Just You Page 8

  He opened the door but didn’t enter. Instead he rested one hand on the door frame, his sweater stretching across his paunchy stomach, and loudly cleared his throat. He seemed fidgety, uncertain, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t quite sure if he should. I rifled through my makeup bag for lip gloss and waited for him to speak.

  “Going out again?” he asked, striving for casual.

  I smoothed some gloss over my lips. “Uh huh.”

  “You’ve been going out a lot lately.”

  I wondered why he picked tonight to bring this up for the first time. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he knew something. But that was silly. Dad wouldn’t notice if I’d suddenly dyed my hair purple and took up opera singing. Not that he was neglectful or anything; he was just in his own little world half the time. It drove Lynn crazy, but I didn’t mind. It was a nice contrast to my mother’s eagle-eyed scrutiny.

  “Who’s the boy?”

  My hand, holding the lip gloss tube a few inches from my lips, froze in midair. Slowly, I recapped it and dropped it into the makeup bag, all the while avoiding my father’s gaze. But going by his light, easy tone, he wasn’t about to grill me or tease me, so I answered honestly. “His name is Michael. He lives in Redwood Hills.”

  “Ah ha,” Dad said, as if he’d uncovered some great mystery. “And how long has this been going on?”

  “A while.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “There was nothing to say, Dad.” I searched the room for my earrings, finding them on the night stand under an empty CD case. “It’s no big deal.”

  Dad frowned. “This boy’s older than you. Lynn saw you a couple of weeks ago. You and Robin, driving off with some boys.”

  Ah, so that was why they’d been waiting up for me the other night, because they knew I was out with some guy they didn’t know. Dad may not have been the observant type, but Lynn missed nothing. “He’s seventeen. Not that much older. I’ll be sixteen in three weeks.”

  “You’re being careful, right?” He pretended to examine a scratch on the paint on my wall. “Staying out of trouble?”

  I didn’t know quite what he meant, but I assured him anyway. “Yes, I’m staying out of trouble.”

  “He is a little old for you.”

  I gave him a look. “Dad. Come on.”

  “I don’t know…a boy that age…”

  “You haven’t even met him.” Obviously he had the wrong impression of Michael.

  “Well,” Dad said, scratching his beard. “I should meet him then, don’t you think?”

  Now my whole body froze. Bringing the person you’re going out with home to meet your parents made it official. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to climb that step, to expose Michael to my corny, unpredictable father, not to mention the rest of my family. They were liable to show him my baby pictures and tell him about the time I fell off the stage during my fourth grade Christmas recital, among other tidbits from my vast collection of humiliating childhood moments.

  “I guess,” I said, hesitant. “But…not tonight.” I needed time to psych myself up and warn Michael.

  “No? What’s going on tonight?”

  “Another party.”

  He seemed mollified with this answer. As lenient as my dad was, he still didn’t want me anywhere alone with a seventeen-year-old boy. Never mind the drinking and drugs that accompanied these parties. I guess the way he saw it, drugs and alcohol couldn’t impregnate me.

  Ready to go, I walked over to my father, thinking he would move as I approached him, but he stayed put. Clearly he had more to say, but he just looked at me in a lost, helpless sort of way. Feeling sorry for him, I decided to help him out.

  “You can trust me, Dad,” I told him. “Really.”

  “Okay,” he said, and he stepped aside to let me leave. That was all he needed to hear. For him, it was enough.

  Robin and I caught a ride with Devon to the party, which was taking place at an imposing ranch-style house with a sprawling lawn, held by a girl I didn’t know whose parents happened to be away for the weekend.

  “Do you want a drink?” Michael asked me after I discovered him in the crowded kitchen, where a makeshift bar had been set up on the island.

  “No thanks,” I said. I felt naturally buzzed from his presence alone. This feeling hadn’t tapered off over the past few weeks. If anything, it had intensified. I’d discovered that underneath all the hotness, there was this nice, down-to-earth guy who was easy to talk to and get along with. He became less and less intimidating as I got to know him, and when we were together I wanted to do things I never even imagined wanting to do before. My father was right to be concerned.

  Michael led me around from group to group, talking to his friends, and I tried to follow the conversation despite being distracted by something else, something I experienced often when I was with Michael in public—the evil once-over. It consisted of a long, sometimes subtle/sometimes obvious glare in my direction, during which the girl’s eyes narrowed and traveled from my head to my feet, presumably trying to figure out what I had to hold the attraction of someone like Michael. I couldn’t blame them, but that didn’t make the Evil Once-Over any less uncomfortable.

  Right now, I was getting slammed with it by a pretty blond girl on my right. It was Elena Brewster, a junior at RHH who quite plainly wanted Michael. She had the Evil Once-Over down to a science, never failing to bombard me with it whenever I saw her. And when she wasn’t glaring at me, she was moving in whenever I left Michael’s side to use the washroom. I would’ve loved to ask her what her problem was, but I knew if I did confront her she and her pack would be on me like rabid wolves on a carcass.

  Often, Elena accompanied the Evil Once-Over with a sneer or snicker or, when I was really lucky, like tonight, a cutting remark.

  “Are you still around?” she said as she walked by, flanked by her ever-present collection of BFFs. When I ignored her, they all burst into giggles. Their mocking laughter made me feel small and inadequate, and I wanted to slink away and hide in a bathroom for the rest of the night.

  I tugged on Michael’s hand and he turned to me, smiling, oblivious to the cattiness flung my way simply because I dared to be seen with him. “I’m going downstairs for a second,” I said, knowing my face was pink.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s a little too warm in here, that’s all.” People were packed like sardines on the main floor, and the fire blazing in the living room fireplace wasn’t helping matters.

  Michael walked with me downstairs, where we found a nice, cool workshop room with a deep freeze in the corner and tools hanging from nails on the wall. We slid up on top of the freezer. I felt better immediately.

  We sat there and talked. We’d been doing more of that lately, talking instead of being all over each other. Well, in addition to it, anyway. We usually stuck to the safe topics—school, family, aspirations—and avoided touchy issues like exes and this mysterious older brother of his that he hadn’t mentioned after that one time. We also avoided talking about our relationship, such as it was. Maybe because neither of us knew how to classify it, exactly. Were we boyfriend-girlfriend? Casually hooking up? Exclusive? Non-exclusive? Sometimes I didn’t care, but other times I wished I knew how he really felt about me. I knew what I was about to say next might give me an inkling.

  “My dad wants to meet you.”

  He bit his lip, which made him look more sexy than worried. “Really?”

  “Don’t worry. He’s harmless.”

  Now he smiled, his teeth glowing in the semi-darkness. “I guess he’s going to interrogate me.”

  “You guess right.”

  “What about your mother? Do I get to meet her too?”

  I nibbled at my thumbnail. This was one of those touchy subjects we’d never discussed. “Well…she doesn’t exactly know about you.”

  “Why not?”

  How to explain my mystifying mother to him without scaring him off
for good? “She’s strict. She wouldn’t let me go out with you.”

  “Because I’m a little older than you?”

  I nodded. “And because you live here. She knows Dad will let me do whatever I want and she wouldn’t be able to control the situation.” This was one of the main reasons I was apprehensive about bringing Michael around my dad’s house—sometimes Emma had a big mouth.

  “She’ll probably find out someday,” Michael said.

  My stomach fluttered a little. What he said implied that he thought we’d be together for a while. Someday. Surprisingly, this word made me more happy than scared. So happy that I leaned over and kissed him with enough enthusiasm to erase all lingering thoughts of dreaded parent-meetings out of both our minds. He kissed me back, his lips moving against mine until I forgot where and who I was.

  Good thing Dad had faith in me to “stay out of trouble”. At least one of us did.

  Chapter 10

  I put it off the meet-the-parents date for as long as I could, partly because of the “boyfriend/girlfriend” connotations attached to it, and partly because I was afraid Emma would mention it to Mom, who still didn’t know Michael existed. So I waited for a night I knew Emma had a sleepover and wouldn’t be around.

  When Michael showed up for the dreaded Meeting/Interrogation, my father and I were downstairs waiting for him. Leo started barking when I let Michael in. He did this whenever he saw someone he didn’t know around our house. Only Lynn could get this stubborn pooch to quiet down, so I didn’t even bother trying to reprimand him. Michael didn’t mind. He crouched down and stroked the dog’s head, and after sniffing Michael’s hands, Leo dismissed him as a threat and finally stopping his loud yapping. My father entered the foyer, beer in hand, just in time to witness Michael and Leo’s bonding.

  “You! Out of here!” he bellowed, and for a moment I thought he meant Michael and I almost passed out.

  “Dad, this is Michael,” I said, recovering quickly.

  Michael stood up straight and wiped his dog drool-covered hand off on his shirt before offering it to my father. Dad laughed and shook his hand firmly. “Hello, Michael. Steven Brogan. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” Michael said, giving Leo another scratch under the ears. Leo sat still, his tail smacking against the marble tile. Michael had won him over, at least.

  “Okay.” Dad hooked the dog’s collar with two fingers. “Come on.”

  Leo barked once in protest as Dad dragged him away, but all was quiet when they reached the kitchen and Leo’s freshly replenished food bowl. My father returned a few seconds later.

  “Come in, come in,” he said, ushering us into the living room. “Sit, sit. Anyone for a drink?”

  We both declined. I was nervous, and every time I was nervous and ingested liquid, it instantly expanded my bladder to near bursting. And leaving Michael alone with my father for any length of time didn’t sit well with me. Dad seemed to be missing the important filter most people had between their brains and their mouths.

  “You look so familiar to me, Michael,” Dad said, settling into his recliner. “Do I know your father?”

  Michael and I were seated on the couch together, a few deliberate inches between us. Surprisingly he seemed relaxed, even under my dad’s scrutinizing gaze.

  “He works at the golf course in the summer, Dad.” I had told him this earlier, but of course he had forgotten. My father practically lived on the golf course in the summer, so I knew he must have met Michael without even realizing it.

  “The golf course,” Dad said, as if he’d remembered all on his own, without my help. “Yes. I’ve seen you in the pro shop, haven’t I?”

  “That’s right,” Michael said. “And you’re usually with Dr. Fletcher, right?”

  My dad smiled, pleased that Michael had recognized him too. “Dr. Fletcher. Head of the oral surgery department at the university,” he added for my benefit. “Good ole Fletch. He’s a shark, that one. One day...”

  Dad started talking golf-ese and my eyes glazed over. Instead of listening, I watched Michael and wondered what he thought of my father, and this house, as compared to his own. Dad, while well-educated and somewhat clever at times, wasn’t exactly as powerful and intimidating as I imagined Michael’s lawyer father to be. As a professor, my father made a decent living. He and Lynn had nice things, took nice vacations, and probably had a hefty retirement fund sacked away. Their house was old, drafty, and lived-in. You’d never see one like it in Redwood Hills. No backyard pools or convertibles in driveways around here. No pristine, housekeeper-clean rooms. Dad and Lynn’s house was always a little messy—newspapers strewn about, video game boxes and DVD cases piled up, clothes hanging on the backs of chairs, dust and dog hair and dirty windows.

  “So Michael,” Dad said later, when he came back from the kitchen with a beer. “Any plans for after graduation next year? College?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure where I’m going yet.”

  I squirmed. I knew this was a sore spot with Michael. His future was his father’s favorite topic, but Michael had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, not yet.

  “Any ideas for a major?” Dad asked.

  Michael hesitated, and I could feel his hand start to sweat. Or it could’ve been mine. “I like history…”

  “John Quentin teaches comparative global history at Kinsley. He’s a remarkable teacher and a fine man.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Michael said politely. Kinsley, the local university and my dad’s place of employment, was a decent school, though maybe a little limited. Not many lawyers had gotten their start there, I suspected.

  To my relief and probably Michael’s too, Lynn came downstairs at the moment, rescuing us from more college talk. I introduced her to Michael.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, shooting me a quick wide-eyed look, which I took to mean Damn, girl, where’d you find this hunk?

  Lynn sat down in the other chair and started asking a series of benign questions about school and his family, and we all relaxed again. I could have hugged my stepmom for steering us into more neutral territory. The rest of the evening went smoothly because of Lynn’s upbeat presence. My father only embarrassed me once, at the end of the meeting when he said, “It was good to finally meet you, Michael. My daughter has been more absent-minded than her old man since she met you.”

  I shot him a dirty look as we left, and he stared back at me with his innocent “What did I say?” expression. He used that often, right after extracting the foot from his mouth.

  Michael and I didn’t speak until we got to his car, and when I looked at him he had this amused expression on his face. I stopped by the passenger side door, arms crossed. “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  He grinned as he passed me on his way to the driver’s side. “The death glare you just gave your dad.”

  “He deserved it.” I climbed into the car. “He’s not usually that bad. Most of the time he’s reasonably sane.”

  “I liked him,” Michael said. This wasn’t unusual. Everyone liked my dad. Each year, students scrambled to get a spot in one of his classes.

  “He has his moments,” I said grudgingly.

  “He seemed interested in what I wanted to do. That was nice for a change.”

  “I thought college talk made you uncomfortable.”

  He started the engine. “It does, usually.”

  We had planned to see a movie, but when we got there a few minutes late, almost everything was sold out. It was my idea to drive downtown to the waterfront boardwalk, which was virtually deserted this time of year. We parked in a small lot near a hotel, facing the water.

  “I used to play there when I was little,” Michael said, pointing to a boat-shaped playground structure in the distance. “We used to come here almost every weekend. My brother Josh…he liked watching the ships.”

  He seemed wistful, as if he were remembering nicer, simpler times. If I didn’t know better, I
’d have thought his brother was dead. I held my breath, waiting for more, but he left it at that. Josh. Now I knew his name, at least.

  It was cold inside the car. I shivered, pulling the sleeves of my jacket over my hands. Michael shook off his pensive mood and reached for me, folding me against his warm chest. Getting close wasn’t an easy feat with those annoying bucket seats and the gearshift between us, so after a few minutes of awkward fumbling, we moved to the back. There, in the shadows cast by the streetlights, we kissed until cold was no longer an issue.

  When we came up for air a while later, a question I’d had no intention of ever asking popped out of my mouth like it had a mind of its own. “Why didn’t you go out with Elena Brewster?”

  “What?” He was gazing at my lips, still distracted.

  “Elena Brewster.” I pulled back a little. “She’s asked you out before, right?”

  “A while ago.”

  “And you said no? Why?” I guess I found it hard to grasp how anyone could say no to someone like her. She was viciously determined. I knew that much from watching her try to flirt with Michael—while simultaneously glaring at me—every time we were in her presence. And it bothered me. The flirting and the glaring.

  “I just don’t like her,” Michael said with a small shrug. “She’s a…well, she’s not a nice person. And she’s fake.”

  “She’s also beautiful.”

  He held my face in his palms. Even though he hadn’t eaten any cinnamon mints lately, he still smelled like them. “You are beautiful.”

  “Not like Elena…and Robin…and most of the girls you hang around with.”

  “No…” Michael said, and before I had time to wonder if I should feel insulted, he kissed me again. When he backed away a few minutes later, he finished his sentence. “You’re beautiful like you.”

  Gulp. He certainly didn’t make it easy for me to behave myself. I could finally understand what Ms. Winters, my sex ed. teacher last year, had meant when she lectured us about the overwhelming power of hormones. Kissing Brian had been nice, but sometimes, right in the middle of making out with him, I’d start thinking about other things, like song lyrics or who would get evicted this week on my favorite reality show. With Michael, however, all I thought about while kissing him was how I wanted more of him. I could never get close enough.