by Olivia Chase
“Wait.”
Startled, I look over at Gage. The look on his face is painful. His dark eyes are desperate, begging me to understand.
“There’s no reason for her to speak,” he begins. “No reason to put her through this. Keri, I’m sorry.” He looks back at the admin. “But I’m not sorry for loving this woman. And that’s the fact of the matter. I do love her. I am not going to stand here in front of you all and deny our relationship, or make the love of my life lie for me.”
My mouth drops open. Across the room, at least three other mouths are doing the same thing.
“I probably deserve to be fired,” Gage goes on, “and to lose my company. As important as Pharoah is to me, and as much as I genuinely love teaching, I don’t for one second regret meeting Keri. She’s worth it.” He looks at me, fire in his eyes, and smiles. “She’s worth all of it. You are worth it, Keri. You are so very worth it.”
There is a table full of stunned academics over there. After a second, pandemonium sets in.
“Can’t be,” someone says.
“He just admitted it,” another one says.
“…of all the obscene…”
“…fired…”
“…an outrage…”
I turn shocked eyes onto Gage. He holds a hand out, and I step closer to him, taking it.
“I love you,” he whispers, and kisses me. And it’s the longest, sweetest, most glorious kiss the state of Texas has ever known. Which, in my opinion, is saying something.
“Ramsey,” the dean roars, disposing of any niceties. “You may leave at once.”
“Sure thing.” Gage turns to me. “Shall we?”
I still can’t believe what’s happening. Gage gave it up, gave everything up. For me.
I find my voice. “You like to interrupt me,” I say. Happy tears spring to my eyes, but I don’t bat them away.
“Bad habit,” he says. “I’ve got a couple.”
Arm in arm, we stride out of the room.
Chapter 22
KERI
I try to take my dad's advice. A little nugget of gold he's always given is "Wait a few days. Then, if you're still madder than a wet hen, go do something about it."
Well, it's been a few days. And I'm still pretty fucking pissed. So I hop into the shower, blow dry my hair to perfection, dab on some mascara, and head to the Chevron on the corner, where I fill up for a drive of at least four hours. I've never been to Gator Bridge, Texas, and I probably could have been okay living life without ever going there. Until today.
I blast Taylor Swift's earlier albums and feel alright for the first several hours on the road. Then, somewhere outside of Houston, where the massive freeway turns into a smaller freeway and then a two-lane highway to nowhere, a wave of anxiety hits me full-force. And that just brings back the anger.
The trees have somehow become taller, some kind of-- pine? I stick my head out the window but can't catch a scent. And, somehow, amidst the tall foresty trees are banana trees. Banana trees and forest? I do a double take, but yeah, those are definitely banana trees. What a weird place. I catch patchy areas of dark water, with all kinds of scraggly growth all around, and shudder. I don't think I want to know what lives in these ponds.
I must be almost in Louisiana by now. Sure enough, my navigation map shows how close to the border Gator Bridge is. I roll past the welcome sign, announcing itself as a tiny, po-dunk town of a few thousand. Not unlike Deer Falls.
My directions tell me to get off the main road, and for awhile it's a series of turn here, turn there, and I cross a bridge over a legit swamp. That water just looks... wow. It's slush. It's slime. East Texas is so different from where I live.
"Honeysuckle Lane," I mutter to myself, turning onto my desired street. It would sound old-fashioned and charming, if only Natasha didn't live on it.
Yep. She’s shown that she’s perfectly ok just showing up at people’s homes. Why not give her some of that consideration? At least I’m not rolling up at six AM.
As I slow to a stop in front of 316 Honeysuckle, I let out a breath I hadn't realized I've been holding. I'm here. At Natasha's. I drove all the way from Deer Falls-- Nowhere, Texas-- to Natasha's freaking house in Even More Nowhere, Texas. I was shocked when I realized her family lived so close to Deer Falls, but it made sense the more I thought about it. Gage had even remembered something about his lawyer telling him Natasha’s family lived outside of Houson, when the whole thing had gone down at Drummond.
Well. To hear her talk, like she did when she got in my face about Gage, she was from Dallas, next door to Ross Perot or something. But it looks like maybe she knows a nothing town when she sees one.
I alight from my car and stare hard at house number 316. It almost, almost, resembles my parents' house. Except it's worse.
The front porch steps, wherever they went, have been replaced by cinder blocks. I approach the yellow front door-- the only sign of cheer on this whole property-- while trying not to trip on the crumbling sidewalk. Hand shaking in repressed fury, I knock.
I slap hard at two mosquitos in the time it takes for the door to open. When it does, the figure of Natasha stands framed in the doorway, brown hair pulled into a half-assed bun. She's wearing a Bristowe T-shirt over yoga pants and while her makeup-less face isn't as strikingly different as Isabel's natural look, it's enough for me to deduce that she had no expectations of seeing anyone she knew for a good while. That's probably why she stands there gawking at me for a full ten seconds.
"Hello," I say tightly. I might as well break the silence and get this over with.
"Uh, hey," she says, glancing behind her as though someone might be on her heels to see who's at the door. I cringe momentarily-- I hadn't thought about having an audience. How am I supposed to chew her out if her family's in earshot? I don't need one or both parents stomping up to me and telling me to quit hollering at my baby girl, you crazy hussy.
And how could I not have considered that? I mean, I guess... I guess I just didn't think of Natasha as having a family. Even though Gage mentioned she had family here, I still had this image of her as existing completely solo, with only her obsession and her total lack of boundaries to keep her company.
She holds the door open for me. "Come in."
I follow her inside. The smell of baby lotion mixed with beef broth hits me full-force, and I notice the dark brown carpet is even more decrepit than my own home's. A boy about sixteen trots into the room, smiles right through me, and then runs down the hall, laughing to himself.
"I guess we can talk in the kitchen," Natasha says, apparently aware that this isn't some sort of hi-and-bye. That sounds uncomfortable, but it turns out the kitchen is literally one room away, and the ladderback chairs around the table are huge, with what looks like handmade cushions. She gestures to one and I sit.
I take another sweeping glance of this place. The laminate counters are that avocado green color, from the seventies or something, and they're cluttered with mismatched canisters and pages of newspaper coupons. The appliances look like they're even older, and the fridge is one of those small box things that suck up every ounce of energy in the house. There are colorful magnets decorating its white door, and on the freezer's small door on top, a pencil drawing of what looks like the bridge I drove across to get here is prominently magnetized in place.
My eyes move across the kitchen to the window, where strips of duct tape have been lined up to cover a square of window that, for whatever reason, doesn't have glass like the others.
I open my mouth, then close it. I hadn't expected Natasha to be living quite like this. My parents' house can only be described as very modest, but this? This is pretty much ramshackle.
She's looking at me like she's waiting for me to speak. Which I'm sure she is. I'm the one who just kind of showed up here. But looking around this little home-- the beef broth smell is strong in here, even though nothing is on the stove-- I feel a pang of empathy for Natasha.
But I came all the wa
y here. I should say something.
"Um," I begin. "Well. I didn't mean to... disturb you, or interrupt anything."
"You're not," Natasha says. "We don't have to go to physical therapy or tutoring today, so we're good."
"Physical therapy?"
"Yeah. My brother." She points to a framed photo on the nearby sideboard, and a guy grins at me out of the photo in a wheelchair. Next to him is a kid-- maybe a young teenager-- grinning at something off to the side. "Britt. He's nineteen. He was in a bad accident a few years ago."
I nod, thinking it might not be appropriate to ask what kind of accident. Then again, how appropriate is it that I'm here? How appropriate is anything both of us have engaged in the past few weeks?
Natasha satisfies my curiousity for me. "His favorite horse threw him."
Oh. That really is terrible. God.
"And Bailey," she says, nodding back at the picture, "is the one you met a minute ago. Or, sort of met."
I nod again, not sure what to say, even though this was my idea and I'd better start talking soon. "How old is Bailey?"
"Seventeen next week." Natasha's eyes fill with tears and she scrubs her forearm over her eyes. "He's the one who needs me the most. Britt needs a ride here and there, but he's fully competent. Bailey's autism is-- well, it's... it's been tough."
I finally think of something else to say. "Do your mom and dad live here?"
"Mom," she says, and I can hear her fighting to keep her voice steady. "My dad's been gone a long time." She doesn't explain in what sense gone means, and I don't ask. "She's getting older, and--" she lowers her voice-- "according to doctors, wasn't really supposed to have Bailey. But she did, and he's here. And, well, they were right about... this one thing they warned about. But I wouldn't trade him."
Her tone dares me to challenge that. Of course I don't. "My mom was older when she had me, too," I say. "They made sure to tell her a million times, right into the ninth month, that she was a geriatric pregnancy and I was at risk for everything you can name."
"But you turned out okay."
Ha.
"I guess so," I murmur. "Sometimes I have myself wondering."
I thought maybe Natasha would smile at that, but her face just slowly crumples instead. "I love Bailey," she says. "But taking care of his needs is hard. Especially now that my mom can't do as much. I've had to take him to his special classes, and make sure he gets off the bus, and make his dinner, and clean up after him."
"That does sound hard," I say. My heart pulls itself. "I had no idea."
"Most people don't." She pulls a paper towel from the nearby counter and blows her nose. "It's just something I have to deal with. And most of the time I don't mind, really. He's--" she pushes a little sob down, and takes a few seconds before getting control back. "He's so smart, though. You might not believe it, but he is." She points back to the fridge. "He drew that."
"I believe it," I tell her. I admire the drawing of the bridge-- it really is well done, especially for a kid not even seventeen yet. I couldn't even come close to drawing anything recognizable.
"He’s got a lot of talent."
She’s right. I couldn’t draw anything like that if I traced it. I pull a travel pack of Kleenex out of my purse and hand it to Natasha. "A lot softer than the paper towel," I say.
“Thanks.” She takes it and blows her nose for at least five seconds.
A neighbor’s lawn mower revs up outside. The duct tape doesn’t do a great job of keeping the sounds out. As Natasha composes herself, I think what it must have been like to go to college in Southern California—Drummond is in that neverending Los Angeles metropolis somewhere—only to drop out and end up right back here.
Maybe she’s reading my mind. “I won’t be here forever.” Her tone indicates that she fears this will be another lie.
I gaze at my surroundings, at the ratty furniture and wood-paneled walls, and I realize this might be the most tragic of all her lies. Unless they can afford a caretaker—and my guess is they can’t—Natasha might be stuck here for a lot longer than she planned.
I clear my throat. “Do you think you’ll go back to college?”
“Yeah,” she says without missing a beat. “Eventually. I mean… I have to. But,” she gestures toward the hall Bailey disappeared into with her head. “You know.”
And what else can she do?
“I understand,” I say. And the thing is, I think I do. This could be me. What if my dad’s treatment wasn’t going so well? What if my mom falls again, or kinks something up and needs a new hip? Or any of the other disasters that befall aging people? I’m lucky as hell that I got into Bristowe, a good school so close to my house, but if both of my parents needed a constant presence? There’d be no way I could leave them for long periods of time.
I could be Natasha. I don’t know where her father is, but if mine was removed from the picture, along with the pension my family lives on? Well, my mom and I would be in housing a lot less glamorous than this tumbled-down place I’m sitting in right now.
She looks at me, shame liquifying her eyes. “Sorry,” she says, wiping them again. “I don’t know why I keep crying.”
“You’re okay,” I say, which is something my dad always told me whenever I did anything from falling off the swing set to coming home with a bad grade. I leave out the next part of his coaching, which is walk it off, kiddo. “And you will be okay.”
“I have my applications open on my laptop in my room,” she informs the floral tablecloth. “University of Houston. Maybe Rice, if I’m lucky. Something local.”
I feel like I’m doing a lot of nodding, but I keep at it. Maybe all she needs right now is silence and an ear.
“I will finish.” Her brown eyes fill up again, but this time she lets the tears drip out. “I will. What I did at Drummond was the biggest mistake of my life. Followed by what I did to you guys. At that point, I was just so pissed. Maybe at Gage, yeah, for rejecting me. But mostly at myself.” She blows her nose again. “I couldn’t stay at Drummond, because of the shitstorm. People were calling me Monica Lewinsky, and Anna Nicole, and what really sucked was that there was truth in it. I brought that on myself.”
I’m tempted to actually pat her arm. God.
“I couldn’t just transfer to another school, even though I tried. I was checking out UCLA and UCI, thinking maybe I could swing one of those. But I wasn’t a California resident and hadn’t bothered doing any of the stuff you need to establish residency, since Drummond is private and I never expected that to matter. And out of state tuition, well.”
“It’s ludicrous,” I supply. “That’s one thing that kept me so close to home.”
“I couldn’t wait a year to get residency because I couldn’t afford to live there. No more Drummond meant no more scholarship and no more dorm. I mean, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the rental market in SoCal, but…” she trails off. I can almost see a stream of apartments going through her head, each one unaffordable. Or maybe a stream of ratholes with body outlines on the floors, and some agent or apartment manager saying “This is all we’ve got in your price range.”
“Don’t even want to know,” I say out loud. “I can’t fathom surviving in Los Angeles on my own.”
“I can’t believe I entertained the idea.” Natasha almost smiles, shaking her head. “But then, I get some dumbassed ideas. But that one just wasn’t going to happen, and right about then my brother had his accident. So I came back here, and hospital bills had no mercy on us. Britt couldn’t drive Bailey and my mom around anymore, so that all fell to me.”
I continue processing this while Natasha stands up. “Something to drink? I should’ve asked earlier. My mom’s getting slower, but she makes a goddamned good tea.”
“Please,” I say. I can’t believe I’m actually smiling at Natasha, watching her move around her mother’s kitchen, pouring two Mason jars full of iced tea and bringing them over. Domesticated Natasha, for all her hard times, actually seems like a p
retty decent soul.
“California has prettier beaches than we do,” she says, sitting back down. “But I never found anyplace that grasped the concept of a good sweet tea.”
She’s right. Her mom’s tea might be even better than my mom’s. “Where’s your mother now?”
“Napping.” Natasha takes a long, slow sip. “She gets tired a lot. But she’s still sharp as a tack.”
It astounds me just how much this girl and I have in common. Though I certainly can’t call her a friend—everything that happened is still fresh in my mind—I, against all odds, somehow see where she’s coming from. The fury I drove here with has just bubbled away.
“I keep going on about myself,” Natasha says, breaking my thought. “I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way here for a sweet tea.”
“You know what,” I say. “I just, um. Just wanted to try to mend fences and make sure there were no hard feelings.”
Natasha noticeably holds back a smirk. “You sure?”
“No,” I confess, and we both laugh. I came partly to rail on her for blatant dishonesty, and here I am lying and lying badly. “I was pretty upset. But I think I’m okay now.”
“If you take nothing else from this visit,” she begins, “just know that I’m happy for you. And Gage. I mean it. I had a little talk with myself in the car coming back home, and I decided that if I was the one for Gage, that would’ve happened. So we must not be right for each other, and that’s not the end of the world. And maybe the right girl for him is you. And if so, then I’ve got no business trying to mess with fate.”
I don’t know what to say. “Thank you,” is all I can manage. “I appreciate that, Natasha.”
She walks me back out onto the porch. Across the yard, a white chicken struts around, pecking at the grass. “Norma Jean got out again?” Natasha sighs. “Damnit.”
I chuckle at Norma Jean. I feel so much better after our conversation. In this house, the next thing to a shack, really—I saw the calmer Natasha, the responsible one who speaks thoughtfully. The Natasha who earned a Drummond University scholarship and set out for California with big dreams and nothing in her way, like so many of us.