I pulled away. Sort of. “One sec.”
“Okay.” He moved his hands back to my hips. “Everything okay?” The space between his brows creased.
“Of course!” I played idly with his unbuttoned collar. “Just…we’re not telling my parents, k?”
He shrugged. “Okay. You sure? My mom’s totally chill with us.”
We were an
us
now?
And his mom knew?
I nodded. “Short of engagement rings, my parents know nothing. And this, I have a feeling, is thankfully not going that way.”
He laughed. “Thankfully? I’m hurt.”
My mouth brushed the weave of his shirt, rough against dry lips. “Don’t be.”
Silence for a minute. Then, “So we done talking?”
He was always predictable.
Thursday, I arrived in the dining hall a few minutes earlier than our usual six o’clock time. Our table was empty, except for Alec and his unopened precalculus book. The way he was staring into his barely eaten gyros seemed to indicate he felt the exact same way I did. Either that or the uncertain origins of institutional food were even getting to him.
“Everything okay?” My bag dropped to the floor as I slid into the seat across from him. We’d been spending more time together since I started dating his roommate.
He put down his fork, raking a hand through his hair with a slightly sheepish smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.” The odd preoccupation he still had with pushing around his uneaten, unappetizing gyro indicated otherwise.
“Parents?” I knew exactly how he felt.
“You too?” He looked a little surprised. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended. “Daddy’s girl” wasn’t exactly the impression I was going for.
I settled for a sympathetic smile. “You have no idea.”
“I think I might get close. And Dev will not stop talking about having dinner with his mom this weekend.” We both laughed. Dev had been talking about seeing his mom for days. Only he could be a proud momma’s boy and get away with it.
“Tell me about it.” I stole a neglected French fry off his plate.
“When he hung up with you last night, he called her.”
I shook my head, caught between amusement and exasperation. “He would.”
“Amie’s with her dad now.” Alec poured more ketchup. “Who I do not want to see. Big ex-football player…” He shook his head.
“Yeah, Dev’s all hurt I won’t let him meet my parents.” Or my cousin.
Alec grinned. “Can I meet them?”
I shrugged. “Why not?” He was just a friend.
The grin widened. “Awesome. He’s gonna be so pissed.”
“And I thought this was ’cause you liked me.”
He chewed a fry thoughtfully. “Nope. Sorry.”
Despite his claims of dislike, Alec walked me back to my dorm after our nutritious dinner of fries and ice cream. It’s not malnutrition. It’s passive resistance after fifteen years of “eat your vegetables.” Plus the gyros were gross.
I had an email waiting from Erin when I got back to my room. I couldn’t not reply and tell her I couldn’t wait to see her either. I could, however, blow off all my homework to watch a movie with Cleo and Amie.
Like I said. Passive resistance.
From the start, the Friday morning that kicked off Parents’ Weekend was not a good day. The shower was cold, my hair would not straighten, and the vending machine was out of Diet Mountain Dew. Figured.
The campus was unnaturally green and flowery, something I noticed even through the haze of caffeine deprivation. Alec had said that Facilities snuck out in the middle of the night to plant extra flowers and spray-paint the grass the night before the parents came, but I hadn’t really believed it. Guess I underestimated the commercial appeal of emerald-green grass.
My parents were gushing about campus from the moment I met them at the front gate, ten minutes before my first class. Erin made them easy to pick out. The long blond hair and longer legs made her hard to miss. I felt disproportionate and badly dressed, even though I’d tried on three different uniform polos before being satisfied. She had probably thrown on her denim shorts and button-down in thirty seconds, and hadn’t bothered to conceal the sprinkling of zits over her forehead. Proof that the world is by no definition fair.
It really was good that turning green with envy was purely metaphoric, since I was somewhere between “puce” and “evergreen.” At least I might have blended in with the grass.
The genuine smile that spread across her face when she saw me instantly made me feel like a horrible person. Even if it was alleviated somewhat by the guys blatantly checking out her legs. The scars on her left knee from a break in second grade didn’t give any of them pause. Somehow, anything wrong with her always just faded away.
I gave her a hug before turning to my parents. I’d gotten my average features from my self-employed mother, my average height from my doctor father and my above-average brains from some unfortunate combination of the two. The only thing which certainly hadn’t come from either of them was any kind of social skill. It was only a matter of time before one of them said something embarrassing, and my dad was already wearing a batik-print shirt.
“Math’s across the quad.” I pointed. “We need to run.”
Erin grabbed my arm as we followed other parents toward the brick math building. “Bizza, it’s gorgeous. How do you focus?” Her enthusiasm was irresistible.
“I don’t.” I grinned. “Probably bad. But whatever. How are you?”
“I’m amazing!” And she was off. Before we made it to math, I’d heard about her awesome friends, her awesome school and her hot and awesome boyfriend. It would have been harder to listen to except that, for the first time, I had all of that too, even if the assuredly hotter Dev still wasn’t technically my boyfriend.
Math was boring—no surprises there. My parents were oddly, and obviously, absorbed in everything my too short, too skinny math dork of a teacher had to say. I mean, come on, the man even wore thick-rimmed glasses. I couldn’t focus on a damn thing he was saying about sines and cosines. Erin and I passed notes the entire period. Fifteen minutes before class ended, I found myself checking the clock compulsively, following the circle the red second hand traced around the pale unsympathetic face.
I had drama next. More importantly, I had drama next with Dev.
Erin always had the effect on guys I was interested in. There had been more than one time where some guy I was interested in was more than a little too interested in her. She always looked confused, but I’d learned one simple lesson: distance. Too bad I didn’t have a choice this time.
Even though I dragged my feet the whole way there, pointing out buildings and ugly statues with the prominently displayed names of donors to my parents and Erin, we made it to theatre at the same time as everyone else. A sigh escaped my lips when I caught sight of Dev, happily talking to a dark-haired woman who could be no one other than his mother. She had his dark eyes, his angular bone structure, his characteristic casual slouch. Of course his mother would be beautiful and sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
“He’s cute!” And of course Erin would notice him right away.
“That’s Dev Kennedy. He…” My voice trailed off as he caught my eye from across the room and grinned mischievously. I shook my head at him.
“Is he…”
I turned back to Erin. “Yup.” I didn’t look at Dev. I hated seeing the interest on guys’ faces when they noticed Erin, saw she was with me.
“Nice.” She glanced over my shoulder with a shy smile, throwing Baywatch waves over both of our shoulders. I didn’t turn my head.
Mom and Dad missed the entire conversation, thank God. Probably talking to each other about the other parents in the room, arguably their favorite pastime. Class started and my attention shifted from Dev and Erin to hopes that I wouldn’t embarrass myself too publicly. The fanatical drama teacher had decided, enthusiastically, that we should show off our newly attained acting prowess to a captive audience.
Too bad I still didn’t have any.
My prayers went unanswered and I found myself yet again compulsively checking the clock that sat, hidden, on the wall backstage. Dev was in the other wing, waiting to enter as Harker and either humiliate himself in front of all the parents or make our drama teacher cry. Somehow, though, I had a feeling Dev could yell Harker’s dramatic moment of panic, complete with the cry to “preserve my sanity,” and still raise no questions about his own state of mind or social status. Thankfully, I had one line. From the back of the stage.
After drama, I didn’t seen Dev again for the rest of the day. My parents remained madly in love with my teachers, hypnotized by the classes and much too interested in everything that came out of my mouth. Alec charmed them when they met in between third and fourth CP. His father looked only faintly like him. His mother was in the car making a business call.
Erin thought he was hot too.
It was one of those days where your hands hold a little too hard and your smiles teeter on the knife edge between forced and fake. From her half smiles and the crease between her eyebrows, I could tell that the distance I kept was hurting my mom. I felt bad, I really did. I just didn’t know how to apologize and keep her at arm’s length at the same time. There was so much they didn’t know and so much I didn’t want to tell them.
They clearly wanted that to change when they offered to take me out to dinner at the one nice restaurant in town. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have an excuse to get out of it, but at least I wasn’t alone. The restaurant was filled with kids from school, some of whom I recognized, some of whom gave themselves away with brand names or accents the locals never had. Some of them had unbuttoned collars and heads tilted back in laughter, talking to siblings or parents and barely touching their food. Most of them kept their mouth full of food and kept looking at the door or the clock. Once people get out, it’s a struggle to remember how they ever lived with their parents in the first place.
Surrounded by the faint glow of artificial candlelight, overpriced food and the ever-present small town bar with its avid football fans, I picked at my salad awkwardly. Erin dipped fry after fry methodically in her pink mess of ketchup and mayonnaise. She’d given up on touching the awkward silence. There had already been attempts at the typical questions: how are your classes, your friends, any boys? Monosyllables don’t tend to make for good conversation. I had resorted to studying the specials written on the wall over my mother’s head. Teriyaki salmon. Garlic mashed potatoes. Fried green tomatoes. When would they realize I wasn’t going to tell them anything?
“So Bizza.” My father spoke around a mouthful of steak. Ew. “What are your friends looking at for college?”
I shrugged. Dev, when asked, told people he wanted to go somewhere with the least-observant bartenders and Cleo said she was going to sell drugs or herself to earn a living. We weren’t quite sure whether she was kidding. Scott had been working his ass off for Northwestern for the last three and a half years (if not his entire life), but had no idea where he would get in. Gotta love the college process.
“What about you, sweetie?” My mother dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, wiping invisible traces of salmon off her lips. “Are you looking anywhere?”
I shrugged again.
“You know, Cambridge is beautiful this time of year.” She turned to my dad. “You remember the time I met you at Harvard Yard in the fall, with the leaves turning…” And she was on her way to class at the business school and Dad had come up from graduate school at Brown and it was six months from her graduation and life was Ivy League and perfect. She had only repeated the story a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours. Not like there was pressure or anything like that.
Erin laughed. “It sounds so pretty.”
“It is. Not as pretty as Bryn Mawr, though.” My mother beamed, reminiscing about the good old days. The only thing more closely knit than the old boys’ club was the old girls’. Never, I repeat, never ask anyone about their women’s college unless you genuinely want to know the full and complete answer and maybe hear an additional lecture in gender studies. They will talk your ear off about the wonders of single sex education.
Whatever makes you happy, I guess. Unfortunately for Bryn Mawr, I wanted boys
“We could go up over a long weekend.” The beaming was now directed at me. “That break at the end of October.”
I put my fork down on the side of my plate, fiddling with the napkin on my lap. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
This was not going to go well. Danger, Mrs. Robinson.
“Cleo invited me back to her house for Fall Long Weekend with a couple other people.”
“Sounds fun.” My dad shrugged. “We can do colleges when we go to New York for Christmas.”
At least it postponed the inevitable: days driving for hours on end through identical scenery, alone with a parent focused on transcripts and test scores and extracurricular activities. Guaranteed, there would be long conversations about my goals and dreams, the pros and cons of practically identical campuses and long-winded speeches about the distinguished alums that had walked the halls of this fine learning institution. Sometimes I wished I could tell the entire college process to screw itself and walk away.
“Who else is going, Bizza?” Ever the concerned mother, she had her serious face on. The one where her eyebrows are together and there’s that set to her mouth. But really, she’s listening.
Evasive tactics were definitely a good idea at this point. “Just a couple people.” I fell back on the always infallible shrug. “Not really sure yet.”
“Are her parents going to be there?”
Did she have a checklist?
“Yes.” No. “And her brother’s going to drive us. It’s going to be really fun, Mom.”
“Can I speak to her parents?”
“They’re in Nantucket right now.” Cleo’s dad was some big shot bonds dealer and her mother wrote bodice rippers and fancied herself an undiscovered talent. Cleo had showed me one example, published by a family friend. Hilarious. In any case, Cleo’s exodus to boarding school gave them the spare time to spend their spare change on things like three-story beach cottages. “But you can call them in like, a week.”