Overprotected

by Lulu Pratt

  But I don’t want to. Whatever else is going on, I want to figure out what the deal is with Zane and me, and I don’t want to see myself as a coward. I want to see myself as someone who did what she wanted to do, and faced the consequences, whatever they were.

  I decide that I’ll go back home and deal with Mom, and that I am going to make a policy — we are not going to talk about Zane in any way. I’ll get to work on some of the paperwork the office sent me and I’ll avoid Zane until I have to deal with him at the dinner.

  Then after all that, I will go back home, to my lonely apartment and single-girl life, and I can put everything that happened on this ill-conceived vacation behind me.

  “As if it will be that simple,” I mutter to myself as I start the car up again. I’m definitely taking the long way home. I want to be ready to put my foot down with my mom when it comes to the subject of Zane. I start rehearsing what I’m going to say to her in my head, and thinking about the best way to avoid Zane without having to actually make it obvious that that’s what I’m doing.

  It’s going to be complicated, I know that, but I figure that I can make it happen. Besides, it’s only a couple of days, and then I’ll be gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ZANE LEWIS

  I look out over the lake where Harper left me. I have no idea what the hell to do with myself. I figure I might as well go home, but I don’t really want to. There’s nothing for me there, and I might end up getting there right after Nadine tells my parents about what she saw Harper and me doing the night before.

  I’m about to get in my car and leave the lake when another car pulls into the parking area. It’s my dad, and for a second I feel guilty, thinking that for sure Nadine has gone to my parents, and this is him here to chew me out.

  “Glad I caught you before you left,” Dad says through the window, pulling into the spot next to mine in the little lot. “Wanna talk to you a bit, and this is a good place for it.”

  “What’s up, Dad?” I lean against my rental, my heart beating faster at the idea that I’m about to get read the riot act about fooling around with the next door neighbor’s daughter.

  “I’m worried about you because you don’t seem to have much of a plan when it comes to the army. The anniversary parties seem to have taken over your vacation and I thought it was time to focus on what’s happening in your life,” Dad says.

  I almost breathe a sigh of relief at that opening.

  “I’ve got a couple of months to think about it before I have to pull the trigger,” I say.

  “I got to thinking, when I heard you were up for discharge, you might be somewhere shacked up with someone, or at least on your way to hooking up. That’s what you kids say these days, right?”

  I have to laugh at the sound of my Dad saying ‘hooking up.’

  “Yeah, something like that,” I say.

  “I used to take your mom out here for the occasional romantic picnic, so I figured if you did find a girl, this might be where you’d go,” Dad says, and flashes me a grin. “Imagine my surprise to see you here by yourself.”

  “I just came out here to think,” I tell him.

  “What’s on your mind? The reenlistment thing?”

  I think about it for a minute and decide to mostly go with that. “Everyone I know from high school is doing stuff with their lives,” I say.

  “So are you, serving your country, making rank,” Dad points out.

  “Yeah, but they have actual, like, lives, you know?” I decide to sit on the warm asphalt of the parking lot and Dad perches himself on a parking bumper near me. It’d be more comfortable to go out to the actual shore of the lake, or on the grass that slopes down to it, but I don’t care.

  “Okay, here’s the thing. I don’t know if I want to reenlist or not, and it’s kind of complicated the reason why,” I tell him.

  “Well, talk to me about it, and we’ll figure out if it’s as complicated as it looks from the inside,” Dad suggests.

  “It’s about a girl,” I say, making a face.

  Dad laughs. “It’s almost always about a girl at the end of the day, even if it doesn’t look like it,” he says.

  “Anyway, so there’s this girl that I’m sort of… I guess I’m sort of into her. I’ve known her for a while now, and it’s only in the last… couple of weeks that I started seeing her differently, as someone I might want to date,” I explain.

  I want to cover the fact that it’s Harper I’m thinking about as much as I can. I don’t even really know why I’m asking my dad for advice about Harper at all. Except for the fact that it’s only just occurred to me that there’s more to the situation than some fun fooling around.

  “Have you been dating her or anything? Is that why you didn’t get a date for the party the other night?”

  I shrug. “We’re talking, and we’ve done some stuff together, but there’s no real tie there,” I say. That’s as close as I can come to telling the truth without coming right out and saying it’s Harper.

  “But you’re into her, more than just a fling, or a one-night stand,” Dad says.

  I nod. “I mean, we haven’t really talked about what it is specifically, but I guess things aren’t… they’re not serious, but I have some feelings there.” It feels weird to talk to my Dad like this. We don’t really talk about feelings, even feelings towards girls.

  “And this is mixing up in your mind about whether or not you should reenlist?” Dad’s confused by the connection, and I try to think of a way to explain it without telling him about Harper. I want to put that off as long as possible.

  “She lives away from base. Like, really away from base. So it would be easier to keep seeing her, to see if there’s anything to it, if I don’t reenlist. But I don’t even know if there’s anything to it, so what if I get out and then find that it’s just some three-month thing?”

  Dad looks down at his hands for a few moments and I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if it sounds as stupid to him as it does to me, wondering if I should leave the military for a woman.

  “This is someone you’ve known a while, I take it. If it’s someone you’re starting to see, I couldn’t see this coming up as a reason not to reenlist,” Dad says finally.

  “Yeah, I’ve known her a really good, long while,” I tell him. “Years, in fact. Just, I didn’t really think of her that way before, but now that I do, it sort of feels weird to let it drop when it might be something.”

  For a few minutes Dad’s quiet, and I don’t know what to think. Has he figured out that I’m talking about Harper? I sure as hell hope not. Sitting there in the parking lot at the lake, I realize I might have tipped my hand off to him on accident.

  “I think you need to look at the whole situation if you want a good answer to this. Obviously, this is an important thing right now, but it’s not the only important thing,” Dad says.

  “I know, making my decision based on some girl I might or might not be with this time next year seems stupid,” I agree.

  “You should think about what the military has to offer you, and the fact that, being a vet, you’re actually a pretty good candidate for a lot of non-military jobs. And you need to decide how serious you are about this girl,” Dad tells me.

  “Right,” I say, nodding. I know it’s going to take me a while to mull over what he’s saying, but for the time being I’m just glad for advice of any kind. I can’t tell whether or not Dad knows it’s Harper. That bit about me knowing her for a while might be a hint, but I want to hear what he has to say, think about it, and figure it out from there.

  “If you’re serious about this girl, and you know you’re serious about her even if it doesn’t last beyond a few months, you should consider leaving the military if it will make it easier to figure out where things are between the two of you,” Dad continues.

  “I should?” I would have figured that Dad would tell me not to think about that aspect of it at all.

  “If you’re serious — not if it’s
just something you’re pinning a lot of promise on that isn’t going to go anywhere. At this point you’ve served your country honorably, and they’re letting you leave if you want to. What’s the harm? But if you don’t think it’s that serious, you need to reenlist and break all ties with her as soon as you can so you can both move on with your lives.”

  I nod. It’s actually kind of solid advice, and I’m surprised at the fact that I’m surprised by it.

  I chat with Dad a little while longer and we both decide that we’re tired of sitting in the parking lot. I have no idea what’s going on with Harper, but I figure I will find out soon enough once I get back home.

  Dad tells me he’s going to go to the store to pick up some bread to make sandwiches of the leftover meat, and I tell him I’m going to head back to the house and see if Mom needs my help with anything.

  The whole drive home I’m lost in thought. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I have to make up my mind one way or another.

  Harper and I are going to have to talk at some point.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HARPER POLSEN

  I’m actually pacing in my room, feeling like some kind of trapped animal, because I know that in less than six hours, the Lewises are going to be under the same roof as me, all three of them. Never in my entire life has the knowledge that Bev, Nolan and Zane will be coming for dinner managed to make me feel anxious, but here I am, dreading it.

  “God, I’m pathetic,” I mutter to myself as I jump at the sight of myself in the mirror on my closet door for the third time in twenty minutes. I take a deep breath and try to sort out how I’m feeling, and what I’m going to do.

  I have to go back to Brooklyn in less than twenty-four hours. I know that the dinner with the Lewises and my parents and me is going to be tense no matter what. I don’t even know if Zane’s parents know about Mom finding us together, but just from Mom knowing, and probably Dad, too, things are going to be tense, let alone the situation between Zane and me since we fought the day before.

  I’d been avoiding him since then, not even stepping foot outside of the house, using the excuse of having to get pre-project work done to keep from having to see Bev or Nolan about anything.

  Mom’s been busy getting everything ready for the fancy dinner tonight, and Dad’s been doing whatever it is Dad does to stay out of Mom’s way. I’m not even letting myself look across the yard to Zane’s window, or the Lewises’ driveway.

  But obviously if I don’t want the whole evening to go badly, I’m going to have to do something else. We’re going to have to actually talk about the situation, and figure out what the hell we’re going to do about it. But to do that we’re going to have to have some privacy. There’s no way either of us could to go to the other one’s house to have the talk. Our usual spot at the dead center between our two parents’ yards isn’t going to work either.

  There’s a knock at my door, cutting through my thoughts. For a moment or two I resent the hell out of it, but I know it has to be one of my parents.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you busy, sweetie? I could use your help with something in the kitchen,” Mom says.

  I consider telling her flat out that I’m too busy, but I decide that after the fight the day before, Mom and I should at least have a chance at mending fences.

  When I came back in yesterday, Mom wasn’t interested in rehashing the situation with Zane. She pretended like nothing at all had happened, and brought up a snack to my room in the afternoon and asked me about the project I’m going to be working on when I go back to Brooklyn. Things are still tense between us, but I figure that if I help her in the kitchen for a while, that might help things. I open the door and put on my best smile for my mom.

  “Yeah, I can help you for a bit, I should take a break from paperwork anyway,” I say, letting her lead the way from my bedroom to the kitchen.

  Mom apparently has decided to make fresh, homemade rolls to go with the dinner she’s serving to celebrate the Lewises’ anniversary, and I get to work with her, taking the slightly sticky dough and forming the lumps into individual rolls.

  “Do you do much baking in your apartment anymore?”

  I shrug, smiling slightly to myself. When I first moved into my little Brooklyn loft apartment, I had been so thrilled to have an oven of my own that I’d made cakes, cookies, brownies, anything I could think of.

  “Not that much, just for special occasions, like if the office has a potluck, or it’s someone’s birthday,” I say. We keep talking about the job, about my mediocre social life in New York. In the back of my mind I keep thinking about how Zane and I can manage to maybe meet up and talk about what’s going on between us, come to some kind of conclusion.

  I know I have to do something.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ZANE LEWIS

  I leave my room feeling a little bit worried still. I can’t quite believe that the week is almost over. That things are still so messed up between me and Harper, and there’s not really much I can do about it.

  Mom’s in the kitchen, working on lunch. While I don’t think she knows about the situation with Harper and me, I also don’t know what to talk about with nothing more than Harper and my reenlistment on my mind.

  “Hey, are you hungry, sweetie?”

  I sit down at the table and think about the question. “I could eat,” I tell her.

  Really my stomach’s in knots, but eating at least will give me something to do. Mom brings over what she’s been working on, pasta salad, with leftover roast chicken, tomatoes and little cubes of cheese mixed in. I serve Mom and then myself, and try to think of something to say. How many hours is it until we have to go next door for dinner?

  “So you’re leaving in the morning, right?”

  I nod. “I’ve got a late-morning flight, so I should have just enough time to get some breakfast with you and Dad and then drop the car at the airport, and I’m off.”

  “I have to say, I’m glad that you and Harper could both make it this week,” Mom says.

  “You are?”

  “Well of course, sweetie,” Mom tells me. “I love you both.”

  I’m right there on the point of telling her that I think I might have feelings for Harper, but I don’t even know what those feelings actually are, or whether there’s anything either of us can do about them. So I let the comment stand, and try to think of something to talk about while I eat a few more bites.

  “I went out to the lake yesterday,” I say.

  “Oh, your father and I used to go out there all the time,” Mom says.

  “He told me that.”

  “I know you and your friends used to go skinny dipping down there when you were teenagers. Though you all thought you were so clever you couldn’t get caught,” Mom says with a little grin.

  I laugh. “I think we’re all just glad the cops never showed up,” I say.

  “I think there was probably a little conspiracy to prevent that. None of us wanted you kids to get in trouble for the kinds of things kids do.”

  I have to laugh again, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking of the fact that Harper and I only just went skinny dipping a few days before, and Mom apparently has no idea. It’s probably for the best that she doesn’t know.

  I finish off one bowl of pasta salad and consider having another one. I know we’ve got a big dinner at the Polsens’ place, but I don’t know if I’ll even be able to eat. Everything I try to think about circles right back around to Harper. This isn’t good. It isn’t like I’ve never been into a girl before. I had a couple of girlfriends in high school, and I dated Cheryl Sheppard more than half the year between high school and basic.

  But there’s something different about the way I feel towards Harper.

  It isn’t that she’s been my next-door neighbor for as long as I can remember, or even that she’s suddenly gone from being the nerdy girl who’s practically my sister to this hot city-living woman. It’s something that goes
in another direction that I don’t even really know how to name.

  “Do you think you’re going to end up deciding to reenlist? I know you said you didn’t really want to talk about it, but you’re going to leave in the morning and I figured I’d pick your brain a bit before the only way I can talk to you is on the phone,” Mom says.

  I try to pull my head out of the clouds to think of a way to answer her.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “You should talk to your dad about it,” Mom suggests, and I grin.

  “We talked about it yesterday, and I’ve got a lot on my mind about it, it is really complicated,” I tell her. “Right now, I don’t really know which direction I’m leaning more towards. It’s weird.”

  “Well, you’ve been in the army for pretty much your whole adult life so far, seeing as how you went into basic just before you turned nineteen,” Mom points out.

  “There’s that, and the fact that I don’t really know what I’d do outside the army,” I say.

  “You have great skills, and you’re really a lot more disciplined than you were before you left,” Mom tells me.

  “I could see about going to college, or transferring my certifications into something in the civilian world,” I say, almost more thinking out loud than anything else. “I really don’t know.”

  I finish up half a bowl more of pasta salad, and decide that before Mom gets any bright ideas that might lead her to ask me questions I can’t answer, I’ll go back to my room.

  I start playing Tekken on my PlayStation. Of course, that makes me think about Harper and I groan, even as I’m playing a tournament against the computer, because it seems so damn pathetic not to be able to get her off my mind.

  I know she’s been avoiding me since our fight, but I don’t know if that’s because she’d really rather never see me again, or because she thinks it’s going to be awkward and wants to put it off until she absolutely can’t anymore. She could just be busy, but I don’t really believe that.