the silence. He probably meant to sound sincere, but all Izzy heard was sarcasm.
Peyton’s reaction was less veiled. “Tell me again why you’re going to Italy?”
Izzy bristled. Peyton knew damn well why she was going. “Because I want to.”
Do you?
“I think,” Jake said, jumping in, “Peyton’s just worried.”
“Yes!” Peyton cried, eyebrows knitted with concern. “What if something happens to you? You get hurt or kidnapped into one of those white slavery rings?”
“You need to lay off the Lifetime Original Movies,” Izzy said, forcing a laugh.
“It’s dangerous out there,” Peyton continued. “Look at that serial killer in LA targeting single women. That could be you!”
Hunter leaned forward, interested. “The guy who has sex with the bodies afterward?”
Of course that was the salient detail Hunter took away from the manhunt for the Casanova Killer. “It’s called necrophilism,” Izzy said, quoting from the latest episode of Murder Will Speak, all about the perviest new psychopath on the block. “Usually an attempt by the killer to exert control over his victim, even in death.”
Peyton’s eyes grew wide. “That’s disgusting.”
“The Casanova Killer isn’t a necrophiliac,” Izzy said. She felt like she needed to clarify this point, even though it sounded as if she were defending a monster. “But his DNA has been found on the mouths and faces of his victims, as well as in their throats and lungs, implying that he was making out with them at the time of death.”
“That’s even more disgusting.” Peyton covered her mouth with one hand, as if afraid she might be the next victim of the Southern California murderer.
“Why do they call him that?” Hunter asked.
“Eyewitnesses say he’s good-looking and charming, and targets women sitting alone at bars,” Jake said. His face was hard, no hint of Hunter’s delight or Peyton’s distaste.
Izzy would have been impressed if she weren’t pissed off at him. “Not exactly a barfly over here, so I should be fine.”
“That’s not the point,” Peyton snapped.
Izzy tilted her head. “What is the point?”
“That…” Peyton stumbled. She was losing the threads of her argument. “That it’s a dangerous world out there.”
“It’s a dangerous world, period,” Izzy said as the cashier dropped off their orders. Once again, Izzy caught the woman smirking at her.
“It’s true,” Jake nodded. “When I was waiting to fly home, the local news ran a story about a body that washed up in San Francisco Bay with its face completely removed. Hannibal Lecter style.”
“Who?” Peyton asked.
He cast a furtive glance at Izzy. “You know, Silence of the Lambs?” One of the many movies they’d watched together at Hunter’s house after he and Peyton had gone off to have sex. Jake scrunched up his face like a lizard. “‘I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.’” Then he made a weird fuh-fuh-fuh sound with his lips.
“Rad,” Hunter said with an appreciative nod.
“I’m not going to be cannibalized in a study-abroad program, guys,” Izzy said. She couldn’t believe how off the rails this conversation had gotten. “Or be strangled by a serial killer or end up as some Russian oligarch’s sex slave. I’m just going to study art with a bunch of other art nerds.”
Jake turned to her. “You’re an art nerd now?”
“I…” She felt her face redden.
“See?” Peyton said, hands wide. “Even Jake can see this is bullshit, and he hardly knows you.”
Hardly knows me. Izzy felt her chest contract like she’d been punched in the solar plexus. She clenched her jaw, trying to keep the tears at bay. She was under attack, and there was no safe harbor at this table. Her eyes shifted from Peyton to Hunter, and finally to Jake. His was the only gaze that faltered, and suddenly she knew why they were here, why Peyton had suggested lunch instead of hooking up with Hunter, why everyone was so intent on talking about her Italian.
“Seriously?” Izzy stood up, hands clenched at her side, while her carefully controlled temper ignited. “You’re staging an intervention?”
Peyton clasped her hands in front of her heart, which meant she was about to lie. “We’re just worried about you.”
Izzy backed away from the table. Hunter was just along for the ride, but she wasn’t sure whose participation she was more disappointed in: Peyton’s or Jake’s. “I’m going to Italy. I’m going to fucking love it there. And I’m never coming back to this shithole, so just get over it!”
Then she spun around and marched out the door.
IZZY RACED UP THE STREET, HER VISION BLURRED BY SHAME. Did her friends really think an intervention was the best option? Like she was a drug addict or an obsessive gambler. Why was it so awful that she wanted to leave, to see the world, and to maybe figure her shit out along the way? Why did every single person in her universe have their entire lives mapped out by the time they were seventeen? Who even did that?
Peyton’s motivation she understood, but what right did Jake have to act like he cared what she did with her life?
Especially since he, and only he, knew all of Izzy’s secrets. Her fear of going to Italy, her fear of staying home, her fear of what might happen to her family if she left. And her mom…She hadn’t even told Peyton about how the Italian Scheme had started in the first place. One night a few months ago, Izzy’s dad had been working late, and she’d come home to find her mom alone in the living room, weeping. A full glass of red wine and two prescription pill bottles on the coffee table, her mom’s favorite movie paused on the TV screen. A Room with a View, the scene at the Basilica of Santa Croce with the Giotto frescoes.
Izzy had seen and heard her mom cry countless times before, usually silent tears while she worked in the kitchen or more robust wails as she sat alone in her room and thought no one else could hear. This time was different. There was no hiding her anguish. Agonized sobs ripped from her mom’s chest, while snot and tears flowed unheeded down her face.
But the thing that had scared Izzy the most was the desperate look in her mom’s eyes as she silently pleaded with her daughter for help.
“I’m sorry,” her mom had sobbed, head buried in the palms of her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
Izzy had rubbed her mom’s back in slow circles with one hand while she picked up the pill bottles in the other. One shake allayed some of her fear—neither was empty.
“It’s okay, Mom.” Izzy had known for a long time that nothing about her mom’s emotional state was “okay,” and that her struggles to find the right combination of medications had only exacerbated the problem in the short term, but that evening had neither been the time nor the place for that conversation. She just had to keep her mom calm, let her know that she was loved, and ease her through the night until they could contact her doctor in the morning.
“I just…” Her mom had stared at the television. “I love this movie so deeply.”
Izzy hadn’t been sure how to respond but went with the first thing that popped into her brain. “I do too.”
Her mom had caught her breath, eyes wide, mouth agape. “Really?”
“Um, yeah.” Izzy had squeezed her mom’s hand. “Don’t I watch it with you all the time?”
Her mom had paused, eyes still fixed on the screen. “Firenze,” she’d said in a hushed voice. Then, all of a sudden, her mom had been in motion, talking a mile a minute as she transitioned from the film to the city to her own love of Italian Renaissance art, and by breakfast the next morning, a plan had been formulated: Izzy would follow in her mom’s abandoned footsteps and study art history abroad in Florence.
Her mom, Parker, and Riley had been for the plan, her dad against it, and her eldest brother, Taylor, was impartial as usual. Like the friends she’d just left, they all had an opinion about her future, but…
She froze in the middle of the street, heart thundering. But no one had even asked her what she wanted. Not once. They’d either told her what she should want or scolded her for not knowing, but no one had asked.
Izzy felt rather than heard the footsteps pounding down the pavement toward her. She didn’t turn around, afraid she’d immediately burst into tears. If Peyton wanted to apologize, she’d have to do it to the back of her head.
“Izzy!” a voice called from behind. Only it wasn’t Peyton. It was Jake. “Wait up.”
She didn’t move, though she wasn’t sure why. Did she really want another standoff with him?
“I’m sorry, okay?” Jake dashed in front of her, panting. “I didn’t know it would go like that. Honest.”
Izzy blinked. That was the only response he deserved. Jake sighed, shoulders sagging. The self-confidence drained out of him.
“I’m just worried that you’ve latched onto this plan for all the wrong reasons.”
“I’m not going through a midlife crisis, Jake.” I’m not my mother.
He stepped toward her, dropping his voice. “No, but that night with your mom and the pills…”
After disappearing from her life without a word, Jake didn’t deserve to fall back into their intimacy so easily. “Oh, please, person I ‘barely know.’” She added air quotes on the last two words to emphasize their ridiculousness. “Please enlighten me.”
Jake grimaced. “You never told Peyton about our chats.” It felt like an accusation.
“Why do you care?”
Heavy brows pulled low over his dark brown eyes. When he spoke, his voice was soft and measured, but his jaw quivered as if it took all of his concentration to stay calm. “You may find this difficult to believe right now, but I do care.”
THEN WHY DID YOU DISAPPEAR? She wanted to scream the words in his face but realized that the answer wasn’t something she really wanted to hear. She’d been a temporary crutch, a friend of convenience to help him through his breakup with Lori, but once he met someone cooler, more together, and more interesting, he’d dropped Izzy like a hot brick.
“Look,” she said, exhaling all of her anger in one giant deflation of her lungs. “I’m glad you had such a great summer. And…and I’m glad that you connected with Tamara and are staying here to go to school with her next year.”
“Uh, I’m not going to school with Tamara.”
Izzy was confused. “But she’s at Humboldt with their top-five oceanography program.” Why else would he have brought that up?
“I am applying to Humboldt for next year,” Jake said, then shook his head. “But that’s not what I meant.”
They’d reached the front gate of Izzy’s house and she turned, one hand on the latch, to face him. “Then what did you mean? Why is everyone trying to get me to stay?”
“I’m not everyone.” He stepped closer. Izzy had to tilt her head to meet his eyes, and she caught her breath at the sadness she saw in them. “I know you’re mad at me, but I just need you to know that I’d really like it if you weren’t so far away next year.”
He hovered, eyes locked on Izzy’s, and teetered toward her as if a gust of wind had suddenly caused him to lose his balance. Then he seemed to right himself. He stepped back, swallowing hard before he turned and disappeared around the corner.
IZZY’S EYES LINGERED ON THE SPOT WHERE JAKE HAD DISAPPEARED around the side fence of Miss O’Sullivan’s Victorian Bed-and-Breakfast.
It had seemed, maybe, that he was about to kiss her.
But that was impossible. Izzy wasn’t the kind of girl who inspired romance. She was plain and boring and quiet. A third wheel. That’s the only way anyone in this town would ever see her.
Besides, Jake had literally spent the last month pretending she didn’t exist while he was hanging out with cool college girls named Tamara. Izzy must have misinterpreted his body language.
She shook her head, dismissing the feelings that had bubbled up inside her, and unlatched the gate that opened onto her front yard. The ancient iron hinges creaked like a surly old tomcat mewling for his dinner, and Izzy could feel the grinding metal vibrate beneath her hand. While her dad was maintaining the fancy Victorians in town, the Bell house was falling apart.
The stick-style Queen Anne had been a grand house in its day, occupying a spacious corner lot not far from the iconic Carson Mansion, whose peaked roof and ornate tower dominated the Eureka waterfront. The Bell house was decidedly less stately, though the carved roof posts around the front porch and intricate gingerbread trim indicated that the original owners had money to spend. Every detail of the house had been meticulously planned, from the stained-glass windows on either side of the massive oak door to the multitiered gabled roofline to the tone-on-tone green paint with brick red trim that harkened back to the native Humboldt County redwoods; it must have been a sight to see in 1907.
Today, not so much. Her parents had bought the house as a fixer-upper after years of neglect, and though her dad had spent almost a decade restoring it to its original glory, his attention and resources had eventually been pulled away by his business, and the Bell house hadn’t received any significant TLC since Izzy was a child. The paint was faded and peeling, the once sharply landscaped hedges were overgrown blobs choking the front yard, and a portion of trim over the front door had broken off in a storm. If it weren’t for the always-on porch light, strangers might have mistaken the decrepit old house for abandoned, possibly haunted.
Even though her family routinely left the front door unlocked, no strangers were going to venture inside. It didn’t look like the kind of place that would have anything of value to steal.
Izzy slunk toward the house, dragging feet weighed down by the world. At the base of the front stairs, she froze. She’d left the goddamn bagels in Peyton’s car.
