“Wait, Miller,” Clara says. She snatches the shirt she was wearing yesterday off the floor and walks to her closet. She closes herself inside so she can change shirts. Miller looks like he doesn’t know if he should listen to her and wait for his shirt or run before I murder him. Lucky for him, it only takes Clara a few seconds to change.

She opens the door and hands him his shirt.

Miller pulls on the shirt, so I yell at him again, this time with more force. “Get out!” I look at Clara, wearing just a T-shirt that barely covers her ass. “Get dressed!”

Miller rushes to the window and starts to open it. He really is an idiot. “Just use the front door, Miller! Jesus!”

Clara is wrapped in her bedsheet now, sitting on her bed, full of rage and embarrassment. That makes two of us.

Miller slips past me nervously, looking back at Clara. “See you at school?” He whispers it, as if I’m unable to hear him. Clara nods.

Honestly. She could sneak any guy into her bedroom, and this is the guy she chooses? “Clara won’t be at school today.”

Clara looks at Miller as he reaches the hallway. “Yes, I will.”

I look at Miller. “She won’t be there. Goodbye.”

He spins and leaves. Finally.

Clara tosses the sheet away and reaches to the floor to grab the jeans she wore yesterday. “You can’t ground me from school.”

My worry about whether I have the right to parent her is nonexistent right now thanks to my anger. She isn’t going anywhere today. “You are sixteen years old. I have every right to ground you from whatever the hell I want to ground you from.” I glance around her room, looking for her phone so I can confiscate it.

“Actually, Mother. I’m seventeen.” She slips a leg into her jeans. “But I guess you were too busy with Jonah to remember that today’s my birthday.”

Shit.

I was wrong.

This is rock bottom. I try to recover by muttering, “I didn’t forget,” but it’s obvious I did.

Clara rolls her eyes as she buttons her jeans. She walks to her bathroom and comes back out with her purse.

“You aren’t going to school like that. You wore those clothes yesterday.”

“Watch me,” she says, shoving past me.

I’m pressed against the frame of her bedroom door as I watch her walk down the hall. I should be running after her. This isn’t okay. Sneaking a boy into her bedroom is not okay. Having sex with a guy she just started dating is certainly not okay. There is so much wrong here, but I’m scared it’s beyond my parenting abilities. I don’t even know what to say to her or how to punish her or if I even have the right to at this point.

I hear the front door slam, and I flinch.

I grip my head and slide down to the floor. A tear rolls down my cheek and then another. I hate it because that means a raging headache is going to follow. I’ve had headaches every single day since the accident, thanks to the tears.

This time, I deserve the headache. It’s like my own actions have given permission to her rebellion. They have. She’ll never respect me again. A person can’t learn from someone they don’t respect. It just doesn’t work that way.

I can hear the faint sound of my phone ringing down the hall. I’m sure it’s Jonah, but part of me wonders if it could be Clara, even though she hasn’t even had time to back out of the driveway. I rush to my bedroom, but I don’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Grant?”

I grab a Kleenex and wipe my nose. “This is she.”

“I’m the technician who’ll be repairing your cable today. I just wanted to let you know that someone will need to be home from nine until five so that I can have access to do the repairs.”

I sink onto the bed. “Seriously? You expect me to sit in this house for the entire day?”

There’s a pause. He clears his throat and says, “It’s just policy, ma’am. We can’t enter an empty residence.”

“I get that it’s policy for someone to be here, but you can’t give me a smaller window of time? Maybe two hours? Three?”

“It’s difficult for us to pinpoint a particular time because every repair varies in need.”

“Yeah, but come on. An entire day? Why do I have to stay in this house for eight fucking hours?” Oh my God. I’m cussing at the cable technician. I shake my head, pressing my palm against my forehead. “You know what? Just cancel it. I don’t even want cable. No one has cable anymore. In fact, you should probably start looking into other careers, because apparently being a cable technician is no longer sustainable.”

I end the call, and then I toss my phone on the bed and stare at it.

Okay. Okay. This is rock bottom. This is definitely rock bottom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CLARA

I get to school half an hour early. There are only a handful of vehicles in the student parking lot, and Miller’s truck isn’t even one of them. There’s no way I’m walking into Jonah’s classroom early, so I pull the lever on my seat and lean back.

I’m not going to cry.

In fact, I’m not even angry right now. If anything, I’m numb. So much has happened in the last twelve hours that I feel like my brain must have an emergency shutoff valve. I’m not sad about it. I prefer this feeling of numbness to the anger I had last night and the embarrassment I had this morning when my mother was so rude to Miller.

I get it. I snuck a boy into my room. I had sex. That’s really shitty, but she lost her privilege last night to tell me what is and isn’t shitty behavior.

I flinch at the knock on my passenger window. Miller is standing next to my car, and I no longer feel numb because seeing him springs a little bit of life back into me. He opens the door and takes a seat, handing me a coffee.

He’s never looked so good. Sure, he’s tired, and neither of us have brushed our teeth or our hair, and we’re wearing the same clothes we wore yesterday, but he’s holding coffee and looking at me like he doesn’t hate me, and that’s a beautiful thing.

“Figured you could use the caffeine,” he says.

I take a sip and savor the heat against my tongue and the sweet caramel sliding down my throat. I don’t know why it took me so long to appreciate coffee.

“For what it’s worth . . . happy birthday?”

He says it like a question. I guess it is. “Thank you. Even though this is the second-worst day of my life.”

“I think yesterday was the second-worst day of your life. Today still has a chance of looking up.”

I take another sip and grab his hand, squeezing it, sliding my fingers through his.

“What happened after I left? Did she ground you?”

I laugh at that. “No. And she won’t.”

“You snuck me into your room last night. Not sure how you can get out of that one, even if it is your birthday.”

“My mother is a liar, a cheat, and a very bad example for me. I decided this morning I’m no longer following her rules. I’ll be better off just raising myself.”

Miller squeezes my hand. I can tell he doesn’t like what I’m saying, but he doesn’t talk me out of feeling this way. Maybe he thinks I just need time to calm down, but time won’t help. I’m done with her.