Clouds In My Coffee Read Online Free Page A

remember to have your butt home by midnight.”
    “Later, Mom.”
    Once I’m alone, I contemplate her words. I don’t see how this one accomplishment is going to do all that for me. I look out the window of our mobile home and see Erik working on his car. I know he’s got a gig tonight. He blew off going to the bonfire for that reason, but I know he wouldn’t have gone regardless. High school social events are not “his thing.” This particular event marks the last week of classes. Finals start next week and then school is out for summer break.
    I wave my hands in the air to help dry my nails. I’ve got about fifteen minutes before Kim gets here and I need to talk to him.
    I saunter over across the road to where he’s fiddling with something underneath the hood of his car.
    “What’s happening?” I ask, startling him momentarily. He straightens up, doing a quick perusal of me in my short green skirt, gold tee shirt and white tennies.
    “You’re lookin’ like ‘Susie Sorority’ these days,” he comments, wiping off the oil dipstick on a rag. He gives a slight smile so I realize he’s just poking a little fun at me.
    “Wish you were gonna be there,” I reply.
    “You’ll do fine without me,” he remarks, opening a can of motor oil. “You’re really starting to fit in with the preppies these days.”
    “Is that what this is about, Erik? Are you feeling left out? Because that’s your choice, you know?”
    And he immediately stops what he’s doing and glares at me. “Hey, I know it’s my choice, Cece. And I’d be fine with the direction you’re headed in if I was sure that it was your choice.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “Meaning, you’re living your life the way your mom wants you to live it. You’re not being real.”
    “Oh, I see. And I guess I’m just plastic like everyone else that doesn’t fit into your scheme of things, right?”
    “Hey, at least I’m my own person. Not someone else’s version of it.”
    He is really starting to piss me off. “You know what Erik? You start senior year in the fall; I start junior year. Maybe we’ve outgrown one another. We don’t spend much time together anymore, so what’s the point?”
    “The point is that I thought we loved each other, Cece. I thought we both had the same dreams.”
    “How can you say that? Do you even know what my dreams are?”
    He looks at me - I mean really looks at me and his eyes seem to flash even darker. “I thought us being together was both of our dreams.”
    And my heart feels heavy with the realization that what he just said is too simplistic; too damn easy.
    Not definitive enough.
    I start to tell him just that when I hear Kim tapping the horn of her mother’s Chevy as if she’s impatient for me to get away from Erik, which is exactly what she is.
    “I guess I’ll see you later,” I say, moving closer to see if he plans on giving me a kiss before I go. I don’t like leaving things strained.
    He turns back to his car engine and mumbles, “later.”
    Evidently not.
    As Kim drives off, I endure her badgering once again about Erik. She doesn’t understand what he’s been to me for the past eight years. When we moved here, my parents had just split. He was nine; I was eight and we became fast friends.
    He’d jump rope with me as long as I was willing to go frog gigging with him. We fished, we rode bikes, we trick-or-treated together and then one day, we kissed.
    He was fourteen; I was thirteen. We’d been sitting out in front of his trailer on the picnic table, looking up into the dark night sky and naming the stars. He had simply reached over, put his hand behind my head and drew my face up to his.
    It had been the sweetest, softest kiss ever. I asked him what prompted him to do that. He said he’d wanted to ever since Billy Bradshaw had told him that he was going to ask me to go steady. Of course, I had turned Billy down flat, which Erik knew, but he still wanted to kiss me.
    That was pretty cool.
    I had