by Tessa Blake
“So,” he says, finally. “I’ve had a call a bit ago, from Jeff Lowell.”
Oh, fuck.
“Okay,” I say. “I don’t suppose he just called to say hello?”
“That’s enough of that.”
The weight of his disappointment descends on me full-force. I can practically feel myself shrinking in my chair, to about the size of an eight-year-old. The eight-year-old who sat in this very chair and promised to take care of Beck, actually. Promised to make sure she was safe and happy.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Just trying to lighten things up.”
“This isn’t a joking matter. Talk to me about Rebecca.”
“I don’t … I mean … Dad.” I shrug. “I’m not going to talk to you about that.”
“Do you think that I’m asking you out of prurient interest?” he snaps. “I’m not looking for a play-by-play, Garrett. What I want to know—in as little detail as possible, actually—is what went on with you and Rebecca. In Boston, and since then, and especially tonight. Jeff says that she came home crying.”
I feel all the air go out of me. “I upset her tonight, but I didn’t mean—”
“Start at the beginning,” he says. Yeah, definitely slays in court, my dad.
I tell him, as concisely as possible. “We had too much to drink, and ended up in bed together. And I didn’t handle it well, because I was confused and worried about losing her as a friend.”
“How drunk was she, Garrett?” His tone is serious, his look even more so. He’s a lawyer; I know what he’s asking.
“Drunk enough to make bad decisions,” I say, “but they were her decisions.”
“Are you quite sure about that?”
“Dad!” I throw my hands up. “I asked her, like, a hundred times. Yes, I’m sure.”
“Good,” he says. “I expected no less, but you understand I have to ask? Jeff was … unclear on that.”
Oh, fuck. Now Beck’s dad thinks I took advantage of her? Christ.
“Well, I’m clear on it,” I say. “She was pretty wasted—we both were—but she knew what she was doing, and she said as much to me, very plainly, the next day.”
“Okay. And tonight?” He lifts his eyebrows at me. “I understand you were quite insensitive.”
“I—” Ugh. “I asked her to double date with me and another girl.”
“I guess that explains why she went home crying,” he deadpans.
“No,” I say, without thinking, “that was because I kissed her.”
His eyebrows disappear up around his hairline. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m not telling it right—”
He cuts me off with a shake of his head. “I’ve heard all I need to. And I’m very, very disappointed in you, son.” Leaning back, he regards me solemnly. “I believe I’ve impressed on you—your mother and I have both impressed on you, since you were small—that Rebecca is family. Family, Garrett. Not someone for you to toy with.”
“I’m not—”
“Whether you mean to or not, this is precisely what you’ve done. The girl is a mess. Jeff and Cheryl are both furious with you. As am I. As will your mother be, when I tell her tomorrow.”
My whole face is flaming. There’s something uniquely emasculating about your sex life being a hot topic of discussion between people who changed your diapers. “Aw, come on. Do you have to—”
“Absolutely,” he says. “Tell me this: what do you intend to do going forward?”
How am I supposed to answer that? I haven’t even talked to Beck. I don’t know what she wants, what she feels—though God knows I have hopes. So many hopes.
But I can’t tell that stuff to my dad. I don’t know what I’m going to do; that’s the truth, so that’s what I say.
“I have no idea,” I tell him. “But—”
“Let me help, then,” he says. “I want you to leave her alone, Garrett. And I’m sure your mother will agree with me. I know for a fact that Jeff and Cheryl do.”
My heart sinks. If Beck’s parents want me to stay away from Beck, and Beck won’t take my calls, how am I supposed to get anywhere with her? I fell in love with my best friend, for God’s sake; I’m not a complicated guy. I’m not cut out for star-crossed love and Romeo-and-Juliet shit.
“Now, if you were in a position to truly make some kind of commitment to Rebecca, that might be a different story.” Dad leans forward again and pins me with his gaze. “We all—your mother and I, Jeff and Cheryl—consider each other and you children family. There were always good-natured jokes when you were young about how we should arrange a marriage. I think, for your mother at least, they weren’t always just jokes. She loves that girl. So do I. She’s already a daughter to me in many ways.”
I stare at him in horror. I just figured out I was in love with her an hour ago, for crying out loud. I’m not ready to have this conversation.
And if I did want to have this conversation, I think, I’d be having it with Beck. This isn’t Dad’s business yet.
“So when I talked to Jeff, what I was thinking was, how would I feel if this was my daughter? What would I want to see the young man in this situation do?” He watches me steadily while I try not to visibly flinch. “And what I thought is what I’m telling you now: I would want him to think carefully about how he felt about the young lady in question, what the right thing to do would be. I would want him to be honest with himself, honest with her, and honest with all the people involved. Because,” he continues, “if what you have to offer Rebecca is the same as you offer the other young women you bring home—or, God forbid, the many young women you spend time with who don’t make it to the ‘meet the parents’ stage—then I want you to leave Rebecca alone.”
If the floor could open up and swallow me, I’d welcome it. I did not start this day out thinking I’d be having a conversation like this with my father. Not even a conversation, really. More a lecture.
He doesn’t say anything for long enough that I figure I’m supposed to be the one talking now. But what can I say? Finally, I manage: “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Then don’t,” he says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. He stands and walks around the desk, opens the door to his office. “You’d probably best get some sleep. Things might look a little clearer in the morning.”
It’s not all that late, but I nod, if for no other reason than to get out of this office. “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry you had to get that call.”
“I’m sorry as well. This is not the kind of behavior I expect from you—at least not with regards to Rebecca. Figure it out, son.”
I nod again. “I will,” I say, and then make my escape out into the hallway and back toward my room. I pause in the kitchen and, after a moment, I can hear him walking up the stairs. As far as talkings-to, that wasn’t the worst, I guess. I’m really too old for grounding, or taking things away.
Well … other than my self-respect. And from that angle, this talk was the worst. Because I feel like absolute shit. I wasn’t trying to toy with Beck, but of course that’s how it’s got to look to her. She’s not in my stupid, crazy head while I’m coming up with idiotic plan about double dates, or figuring out important stuff like I’m in love with you.
Now I have to figure out how to make this right—or stay completely away from her.
And that second one is not going to happen.
Chapter 16
Rebecca
As awful as it sounds, programming my phone to reject Garrett’s calls and messages is the best thing I ever did for myself. He can’t reach out to me—well, he can, but I’m not going to see—so I don’t have to think about it or make decisions about it or feel like I’m being stabbed in the heart every time he calls.
Hell, for all I know, he hasn’t called.
I’ve spent the last week wandering around the house sort of dazed. Garrett permeates everything. He’s been a fixture in this house with me for a long as I can remember, and every room holds memories of him. I took all
the pictures of him—and of him and me—down from the big corkboard in my room, but there’s still an army of framed photos on the living room built-ins: Garrett mugging for the camera at Six Flags, Garrett watching as I open his gift to me last Christmas, both of us sound asleep at maybe three years old in a playpen in front of the fireplace in the living room. It’s a series of gut-punches, and they don’t seem to get any easier.
And then there are other things that are just absurd—they don’t hurt, exactly, but they make me hyper-aware of that space where something is missing. I think about him when I put on deodorant, because he was the one who told me about the brand I use now. I think of him when I run to the grocery store, because I make a point of going a different way than I used to, so I can avoid driving by his house. I skipped past Age of Ultron on Netflix the other day and thought about his lifelong, enormous crush on Scarlett Johansson.
I threw away the Bob Ross bobblehead he bought me. I mean, I’m not kidding when I say “absurd.”
Twenty-plus years breaks down into literally thousands of shared memories, funny stories, remember-whens, and inside jokes. His loss is unfathomable, incalculable.
I know I’m going to be okay. But it sucks so much.
Today, though, for the first time, I can sort of see how it will be. It hurts, but it hurts less—noticeably less. I think there will probably be moments where it gets bad again before it gets better, but for the first time in a while, I woke up feeling like I really need to do something other than sit around feeling bad for myself. So, after breakfast, I called Bri and asked her to come over this afternoon. Now, somehow, it’s already afternoon, and I’m sitting on my bed in a towel, trying to get up the energy to socialize.
There’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t invited her, but I can’t hide from everyone forever. A visit with Bri will be good for me. I pull on some sweats and head downstairs.
Mom looks up from her crossword puzzle and smiles at me when I walk into the kitchen. I’ve been wondering if, in her heart, she isn’t a little tired of me moping around, but she’s been nothing but positive and supportive.
“Bri’s coming over,” I say, sitting down next to her.
“It will be lovely to see her. What are you planning to do?”
“I actually just wanted to maybe make some brownies or cookies or something?” I think I’ve gained five pounds this week, eating my feelings. Actually, given the alarming amount of food I’ve consumed, I think I’m eating five or six other people’s feelings, as well.
“I think your dad used the last of the cocoa.” She gets up and heads past me and around the counter. A few minutes rattling around in the cupboards and she nods. “Yeah, no more cocoa. Cookies are doable. You want me to make myself scarce?”
I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her. My mom is just the most amazing mother in the world. “Why don’t you stay? We haven’t all made cookies together since probably freshman year.”
She smiles and leans over the counter to rub my upper arm lightly. “A lot has changed, but girls still need cookies,” she says.
“And their moms.”
“And their moms.” She turns back and starts pulling ingredients out of the cupboard, but not before I see the gleam of tears in her eyes.
I mentally kick myself. I’m not the only one who’s lost someone here. Garrett was her family, too. I go over and wrap my arms around her from behind. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
She turns and hugs me back. “Oh, baby girl. No. You’ve done nothing to be sorry for.”
I sit back down on my stool and watch her gather ingredients for several kinds of cookies. She pulls out all the bowls we’ll need, and the cookie sheets from the thin cabinet beside the stove.
“I think that’s everything,” she says.
The back door opens and Bri comes in, smiling. It’s like she brings the sun with her; the whole room brightens, and mom’s face goes back to being happy again. I could kiss Bri for that alone.
Instead, I pull her down on the stool beside mine and point at a cookie scoop. “You’re on drop cookies,” I say, “so sit for a bit while we get stuff ready.”
Mom mixes up the first batch of dough—chocolate chip—and I pass the bowl to Bri. The second batch will be sugar cookies, and those go through the cookie press; that’s my job. We fall into an easy rhythm; despite not having done this for many years, we’re veterans of mass cookie production. Bake sales, potlucks, just-because—we’ve made a hell of a lot of cookies.
And if my eyes sting a bit when Mom says “I don’t believe we’ll be having macadamia nut” —Garrett’s favorite—well, that’s okay. I’m allowed to have feelings. And eat them, in the form of six or seven dozen cookies.
We can’t avoid the topic forever. As she pulls the first sheet of perfect, slightly underdone chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, Bri asks, “Have you heard anything from Garrett?”
“I told you, I blocked him.” The cookies smell amazing, but I know they need a few more minutes to cool before I can start eating them—and my feelings along with them, of course.
“Yeah, well, did his car break down?” she huffs.
“He wouldn’t just come by,” I say. I press out a star-shaped sugar cookie just a little too forcefully, and the press globs out too much dough. I scrape that one off the cookie sheet and unscrew the cookie press to pack the dough back in. “I told him we weren’t friends, and I didn’t want to see him.”
She pulls a clean cookie sheet toward her and starts scooping dough onto it. “And Garrett always does what you say? Let’s not forget, you told him not to call you, but you still blocked his number in case he didn’t listen.”
“Coming over to my house is different,” I say.
Mom clears her throat. “He came by the day after … you know, after the double date.”
I turn and stare at her. I think my mouth might be literally hanging open. “He what?”
“He came by that next morning, before you got up.” She shrugs a little. “Your father and I spoke to him, and we told him not to come here again, until and unless you changed your mind and asked him to.”
My mind is whirling. Why would he do that? What could he possibly think he could say that would make up for playing with me the way he did?
But I keep pressing cookies out like it’s no big deal. “What did he say?”
“Not much, actually. Basically okay, and that he was sorry he’d upset you.”
“That’s it?”
“Your father wasn’t in the mood to entertain a lot of chit-chat from him,” she says wryly. “I think Garrett was grateful to escape relatively unscathed, and we were very clear with him. I love that boy almost like he’s my own—but what he did to you is wrong. He took advantage of you.”
“Whoa, hold up.” I set the cookie press on the counter. “That’s not what happened at all. I told you, I wanted—”
“I know what you told me,” she says. “And I’m not talking about … about assault. I’m just saying that obviously you weren’t making great decisions, and he should have respected that.”
“Great or not, they were my decisions,” I say. “Nobody took advantage.”
“He took advantage of your trust,” she insists. “And then treated you badly because he didn’t want to face the consequences of his actions.”
Bri passes me a warm cookie. “She’s got a point. I’ve known Garrett a long time, and I never would have pegged him for being selfish and shitty like this.”
“He wasn’t,” I say, taking a bite and chewing while I think. It occurs to me that there’s some irony in defending Garrett when these are the exact things I’m mad about, but they’ve got it wrong. “He wasn’t being selfish. He just … it just happened. We were both into it—and then, in hindsight, it was a mistake. We agreed.”
“Did you?” Mom says. “Because it sounds to me like that was Garrett’s line.”
I take another bite of my cookie and swallow with some difficulty. “It was. But I agree
d with him. I couldn’t agree with him fast enough.”
“Why, sweetie?”
Tears spring to my eyes—tears I thought I’d cried out days ago—and I tell them the truth, which I haven’t said out loud until this moment. “Because I was embarrassed,” I say, furiously blinking the tears away. “Because I thought everything was wonderful and we would be different, and here he was just saying he wanted to go back to how it was.” I shrug. “It was like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, so he—”
“He’s supposed to take care of you,” Mom says, “and protect you. Not be the one to hurt you.” She goes back to mixing up the third batch of cookies, stirring furiously with a rubber spatula, clearly taking her anger at Garrett out on the poor peanut butter cookie dough.
“Yeah,” Bri chimes in. “Taking care of you has been, like, his whole thing. Hell of a time to forget it.”
And suddenly I’ve just had it. Had. It.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Seriously, wait just a minute. I want to say this, and it’s important that you hear me—both of you.”
Both of them look at me.
“You keep saying the same things Garrett said. That he’s supposed to take care of me. Supposed to protect me. I’m not a sick kid anymore. I don’t need to be protected.”
“Beck—” Bri begins.
“No, I said listen. I’m so glad you all love me so much—how lucky am I? But this has to stop.” And finally the tears fall. “It’s this exact way of thinking that caused all this trouble in the first place. If Garrett hadn’t decided to tie himself in knots over how he’s supposed to behave with me, he could have just … been with me.”
Mom stops stirring and sets her spatula down on the counter. “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want,” I say. “I didn’t even have time to think about it. But I felt like … that night, I felt like something had clicked. Like this was how we were meant to be.” I sit heavily on a stool, tears still streaming and feeling stupid as hell.