“You deal with it well.”
“Jonathan dealt with it, not me.”
“I mean in general. The whole fame and Luke thing. It doesn’t seem to affect you too much one way or another.”
“Thanks.” I leaned against the wall, and felt the hanging silk fabric bunch up behind my back. “But it does, in a way. Like . . . I’m tired of people at school trying to be friends with me just so they can meet Luke.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“All the time. There’s this one girl right now who—Oh, there’s my drink!” Aaron had spotted us and was coming over with a cup in his hand. “You see?” I said to George. “He had no problem finding me.”
“Clearly I lack his skill and perseverance,” George said. “Excuse me.” He walked away as Aaron approached.
“Was it something I said?” Aaron asked, nodding in his direction.
“I made him feel bad that you brought me my drink and he didn’t.”
“You’re a harsh mistress.” He handed me my soda. “And speaking of harsh mistresses, my soulless, bloodsucking stepmother just said I have to keep mingling. You know I wouldn’t leave your side if I didn’t have to, right?”
“Fly,” I said. “Be free.”
“I will come back to you,” he said, clutching his heart. “I will find you and come back to you.” He held out his hand and I held out mine and we did a whole melodramatic thing where we pretended to be reaching for each other as he backed away, then he suddenly rushed back. “It hurts to say good-bye,” he said, and grabbed me around the waist, bent me backward, and planted a pseudo-passionate kiss right on my startled lips. “I couldn’t just leave,” he said as he released me.
I tottered for a moment, regaining my balance. A quick, embarrassed glance around the room confirmed that Crystal was watching with her hands on her hips; Jonathan, George, and Izzy were all staring; and Mom and Luke were gaping from just a few feet away. Only Jakie, curled against Luke’s chest, seemed unaware of what had just taken place, his eyes gazing blankly in a completely different direction.
“My goodness,” Mom said as the three of them came close. “That was quite a kiss.”
“It was ironic,” I said quickly.
“Of course it was,” Mom said with a little smile.
I felt my face get hot, mostly because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was ironic. I mean, the whole back-bending part was clearly over-the-top and ridiculous. But was the kiss itself? I hadn’t really ever been kissed before—I wasn’t convinced I could distinguish a sort-of-real kiss from a totally mock one.
Fortunately Mom was changing the subject. “We’ve trick-or-treated,” she said, holding up a very full plastic pumpkin. “Jacob wasn’t crazy about the part where you were supposed to go up to people but he liked the part where you get candy. And he really liked the part where you eat candy.”
“He’s wiped out now,” Luke said, and Jacob’s smushed face against his shoulder seemed to confirm that. “You ready to go, Ellie? Or do you want to stay and I’ll come back to get you later?”
“I am very good to go,” I said. I had a lot to think about.
At home, I considered FaceTiming with Heather and telling her about the whole Aaron thing, but decided instead to take a long bath. Heather would probably ask me stuff like “Do you like him? What are you worried about?” and I didn’t want to start answering someone else’s questions until I could get my own thoughts straight.
So I tried to get my own thoughts straight as I lay in a bath that was more bubbles than water.
Aaron likes me. And he’s handsome and funny and charming and I like him.
So . . . why didn’t I let him take things to the next level?
Because I’m not ready for that yet. Because I don’t want to risk losing him as a friend. Because I don’t want to date anyone now. Because . . . I don’t know and it’s weird because he’s very good-looking and I like him so much and it would make our parents so happy.
Because it would make our parents happy?
Because it’s too easy, too comfortable, too right, and I’m contrary?
Because . . . because . . .
I got nowhere in the bath. Other than wet and wrinkly.
twenty
On Sunday, Mom, Jacob, and Luke left for London. They’d be staying in some super-grand hotel—VIP treatment all the way—but Luke would either be shooting segments or doing publicity most of the time, so Mom wasn’t all that pumped about it.
“I’ll miss you lots,” she said as we hugged good-bye. “Please be nice to your grandmother.” Grandma was coming that afternoon; Mom had arranged for a car to pick her up at the airport.
“I’ll be as nice to her as she is sane to me.”
“Be nicer,” she said. “And get your college application in on time.” She turned to George, who had arrived a few minutes earlier to help me work on my essay. “I’m relying on you to make it happen, since I won’t be here.”
“We’ll be talking every day,” I said. “You can remind me yourself.”
“I don’t trust you when I can’t see you,” she said. “You’ll probably ignore everything I’m saying and text your friends while I’m talking.”
I put my hand to my chest. “I would never.”
“She would,” Mom told George, who nodded in agreement. “Oh, and don’t you think Ellie should consider applying early to an Ivy League instead of Elton? I feel like her scores are good enough for her to aim a little higher. I’d hate for her to sell herself short.”
George opened and closed his mouth, looking a little panicked. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to—”
He was both interrupted and rescued by Luke, who appeared in the doorway.
“Car’s loaded,” he said. “And Jacob’s in his car seat. He knows something’s up—that kid’s no dummy. You’d better get out there.”
Mom’s mouth turned down. “I hope he likes the hotel babysitters, or it’s going to be a very long couple of weeks.” That little line appeared in her forehead. “I’m worried this is a mistake—taking him out of therapy, uprooting him . . .”
“A few weeks without speech therapy isn’t going to change his life, and I want you both with me.” Luke put his hands on her shoulders and steered her toward the hallway. “You worry too much. Come on.” He shoved her gently in the right direction, then came back to me for a quick hug. “Take care of yourself, Ellie. Sorry we’re abandoning you, but we’ll be back before you know it.”
“Right,” I said. “Have fun.”
“Fun? I’ll be working eighteen-hour days. Fun isn’t on the agenda.”
“No one feels sorry for you, you know.”
He flashed the gently roguish grin that made hearts beat faster all over America, told me he’d miss me lots, and left.
I went back to the kitchen, where George was typing on his laptop. He looked up when I entered. “They gone?”
“Yeah.” I threw myself into the chair across from him. “So . . . kegger tonight? You bring the coke.”
“As in cocaine?”
I rolled my eyes. “A-doy.”
“Just checking. Last time you asked me for Coke, it was a whole different thing.”
“Yeah. And you never gave it to me.”
“Are we really going to rehash this? Or are we going to work on your essay?”
“My essay sucks. It’s boring. And clichéd. I don’t like it.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Complain a lot and whine.”
“You’re doing great!”
My phone dinged with a text. I glanced at it.
“Aaron?” he asked.
“Heather. She wants to know if you’re here and if she should come over to work.”
“Fine with me.”
I texted Heather to come and then looked up again. “Did you go back and get that cute catering girl’s phone number?”
“Did I? I can’t remember.”
“Don’
t be a jerk. What’s her name?”
“Ethel? Maybe Gertrude. No—Brunhilde.”
“You’re no fun.” My phone dinged again. “Aaron?” he asked.
“Riley.”
“Don’t you have any friends with gender-normative names?”
I texted her back that I was busy and couldn’t hang out, then looked up. George was watching me. “You want to work?” I asked.
“Only if you’re not too busy,” he said with exaggerated politeness.
“Never too busy for you,” I said genially. My phone dinged again.
“Aaron?” he said.
“Yep.”
“Ha! Guessed right.”
“It’s not a good guess if you’ve made it three times and were wrong the first two.” I read the text then said, “Hey, what time do you think we’ll be done?”
“The usual. Two hours from when we start. Assuming we ever actually start.”
“Hold on.” I sent a text to Aaron, who had asked if I wanted to go see a movie later: Yah. You okay if Heather comes?
The cute blonde? Why wouldn’t I be?
I smiled at my phone, relieved. I had been wondering whether we’d be able to go back to normal after the other night’s weirdness, but he sounded like himself. And also like he didn’t care whether or not we were alone together, which meant he was in no rush to start pushing things forward again.
“I really hate to interrupt the love affair you’re having with your phone,” George said. “Any chance I can get you to put it aside for . . . I don’t know, ten seconds? To start?”
I tossed the phone onto the counter. “Look how I obey you,” I said. “Use your power over me wisely.”
“I’ll try to,” he said, with a sort of odd seriousness that made me feel anxious—was I about to get in trouble? And why did George always make me feel like I was about to get in trouble? But all he said was, “Let’s read through the essay again. Did you make those changes we talked about last time?”
“Um . . . about that . . .”
He sighed and we bent over my laptop together. We went back through all his notes and I made the changes right there and then, with him at my elbow, pointing at the screen. But even though he kept me on task, he wouldn’t actually cut anything or dictate any phrases; he had said earlier that every word of it had to be mine and apparently he meant it.
I worked hard for twenty minutes, which, as I explained to George, was as long as my attention span ever lasted. He said, “I guess that is true,” so I got up and made us tea and found some cookies in the freezer in a big bakery box that someone must have brought my mom as a hostess gift.
We sat and ate our microwave-warm cookies and drank our tea and talked about some of the short essays on the application and what I could say about extracurricular activities since I didn’t really have much other than the Holiday-Giving Program—I showed up to meetings for the Gay-Straight Alliance and Diversity Council, but I didn’t run anything other than the H-G.
Then Heather arrived, looking extremely adorable in a pink-and-gold sundress, and George asked her if she’d made the changes he wanted, and she dimpled up and said that of course she had, she’d made every one of them and all of his comments had been so helpful and made it so much better, and he glanced at me like he wanted to make sure I’d heard that, and I shrugged because Heather was the kind of girl who did what you told her to and I . . . wasn’t.
While they went over her changes, I worked on the common app, adding the information we’d just discussed. A while later the intercom let us know that someone was at the gate. I jumped up and buzzed in Aaron’s car.
“We did good work here today,” I announced to the kitchen in a “Let’s wrap this up now” kind of way. It had been almost two hours . . . if you considered an hour and a quarter almost two hours.
“Oh no,” Heather said, looking up. “Do we have to be done? Can you look at this one more time, George?”
“Call him Georgie,” I said. “He likes that.”
“I can stay as long as you need me,” he told her. “I’m doing some organizing for Ellie’s mom, so I was going to stick around to work on that anyway.”
“Do you really like to be called Georgie?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I hate it.”
“I figured. Ellie likes to be mean sometimes.”
“I do not!” I said, but before I could defend myself more, there was a knock at the front door. I ran out into the hallway and swung it open. “Yay, you’re here!” I said to Aaron. Then, a little less enthusiastically, “And you brought my grandmother.”
“‘Brought’ isn’t entirely accurate,” Aaron said. “But we got here at the same time.”
“Am I supposed to tip him?” Grandma asked me in a loud whisper. “He looks like he expects a tip.” For a second I thought she meant Aaron, but then I spotted the cabdriver coming up behind them with her suitcase.
“It’s taken care of,” I said.
“Are you sure? I think maybe I should tip him.” There was no way he hadn’t heard her stage whisper.
“It’s good. We’re good. Thank you,” I said more loudly to the driver, who handed the suitcase to Aaron, wished us all a good day, and stepped away.
She looked back over her shoulder. “I just don’t like having someone out there who thinks I’m ungenerous. Bad energy always comes back to you.”
“He doesn’t think you’re ungenerous.” I led her into the foyer, and Aaron followed us. “Mom already paid the tip online. You know she would never expect you to use your own money for this. You’re doing us a favor.”
“I am using up all of my vacation days on you,” she said. “Not that I mind.” She pressed me tight against her ample chest. “We’re going to have so much fun together.” She released me. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
I explained that Aaron was Michael Marquand’s son and then reminded her that she had met Michael and his wife at the anniversary party.
“She’s very beautiful,” Grandma said to him. “Your mother, I mean.”
“Crystal’s not my mother!” Aaron looked horrified at the thought. “She’s, like, twenty-five.”
“I see. Well, I hope you get along with her. The stepmother/stepchild relationship can be a very meaningful one, if people are willing to be open to it. Have you let her into your heart?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, but he looked like he wanted to both laugh and vomit.
“Come into the kitchen,” I said quickly. “More people to meet there.”
Both Heather and George had already spent time with my grandmother, so no introductions were needed. Heather hugged her warmly, loving her because she was my grandmother and Heather was the kind of person who loved other people’s grandmothers. George was going to shake her hand, but she threw her arms around him, which seemed to surprise him but not in an unpleasant way. He nodded over her shoulder at Aaron with a curt, unenthusiastic “Hey.”
Aaron was more focused on Heather, anyway, dropping the suitcase on the floor so he could go in for his own hug after Grandma got hers. Leaving his arm slung possessively over Heather’s shoulder, he said, “I want you to know that I only came over because Ellie said you were here. You’re my favorite.”
“Favorite what?” she asked.
“Human being.”
“What about Ellie?”
“Her? Ugh.” He made a disgusted face, then pretended to realize I was watching and flashed me a big fake smile and a double thumbs-up. “I mean, she’s great!” I rolled my eyes at him, and Heather laughed. “So, what are we all up to here?” he asked.
“Just finishing up some college application work,” I said. “Heather had a few more questions for George, then we can go. What movie should we see?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to four possibilities,” Aaron said, and removed his arm from Heather’s shoulder so he could tick them off on his fingers. “A superhero movie, a movie about a gang of superheroes, a dark thriller
featuring a superhero, and a romantic comedy starring someone who usually plays superheroes. But I should warn you that I only threw in that last one to make you girls think I’m sensitive. I don’t really want to see it.”
“That’s okay—neither do I,” I said.
“I do,” Heather said.
“Me too,” said Grandma. “I vote for that one.”
There was an awkward moment of silence after that. Aaron coughed. I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake.
“Don’t feel you have to chaperone us or anything,” I said to Grandma. “You’ve got to be pretty tired after getting up early and flying.”
“I feel fine. I just need to visit the restroom and I’m good to go. So what movie shall we see?” She gazed around happily.
Aaron caught my eye and opened both of his wide for a moment in telegraphed panic before collapsing into a chair like his legs couldn’t support him any longer.
“You can come if you want to,” I said, “but it might be weird for you.”
“Why would watching a movie be weird?” Grandma asked, her smile fading a little.
“The movie wouldn’t be, I guess—not that much—but we were going to walk around the mall and just sort of hang out for a while afterward. I don’t think it would be that much fun for you.”
“You mean,” she said, “that it wouldn’t be that much fun for you if I came.” She blinked a few times, patted her hair as if she were making sure it was still there, and said, “That’s fine. Really. I understand. Who wants a grandmother cramping their style?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just . . . we all made this plan a long time ago, and you and I will be spending a lot of time together over the next couple of weeks, so . . .” I trailed off.
“More than you probably want.”
“No, no.” I’m not sure how convincing I sounded. “It’s great. We’ll have a lot of fun. I was just . . .” What? “Just expecting you to show up later, so I made these other plans for today. But if you really want to go . . .” I stopped because Aaron was slowly shaking his head at me, telling me not to finish that sentence.
“I’m sorry,” Grandma said into the silence. “I didn’t mean to get in the way of your fun.” She picked up her suitcase with a slight grimace of effort. “I’ll just take this up to my room. I assume I’m staying in the same one as usual?”