“Definitely in Hawaii. Maybe even before. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are? Or how much fun it is just to be with you?”
“Tell me.”
He pulled my head onto his shoulder and pressed it down there, almost roughly. “No. You’re conceited enough.”
“Never enough.” I raised my head and studied his face, then gently traced the line of his nose with my fingertip. It felt almost wicked to do something that intimate. His skin was pale and smooth, with slight purple shadows just under his eyes. It seemed perfect to me.
He lay there with his eyes closed, letting me trail my finger lightly along the outlines of his face. Then he grabbed my hand and pressed it against the side of his cheek. Then he opened his eyes. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, and settled back down next to him, pressed against his side, inside the circle of his arm. Where I belonged.
thirty-four
Eventually he took me home. It was late, so I crept quietly up to my room, assuming everyone was asleep. I was lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, too dazed and happy to start getting ready for bed or do anything really, other than gaze at the spinning fan and wonder if the last few hours had been some kind of a dream, when there was a knock on my door and Grandma walked in.
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Nothing—really, nothing—could make me as sure that I wasn’t dreaming as the sight of my grandmother in her striped long johns (yellow and green) with her hennaed hair sticking up around her head like a spiky red halo.
“Hi,” I said, sitting up. “I didn’t know you were still awake.”
She came over and settled down next to me. “Someone’s in love! And I know who with.”
“It’s not exactly a secret.”
“He’s a good one. I approve.”
I bit down on the sarcastic rejoinder I wanted to make—oh, thank you, because of course I wouldn’t dream of dating someone without your approval—and just said I agreed: he was a good one.
“And now,” she said, “we need to talk about condoms.”
“Oh, God, no,” I said fervently. “Please not now.”
She waggled her finger at me. “If you’re going to act like an adult, you need to be responsible like an adult.”
“Can’t I just enjoy kissing a boy for the first time without having to talk about all that? That’s all we’ve done, I swear.”
“You’d be surprised how quickly one thing leads to another.”
“We both want to take things slowly.” George did, anyway. I wasn’t so sure and had done my best to break down his defenses that night. I’d almost succeeded. But not quite.
It had been fun trying.
My being impulsive and his being cautious—it was who we were. It felt right even when everything else between us had changed.
“Don’t be afraid of sex,” Grandma said. “It’s good for the body—it revs up your circulation and improves brain function. But you do have to be careful. So . . . condoms.”
“Got it,” I said, deciding it was easiest just to agree with everything she said: arguing would lead to a longer discussion, and I really just wanted to be alone. Almost as much as I didn’t want to have a Sex Talk with my grandmother.
“It’s good to be practical, but never forget that sex can be spiritual, too,” she went on. “There’s the tantric approach, of course. And the many positions of the Kama Sutra. And yoga can open you up to better orgasms—but I had to stop doing yoga because of my hip problems. You’re lucky you’re young.”
I nodded, my face blank. I don’t have to listen. I have to sit here, but I don’t have to hear what she’s saying.
She nudged my shoulder with hers. “Experiment. I wish I’d experimented more when I was young and my body was like yours.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
She put her face close to mine. “Your mother isn’t as open-minded as I am,” she whispered. “No one was wilder than she was as a teenager, but now she likes to pretend that none of that happened. So don’t go to her if you have questions. Come to me.” She shifted back. “My mother didn’t talk to me openly about sex and it took me decades to learn everything I’m telling you tonight. I want you to be an expert right away. So ask me anything.”
“I will,” I said. “Only not tonight. I’m really tired.”
“Sex gives you energy,” she said. “Did you know that? It doesn’t work with men—they lose energy with sex. But women gain energy from it. Remember that.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, and she smiled and, to my huge relief and with one more pat on my leg, finally left.
I couldn’t fall asleep. I just couldn’t. Most of it was happy, excited energy, but there was a tiny part of me that felt uneasy—the part that didn’t know how I was going to tell Heather that I was totally in love with the guy she had admitted to having a crush on.
Eventually I gave up on sleeping, picked up my phone, and texted George. He was awake, too. We texted for a while. It was ridiculous—we had been together all evening but still had so much to say to each other. Neither of us was the sentimental type, so it wasn’t gooey and silly, but we talked about what we should do together tomorrow and the next day and the next and about his frustrations with not having a real job yet and about my anxiety about leaving for college when I felt like Mom and Jacob still needed me—stuff like that. One thought led to another, which led to another. It could have gone on all night, but sometime after two a.m. I heard a wail from down the hall.
Jacob’s crying. Going to get him
I dropped my phone and went to Jacob’s room. He was sitting up in his bed, rubbing his eyes, and softly weeping.
“Hey, there, baby dude,” I whispered, and picked him up. “What’s wrong?” I carried him over to the rocker in his room and sat down. “Why so sad?”
He said something. It was definitely a word—I just didn’t know what word. It sounded a little like “uggy” so I repeated it. “Uggy?”
He shook his head and said it again.
“Oggy? Uppy?”
He moaned in frustration and hit me—lightly—with his fist. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, just letting me know I wasn’t getting it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish you could talk.”
“Me too.”
I looked up over his head and saw Luke in the doorway.
“He wake you up?” he asked as he came over to us.
“I was awake anyway.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I can take him if you want to go back to sleep.”
“I’m okay. I just wish I knew what he was trying to tell me. I think he had a bad dream or something and he’s trying to tell me what it was about.”
“Uggy,” Jacob said again.
“Uggy?” I repeated, and his body became rigid with fury.
“No!” He collapsed against me, sobbing.
“See?” I said to Luke. I stroked Jakie’s back. “You know what he means?”
“No idea.” Luke sat down on the corner of the bed nearest us. “Poor little guy. He’s so frustrated.”
“You’d be frustrated, too, if you couldn’t speak the language.”
There was a pause.
“Luke?” I said.
“Mm?” His hair was sticking up funny and he was wearing retainers—his teeth were shifting but of course he couldn’t have braces put on, what with his TV appearances and music performances, so the orthodontist made him retainers to wear at home whenever he could. Sometimes I wished all the women who adored him could see him like this. He just looked so normal.
I touched the top of Jacob’s head and said quietly, “I really don’t think Mom’s being crazy when she says there may be something going on with him.”
His face tightened. “I never said she was crazy. I’m just trying to protect him from being boxed into a corner at the age of two.”
“He’s almost three. You should look at those books Mom bought today. A
lot fits.”
“Your mother just starts jumping to conclusions—”
“It’s not jumping to a conclusion if you’ve really thought about it—it’s reaching one, and that’s different.” I hugged Jacob hard. “This guy is amazing. He’s smart and cute and wonderful and nothing changes that. But I want him to learn to talk to us. Don’t you?”
“He’s in speech therapy.”
“I know but maybe there’s more we could be doing.”
“I want what’s best for him, Ellie. You know that. I’m just not sure that what he needs at this stage of his life is a bunch of doctors and a label.”
“Mom’s not sure either.” I rocked Jacob slowly. “But can’t you guys try to figure it out together? You could read those books and talk to the therapists and if the two of you just keep talking to each other about it all—”
“Ellie—”
“You’ve told me a million times that you love me and would do anything for me. Well, this is what I want you to do more than anything else in the world: I want you to listen to what Mom’s saying. Really, really listen. Please, Luke?”
He sat there for a moment, staring at Jacob, who was calm now against my chest. “I promise,” Luke said finally, with a sigh. “You always win, don’t you, little girl?” He held out his arms. “I’ll take him now. You go back to sleep.”
“Okay.” I got up and let Jacob slide into his arms, where he settled down contentedly against Luke’s broad chest. “Good night.”
“Hold on,” Luke said. “We haven’t talked about you yet.”
“What about me?”
“You know how I feel about those Nussbaum boys. I trust them more than anyone else in the world. But George is a lot older than you and in a different place in life and—”
I stopped him with a raised finger. “You don’t need to worry,” I said with my most disarming smile. “He doesn’t have an attractive young stepmother. So I think this could really work out.”
Luke laughed, just like I’d hoped. “There are other potential issues, you know.”
“He’s a good guy,” I said more seriously. “He would never take advantage of me in any way. But I will probably take advantage of him in every possible way I can.”
“Good,” Luke said. “That’s exactly how I want it to go.”
thirty-five
I had to tell Heather. We always shared the important stuff. And keeping this a secret from her would only make my betrayal worse when she eventually found out.
I called her from the car on my way back from school on Monday. After we’d said hi, I took a deep breath and told her that her friendship was one of the most important things in the world to me and that it was hard for me to tell her what I had to tell her.
“What’s going on?” she said. “You’re scaring me. Did you hear about college? You did, didn’t you?”
“No. This is about George.”
“He told you he doesn’t like me. Oh, God. Did you bring it up? Why would you bring it up?” The hysteria in her voice was mounting.
“It’s not that!” Deep breath. “It’s just . . . he and I are sort of going out now.”
“What?” she said. Then again. “What?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “When we talked about him and you said you were interested, I swear I wasn’t—or at least didn’t know I was—or I would have told you. But then we were running some errands together and somehow I just realized that I liked him and he realized that he liked me and things kind of went from there.”
“Let me get this straight,” she said, her voice trembling and tight at the same time. “You waited until I said I liked him to decide that you liked him? Is that what you’re saying?”
“The last thing I wanted to do was go behind your back or hurt you.”
“Oh, well, thanks,” she said. “Thanks for not wanting to hurt me.” Then, “What about everything you said? How he was too old for me? How it was weird for a guy his age to date a high school student? About how you didn’t want to date until you were in college?”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I was stupid and wrong about everything, especially about myself.”
There was a long pause. Then: “Well,” she said in a very cold, very distant voice, “I guess this proves what I’ve always known, which is that the great and powerful Ellie Withers gets everything she wants and I don’t get anything I want ever.”
“Heather—”
“I have to go,” she said, and hung up.
Once I was home, I tried texting and calling her but she wouldn’t respond, and later that night her mother answered her cell phone and told me to leave her alone, then hung up on me.
It hurt a lot. Especially since I blamed myself for her unhappiness: I’d thought she liked Aaron when she liked George, and I’d thought I didn’t like anyone when I basically worshipped George. If I’d just been more aware, less dense . . . But the damage was done.
The one thing that cheered me up a little was that Luke and Mom went out to dinner alone that night, and Mom told me after they got back that Luke had—for the first time—let her talk freely about her concerns about Jacob and told her he’d read whatever she wanted him to with an open mind. “I’ve never loved him more,” she said, and even though she said it lightly, I don’t think she was actually joking.
Tuesday was the last day of school before Thanksgiving. That afternoon the members of the Holiday-Giving Program assembled food baskets for the shelter residents. Students and their families had been donating nonperishables for the previous few weeks, and then that morning everyone brought fresh bread and frozen turkeys. Most of them were donated by school families, but Skyler’s uncle had a friend whose family owned a supermarket chain, and they had donated a few dozen turkeys, so we were in good shape.
We gathered in the student lounge to pack the baskets, which were really just cardboard boxes, also donated by the supermarket. We had the core group of me, Ben, Skyler, Riley, and Arianna, and then a bunch of volunteers to help us. It was pretty hectic, but even with all the running around and heavy lifting, I couldn’t miss the bolts of hatred Arianna was launching at me.
Yes, my self-proclaimed “best friend” (at least on Instagram) was now apparently my worst enemy. She sighed loudly when I gave directions, glowered when I thanked everyone for coming, turned her back on me whenever our paths crossed, and told everyone who would listen that I was a snob who thought that because my stepfather was famous, everyone was supposed to worship me. I knew exactly what she was saying, thanks to Riley, who spent the afternoon listening eagerly and reporting every word to me, despite my attempts to convince her that I actually didn’t want to know every single horrible thing being said about me that afternoon.
“She’s so awful,” Riley said with horrified delight. She liked drama. “She’s just tearing you apart out there. Do you want me to tell her to stop? I will if you want me to.”
“I honestly don’t care what she says about me,” I said. “I just want to get these baskets packed.”
I really didn’t care about Arianna, but I was disappointed in Ben. He had always been friendly in a businesslike kind of way. We had been good teammates. But now he was cold and standoffish, abrupt to the point of rudeness. Maybe I should have admired his loyalty to his girlfriend, but mostly I just felt disgusted with them both. Was I supposed to have tolerated her inappropriate snooping just because my stepfather was famous? I wished I hadn’t said anything about it to Ben—and I wouldn’t have if I’d known he was her boyfriend—but she was the one who had behaved badly, not me, and it bummed me out that Ben couldn’t see that at all.
We finished packing up the boxes and loaded them into Skyler’s mother’s minivan, then Skyler, Ben, and I drove them to the shelter, where people there helped us unload them. The warmth and gratitude of both the staff and the residents made me feel a lot better. This was what mattered. Even Ben seemed touched enough by it to say an almost civil “Happy Thanksgiving” to me when we parted b
ack at school.
A little while later, I walked into my house with that incredible feeling of lightness that comes from knowing you have five days of vacation ahead of you—and will be seeing your new boyfriend as often as possible during those five days—and found Lorena and Grandma sitting and chatting in the kitchen.
Lorena was a good listener and Grandma loved talking, so they had always gotten along well, but I think the last couple of weeks, when they’d spent a lot of time alone together in the house, had turned them into real friends.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, joining them at the table.
Grandma said, “Your mom and Luke took Jacob to an appointment with that doctor she wanted him to see.”
“The developmental pediatrician? I thought they couldn’t get an appointment for like two more months.”
“The office called this morning—there was a sudden cancellation.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And Luke Weston’s kid just happened to jump to the top of the waiting list?”
“We don’t know that,” Grandma said primly.
“I’m just glad for Mom’s sake.”
They walked in a little while later. Luke was carrying Jacob, and Mom was close behind them. Lorena was instantly on her feet; she held her arms out for Jacob and whisked him off.
Mom said, “Who wants to make me a cup of tea?” as she sank down on a chair.
“I will,” said Grandma, getting up. “You relax and tell us what happened at the appointment.”
Luke said, “I should go work out. I had to cancel with my trainer today.”
“Not yet,” Mom said, and patted the chair next to her. “Let’s all talk about this for a second.”
He sat down and reached for her hand. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of their clasped fingers—whatever they’d heard hadn’t driven them further apart. “What did the doctor say?”
They looked at each other and then Mom said slowly, “She does think Jacob falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. But she also thinks he’s incredibly bright and that he can learn pretty much anything we want him to, with just a little bit of work.”