by Julie Wright
“Not at all.”
“You should be. C’mon.” I led him to Grams’s door, which was one of those doors designed to accommodate a visit from a giantess. Everett tilted his head back to view the top of it. “Wow. Your Grams is tall, huh?”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder and let myself in to the house.
I clutched Grams’s present in one hand and Everett’s hand in the other as I wove him around crowds of neighbors and old family friends in search of the one person who could ever induce me to spend time with my family.
“There’s the birthday girl!” I said, settling her present near the food table and rising up on my tip-toes to kiss my Grams’s cheek. “Aren’t you supposed to be shrinking as you get older so I can pretend to be tall around someone?” I asked her.
“Ah, my Andra! I didn’t expect you to drive all the way over from school!”
I reclaimed Everett’s hand and tugged him closer. “I didn’t drive. I got me a chauffeur. Grams meet Everett Covington.”
“Covington? That sounds like quite a very lofty family name,” Grams said.
Everett put his hand out to shake Grams’s. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Stone, but the sound of lofty and the reality of lofty are very different things.”
Grams laughed and shook Everett’s hand. He inquired after her tennis game and challenged her to a match sometime in the future, though he agreed she’d beat him soundly since he never played tennis. Satisfaction found its way to my lips as I watched him with her. Had anyone ever done a better job at greeting my grams? No. Not one man in my entire life ever made her laugh within the first moments.
Had any of them ever made her laugh?
I didn’t think so.
My brother appeared from around the corner just at that moment. “Did I hear Andy come in?”
“Nathan!” I ran and gave him a hug during which he swept me up and swung me around, as was our custom. This never got old for me and was the only benefit of stunted growth: I’d never get too big for it.
“Where’s Mom?” I whispered to him, wondering how long it would be before I had to deal with her.
“Bossing the kitchen staff around,” he whispered back.
“And Dad?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid him all night. Or maybe he’s avoiding me.” Nathan shrugged and gave a meh kind of face. “So who’s the guy schmoozing Grams?”
“My friend.”
Everett and Grams had worked their way toward us, close enough that Everett caught the tail end of the conversation. “I’m also her accomplice for criminal mischief.”
If he had said that around anyone else in my family besides Grams and Nathan, I would have killed him. The last thing I needed was for word to get to my parents about the incident with the police and with Jazzy Dean.
“Crime?” Nathan swung an arm over my shoulder. “Our Andy? Not even a possibility. Which was a huge disappointment during our childhood. She would have been lots more fun if she hadn’t been so unbending when it came to rules.”
I rolled my eyes and squiggled out from under my brother’s arm with the intent of removing Everett from the conversation before it could go any further. But Everett changed the subject. He asked Nathan all about his YouTube channel and his culinary experience and his favorite recipes.
Grams smirked at them and dragged me over with her to greet guests and do the tedious job of being gracious to birthday well-wishers. “If I have to do this, you might as well have to do it with me,” she said.
I stayed with Grams for quite a while, long enough that my mom and then my dad found me, and both of them sniffed in disdain about my life choices. Mom was devastated that I no longer dated Greg, as he was from such a nice family and she’d seen some real potential there. Dad was indifferent to my dating situation. He had other issues.
He fixed me with a look that made me feel like a bug pinned to a science fair poster. His slicked back dark hair shone in the warm lights from Grams’s antique lamps. The Rogaine and dye job must have been doing their jobs because he actually looked like he wasn’t balding and wouldn’t be any time soon. “A friend of mine sent me an interesting email,” he said.
My breath stuttered in my throat. I didn’t encourage him to continue, but he did anyway.
“Yes, it would appear that a certain student at Boston University is in a bit of trouble—enough so that they are considering disciplinary action against this student.” His eyes narrowed.
“That’s too bad. The student probably didn’t even do anything wrong.”
A low growl at the back of his throat showed he wasn’t all that impressed with my answer. “Andra. What have you done?”
“It’s nothing. I’m not in any real trouble.”
“That’s not what my friend said. He said they were contemplating pulling your scholarship.”
This was the problem with having a heart surgeon father who was highly respected and esteemed in the medical world. He knew everyone. Everyone knew him. And they all revered him enough that these same people acted as if they were his personal spies and reported back to him all the details of my life.
“They might be pulling my scholarship,” I admitted.
“Andra . . .”
He wanted to yell at me. He wanted to rant and rave and perhaps even throw things. I’d seen him throw tantrums like that before.
But the beauty of a party setting was that he wouldn’t make a scene over anything. No one would be allowed to raise voices.
Public parties made family time so much more civil.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I broke up with my boyfriend.”
He snorted softly. “I doubt childish relationships are enough to move university review boards to action.”
“They would be if people like Mom were in charge.”
He frowned as if uncertain whether I meant the remark as a compliment or an insult. “What did you do?” he asked again.
“I painted his car and then cleaned his car off. It’s good as new. No harm, no foul.”
A distinguished and geriatric looking man waved to us from across the room. Dad waved, gave a false smile, then said through gritted teeth, “Why is it whenever people say no harm, no foul, someone has usually been harmed, and something always smells foul?”
The geriatric crossed the room and stood in front of us. “Dr. Stone!” he exclaimed and took my father’s hand and pumped it with enthusiasm.
I used the moment to slip away.
Grams must have announced that I’d brought a male friend from Boston; Mom eagle-eyed her way around the guests until she spotted him. She was at his side before I had time to blink. I felt genuinely sorry for Everett but not sorry enough to force myself to join them where I would have to witness the embarrassing things she would say.
Knowing she would say them was bad enough.
I joined Nathan at the food tables.
“Your boyfriend is apparently bilingual,” Nathan said as he filled his plate with finger foods that he scowled at before eating. “These are terrible!” he said after popping a little sandwich in his mouth and then spitting it back into his napkin. “Where does Mom find these caterers?”
“Bilingual?” I prompted him back to the conversation he started.
“Yeah, the guy speaks crème brûlée. I think you should marry him.”
“I’m not getting married. And I’m too young to get married.”
He dropped his napkin on his plate with a shiver of disgust and set it back on the table. “Okay. But if you change your mind and/or ever grow up, which is not the same as grow tall since we all know that isn’t going to happen for you, I’ve decided he’s the one.”
“Right. Because I don’t have enough people making decisions about my life.”
“Yes, but I’m smarter than the rest of them, and you like me better.”
“You don’t know I like you better.” I took a bite out of one of the finger sandwiches Nathan ha
d already declared inedible, figuring he was too picky so his opinion couldn’t count too much. And it was a sandwich. How hard could it be to make a sandwich that tasted good?
Apparently very hard.
I spit the pasty texture into my napkin while Nathan watched with amusement. “I do know you like me better because your other choices are Mom and Dad. I win because my competition is lacking.”
He explained how Dad had tried to bribe him to go back to school under the guise of spending quality time with me in Boston. Dad then said he really needed the help because he felt he had no one to look after me, and he worried about me, and proceeded to guilt trip Nathan into making the move.
“So you better not let him hear about painting your ex’s truck or I will never hear the end of it,” Nathan said.
I widened my eyes and lifted my shoulders.
Nathan grunted at me. “He already knows? Why? You’re not Catholic! You don’t have to go to confessional!”
I lowered my voice so the people who had come to refill their plates for the sixth time wouldn’t overhear. “Do you think I have no sense of self-preservation? Of course I didn’t tell him. One of his medical buddies who serves on the board emailed him. The guy has more spies than a small government trying to get their hands on nuclear weaponry.”
Nathan fixed me with a determined stare. “I am not moving to Boston to babysit you.”
“Good.”
We both gave our heads one sharp nod in agreement.
Everett finally showed back up at my side and whispered, “Your mom likes me.” He grinned wide.
“Since I make a habit of not liking anything she likes, that’s not exactly working in your favor, Everest without an S,” I whispered back.
“Maybe not. But it works in yours. She’s very glad you’re going to Boston University as long as she knows you’ve got me to look out for you.”
Could his grin get any wider?
I laughed at him, shook my head and looped my arm through his in the friendly way I had done a dozen times when he’d gone out with Greg and me to dinner or movies. Only, for some reason, it didn’t feel friendly this time as much as it felt intimate. When Everett placed his hand over mine in the crook of his arm, and his thumb traced a small circle over my fingers, my face felt like someone had put it in the oven on broil.
The “Happy Birthday” song began as the lights went out and a cake with a million candles rolled into the room. I had never been so grateful to have lights go out than I felt at that exact moment.
Even my mom’s meddling and my sudden hyper awareness of all-things-Everett couldn’t keep me from smiling at Grams oohing and aahing over the cake and the candles. She blew hard and the room went dark as she got every last one.
“That’s my grams,” I said.
“She likes me too, by the way,” Everett whispered in my ear.
“Okay. That’s one thing in your favor.”
One thing totally and completely in his favor.
The fact that my face warmed every time I thought about kissing him the night before was another thing in his favor.
By the time he’d wowed my whole family and the evening was through and he’d driven me home and walked me to the door, I felt a bit of breathlessness. This was something new, something different than anything I’d ever had. This could totally work.
And when he kissed me again and I felt all melty and ridiculous the way I’d heard girls describe but had never experienced for myself until this moment, I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.
My grams once told me that life was made up of millions of little moments, but that there were only a few moments that were actually worth a million. She always said that recognizing the million in one was the most essential part of happiness. According to her, most people overlooked those moments because they were too busy looking to the future and they didn’t realize what they’d missed until long after it was gone.
I knew the moment at exactly the moment it happened. The universe snicked into place when his mouth settled softly on mine. He had met my family and walked away unscathed or running in the other direction. He had won over my brother and my grams. He had shown me two of the most perfect days in my life. I felt myself tangling into him more and more the longer we were together.
A flawless, stunning, tangle.
I’d pretty much lost my head and heart to the moment, when my phone rang. It startled me so much that my finger slid over the screen without me thinking of who was calling or why I was answering when the last thing I wanted on the planet was to be interrupted. It wasn’t until after I put the phone to my ear and answered a breathy “Hello?” that I realized the word Dad had been on the screen.
Everett’s mouth dropped to my neck where he lightly traced kisses just behind my ear. I almost dropped the phone.
When my dad’s voice came through the speaker, forceful and furious, with a single word, “Andra!” I almost dropped the phone for entirely different reasons.
“Dad?”
Everett backed away from me as if my father had found his way to my porch and had walked in on us kissing goodnight in person.
“I just received another email, Andra.” The severe tone felt familiar. How many times had he spoken to me in that same severe tone?
Another email? Another email meant nothing good for me. None of my dad’s friends and colleagues ever tattled on me for doing anything well.
“You’ve lost your scholarship. It’s time to come home.”
Chapter Six
I didn’t go home in the aftermath that followed the board’s decision to pull my scholarship. They made me repay tuition for the full year but even then, I stayed at Boston University. With only a semester left before graduation, and with transferring ensuring the addition of other class requirements that would extend the length of time it would take to get a bachelor’s degree, I did the only logical thing a girl in my position could do. I got a job and a student loan.
My parents felt the rub of my refusal to go to them for assistance. They acted the part of two people who were delirious with the need to rescue me, when what they were really delirious over was the need to control me.
My brother supported me with thumbs-up icons in texts, and Grams slipped me a few hundred dollars every month.
Everett . . . Everett became a liability.
Time with him took time from studying. My parents’ approval of him reminded me of all the reasons he wasn’t right for me because, really, had anything they’d ever approved of been right for me?
And that was how I found myself on the shores of the Charles River, sitting in the twilight on a metal fold-up chair, clutching my phone and the wretched message it held on its screen from my new employer at the restaurant.
We need you to come in and work tonight, Kelly is sick.
I felt like shouting to the world, “I’m only one person!” so they would recognize that I could not do everything for everyone.
Instead I looked up at Everett. “I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered, trying to keep from disturbing the other people listening to an amateur symphony performing at the Hatch Shell. The texts from the restaurant always demanding more hours. The texts from my father insisting I was being stubborn and childish and needed to accept help or I would flunk out of school altogether and shame him before the entire medical world. They shredded my strength and resolve.
Everett’s chair squeaked as he leaned my direction, his eyes stayed on the orchestra at the front. “Hm?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I just . . .” I’d been thinking about homework since we left my apartment to come to this practice—the same homework I’d gotten behind on because my new job waitressing had booked me a double shift when one of the waiters didn’t show up. Every note the orchestra played sounded like the death march. I had to keep my grade point average solid and get studying for the MCAT so I could continue with my plan of attending UMASS for med school. The orchestra was a distraction I could not afford.
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I shook my head as the finishing notes of Ode to Joy rang through the air. The following applause made me feel queasy. I stood. As the applause quieted and before the next song began, I said, “I just can’t.”
With that, I fled through the audience, up the jogging path.
Running felt better. Running felt like I was doing something. Running felt like the stresses of losing that scholarship and the financial burdens and familial lecturing that followed would fall away from me if I could just run fast enough.
“Andra!” Everett called from behind.
I squeezed my eyes shut as if such an action would close my ears too. No. I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t wait for him to catch up. Couldn’t explain.
Just had to run.
“Andra!” His feet pounded the jogger path behind me, closing the distance between us.
Crazy? Am I crazy? Is this breakdown I’m having fixable?
I didn’t know. My feet beat a steady staccato. The water and boats blurred to one side while the trees, people, cars blurred to the other.
I can’t.
Right foot.
I.
Left foot.
Can’t.
Right foot.
I.
Left foot.
Can’t.
His hand was on my arm, pulling me to a slower pace, creating enough drag that I had no choice but to actually stop.
“Andra . . .” He gulped for breath. “What are you doing?”
I stared at him, feeling the wildness in my movements.
“I need to study.”
He blinked as if expecting something else, something more intense, more wrong. “Okay. Let’s go study.”
“No. Not let’s. Just I. Just one. Just me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m a doctor!” I spit out, not knowing where the tantrum was coming from. “I don’t have time to be a girlfriend, too. I need to study or my MCAT score will suck. And because I lost my scholarship, I need to work, which means I don’t have time to study and I feel . . . overwhelmed right now.”