Stir Me Up Read online

  “No.”

  “I’ve been thinking about doing something with a veal consommé.”

  “Sure, sounds good.”

  Estella comes in awhile later and sits down next to me. “You know Julian is here early. That he wasn’t supposed to be with us for another few months. That he hasn’t even gotten his prosthesis yet?”

  “Yeah,” I say, hanging my head.

  “Because of this, he has to be seen at the VA Center in Northampton almost every day. Did you know that?” Estella demands.

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Now you do. I know he shouldn’t be here yet. But he is. And it’s not just the medical issues that are the problem. Just yesterday Julian received some bad news about two more men in his unit who were killed. Men in his battalion keep dying. And he’s not able to be with them to help them anymore. Do you know what that’s like for him?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No, you can’t.” She gives me a hard look. “I know Julian can be abrasive and difficult to deal with. But he has good reason. And I, for one, would appreciate it if you could try to be a little more understanding towards him.”

  Something hard knots up in my chest. Why did I lose it so quickly with him today? Is it just PMS, or is there something about the way he never has any use for me? “I will, Estella. I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?” Dad asks, coming to the table.

  I sigh. “Julian mouthed off at me, so I threw a muffin at him.”

  “You threw food at him?”

  Ugh, okay so I screwed up. “I said I’m sorry.”

  Dad frowns at his own muffin. “Waste of perfectly good food.”

  “Actually, no. He ate it.” Estella tells him.

  Wait a minute, what? I look up at her. “He ate it?”

  “He did. He said it was good.”

  “Just leave him alone, Cami,” Dad instructs. “Stop annoying him.”

  “I brought him breakfast to try to be nice! Isn’t that what you told me I should do?”

  “No. There’s being nice and then there’s being excessive. You were excessive.”

  Unreal. I finish my breakfast and then head outside.

  * * *

  The foliage season hasn’t set in yet; it’s still a few weeks away, but the forest is readying for it. You can feel the hint of it in the air, the sense that the leaves are holding onto something, a secret just waiting to burst out. They flutter down on me as I walk up the dirt road. Very few cars pass by. The road is uneven, especially in the shoulder where I’m walking. There’s a big ditch and it’s tangled along the edge with weeds. I’m walking to Luke’s house.

  I don’t think about why I’m going—if it’s just because I want to see him or if it’s that I want to settle something stirring in my head. Something. I can’t even figure out what, so I let it go and just think about the road and all the trees lining it and how I wish I could just walk off and get lost in the woods somewhere. The forest has a smell to it, a woodsy smell that for me has always been a kind of magic. Like if all those tales of fairies and elves were real, I know they’d be here in the woods of Vermont. At least I would be. I pass birds and cows and old beaten down houses. Then I see Luke’s house up ahead. I go over and tap on the door.

  “Hi, Cami,” his mother says. “Come on in, Luke’s still sleeping.”

  “Mind if I go ahead?” I ask, pointing to the hallway.

  “No, go on.”

  I open Luke’s door a crack without knocking on it. He’s in bed, asleep on his stomach. I slip inside the room and shut the door. Then, very quietly, I get undressed and curl against his back. He stirs and my hands run over him. He feels nice.

  “Hi,” he whispers, turning to me.

  “Good morning.”

  “Mmm, it is now.” He kisses and caresses me. It’s exactly what I needed.

  Two hours later, I’m walking back the way I came when suddenly I see Julian in a wheelchair working his way up the hillside in the middle of the road, where any passing car could hit him. His head is down in concentration. I can tell he’s working hard. Julian may have chosen the most solid ground he could, but it’s still a dirt road full of rocks and potholes. With the condition both his legs are in, and the way a car won’t be able to see him coming, this whole thing seems a bit insane.

  I walk up to him and stand right in his way. “What are you doing?”

  “Move,” he says.

  I don’t move. “A car isn’t going to see you around this corner.”

  “Then move so I can get past it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Can you just move out of the goddamned way?”

  Tempting, but... “No.”

  He tries to go around me. I step in front of him. I, of course, can move much faster than he can. He tries to head to the left. I cut him off again, very easily. He stops, grimaces in frustration, then looks up at me and frowns. I must look terrible, I realize—all swollen-lipped and in a sweatshirt and yoga pants. I resist the urge to run my fingers through my hair to help smooth it down.

  “Just coming back from getting laid again?”

  My face burns. “Fine, get run over.” I let him leave and head back to the house, but instead of going inside, I sit in one of the chairs on the back patio.

  I snuck into Luke’s this morning when he was still asleep, I text Taryn. It was really nice.

  YOU ARE ALWAYS SNEAKING IN THERE!

  Not in the morning.

  DID YOU DO IT WITH HIM YET?

  No, I text her.

  OKAY, THAT’S FINE. DON’T IF YOU DON’T WANT TO.

  Is it what I want? I don’t know. It’s complicated. Eventually, I’m going to have to either sleep with Luke or break up with him; I don’t think he’ll be willing to keep things like they are much longer. Why am I so hesitant? We’ve been dating long enough, most of my friends have. But, whenever I think of doing it, I fast-forward past the sex itself to the part that I think will come after—the part where Luke will have us always together every night, how he’ll want us to move in together as soon as I graduate, two chefs working and living together and then getting married and having babies, and I just...wish things were still like they were last year with us. It was all so much simpler then—more fun and less serious.

  We used to be in school together; we’re not anymore, he said today. You used to have me over to dinner. You don’t anymore. So I invited him to come over for our next family dinner. But it’s more than just that. Things are changing for us this year.

  I put my phone away and see the wheelchair turn into our driveway.

  Julian hasn’t spotted me yet, because I’m mostly hidden by lawn furniture. I sit there and secretly spy on him. Our house is on a steep little hill, like I said, and he wheels over to the foot of it and stays there staring at it, and I’m wondering how he’s going to get up to the front door. The stairs leading up there are out of the question. So instead, he heads down into the grassy lawn that runs along the back side of the property, just below me. His plan must be to go clear around the stretch of lawn to the very back where the slope is gentler. From there, he can probably work his way up to house level. It’s a far distance and the grass must make it hard going, but it’s his only choice. He fights his way out to the middle of the lawn and stops and I see him slump over and drop his head into his hands.

  I get up and walk tentatively over to him, not wanting to impose on his privacy, but figuring maybe I should offer to push him a distance and see if he’s all right. It’s a cool morning, but his shirt is covered in sweat. It occurs to me he might be crying. Julian doesn’t hear me at first, but then he turns his head and peeks at me, I think, through his fingers. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” he yells, his voice breaking.

  This, I realize, is all he ever says to me—go away, get lost. But seeing him in the field like this, for the first time I hear it differently. “Sure,” I say. “I just thought I’d warn you about the carnivorous deer that prowl around
here sometimes. But...”

  My aim was to make him smile, but it isn’t working. He’s still burying his head in his hands. He looks utterly miserable—and completely exhausted.

  I come up behind him and take hold of his wheelchair handles.

  “Don’t push me,” he says.

  I push him a little. It’s impossibly difficult to move him thanks to our overgrown lawn.

  “I SAID DON’T! I don’t need you staring at me or helping me or feeding me or feeling sorry for me like I’m some kind of poor, pathetic...”

  I feel a surge of something warm for him. “I feel sorry that you have to haul this chair up the hill. That’s for sure. If you let go by accident could you go rolling backwards? Maybe I should stand behind you with a big trampoline just in case.”

  At first, Julian is silent. Then his mouth contorts like he’s holding something back—possibly a smile, though I can’t be sure. “All right,” he says. “That’s it.” He glares at me, grasps his chair.

  “What, you’re going to get me?”

  “Oh yeah. You’re dead.”

  “Good luck with that. You’ll have to catch me first. Ow! Hey, watch it!” His chair apparently has a turning radius I didn’t know about. “Ow,” I repeat, peering down to check my ankle.

  “Are you all right?”

  The question catches me off guard. I look at him—green eyes splashed with brown, just below a serious brow. His face, from this close, seems all planes to me—the stretch of forehead, slope of each cheek, and softly-square turn of his chin. My eyes drift up from his chin to his mouth—the right side is slightly fuller than the left, I realize, and it’s curved there in the corner. A faint hint of stubble dusts his upper lip. “Are you?”

  He looks quickly away from me. It’s an unfair question, I realize, too difficult for him to answer. “Because if you think I’m letting you get away with that little ankle swipe...”

  His mouth softens a little. “That was an accident.”

  “Yeah...” I try to get a grip on myself, “sure it was. What are you doing out here anyway?”

  “Just getting some exercise.”

  “Typical guy. Taking on something completely ridiculous.”

  “It’s not ridiculous. I’m just out of shape.”

  I get behind his wheelchair and try to push it again. “So am I, apparently. Look at this, I can’t even move this thing.”

  “Then stop trying. Let me do it.”

  “Quiet, I’m working here.”

  “You’re not working. You’re not doing anything.”

  “Huh, shows what you know—I made progress. You just moved a few inches.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did. Look.”

  “Look at what? Would you move away, for Chrissake? Stop backseat driving.”

  Yeah, yeah, Julian. His complaint this time almost makes me smile. I don’t let go of the wheelchair and he doesn’t ask me to again. When we finally do make it up to the house, it’s together, but he doesn’t say anything to me about it.

  “Hey, Stell,” he says, seeing her.

  “Hi.” She looks dubiously at me.

  “Brandon’s coming over soon. Just to hang out.”

  “Great, glad to hear it.”

  Now that he’s told her this, Julian wheels off to his room.

  “So the boys are hanging out again,” she comments, half to me, half to herself. “That’s great—he must be feeling better.” I don’t say anything in response. But for the next few hours, her comment is all I can think about.

  Chapter Ten

  Estella simply refuses to try to make anything remotely French for her Tuesday night family dinners. I think this is because she feels competing with Dad on his turf isn’t wise. Also, I suspect she secretly wants to knock a little of Dad’s incredible culinary snobbery out of him.

  So, the next Tuesday night, after I invite Luke to dinner, Estella decides to make another one of Julian’s childhood favorites—sloppy Joes. Now, I happen to see her make this, and actually I’ve tasted it. It tastes, to be honest, really delicious and here’s what’s in it:

  Hamburger meat

  Alphabet soup

  Ketchup and mustard

  All mixed together.

  If Dad saw these ingredients on the counter, I can’t imagine what would happen. So, wanting to keep the peace, I hide the empty cans in the trash and put the ketchup and mustard away. Of course this is all a wasted effort—the minute Dad spots letters of the alphabet floating in his dinner, the game will be up.

  To add to Dad’s torture, she’s making frozen French fries as a side dish, and the meat itself is being put on store-bought—wait for it—white bread rolls. Not even store-bought French rolls. In place of a salad, she’s opened a bag of that broccoli coleslaw stuff they sell at grocery stores , and she’s mixed in some—you guessed it—ranch dressing. From a bottle.

  Because Luke is considered company, and Estella is secretly on an anti-food-snob campaign, she’s planning to offer dessert—a variety pack of ice creams, including the kind already in a cone, and ice cream sandwiches. Satisfied she’s come up with a meal my father will hate every single part of, Estella turns to me, smiles and says, “Do you think Luke will like it?”

  Actually, yes. I think Luke will love it. Because he’s normal. Dad, on the other hand...

  “Absolutely. But French people—especially chefs like Dad—can be kind of proud when it comes to their culture and cuisine,” I say, attempting to bridge a gap here.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and change,” she suggests—a subtle way of telling me to shut the hell up and butt out. “Luke will be here soon.”

  I shake my head and go upstairs. What was I thinking inviting him over for this meal? I see him often enough at work, and between work and school.

  Right at six, the doorbell rings. Luke’s dressed up a little—which is to say he’s wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans and his new tennis shoes.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He gives me a quick kiss. “Hey. You look nice.”

  We venture inside, and Estella comes out wiping her wet hands. “Hello!” she says.

  “Hi, Mrs. Broussard.”

  “Please call me Estella.”

  We follow her back into the kitchen, and my cell rings.

  “Cami, I’ve been stranded by my derelict parents,” Taryn says. “Come have pizza with me.”

  “Hold on,” I tell her. “Stell, do we have enough for Taryn?”

  “Yes,” she says. “There’s plenty.”

  “Come join us here,” I tell Taryn. “Luke’s over.”

  “Both of them are there?” she says, meaning Julian also. She’s still dying to meet him. “I’m on my way.”

  By the time I get off the phone, Luke’s made his way to Estella and is peering into the pot. “Smells great,” he says. “Sloppy Joes?”

  “They’re not fancy, but Julian loves them, so I thought you might also.”

  “I’m sure I will. You used alphabet soup? How cool—can I try some?”

  “Sure.” Estella looks thrilled. She hands him a spoon.

  “Fantastic,” Luke pronounces.

  “So glad he approves,” mutters a voice from behind me.

  I turn. It’s Julian. He’s wearing a gray Brooklyn Park T-shirt and his cutoffs.

  “Hey,” I say with a smile.

  Julian raises a brow at me, then his gaze falls somewhat more coldly on Luke. I look over and see Luke’s turned and is staring at Julian’s legs.

  “Luke,” I say with a frown, “this is Julian. Julian, Luke.”

  “Hey,” Julian says, extending a hand.

  “Hey,” Luke says. He stoops down a bit awkwardly to shake it. “How’s the recovery going?”

  Julian’s eyes turn hard. He pulls his hand away and doesn’t answer.

  “Would either of you guys like a soda?” I ask, to break the tension. “We have root beer.”

  “Sure,” Luke says. He turns back to th
e pot on the stove, and I grab two root beers from the fridge and hand one to him and one to Julian. “I can get you something else if you’d like.”

  “This is fine.” He starts to take it from me, and it occurs to me I’ve never seen Julian drink a soda before.

  “I’m glad there’s plenty,” Luke tells Estella, still eyeing the food.

  “I’m surprised your lips are still on,” Julian says under his breath to me, “after kissing such a suck-up.”

  I look sideways at him. “Not all guys have your debonair sense of politeness and charm.”

  The doorbell rings.

  “Can you please not insult my friend?” I ask.

  “Funny you didn’t ask me to be nice to him.”

  I shake my head and go to let Taryn in. “Hey babe,” she says. “Thanks for having me last minute. Luke’s over?”

  “Yep, come in and say hello to everyone.”

  “Everyone?” She gives me a sly look. Taryn’s wearing leggings and a skirt and top that are extremely cute, with high-top Converse All-Stars. I, on the other hand, am in a boring old shirt and jeans. When we get back into the kitchen, Estella’s gone and Luke’s manning the stove.

  “Where’s Estella?” I ask.

  “Your dad called. She took it in the other room. Hey, stranger!”

  “Luke!”

  Taryn and Luke give each other a quick, friendly hug.

  “We missed you all summer. How was L.A.?”

  “Amazing.”

  “Taryn,” I cut in, “this is Estella’s nephew Julian.”

  Taryn turns around and sees Julian—his legs, his face—and goes possibly into shock. “H-hi,” she stammers.

  Hi? I look over at Taryn. It looks like she’s blushing. Is this because of Julian’s injuries, or because she thinks he’s hot? Maybe it’s on account of all the dirty jokes she’s made about him.

  “So, Cami said you were a Marine?” Taryn says. She fiddles with her hair. Like she’s flirting with him.... Which is fine. Right? Why wouldn’t that be fine?

  “Yeah,” Julian says, and he turns away from her.