Tied Up in You

by Erin Fletcher

  “I guess,” I said, but it wasn’t a big deal because Malina didn’t even want to go into business. Maybe it was a big deal for people who did, but not for her.

  “Oh no. Poor Malina. Would they take her late?”

  My defenses flew up hard and fast. “I don’t know. But this is about me, not Malina.”

  “Right,” Lacey said. “Sorry. She missed her interview. You missed practice. Continue.”

  “Okay, so I was trying to calm her down, you know? Reminding her it’s one scholarship and she’s applying for like a million of them. She’s going to be fine. So then she freaks out on me and how I’m not applying for anything and how I can’t be serious about anything and she shouldn’t be surprised that our relationship isn’t going to last.”

  Lacey winced. “Ouch.”

  I stood and started pacing back and forth in front of the couch, frustration preventing me from sitting still any longer. “Yeah. I mean, it’s one thing for some girl I’m dating to say all of that. It’s another thing for my best friend to say it.”

  “It still doesn’t sound like her. What did you say to her?”

  The question made me trip over thin air, stumbling a step before I caught myself. “Nothing! This isn’t my fault! It’s not my fault we overslept and she missed her interview and was pissed about that.”

  “I know, I know,” Lacey said. “And yeah, her disappointment probably did influence the things she said. But you were probably upset about missing practice, which means you might have said things you normally wouldn’t have, too. Maybe she was a little offended when you said it was one scholarship? It might not seem that way to you, but to her it was probably a pretty big deal.”

  Guilt formed a lump in my throat. No matter what I thought, it probably was a big deal to her, and it definitely was a big deal to her dad, who was sitting at the hospital with Tutu, who had just had a stroke. Shit. I hadn’t thought about any of that before opening my mouth, and that wasn’t the only negative thing I’d said. I ran a hand through my hair and let out a tense sigh.

  “What are you thinking, little brother?” Lacey asked.

  I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “I said some other things that I maybe shouldn’t have, at least not right then.”

  She made a “go ahead” motion with her hand.

  “I told her that she was getting in the way of my hockey career. Then I called her out on not going into what she really wants to go into. For going with the safe plan and going into business when really she wants to go into astrophysics. And yeah, maybe I was mad and that wasn’t the time or way to say it, but that one needed to be said. She’s playing it safe, and she has no reason for that. She’s too smart for that.”

  “Like you’re too smart to not even consider trying to go to college?”

  The words were a knife to my chest. “Wait, why are you taking her side? I’m your brother.”

  She shook her head. “Not taking her side. Just showing you that there are two ways to look at every situation. And she does have a point that things are changing. You had a blast in high school, and it’s easy to think and hope nothing is going to change, but I’ll be the first to tell you the real world is different. Some things are bigger and more important than fun. Like attending a good college. Like Malina. I mean, you two were best friends for years. Are you sure you want to let this one argument ruin that for you?”

  On the surface, I did. I wanted to fold my arms over my chest and pout and stay mad at her forever. Below the surface, where Lacey was poking holes in my logic left and right, I knew I couldn’t do that. The problem was that even though my mind was whirling a thousand miles an hour, it wasn’t landing on a solution. “So what am I supposed to do?”

  Lacey smiled. “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. And in the meantime”—she set a stack of shirts in my lap—“you can fold these.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Malina

  When I got home from the non-interview, I sat down on the couch, shoes still on, useless paperwork still in my hands. Everything felt numb, from my fingers to my heart to my brain. As soon as I thought about having to tell my dad what happened, my eyes burned and the tears started again. Tears for missing the interview. Tears for losing Jackson. Tears because I felt both guilty and sorry for myself, and there wasn’t really a worse combination of emotions.

  When my phone dinged in my purse, I jumped, startled out of my emotional mess. I wiped my eyes, took out my phone, and opened the messages from my mom. The good news was that Tutu had been moved out of ICU and to a regular room, where she would spend a couple of days.

  Me: Can I come visit?

  Mom: Of course. Drive safely. Text me when you get here, and I’ll bring you up.

  So I buried my useless paperwork deep in the garbage can, where I wouldn’t have to be reminded about what happened today, and tried my best to bury the sick feeling in my stomach, too.

  The drive was actually good for me. I put on some music, followed the GPS directions, and tried not to think about much else. It wasn’t until I arrived at the hospital and found visitor parking that I felt butterflies in my stomach. But not good butterflies. Poisonous ones. My mom had updated me on Tutu’s condition, but seeing her in person was a whole different story. And what was I going to tell my parents about the interview?

  When I walked up to the hospital entrance, my mom was already standing there.

  “Hey,” I said, giving her a big hug, soaking in some of the comfort I knew we both needed. “How is she?”

  Mom looked tired, but she was smiling. “Excited to see you. Come on.”

  She motioned me through the sliding doors toward the elevator. While we walked and waited, I asked questions about Tutu’s condition to delay the inevitable question about my interview. No reason to have to tell that story more than once. And I knew the question would be the first words out of my dad’s mouth.

  “She’s mostly having trouble with her left arm and leg,” Mom said as we stepped off the elevator. The hallway smelled strongly like soap and some kind of lemon cleaner. “But her speech hasn’t been affected much this time. You’ll see.”

  The butterflies in my stomach grew more restless as we walked down the hall, but they settled down the second we walked into the room and Tutu smiled at me.

  “Lina,” she said.

  Those butterflies flew away completely. Mom was right. She was okay. That was what mattered most of all.

  “Hey, Tutu,” I said, walking over to her bed and giving her a gentle hug, careful to avoid the tubes and wires around her. When I leaned back, I said, “You scared me.”

  “Maikaʻi au,” Tutu said. She was fine. “Don’t worry.”

  “Doesn’t she look great?” Dad asked.

  I slipped the bracelet Tutu had weaved off my wrist and onto hers. Just to give her something other than the gray hospital gown and white sheets. “She looks beautiful,” I said, and Tutu beamed.

  “So, how was the interview?” Dad asked.

  Every muscle in my body tightened. Okay, so it was the second question out of his mouth. I took a shaky breath. “I missed the interview.”

  “You what?” Dad demanded. “What happened? Did you get in an accident? Was there some kind of emergency?”

  The tears that had passed while I drove there filled my eyes again. “I overslept. Slept through my alarm. I went late, but they wouldn’t take me. I’m really sorry.”

  “You overslept?” Dad asked. “This was your ticket not only to college but to a future career, and you slept through your alarm? How in the world did that happen?”

  My cheeks burned as badly as my eyes. I knew this was going to be bad, but there was no way to be prepared for this kind of anger and disappointment.

  “Hey, guys, let’s talk about this in the hall,” Mom said, clearly not wanting to upset Tutu. “Makuahine, we’ll be right back.”

  Tutu waved us off, and we walked into the hall. It took all of my energy to look at my dad instead of
the floor. He was so clearly upset. So hurt. And I hadn’t even told him the whole story.

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  “What?” Dad asked. “What else could you possibly have to say right now?”

  “The reason I overslept was because Jackson was over. He spent the night so I wouldn’t have to be alone. Nothing happened, but we must have fallen asleep before I could make sure my alarm was on and loud enough.”

  “Jackson?” my dad hissed.

  If there had been any muscles in my body that weren’t tight before, they were then. Maybe it was good I had told them in a public location. He couldn’t really yell. Couldn’t try to murder me. Or if he had, I was already in a hospital.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “I know that doesn’t help, and I know there’s nothing I can do to fix this, but I am really sorry.”

  “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you threw away—”

  “Hey, how about you and I talk in the waiting room?” Mom suggested, gently but still loudly enough to interrupt my father’s tirade. “Malina, why don’t you go sit with Tutu? Let us know if she needs anything.”

  My body relaxed the tiniest bit. Mom was going to try to talk dad off the ledge for me. I wiped at my eyes again and nodded before walking back into Tutu’s room. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them the second I sat in the visitor’s chair. She used her right hand to motion me closer. When I did, she reached out and patted my arm.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to cause drama.”

  Tutu shrugged. “The hospital is boring.”

  “Not anymore,” I said, wondering what my mom was saying to my dad.

  “It will be okay, Malina. You are a smart woman. You’ll still go to a good school. You’ll still get a good job.”

  What she didn’t know was that it wasn’t just that. It was that the plan I’d been working toward for so long felt dumb, and anything more than that felt impossible, despite what Jackson had said. “Yeah, but I don’t want just a good job.”

  “What do you mean?” Tutu asked.

  “I mean I don’t want to go into business. I don’t want to get a safe job. I want to go into astrophysics.”

  That must have been one of those words that didn’t translate well into Hawaiian, and it must not have been used much in English there, because Tutu frowned at me, the left side of her mouth dipping a tiny bit lower than the right.

  “Studying space,” I said. “I want to go to a technical school and study space as an astrophysicist.”

  “Ah, space,” she said with a nod. “You always loved space. You didn’t always love business.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So study space.”

  I had to smile at her nonchalant tone. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  I bit my lip. “Because not many schools have astrophysics programs. The ones that do are ridiculously hard to get into, and I missed the early application deadlines. And yeah, careers in astrophysics are amazing, but they’re really competitive. I’d never be able to get one, and then I’d have an expensive degree and no job, which isn’t exactly ideal.” Another tear rolled down my cheek and landed on the leg of my pants. The self-pity tears seemed bigger than all the rest.

  “Hey,” Tutu said, and motioned for me to lean closer.

  I did, and she wiped at my tears with one shaky thumb. “You are smart. Brilliant.”

  “No I’m not, I can’t even—”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” she said. “I’ll talk. You listen.”

  My cheeks flushed. I knew better than to argue with her. Plus, Tutu beat the odds not once, but twice. I needed to be grateful she was okay and soak up every bit of wisdom from her that I could.

  “You are smart. And it’s only November. It’s not too late.”

  She was right. Even if I’d missed early applications, regular applications were still open.

  “Most of all, you are hard working. You do what you set your mind to. The problem here is you set your mind to the wrong thing. You did not go after your dreams. If you don’t do that, they don’t come true.”

  “You sound like Jackson,” I mumbled. And really, if Jackson and Tutu were saying the same thing, maybe they were right. Maybe I owed it to them to consider trying. The thought made me feel kind of sick.

  “Jackson’s smart, too. Smarter than he thinks.”

  Talking about Jackson brought memories of our argument back to the surface. The ache of knowing I’d probably lost him ran all the way down to my bones. “Jackson and I got in a fight.”

  She frowned again. “You fought? Why?”

  I went through everything with her, about how he didn’t seem to care at all that I’d missed my interview and how he’d said the whole “getting in the way of hockey” and “not going after my dreams” things, but in not nearly as nice of a way. I even confessed about the not-quite-so-nice things I’d said about him and his past, present, and future.

  “Sounds like both of you need to apologize,” Tutu said.

  “Maybe.” The problem was that I didn’t know if he’d even talk to me, and I certainly didn’t know how to start the conversation. Or finish it, for that matter. Did I want to be done with him? Did I want to try to make this work? Would he be willing to try to make up? His track record showed that he tended to wave the white flag and call it quits as soon as things got rough. My chest ached with the knowledge that things between us had gotten so rough so quickly and might never be right again.

  “Tell him no more food from me until he makes this right with you.”

  I laughed. That actually had a chance of working. If anything could save Luke Jackson, it was definitely food, especially Tutu’s food. “I’ll tell him that.”

  Tutu closed her eyes again.

  “Are you tired?” I asked.

  “Just need a little rest,” she said.

  “Okay. I’ll be right here when you wake up.” I stood and placed a kiss on the top of her head.

  A few minutes later, when I thought she was already asleep, Tutu said, “Malina?”

  “Yeah?” I asked, ready to go grab my parents or a nurse if she needed something.

  “Missing this interview? It’s not the end of the world. It is the beginning.”

  That made me tear up for an entirely different reason. Maybe she was right. Maybe I needed a nudge to knock me out of my comfort zone, and missing the interview was exactly that nudge. “Thanks, Tutu.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t need to.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jackson

  After hanging out with Lacey for a while, I went down to the basement to work out. I always thought better when I was on the treadmill or lifting weights. It was like getting the blood pumping also made my brain work better. I set the treadmill to a jog to warm up. My muscles warmed quickly even in the cold basement. While I picked the speed up from a jog to a run, I thought.

  This was far from the first time I’d had an argument with a girl, but it was the first time I couldn’t get it out of my brain. Normally this would be the time when I’d be moving on to find some other girl. But I didn’t want to move on. I didn’t want some other girl. I’d say it was because Malina and I were friends first, but I’d dated girls who were friends before, and I’d never felt like this. There was something else going on.

  Once I’d gotten a few miles in, I slowed to a walk to get ready to lift weights. On my way over to the bench, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. There was a piece of paper on the ground, underneath the card table I’d set up for Malina and hadn’t put away yet. Still breathing hard from my run, I walked over and picked it up. It looked like a sheet of notes had fallen out of her bag in her frantic attempt to clean up when my mom interrupted us. It didn’t look too important—some essay topics and notes in her neat handwriting. At the top of the page, where most people would draw doodles or squiggles or something meaningless, Malina had drawn a constellation, dashe
d lines connecting stars in a shape I didn’t recognize but knew she knew everything about. Man, I loved this girl.

  I loved this girl.

  My heart started to race even though I wasn’t doing anything more strenuous than standing there, holding a piece of paper. I loved Malina. That was the difference between her and all of the girls who had come before. It wasn’t only that we were friends. It was that I loved her and couldn’t possibly let the argument we’d had be the end.

  I needed a plan. I needed a way to fix all of the things I’d messed up. I could try to apologize to her. I wasn’t very good with words, especially apologies, but this one would be worth it.

  But that idea still didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t want to tell her I was sorry and was in this for the long haul. There was a good chance she wouldn’t believe me. I wanted to show her those things. As I hit the weights, an idea formed. There was one thing I could do. I didn’t have any clue if it would work. It might end up being a disaster. But if it did work…it might be enough. It had to be enough. I finished my workout, showered, and started putting my plan into motion.

  Malina’s room was on the second floor, facing the driveway. Her bedroom light was on, and I saw occasional flickers of movement, so I was pretty sure she was up there. There were also lights on downstairs, so I assumed at least one of her parents was home. Perfect. I parked down the street, got out of my car, walked up to the front door, and knocked quietly.

  It took a minute or two, but then Mr. Hall opened the door. Several emotions quickly crossed his face: surprise, unhappiness, anger, and confusion. It was pretty obvious he knew more about what had happened than I wanted him to know.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hall,” I said. “How’s Tutu?”

  “She’s doing okay. Better than you’ll be doing if you think you’re going to spend the night again or even look at my daughter tonight.”

  A rush of heat washed over me despite the cold air. He knew a lot more than I wanted him to know. “Mr. Hall, you have every right in the world to be mad at me. So does Malina. But I assure you that my intentions were good. I didn’t want her to be alone after what happened. It was completely innocent.”