Sweet

by Tammara Webber

  “I grew up shifting for myself instead of being looked after,” he said. “It was do or die and I chose do. But I think there’s a difference between spoiled and privileged. Your best friend thinks she has a right to anything she wants without earning it. That’s spoiled. Privileged is what anyone with sense would want for their kid. Your needs were seen to. Most of your wants too, maybe. But that’s nothing to feel guilty over. And it doesn’t mean your parents get to decide your life for you.”

  I’d never thought of it that way. Privileged was something I became when Mama and Thomas married, though compared to the hand Boyce was dealt, I’d been privileged my whole life. Since he used her for an example though, I felt the need to defend Melody. “Mel’s parents have always dangled material things in front of her to manipulate her, you know. She earns what they give her by relinquishing any claim to make her own choices.”

  The answering set of his jaw told me he would always fight granting Melody any sort of concession for her overindulged behavior. I couldn’t blame him. She’d been unkind to his best friend in high school. He didn’t know her like I’d come to know her, or the lengths to which her entire family went to control her.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Maybe the difference is your mama didn’t have to manipulate you because up till now, you and she wanted the same thing where your future was concerned.”

  He was right. I couldn’t remember a point where I hadn’t regarded the world from an analytical perspective. All my mother had to do was support those innate desires—no tactical guidance required. This was my first deviation from The Plan for Pearl’s Future.

  “Oh God.” I put my face in my hands in full, miserable comprehension that this was it—or not. This would be my sticking point or the point where I ceded control over my future. It was my choice.

  chapter

  Thirteen

  Boyce

  “Plans tonight?” I asked her at the door, ready to text Thompson and cancel for tonight without blinking an eye.

  She glanced up, the little crease between her brows signaling her concern over what I’d said or the decision she had to make. Me and my stupid fucking mouth. She wanted me to give her the straight-up truth, but that didn’t mean I had to be a dick.

  “A group of us are going out,” she said. “It’s the first official weekend here for the incoming class. Those of us who chose summer start, at least. I’m the only townie, so I’m supposed to know where to go. I’m also the only one who did premed as an undergrad, so I have to prove I don’t have a stick up my butt… although I’m pretty sure they all assumed I didn’t make the med-school cut.”

  “You set ’em straight on that?”

  “No.” She shrugged, pushing her sunglasses on and digging keys from her bag. “I guess I’m kind of afraid they’d all think I’m as irrational as everyone else does.”

  “Not everyone,” I said, coaxing a crooked little smile from her.

  She squeezed my forearm—one second, maybe two—but my skin burned where her fingers skimmed. “Not everyone. Thanks for that.”

  I watched her drive away for the second time in a week, waiting until she turned the corner before I turned to go inside.

  Randy Thompson and I headed to Avery’s every Friday after work for chicken-fried steak the size of a platter, buttery potatoes, and iced tea. The ritual had started in high school with Maxfield, Vega, and Thompson’s younger brother Rick. Randy had been a senior when the rest of us started high school. He’d been dealing then, mostly weed. He hadn’t gotten into the harder shit until later. Since coming home from Jester, Randy had been living with his parents in the home he grew up in, across the street. He worked at his mom’s shop now, which sold island-themed décor, T-shirts, and jewelry Randy made.

  “That Pearl’s car over at your place earlier?” he asked, swiping a forkful of steak through a pool of potatoes and gravy.

  “Yep.”

  “She graduated with Maxfield last month, right?”

  I nodded, chewing. I’d meant to go to the ceremony, but between Dad’s final trip to the hospital, the increase in business, and the eight-hour round trip, I hadn’t been able to get away.

  “Cool. Maxfield’s heading to Ohio?” Thompson was no idiot. I didn’t discuss Pearl with anyone, and he was no exception. “He coming home first?”

  “Not sure he considers this place home. But yeah—he’ll be here in a couple weeks.”

  “Cool,” he repeated.

  Our waitress, Honey, arrived with the pitcher and topped off our glasses with fresh-brewed tea so dark I grabbed two extra packets of sugar.

  “You boys staying outta trouble?” she asked. Thompson stared at his plate. A childhood friend of his mom, Honey was probably more familiar with the details of his time in Jester than the rest of our small town.

  “Yes, ma’am, we are.” I winked, grinning. “Unless you’re offering to lead me astray. Don’t tease me now.”

  She swatted my shoulder. “You stop that flirtin’ or one of these days I might take you up on it just to watch you run outta here like your pants are on fire.”

  “Oh, they’re on fi—”

  “Hush!” She laughed, shaking her head before moving to the next table.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes, and my thoughts wandered to Pearl for the millionth time since she’d come home. I’d never imagined her moving back here to live. She’d be gone for a few months come fall, but after four years of her absence, a few months was nothing. Unless she returned with another boyfriend. Someone from her program, maybe. I’d watch her grow older, settle down, have children. I’d know those children existed because I’d saved her life, and that fact should make me proud, but it made me want to throw the table across the room.

  I set my fork down before I bent it.

  “I’m never going to live it down,” Thompson mumbled.

  His assertion felt like something I’d think about Pearl, and I had to shift gears. “Honey didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s not what she said so much as…” He sighed. “It feels like there’s some implication under every word anyone says. Some reference to the fact that I’m a fuckup. I’m always expecting it, whether it’s actually coming at me or not.”

  “I learned a while back not to let other people define me,” I said. Except Pearl.

  “Easier said than done when your permanent record includes a set of convictions and prison time.”

  I took another bite, considering. It was true that he’d dug a big hole for himself and then nearly buried himself alive, metaphorically speaking. Digging back out would be a bitch, and there were some options—some possible futures—he’d thrown away forever in the process. That sucked. “What’s that saying? Nothing worth having is easy?”

  Like Pearl. Had there ever been a possible future with her—one I’d never believed in?

  Thompson sighed. “Sometimes, though, I just want it to be easy.” His prison release came with mandatory AA meetings twice a week, monthly appointments with his parole officer in Corpus, and a year’s worth of random drug testing. If he failed at even one of those things, he’d go back in and nobody would give a goddamn except his mom. And me.

  “You can do it, man. You are doing it.”

  “Thanks, Wynn.” He glanced at me and back at his plate. “For what it’s worth, that girl should wake up and see what she’s missing before it’s too late.”

  I didn’t reply. If I’d had a lick of sense four years ago, I wouldn’t have wrecked even the snowball’s chance in hell I might’ve had with her. I’d never been able to forget the look on her face the first time I saw her—after. It was officially summer, and it felt like half the state was partying on the beach. I’d been a bit wasted that night, so my reaction had lagged. The sight of her on the other side of the fire was a violent jolt—every fantasy I’d ever ached for personified. It had only been ten hours or so since I’d left her bed, but I wanted her more than I ever had.

  Her eyes went
wide and her mouth formed an O made silent by the distance between us, and I had the fucking idiocy to be confused when she stepped back and out of the campfire’s light. By the time I figured out why, she was gone.

  I’d pushed the girl off my lap, staggered to my feet and walked straight—or straight as I could manage—to where she’d been, but she had dissolved into the dark and the summer swarm of people as if I’d imagined her there. I tried to convince myself that she’d been a hallucination, that her crushed expression was a nightmare I could still prevent, but I knew better.

  She didn’t answer my dumbass texts the next two days (What’s up?), and when we finally ran into each other at the gas pump, her eyes slid away from mine as we small-talked. I hadn’t gone to my knees and apologized. I hadn’t told her she was all I wanted and always had been. I convinced myself that I could weasel out of it without that sort of humiliation.

  A week later, I heard she’d gone off to some university in Georgia for a premed program for high school graduates instead of working at the marine-science center all summer like she’d planned. She was gone for six weeks, and when she came back, we’d backed up to the day before I spent three hours in her bed, foolishly thinking I was making her mine.

  Pearl

  Dinner conversation focused on research projects, the cheapest bars, the awful reality that the nearest Starbucks was almost an hour away, and affordable student housing that would have cost thousands per month on the open market for the beachfront view alone, even with ancient appliances and doors warped by decades of humidity.

  As usual for me, I’d been quiet during class so far, only contributing when I was one hundred percent certain of what I was stating. My colleagues could tell I wasn’t going to be a burden, but they had no idea of my passion. I knew most of them assumed I’d scrambled for a biology-related graduate studies field when med school shut its door in my face. Maybe they even thought what Mitchell had—that I’d only chosen what was close and safe.

  But I didn’t want to be safe. I wanted to do research that would make a difference, targeting oil corporations and lobbies and politicians and any other entity that threatened the fragile balance of the estuaries connected to the gulf and the life teeming beneath the surface. At times I felt every bit as miniscule and marginalized as those individual organisms. But I had to try, whether I was ultimately listened to or ignored.

  Over blackberry cobbler and caramel-drenched flan, the conversation turned to land-derived nitrogen pollution and my mind wandered. Odd, because I was interested in the topic. More odd, considering what pushed that subject matter to the side and hijacked my thoughts—Boyce Wynn’s hard, freckle-dotted forearm and the electric current that shot through my fingertips when I’d touched it.

  I had an obsession with male forearms that could be traced back to the middle school lunchroom where I shared a table with Boyce every day. I was far too timid to ogle flirtatiously, but furtive staring from behind my goggle-sized glasses and unruly preteen hair was simple, especially when I brought a novel from the library. I was mesmerized by the visible copper hair and the sharp line of muscle linking elbow to wrist—the breadth of which called for big-faced watches and leather bands and led to strong hands.

  Hands. Those hands assumed a different meaning after—ugh. I was an adult woman, and it had been one time. I hid my face with my coffee cup, making a drawn-out pretense of careful sipping while trying to breathe, trying to forget Boyce’s big hands on my hips, stroking, kneading, lifting…

  “Pearl?” Shanice’s voice broke through my reverie.

  “What? Sorry?”

  Chase restated something about mollusks and the effects of large-scale sea grass destruction. Suitable adult, doctoral-student conversation. Right.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  I got all the way to Sunday before Mama brought up Michigan again. Thomas was on the patio grilling while she assembled a salad and I sat at the kitchen table outlining notes from journal articles about chemical dispersants used to clean up oil spills and the effects they had on fragile ecosystems.

  “When are you going to respond to Michigan? What is the deadline?” she said, chopping the heads off radishes that were the color of Mel’s favorite lip gloss. “You don’t want to miss it.” She kept her eyes on the knife slicing through the knobby veggies one after the other, her tone merely inquisitive, as though we weren’t having a struggle of epic proportions beneath the surface.

  “Mama… I’m not going to Michigan. I’m sitting here studying for a marine biology course I’m enrolled in right now. I know you’re disappointed, but I’ve made my decision. Please let it go.”

  The knife stilled and her eyes flashed up. “You cannot be serious, Pearl!” She shut her eyes and mumbled something too soft to hear, likely a prayer for patience in Spanish, and then, “I should have never allowed you to omit ninth grade. That counselor at your school—he said you were advanced and you needed to be challenged by more difficult classes. And what has it led to? You are a college graduate at only twenty. Too young to make this sort of decision for yourself—to throw away your future because of a breakup—”

  “That is not what this is about—”

  “We understand not wanting to go to the same school that boy will be attending, but to throw away the opportunity—”

  “Mama, are you even listening to—”

  “You cannot live here and do this.”

  We stared across the space between us as her edict rang in my ears, the knife no longer thumping rhythmically against the cutting board. My mouth fell open, words crowding through my head but failing to organize themselves into anything coherent.

  She found her voice first. “I have never put my foot down with you before, but I am doing it. This is too important.” Nothing in her expression suggested that she was bluffing or promised a retraction, but that was typical for Mama. Just not where it applied to me.

  I remembered Boyce’s theory that my mother and I had simply never disagreed about the direction of my future… until now. “So if I decline my acceptance to Michigan and stay here—in a doctoral program—I can’t live at home?” My voice emerged stronger than I’d assumed it would.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I nodded, closing my notebook and textbook. My hands were shaking. “Okay.”

  As I reached the base of the stairs, she called, “Supper will be half an hour!”

  When I got to my room, I tried to text Boyce, but the autocorrect made nonsense of my attempts and I gave up and pushed Talk instead. I shut the bedroom door as he answered.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “You were right—she’s expecting me to cave. She says I’m not old enough to know my own mind. That I can’t live here if I decline my acceptance. I don’t know what to do—student housing is full and it’s June. Even the crappiest rooms for rent in town are either booked or cost a fortune—not that it matters because I don’t have a job. What am I going to do? Housing is full for fall too, but I thought I could get an apartment for the nine months there and— God, I’m so clueless! I just assumed they’d pay the rent—” I choked on the last word. I’d never once in my life fought with my mother. I’d been so self-righteous about the difference between my relationship with her and Mel’s with her mother, when all the time it was no different.

  “Pearl? Did you hear me?”

  I took a trembling breath, hating my panic. Hating my powerlessness. She couldn’t force me go to medical school, but how would I pursue what I wanted to do? I had options. I had to have options. I just had to figure out what the hell they were.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t hear. I’m just trying to think.” I closed my eyes and swallowed. Think. Think.

  “It’s not much, but I have a spare bedroom,” he said. “You know you’re welcome to it.”

  chapter

  Fourteen

  Boyce

  I had just asked Pearl to move in with me. I had just asked Pearl Frank to move
into my two-bedroom, one-bathroom, piece-of-crap tin can of a trailer that butts up against a garage. And damn if the bedroom I offered her wasn’t still chock-full of thirty years’ worth of squirreled-away junk, for fuck’s sake.

  I’d spent the afternoon at Mateo and Yvette’s place watching the Astros pull out a win over Chicago and being used as a climbing wall by Alonso and Arturo. As I handed off a twelve-pack to their mama at the door, they’d run up and attached themselves to my legs, one wearing the Astros second baseman jersey I gave him on their birthday last month and the other in full Batman gear, cape and all. To be honest, I’ve never been sure which was which. They’ve always looked like miniature replicas of their daddy and each other.

  Now, still holding my phone, I came around the corner to find all four Vegas staring at me from the table where we’d just sat down to Sunday supper. “What?”

  “Mama says no phone calls at the table,” miniature José Altuve said. “It’s rude.”

  “There’s still food on your plate,” pint-sized Batman added.

  “Hush, y’all two. Rules for daddies and little boys don’t apply to guests.” Yvette blinked innocently. “So… who was that?”

  I pulled my keys from my pocket. “Um, I gotta go.”

  She turned wide eyes at her husband, who was chewing.

  “What?” he asked her.

  “Boyce never gets up from food. Certainly not my food.”

  She had a point. This was a first.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, thinking or not and turning toward the door. “Uh—thanks for supper, Yvette.”

  Poor Vega would be subjected to the third degree before I got my TA backed into the street. Too bad he didn’t actually know anything.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  From her minute-long silence on the phone, I’d guessed Pearl was as bowled over by my proposition as I was having said it. But she needed somewhere to live for the summer; I had an extra room. I’d have offered the same thing to Maxfield or Thompson or Vega… who were all guys. Though it had been known to happen, I’d never even wanted girls to stay over after sex. I’d always reckoned that was because I lived with my dad, but he’d been in and out of the hospital for months and I’d had the trailer to myself most nights. He’d been dead for four weeks. Neither made a lick of difference. I was flat-out opposed to hookups getting cozy in my place.