by Ford, Mia
“Good job!” Randy Mears, the head of accounting said as he shuffled past me.
“So, what do you think?” My father asked. “You passed as far as I’m concerned. This gig is yours if you want it. I think your hands are the best place to put it.”
He held out his big paw for me to shake it.
I smiled and shook his hand.
For some reason, I had a feeling that I’d just made a deal with the devil.
Chapter 3
Cora
“Oh, no. Mom, I don’t think I can eat another pancake.”
I pushed my plate away and tried to breathe past my overly full belly. I loved my mother’s pancakes in the morning. That was one of the best things about not leaving home—my mother’s phenomenal kitchen skills.
I took a sip of coffee and closed my eyes waiting for the magical powers of the caffeine to wake me up. I’d slept pretty well the night before, but I was having trouble getting going that morning. It was actually a problem I’d had ever since school let out. When there was no real purpose to get up in the morning, then it was really hard to get motivated to leave the comforts of bed.
I’d been thinking a lot about getting a summer job. I was fortunate that I didn’t really need money, but I was bored senseless and having somewhere to go everyday sounded really good. At least it would help me keep my mind off how everything around me was changing so fast and I was virtually powerless to stop it.
“I’ll take another,” my father said.
My mother sat two more pancakes down in front of him. He grabbed the syrup and loaded them up.
“Wow, dad,” I said. “You are a doctor. I’m sure you know exactly what all that syrup is doing to your insides.”
He grinned. “Yep, and I couldn’t care less.”
I laughed at my dad’s cavalier attitude towards his health.
“So, what are you going to do today?” My father asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was thinking about finding a job somewhere.”
“That’s a great idea,” he said. “We could always use more help down at the office.”
“No, thanks,” I said.
My dad, Nathan Blair, was a doctor who had his own family practice. My mother, April, was the office administrator. I couldn’t imagine working with your family all day and then seeing them at home, too. It all sounded like too much to me.
“Oh, dear,” my mother said. “Are you sure you want to spend your last summer before college doing some little job?”
“It was just something I’m thinking about,” I said.
“I think it might be good for her,” dad said. “It might get you to come home at a decent hour.”
“What?” I asked.
“The other night. What time did you get in?”
I had to think. “About twelve. Why?”
“Well, you may be a grown up, but we still have rules in our house. Twelve is stretching our parental leniency a bit far, I think.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dad, I was just hanging out with my friends.”
“Well, you don’t have to be out all hours of the night,” he said. “So, eleven o’clock from now on.”
I groaned. He’d just said that I was an adult and now he was telling me that I basically had a curfew. What the hell…?
I wanted to protest and argue, but I figured it would do no good. It was their house and if I wanted to stay there I would have to obey their rules. Sometimes I felt like breaking out of being so good and such an obedient daughter. I’d often fantasized about breaking out of my mold, my shell, and the image that people basically knew me as. Why couldn’t I? Maybe just try it for fun.
I could start sleeping with random guys like Miley had suggested. The thought of it made me feel a bit weird. On one hand it did sound terribly exciting, but on the other hand bonking random, strange guys sounded incredibly gross.
“Is that clear?” My father asked, looking over his glasses. When he did that, you knew he meant business.
I smiled and said, “Ok.”
“Alright, we’ve got to run,” My mother said. She gave me a hug and a kiss.
“We’ll see you tonight, sweetie,” My dad added.
“Ok.”
My parents walked out the door and I sat there listening to the silence in the house, interrupted only by the sound of their car starting up and heading down the driveway.
I breathed a sigh of relief and poured myself another coffee. As I sat there sipping it, I couldn’t get the current argument with my father out of my head. I felt like such a child when I had to defend myself against him. I was eighteen years old. I was an adult. I should have been able to start learning to be my own person.
But that would never happen until I lived on my own. And that wouldn’t happen unless I got into a great school. My parents wouldn’t have paid for me to live on campus if it was within driving distance.
I cleaned up after breakfast and was just about to take a hot shower when the door opened and Miley walked into my house.
“Hey!” Miley said in her usually bubbly manner. She was the most enthusiastic morning person I’d ever known. It was almost annoying and hard to take.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Great,” she replied. “Just thought I’d stop in on my way to work.”
Miley was working as a tech for a local veterinarian, which she’d been doing the past two years. It was a job ideally suited for her.
“Cool,” I said. “Coffee?”
“No. It makes me hyper,” Miley said.
I laughed to myself noticing the irony.
“So, are you going to call that guy?”
“Which guy?” I asked, though I already had a good idea which guy she was talking about.
“The guy who gave you his number the other night at the bowling alley. Nick.”
“No, I doubt it,” I said.
“What? Why not? He was gorgeous and so much into you.”
“Yeah, but I’m not in the mood to date anybody. I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. I’m still not over Jason.”
Miley gave me that annoyed look, the one she gave me when I was really starting to bug her by saying something that was obviously not true. I would never be able to lie to her; we both knew it. But sometimes I tried anyway. It was one of the things that kept our friendship fun.
“You need to stop this moping around,” Miley said. “You should at least call the guy and see about hanging out somewhere. Maybe invite him to the carnival or something. We’ll all be there. It will be a low pressure situation like the other night.”
“Wow, the other night? You guys were all so weird and creepy.”
“How were we like that?” Miley asked.
She really didn’t seem to understand.
“Really? You kept staring at his ass and asking him very personal questions, and don’t get me started on Jacob and Kirby. I’m pretty sure Nick thinks they were trying to hit on him for a three-way.”
“Ok, I guess we were coming on a bit strong. It’s just that you seemed to like him and he liked you. We are your friends, so we wanted to make sure that he liked us, too. You know how it is.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t know how it is. I don’t see why you guys can’t just give up on this.”
“Why are you so angry this morning?”
I looked her in the eyes. She knew that I was agitated at something else, too. Yep, I could never have fooled Miley if my life depended on it.
“My dad,” I said. “He started lecturing me about coming in too late the other night. He laid down the law about a curfew.”
“That is so weak,” Miley said. “Why the hell do you need a curfew? You are eighteen. He needs to deal with it.”
“Yeah, but I do live at home. That’s the type of stuff that I’m going to have to put up with going to college while living at home.”
“Breathe,” Miley said. She put her arm on my shoulder. “It will work out. Or maybe you can start bein
g crazy rebellious, until they decide that they are ok with you living on campus.”
“No, they’ve made it very clear they aren’t cool with me living on campus because of the extra expense.”
“Isn’t your dad a doctor?”
“Yeah, but he is a doctor who doesn’t make money. Helping people is more important.”
“What a crock,” Miley said. “That’s a damn shame.”
“I don’t even have that guy’s number,” I said. “I threw it away the other night when I got home. I felt weird.”
“Weird? Weird how?’
“I don’t know. But I’ve never really taken a guy’s number before. I mean, usually it is the other way around and I have to give them mine or I give them a fake.”
“Do you give them a random fake? Or do you have a stock fake number that you always use?”
“What?”
“Well, I have a stock, standard fake. I mean, it’s not made up. It’s a real number. It goes to this Chinese takeout place over on Vine. Great egg rolls.”
“I don’t know… I guess I usually go with a random fake,” I said. “But I don’t usually have to go through all of that.”
“Yeah, I do see that you shut guys down very quickly. You have a gift, where you can just give off this bitchy vibe that tells guys you have no interest in being talked to.”
“Do I? I wasn’t aware,” I said.
“Then that is really good. That’s a good talent,” Miley said.
I ran my hand through my long, blonde hair. “Do you think I should cut my hair?”
“No,” Miley said. “Not at all. Why would you even think such a thing? Everyone loves your hair.”
“Ok, then I’ll let it be.”
“You got anything else to eat?” Miley said walking over to the pantry.
“Help yourself. I think there are some snack cakes in there.”
Miley found a box of ding dongs and started munching on them.
“Are you done borrowing my red blouse?” Miley asked.
I had to think for a moment. “Oh, yes.”
I had borrowed her blouse to wear to my cousin’s dance recital. I’d never been the type of girl who dresses up that much, but she was doing a dance recital that was supposed to call for a somewhat formal dress. So I borrowed a blouse from Miley. It was creepy how similar we were in build.
I grabbed it from my room and came back downstairs. As I handed her the blouse I noticed that Miley was dialing a phone number. And she had a piece of paper in her hand…
I instantly put it together what was happening.
“Put the phone down!” I demanded.
Miley was laughing hysterically now. “Hey, this is Cora, the sexy girl from the bowling alley.”
I was chasing Miley around the kitchen now trying to grab the phone from her, but she was keeping it away from me. Neither of us could stop laughing. What the hell did she think she was doing?
Miley continued leaving her message. “I think you are so sexy… I just want to run my tongue all over your washboard abs and make sweet love until we are both too tired to move, and we lie there in each other’s sweat. Call me back. Bye!”
“What the hell are you doing? Are you nuts? Now he has my number?”
Miley was now coughing from laughing so hard. “You should see the look on your face.”
“I’m serious. What the hell is wrong with you? You have to call him back.”
“I used star sixty-nine. He doesn’t have your number. He can probably tell it’s a joke.”
“You are so crazy. How are we friends?” I asked.
“Because I provide immeasurable entertainment value.”
“Yeah, I guess that must be it. You are my court jester.”
Miley nodded. “I’ll take it.”
She put her arm around me and crumpled up Nick’s phone number in her hand. Then she gave it a toss into the waste basket.
“And that is that,” Miley said.
Chapter 4
Landon
I pulled into the parking lot of Deweys’ Bar on my motorcycle a little after six p.m. It was a pleasant time of the evening when the sun’s rays were just starting to retreat behind the horizon and the wind no longer felt like steam spraying across your face. You could relax with a cold beer and just enjoy the sweet, freedom of summertime.
I was excited to arrive at the bar. The big crowd hadn’t hit yet, so I figured I’d actually be able to talk to my friends without shouting at them. And we had some catching up to do.
Most of my friends (Ty, Colin, Steve, and Steve’s girlfriend Britney) had stayed around the area after high school. Steve and Britney went to college and then came back to Portsmouth, mostly because their families still lived there. They’d been dating since high school, one of those Romeo and Juliet couples that just seemed made to last from day one. It was pretty awe inspiring actually.
I cared deeply about both of them and wished them all the happiness in the world. And one day I hoped to find that kind of love. I was really at a point in my life where I was looking at the big picture and the idea of settling down with my ideal woman and starting a family was looking really good. And a lot of it had to do with the expectations placed upon me. I was a young man from a very rich family; I was expected to play the part of the aimless playboy. I had no intentions of fulfilling that image. I wanted a normal life. It was something I’d always gravitated towards. Being some rich, yuppie had always left a bad taste in my mouth.
I entered the bar and found a seat. My friends had yet to arrive. It was just like them to all be late. But I didn’t mind. I ordered a beer and sat back to unwind a bit. I’d been working for my dad’s company, basically filling his shoes, for almost a week now. And I was exhausted. I’d always known that he worked hard, but I had no idea how hard until now. There was always some busy work that needed to be finished, some meeting that had to be attended, some question answered, and some numbers crunched and projections made. On top of that were the appearances and social engagements that were as much a part of the job as anything else.
High society could be brutal. And now I was finding out firsthand how much fun it was not.
My friends arrived all together about ten minutes later. It was great to see them. We’d seen each other at most of the breaks we had from school and whenever I happened to make it back home for a few weeks in the summer (I’d taken the past few summers abroad to explore Europe a bit).
“Wow, can’t believe you are finally giving up your dream of being a professional student,” Ty teased.
“That was never a dream of mine,” I said. “But unlike you knuckleheads I wanted to be prepared for something when I left college.”
“What prepared? You knew your dad was leaving you the company, right?”
“Yeah, but until this week I’d been dead set against taking it.”
“Why?” Britney asked.
“You don’t feel like I’m selling out and taking the easy way by doing this?”
“Yes, we do,” Ty joked. “But it’s also the smart thing. No one else in your position would have said no; we just wouldn’t have spent six years in college first.”
“You are such a moron,” Steve said coming to my defense and slapping Ty playfully upside the head. “He spent six years in college to say no; he spent five minutes in the real world to say yes.”
My friends erupted in laughter. That was there way. As long as I’d known them (since high school mostly) they’d always riffed on each other and were always trying to bust each other’s balls. It was just their way. I was used to it. Of course, sometimes I gave it back just as hard.
“So, when are you and Julie getting back together?” Britney asked.
I was just biting into a hamburger I’d ordered and the hot grease splashed on my chin, almost burning me as I was surprised by the question.
“What?” I asked, wiping my face with a napkin. “What in hell would make you ask that question?”
“Well, I heard she
was back in town. You haven’t talked to her?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know she was back. What happened to Paris?”
Britney shrugged. “I guess she got homesick and it just didn’t work out.”
“Wow,” I said. “After all that. Well, that just confirms that I definitely made the right decision there.”
Julie was my college girlfriend. We met freshman year and were together for four and a half years when we broke up. I thought we would graduate and get married right away while we worked on our prospective careers. But then Julie got offered a job working with a top fashion designer in Paris. It was her dream and she had to take it. I was skeptical about our future at this point, but I wasn’t about to stand in the way of her dream.
Things were ok for a while, but then she just told me that we’d be better off as friends. I wasn’t sure if she’d met someone or if she just didn’t want to do the long distance thing anymore. I was devastated.
And now I come to find out that she did come back and hadn’t even bothered to talk to me. It was better for both of us that it was over. I knew that for sure now.
“Damn,” Britney said. “I’m sorry I brought it up now. I thought for sure she would have contacted you.”
“Why would she? We broke up a while ago. And it was her idea. She wasn’t willing to give it a shot.”
“Well, then why aren’t you back in the saddle?” Steve asked.
“What?”
“You should be out there mingling and looking for the next great relationship.”
I laughed. “Is this guy watching a bunch of old Geraldo episodes online or something? I definitely smell a binge of some old eighties talk show.”
“You would think,” Britney said. “But since we got married, it seems like Steve here is trying to get all of our friends to do the same.”
Ty and Britney were both laughing at this point. Steve the matchmaker—it was ludicrous knowing what we knew about Steve. He used to be the biggest cad on the planet (even if it was still high school). Anything with a skirt—he was chasing after it. And then he met Britney and flipped upside down. Now he was the exact opposite. But a matchmaker… that was crazy.