If I Tell - By Janet Gurtler Page 0,1

the guitar charm Grandpa Joe had given me on my thirteenth birthday, right before he died.

“So was that your mom I saw you talking to?” Jackson glanced out at the seating area.

My gaze followed his. “Yeah. That’s my mom.” Bracing myself, I waited for the usual questions people asked when they saw my mom for the first time: Are you adopted? What color is your dad?

“Cool,” he said. “Go ahead and do your thing. I can take care of stuff here. We can catch up later.”

He made it sound like a promise. I tried to ignore the fluttering in my stomach. “You know what you’re doing?”

It came out sounding like I was accusing him of some evil act. God. I was so not good at talking to boys. What I’d wanted to say was thank you for not being a jerk. Thank you for being nice. I filed the feeling. Maybe I could replicate it later in a song.

“Nope.” He grinned. “But hey, I’ll figure it out. Amber trained me. Monkey see, monkey do.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

He twirled the hoop earring in his left ear. “I can handle it. No problem. Selling a legal drug, you know? Caffeine.”

“Uh. Yeah.” That seemed like a cue for me to say something about the rumors, but I was too chicken to go there.

He grinned again as if he’d read my mind. Hot. Definitely hot. I wondered if working at Grinds was part of his rehab or something.

He glanced toward my mom and I held my breath, praying he wouldn’t slobber over her or say something obnoxious and ruin my impression of him.

“Your mom’s pretty young,” he said.

It sounded like an observation, not a crush.

“She’s pretty blond too,” I added.

“They say blonds have more fun,” he quipped.

“She did when she was seventeen.”

Mouth. Shut. Please.

He laughed, an interesting baritone sound. Almost musical. “That’s how old she was when she had you?”

“Yup.” I lifted my shoulder in a half-shrug.

“That’s pretty young.” He paused. “So? Is she cool?”

“My mom?”

He sounded as if he cared what I thought about her and not the other way around. It surprised me. He surprised me. “She’s okay.” I rolled my charm in my fingers. “I don’t live with her.” I frowned. I hadn’t planned to tell him that. I don’t usually advertise my weird family situation so freely. Even though in a town the size of Tadita, everyone pretty much knew already.

“I heard.”

I waited, but he didn’t say more. It didn’t matter. People talked. They always did. He’d probably heard all the stories about me. Loner. Or loser. Depending on who was doing the telling. From someone at my high school, it had to be loser. So why was he being nice to me?

“I live with my grandma too,” he said. He gestured his head toward the café. “Go talk to your mom. I got it covered.”

“Thanks.” I pulled off my stained blue apron and tossed it into the corner laundry bin as Jackson took over my shift. He lived with his grandma? Intrigued, I stared at him while he got to work. Even a semi-awkward conversation with the school’s newest bad boy beat joining my mom. Besides, who knew if the drug rumors were true. I vowed not to pay attention to gossip. He didn’t appear to have labeled me based on what he’d heard.

He looked over and caught me watching, and my cheeks reheated. He grinned in a friendly way, but I quickly turned and pushed through the employee door.

I inhaled a deep breath as I made my way into the café. “Cherry, Cherry” by Neil Diamond piped in over the speakers—one of Grandpa Joe’s favorite songs. At the thought of him, I forced my shoulders back.

Tell the truth, he’d have said. Always tell the truth.

Even if it meant breaking someone’s world apart? The last thing in the world I wanted was intimate involvement with my mom’s personal life, but I’d had a front-row seat. With binoculars.

Around the room, couples chatted at small, intimate tables. A group of girls giggled together, chairs and tables pushed up to each other. I stared at my mom as I approached her. A low-cut tank top peeked out from under her blazer. She liked to emphasize her amazing cleavage.

Another check on the long list of things I didn’t inherit from her. Boobs. Nope. Blond straight hair. Nope. Coloring. Nope. I’m more a muddy mix of black and white. Mixing colors is pretty basic stuff for artists, but it’s