“Two lottery tickets?” I suggest, which makes Teddy laugh. Our eyes meet for a second before I look away again.
“So do you guys have class together or something?” Teddy asks, glancing from me to Sawyer, whose gaze travels back in my direction.
“Yeah, we just had art,” he says. He’s answering Teddy but he’s looking at me, his blue eyes shiny with amusement. “Alice and I are big fans of the abstract kind.”
“You could say we’re both aficionados,” I agree, and when I look back at Teddy he’s frowning. There’s nothing mean or malicious about it; he looks more confused than anything, puzzled and a little out of sorts in a way that’s totally foreign to him.
“Actually,” he says, “Al and I have an art project of our own.”
I tilt my head at him. “What’s that?”
“The boat,” he says with a note of impatience.
“I wouldn’t really call that an art project.”
“Well, who says we can’t make it look nice too?”
“We?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
“Yes, of course we,” Teddy says. “You and me.”
“Mine’s already done,” Lila says. “Stef and I finished last week.” When nobody answers, she adds: “It’s pink and green.”
“Does it float?” Sawyer asks politely.
Lila gives him a scathing look. “That’s the whole point.”
Teddy’s eyes are still on me. “So maybe we should get together tonight.”
There’s a part of me that wants to shoot him down, if only because he was so annoying about the whole thing this morning. But another part of me suspects his reasons for suggesting it and can’t help feeling flattered.
Beside me Sawyer shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other. Lila is now glaring at the floor. Teddy gives me a hopeful look.
“Fine,” I say, and he smiles.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. What time? And where?”
He laughs. “Whatever floats your boat.”
When I show up at Teddy’s building that evening, there are two men waiting outside the door. It’s too dark to make out their faces, but one of them is blowing on his hands to keep warm and the other is busy adjusting something on his camera.
“Excuse me,” I say, since they’re standing in front of the buzzer. They step back from the concrete stoop, but when I hit the button for number eleven they exchange a look.
“Are you here to see Teddy McAvoy?” one of them asks, looking excited at the prospect. He’s wearing a winter cap that’s pulled low, and his jacket is zipped up so high that all I can see are his eyes. Without answering I hit the button again, my heart pounding. It’s cold and dark, and this isn’t the greatest neighborhood, and I don’t like the way these guys are staring at me.
The second man takes off his Sox cap and scratches his head. “Are you the one who bought the ticket for him?”
I press my lips together and turn back to the buzzer, only this time when I press it I leave my hand there, letting it ring and ring until the door finally clicks. I grab the handle, yanking it open and slipping into the entryway without a word, still shivering and grateful to be inside.
Upstairs the door to the apartment is open, and I walk in without knocking. Katherine is standing in the kitchen wearing her scrubs, and she looks up with a smile when she sees me.
“I don’t know if you realize,” I say, “but there are a couple of men outside—”
“They’re back?” she asks, her expression darkening. “They were here yesterday. I think they’re trying to get pictures of Teddy.”
“That’s kind of a shady way of doing it.”
She’s gathering her things, getting ready to leave for work, but she pauses to give me a long look. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him. I’m worried he’s a little too enamored with this whole circus. It’s been nonstop since yesterday, with all these calls about morning shows and requests for interviews, and I’m just not sure—”
“Is she freaking out about the reporters again?” Teddy asks, walking into the room. He’s wearing a Michigan hoodie—which Max brought home for him at Christmas—a pair of old sweatpants, and mismatched socks, one of which has a hole in the toe. He looks, much to my relief, like himself again.
Katherine gives him an exasperated look as she puts on her coat. “You can’t possibly expect me not to worry about the fact that there are grown men stalking my teenage son.”
“That’s because your teenage son is so incredibly rich and good-looking.”
“And modest,” she says, then gives him a stern look. “Just be careful, okay? And listen to Alice. She’s always had a lot more sense than you.”
“Totally untrue,” Teddy says cheerfully.
“And be sure to walk her out at the end of the night.”
“I’ll get her a taxi,” he promises. “Even better: I’ll buy her a taxi!”
“No need to get crazy,” Katherine says as she steps out into the hallway. “Good luck with the project, you two.”
When she’s gone, I turn to Teddy. “Do you think she’ll keep working nights?”
“You mean now that her son’s a multimillionaire?” he asks with a grin. “I don’t know. I told her she could quit, but she says her patients need her. She did promise to cut back a little, though. And she’s putting in a request for the day shift.”
“You think she’ll get it?” I ask, because I know she’s tried to switch before without any luck.
“I have a feeling it’ll be a lot easier to negotiate now that her son’s a multimillionaire.”
I shake my head. “I’m gonna start making you put a quarter in a jar every time you say the word multimillionaire.”
“A quarter?” He swats this away. “Pfft. Make it a hundo.”
“We might need a jar for that one too,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. “Your mom’s right about those reporters, you know.”
“Nah, she’s just worried about bad press,” he says dismissively. “Trust me. She’ll be a lot happier about all this once I get her out of here.”
My heart seizes. “You’re moving?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna buy her a place.”
“You are?” I ask, blinking at him. My first thought is That’s more like it. And my second is Please don’t let it be far away.
“I am,” he says proudly. “And not just any place.”
My eyes widen. “No.”
“Yes,” he says, smiling at my reaction.
“Your old apartment?”
“Even better,” he says. “The whole building.”
“Really? You can do that?”
He grins. “Thanks to you.”
I can hardly believe it. I know how much it hurt to give up their home when his dad lost everything. Even six years later, Katherine still makes excuses to drive by it whenever she can: the old brick building just a few miles up the road where they once lived in a spacious two-bedroom apartment as a family of three.
“It’s for sale?”
“Not technically. I’ll have to buy up all the individual apartments. But I’m planning to make them offers they can’t refuse.”
I laugh, delighted by this. Teddy could buy practically anything he wants right now. He could get something a thousand times nicer, a hundred times bigger. But this building means something to them, and my heart swells because this is the Teddy I know.
This is the Teddy I love.
“I want to wait and surprise my mom once everything’s settled,” he says, “but I already have a bunch of ideas for how to fix it up. Want to see?”
I follow him back to his room, where his new computer is lying open on his bed. He flops down beside it, leaving room for me, but for a second all I can do is stand there, thinking about the last time I was here, that single charged moment between us.
Teddy’s face is serious as he begins to type, his eyes reflecting the light from the screen and his hair still slightly askew. Watching him, I want nothing more than to rewind the
past six weeks, to bottle the way he looked at me that night, to capture the lightness I felt the next morning when he spun me around, to memorize the taste of his lips when we kissed. I want to do it all over again, even if the outcome would be the same; even if there’s no chance of a future, I still want this little piece of the past.
Though the truth, of course, is that I want more than that too.
Together we sit on his bed—Teddy sprawled out and me perched on the very edge—as he shows me a series of floor plans and layouts. “This one used to be ours, remember? There are eight units total, and my plan is to knock down the walls between them and turn the whole building into two giant apartments. One for me, and one for my mom. I’ll take the lower half, since I want to make the basement into a game room—”
“Naturally,” I say with a grin.
“Then I’m gonna build my mom her dream apartment upstairs.” He looks up at me, beaming. “All these years without her own room, and now she’s gonna have two whole floors to herself. Can you believe it?”
He looks so proud right now that my eyes unexpectedly fill with tears. “You’re going to make her so, so happy.”
“I hope so,” he says. “She deserves it.”
“So do you,” I tell him. “You manage to hide it pretty well sometimes, but you’re a really good guy at heart, Teddy McAvoy.”
He gives me a crooked smile. “Well, I do have my moments.”
When it’s time to start working on the project, we move to the floor. His room has started to look like one of those stores that sells gadgets and electronics, the kind with massage chairs and fish tanks and noise machines. There are toys and boxes everywhere: game consoles and tablets, a remote-controlled car that looks a lot like the life-sized one parked on the street below, something with wings that seems suspiciously dronelike, and even a robot, which is standing stiffly beside its box, watching me with a blank stare.
“So what,” I ask, shoving a model helicopter out of the way as we attempt to make room on the floor, “did you raid the mall or something?”
“I went on what you might call a shopping spree last week,” Teddy agrees, kicking aside some Bubble Wrap. “It’s possible I got a little carried away.”
“You think?”
“Hey, I’ve had enough bad luck to last me a while. So have you, by the way. The world owes us. I’m just the only one smart enough to cash in.”
I look around at the piles of screws and batteries, the tangles of cords and plugs. “I’ll bet you a million dollars you never end up putting any of this stuff together.”
“You don’t have a million dollars,” he reminds me, “which is your own fault. And the only thing I’m worried about putting together right now is our boat. So where should we start?”
“With this,” I say, pulling out the instruction sheet for the project.
He studies it for a second. “Okay, well, I don’t want to rock the boat, but—”
“Cute,” I say, making a face at him.
“If you like that one, I’ve got about a hundred more.”
As we start in on the calculations, working through a formula for buoyancy that we learned in class, Teddy’s attention keeps drifting.
“Should we do this in the other room?” I ask, watching him fiddle with what appears to be either an alarm clock or a handheld video game. “I think there are too many distractions in here.”
He sets it aside. “No, I’m with you. Floating: good. Sinking: bad.”
“Teddy,” I say with a groan. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not fall into the pool in front of everyone we know. Plus, this is fifty percent of our grade, and I’m still waiting to hear from Stanford.”
“You’ll get in,” he says, but he sounds distracted. I follow his gaze to the bookshelf, where the stack of applications I printed for him sits untouched. “Here’s what I’ve been thinking, though. If the point of college is to find a job afterward, and the point of a job is to make money…”
“No,” I say quickly, realizing where he’s going with this. “The point of college is to meet new people and learn new things and figure out who you are.”
“And to find a job.”
“Right,” I say grudgingly. “To find a job that you love.”
“But mostly to find a job where you make enough money to live. And now I have enough money to—”
“Hey,” I say, feeling a little panicky. “Come on. Don’t be an idiot. You’re obviously still going to college. I mean…you can go even sooner now. No more measuring shoe sizes or inflating basketballs. You can get your degree and go right into coaching.”
Teddy is looking at me with amusement. “I don’t need a degree anymore.”
“Yeah, you do, if you want to coach—”
“Who knows if that’s even what I still want to do,” he says dismissively, though this is all he’s talked about ever since I’ve known him. “I can do anything now.”
I stare at him. “But you want to be a basketball coach.”
“Al,” he says, like I’m not understanding the situation. “Things are different now. You must know that. I could buy a basketball team if I wanted. I could call them Teddy and the Terrifics and nobody could stop me from being head coach and assistant coach and ball boy all at once. What in the world would I want to sit through college for?”
“I just figured now that you don’t have to take out loans…”
“No,” he says, so starkly, so matter-of-factly, that I reel back a little. I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands, feeling the situation slipping from my grasp.
“Teddy, c’mon,” I say. “You can’t just not go. Please don’t be that guy.”
He stiffens. “What guy?”
“The guy who fritters away his days buying meaningless things and sitting around just because he can afford to do nothing.”
When he looks up at me, his eyes are cold. “Why do I feel like you’ve been waiting to say that to me?”
“I haven’t—” I start to say, then stop, realizing he might be right. “It’s just…it’s a little hard to recognize you right now.” I glance around the room. “Especially with all this stuff.”
“I like all this stuff.”
“Sure, but it’s…” I pause, trying to collect my thoughts. “Well, remember how your dad used to bring you all those presents when he was on a winning streak?”
He glares at me. “This isn’t the same.”
“I know. I’m just saying maybe there are other things you could be doing, other ways you could be spending the money. I mean, what about philanthropy? You haven’t even mentioned giving some away—”
“Give me a break,” he says. “I’ve had the money for, like, two days. I’m obviously gonna donate some eventually. You’re just annoyed that I haven’t asked you about it. Because you think anything having to do with charity is your territory.”
I press my lips together. “Well.”
“Well, what?”
“Well, I’ve been volunteering since I was little. It was what my parents—”
“Exactly,” he interrupts, and I go tense.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighs. “You only do it because you feel like you have to. For them.”
“That’s not true,” I say, my heart thudding. “I do it because—”
“You’re still looking for their approval.”
He says this as if it’s an undeniable fact, a simple statement of truth, something we’ve discussed a thousand times before, and I feel a quick burning anger, because is this what he’s really been thinking the whole time? That I’m just going through the motions, trying to follow in my parents’ footsteps? Is that what everyone thinks?
“That’s not true,” I say coldly. “I do it for me too.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Teddy says, shaking his head, and I clench my teeth, because of course it matters. All of this does. But he continues, his voice steely and his eyes hard. “The point is that it’s not fa
ir for you to be disappointed in me already.”
“It’s not that—”
“Especially since I offered you half.” He practically spits the words at me. “So if you had so many opinions about how this money should be spent, maybe you shouldn’t have been so stubborn about it. Then you could’ve been doing it all yourself.”
This is true, but hearing him say it now, just moments after invoking my parents, a new fear washes over me. Because for all my worries about that snap decision—what it might’ve meant for Aunt Sofia and Uncle Jake, and Leo too, what it might’ve changed between me and Teddy—I somehow hadn’t thought once about my parents or what they would’ve done.
Or maybe I had, and somewhere deep down I wanted to believe they’d have made the same choice. But now I wonder if I’m wrong. Maybe they’d have taken the money and done something good with it, something big, something important.
Maybe that’s what I should’ve done too.
My eyes prick with tears at the thought, and I bow my head so that Teddy won’t see.
“But you said no,” he continues, “and I’m not going to sit here like everyone else and pretend it’s because you were being noble. You said no because you’re a coward.”
Each word is a jab that lands square and true. I open my mouth to respond, then close it again. My mind feels muddled and thick and impossibly slow. I’m not sure how we got here, and I wish I knew how to get back out again.
“You passed up the opportunity of a lifetime because you were afraid. And because you didn’t have the guts to try doing something great with the money yourself.”
“That’s not—” I start to say, looking up at him again, but Teddy has too much momentum to stop now.
“You don’t want it—fine,” he says, his eyes blazing. “But you don’t get a say in what I do with it. You don’t get to sit there thinking I don’t deserve it. And you don’t get to judge me.”
Something inside me snaps back at this.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I do.”
He looks surprised. “What?”
“You might be right about all that other stuff,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “But I’m right about this. Nobody else is being honest with you. They’re all too busy fawning over you or waiting for you to throw a few bucks in their direction.” Or laughing at you, I almost say, thinking of the guys in the parking lot or the girls I overheard giggling about his updated wardrobe last week. “They all want something from you.”