One careless word and she could have outed Meghan to her family.
“You are somewhere else right now, young lady,” her mother commented, patting her arm lightly. Amy startled with a flinch at the unexpected touch and her mother lifted one eyebrow. “It’s just me, no need to freak out! Amy, did something happen? You’ve been gnawing at your nails and staring at the walls since you arrived.”
Amy promptly lowered her hands to her lap.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
Her mother paused, but let it go. Amy squinted at her, confused, because usually her mother wouldn’t stop at anything to figure out what was bothering her—if nothing else, because she was bored and wanted the gossip. Amy caught a look shared between her mother, who was sitting close to her, and her father, who had his back to them and tending to something on the stove.
“What’s up?” Amy asked, eyebrows lowering over her eyes.
“Me and your father have just been thinking,” her mother said quickly as if to reassure her. “It’s just… this is really the first time you’ve been out of the house for longer than a week or two, and, well… me and your father have been enjoying having the house to ourselves.”
Amy looked from one parent to the other, hugging her arms together.
“I’ll tell Brenda to travel more often,” she joked, trying to hide her trepidation. “Housesitting really is nice, isn’t it?”
Her mother sighed. “Amy… your father and I have been very patient, you know, and we’ve never minded having you around, I’m actually very glad that we can give you the support you need, but… really, out of all your friends, how many still live with their parents? I’m not kicking you out! I’m just asking you what your plan is. I respect it that you don’t feel ready to go to college and I accept it that you’re waiting for a good job, but life has to move on. You’re not fifteen anymore. You can’t sell drawings on the internet and buy yourself new boots and let that be that.”
Amy felt her stomach fall to her feet.
“I…” she started, but didn’t know how to continue.
There was no way to continue. She had no plan. She had always known in the back of her mind that her parents’ patience would run out, but she had never thought that it would come now. She hated Brenda, suddenly and irrationally, for getting her out of her house and giving her parents the excuse they apparently needed.
“I’ll… think of something,” she said lamely after a moment of silence.
“That’s all we ask for,” her father said, too gruff to sound gentle, as he set a steaming tray on top of the table. “As your mother said, we’re not kicking you out. But we’re also not not kicking you out, understand?”
“What?” Amy asked, not really understanding.
“Truman,” her mother admonished, but quietly, like he was just saying something she wasn’t brave enough to say.
“We’re not kicking you out, but we will if you don’t get your act together,” he told her.
Amy stared up at him, and a part of her found it funny that her parents managed to get her mind off Meghan for a while, after all.
Chapter Ten
Meghan punched the bell of Carlos’ house with enough force to deafen all his neighbors, continually, until he came to answer the door. It was seven in the morning, a time which she knew he was awake because he had to head to work in about half an hour, and so she felt no mercy in doing this. Her desperation was clawing up her throat and she knew her sweet lazy girlfriend was asleep right now and she needed desperately to talk to someone.
“Dude!” Carlos exclaimed, his annoyance tinged with anger, when he wrenched the door open. “Why are you doing this? We were going to see each other tomorrow anyway!”
“He called again,” Meghan told him, ducking under his arm and walking into the house, which was small as a tin can and which she didn’t visit often now, but used to basically live at during her college days. “He called me again, Carlos, and I don’t know why but he went back on what he had said, and he wants all the money now!”
“What?” Carlos asked, confused, as he followed her to the kitchen. “What do you mean, he went back on what he said? Why on Earth would he do something like that?”
“I don’t know!” Meghan wailed. She pressed buttons on the ancient coffee machine and willed it to start making her coffee. “I don’t know what made him do that but he called me and told me, no-nonsense, that something had happened, and that he wanted—not needed, but that he wanted—all the money now, as soon as possible!”
“Meghan, calm down,” Carlos barked.
Meghan turned around to him. Carlos caught her wrist and towed her to the small two-person table, where he pushed her down to sit. She did so heavily. He sat down on the other seat.
“This isn’t the bank,” he told her firmly. “This is your dad. What can he really do to you? I know he said before that he would take the money, but how could he ever do that.”
Meghan shrunk where she sat.
“He has access to my bank account,” she told him in a small voice. “I’ve always trusted my parents, they have my passwords, and he can just enter my account and transfer the money to his own if he wants to.”
Carlos stared at her. “What? I didn’t know that.”
“I do have some money,” she told him, a bit desperate, reaching for him to clutch at his hand. “I have a bit more than twenty thousand in my savings account, I used to have more, but it’s been drained this past year because the publishing house has been doing so bad. If he just goes and takes it, I’ll have nothing! I won’t be able to keep the press afloat, and then how will I pay for the mortgage on the apartment?”
“Meghan, he can’t do that to you,” Carlos told her, eyes wide. “He can’t just get into your account and transfer so much money out like that. You could, I don’t know, you could sue him!”
“And pay a lawyer how?” Meghan said with a fearful smile. “And I don’t want to sue my dad! I can’t do that! I can’t believe he’s doing this to me. I was… I didn’t know how I was going to fix things before, but I can’t fix things now. I really can’t.”
Carlos was quiet for a moment. He was looking at her like he couldn’t believe it, and she couldn’t either.
“I know you’ve got some people in mind to hire to design the new website for the press,” he said suddenly, the change in subject sudden enough to make her blink in surprise. “Let’s look it over together and choose some people and schedule an interview for tomorrow or the day after.”
“Carlos, that won’t do anything,” Meghan said, world-weary and tired.
“It’s what we can do right now,” he said firmly. “So, it’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to finish my book this week, Meghan. Why couldn’t I? Plenty of people write entire novels in a month. I’ll finish it by the end of the week, and you’ll design the anthology post, and we’ll interview someone to do the web design—”
“You do too much,” Meghan said, though a teary smile broke through. “The press isn’t even yours. I shouldn’t be putting this on you.”
“I was there when you opened it, it’s like my godchild,” he argued, smiling wide as if trying to convince her to do the same. “Look, my parents travelled all the way from Colombia to here and gave up on their college degrees to work retail jobs. I figure, whatever we have to do will never be worse than that. Right?”
Meghan laughed. “Right,” she said. “We can do this.”
“We can do this!”
***
The interviews happened online, obviously, because that was how everything went these days. Meghan set up her laptop in front of her, prepared her best portable microphone, dressed properly as the serious owner of a small business, though only from the waist up, and set aside some water for her to sip through the hours.
She and Carlos were two interviews into this whole business and getting more and more disheartened when lunch time came by and so did hunger. A part of Meghan knew that this was useless, t
hat it wouldn’t really help her, that it would really only be a waste of money if it ended up that she needed to close the press anyway, but she couldn’t tell Carlos that. He was holding onto his hope and his faith like no one else could, like he had to do it for both of them since Meghan was so disheartened.
And anyway, if her father took twenty thousand from her account, what would it matter that she spent a few hundred for some college student to redo a website? She would have bigger problems than that.
They had fifteen minutes before the next interview to eat something, and so were both lingering in the kitchen in silence and waiting for their Thai food leftovers to finish microwaving, when the doorbell rang.
“Were you meeting Amy today?” Carlos asked with a furrow between his brows.
“No, but she passes by a lot,” Meghan told him.
She opened the door. It really was Amy, and Meghan was glad to see her, sharing a brief but lingering kiss with her. Meghan was too tired, and her mind was too occupied with her father and thoughts of the future to realize how downtrodden Amy seemed or how subdued.
“Hey,” Amy said. “I know you’ve been busy, but I was wondering if it would be okay for me to sit beside you while you work? I have a few commissions to draw, and thought it would be nice…”
Meghan grimaced. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s the best idea. I’m very busy, we’re conducting some interviews right now and then I need to brainstorm about how to work out the thing with the anthology. We’ll see each other at the greenhouse in a few days, right?”
Amy drooped with disappointment. “Right,” she said. “Um, is everything all right?”
“Yep,” Meghan said brightly. She didn’t want to worry Amy, and she knew Amy wouldn’t be much help besides—the last thing she needed, actually, was for her girlfriend to try and distract her. She needed to focus, now. “Sorry for cutting you off so soon, but—”
The microwave’s beep interrupted her.
“That’s lunch for me,” Meghan said with a smile. “We’ll have lunch together another day, right?”
“Right,” Amy said with a vague smile, and walked back to her apartment.
Meghan watched her go with a pang in her heart. She did wish Amy could have stayed. She wished she could do nothing but sit on Amy’s couch and nap. She just really, really couldn’t do it right now.
“She could have sat with us,” Carlos said when he gave Meghan her own plate with assorted leftovers, lukewarm and a bit gross. They didn’t have time to heat it up properly before the next interview.
Meghan shrugged. “She doesn’t really know how things work and we would be ignoring her, which is kind of rude. We’ll see each other later, there’s no need for her to stay here and watch us work, right? Let’s go back to the couch, come on. I have faith in the next person we’re interviewing.”
***
Eventually, Meghan chose someone to hire. She spent a couple hours of her day going over how she wanted the website to look with the girl, sending her files and files of examples and crude drawings and ideas for easier access and a prettier layout. After that, she heated up a bit more food, said goodbye to Carlos, who had to go to one of his biweekly night classes, and stationed herself in front of her laptop in front of her latest freelance job.
She liked working as an editor. It was why she had opened the publishing house. She had, while looking over books and novels and short stories and evaluating and correcting them, fallen in love with this side of writing. She didn’t care much about writing the words herself, but she liked the process of combing through them, of reading diamonds in the rough and being the one to polish them into something better.
Owning the press took work, though, and she didn’t work as an editor now as much as she had in the past.
It had made her sad in the beginning, but not for long. Her press was her pride and joy, the mark of her competence and her independence, her capacity to go out there and get things done. A part of her knew that she would struggle and eventually even have to close it, what with bigger companies monopolizing the market, but she had never thought it would happen now.
She had never thought it would be because of her own father.
She got her work done slowly, thinking that it was a bit ironic that after being sad she wouldn’t work as an editor as much anymore, her press closing meant that she wouldn’t work with anything else anymore. The story she was reading wasn’t very interesting, and it let her mind wander.
She wondered why her father had changed his mind so suddenly.
Her relationship to her family wasn’t the best, she knew, but it also wasn’t the worst. They had supported her during her college years and been happy for her when she opened her own business, and she had been glad to be able to help with the health insurance for her mother. They didn’t see each other much, true, but they loved each other.
Had they grown too apart in the months they had spent without seeing each other?
Meghan stared at her laptop and couldn’t find an answer.
Chapter Eleven
Amy had an art blog. It made her feel a bit pathetic to compare it to her girlfriend’s actual business, but same as the press was Meghan’s baby, this was hers. It was where she posted her drawings and received feedback, where people left loving comments and sarcastic responses and interacted with her and her art. She had created it after getting the best of her nerves one night when she was fifteen years old and she had maintained it ever since, and even though it wasn’t a profession, there was a certain ability she needed to have to have kept herself afloat all those years.
Sure, she didn’t open commissions all the time, and mostly used this money to buy herself clothes and video-games, but who else could say they earned as much money as she did with nothing but her laptop, a pirated drawing program, and a ten year old drawing tablet?
Looking at it right now and realizing it was her one and only source of income, Amy felt very small.
She opened up a new window to write a new post and her fingers paused over her keyboard. What could she write? She had gone to Meghan the other day looking to maybe casually get to ask the woman a few questions about finances, but Meghan had been very busy with her serious real-life work and business. Amy wouldn’t have the courage to go and bother her with something as small as this.
“So…” her mother, who was on the phone with her, said. “You’ve been quiet for a while now. How are you?”
“I’m thinking about money,” Amy said honestly, voice low.
She sounded betrayed, she knew, but it also made her feel stupid. They were right, weren’t they? She wasn’t a teenager anymore. Maybe she should have stayed in college instead of dropping out three years ago—maybe she would have been deep in debt, but at least she would have something concrete to put on a resume now.
“That’s good!” her mother said brightly. “Honey, that’s exactly what me and your dad wanted you to start doing.”
I’m doing it and panicking, Amy thought but didn’t say.
“We were thinking, well, you have Chelsea, and her rent isn’t so high, is it?” her mother asked her. “I’m sure you could find a nice apartment in the area she lives at if you find a girl or two to share it with. Chelsea actually mentioned it to me the other day that a neighbor of hers is planning on moving out in a month or so!”
Amy’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“A month? Mom, you guys want me to rent somewhere in a month? I won’t even be done housesitting by then!”
“I was just saying,” her mother said defensively, but Amy knew she was right. Her parents really weren’t going to wait for anything. “You don’t have to move out right now, but maybe you could keep an eye on Chelsea’s area. It’s a good area, and close to us, and again, I’m sure you could make rent if you found some other people—”
“Mom,” Amy said, strained.
“I’m just saying,” her mother repeated softly. “Look, there’s people in way worse situations than you who mo
ve out and get their lives together. Just because you don’t have, I don’t know, years of savings under your belt doesn’t mean you have to stay in your parents’ house forever. I mean, don’t you want some independence?”
Of course I do, Amy wanted to shout. But she hadn’t thought it would come like this.
“Sure, Mom,” Amy said, swallowing nothing. “Look, I have to go. I really need to get drawing, I have some commissions piled up and some are complicated, so… we’ll talk later.”
“All right,” her mom said.
Amy hung up, then stared at her laptop morosely.
She really didn’t have any time left, did she? Chelsea had been right. Her luck had run out.
Amy wished she could go to Meghan for help, but she knew she wouldn’t: Meghan was too busy with her bigger problems and would probably just brush Amy away again.
***
“Amy, that’s amazing,” Chelsea breathed out, eyes wide as she looked at the screen of Amy’s laptop.
Though these days Amy was feeling more down than not, her usual cheery demeanor dampened by fear of the future and betrayal at her parents, she felt a surge of joy rise up at the words. Drawing was her joy and it made her happy that Chelsea could see that; it was easy for people to think nothing much of what she did.
“Look at those wings,” Chelsea marveled. “You really should be charging more for those, Amy.”
Amy sighed, letting her head fall back on her couch.
“Maybe, but then no one would buy anything,” she said. “If the world were fair, I would be able to charge several hundred dollars on a piece like this, with two people, completely colored and shaded, with so many details. Maybe then I wouldn’t have any problems with money and would have moved out already!”
“Well, I did tell you many times that you could go back to college for illustration,” Chelsea said, infuriatingly sensible.
“Why would I go to college to do something I already know how to do?” Amy asked, exasperated and frustrated. “It’s so unfair!”
“Well,” Chelsea said, scratching at her chin in thought. “Your sensible and successful girlfriend works as a freelancer, right? What’s stopping you from leaving your small teenage blog to start looking for actual freelance work? I’m sure if you go to websites geared toward this, you will find people looking for someone like you to illustrate their books or their websites or something.”
Neighborly Love Page 7