Emily Franklin - Principles Of Love 06 - Labor Of Love (5 page)

"A pleasure to meet you, Love." Mrs.Addison shakes my hand.

"We'll see you again soon?" Mr. Addison shakes my hand and looks at Charlie. "The Silver and White dinner?" Charlie's lips go in clench mode again and he nods, so Mr. Addison looks back to me."Silver and White, then."

"Lovely," Mrs. Addison says and without another word, whisks her firstborn, Parker, into the cavernous house to change for tennis.

Silver and White? Harvard? What? The whole interac tion at the Addison abode feels foreign and filled with con fusing ideas and issues, which is what happens, I guess, when so much is left unsaid.This reminds me of how Charlie was all that time in between our first getting together the fall of my sophomore year, and the incommunicado period that happened afterward. He never said what really happened when I thought he'd stood me up; he never cleared up my assumption that he was a local fisherman rather than a Harvard castoff taking a break from the moneyed set. Only

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when directly asked by me this summer were all of those mysteries unraveled. Just like Parker, he speaks only when directly confronted. Maybe that's the Addison way--this casual air of elegance that appears very easy when in fact it's all a cover.

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�H o?" In the passenger seat of Charlie's red pickup, bouncing along the sand-edged roads on the way back into Edgartown, I can almost shrug off the weirdness we left be hind at his parents' house.

He sighs, one arm resting on the open window, the other steering. Meaning, no arm for me."So . . . now you see it."

I turn so I'm facing him. Even though he's got eyes on the road and hands to himself and the car, I can at least at tempt some closeness. Isn't this the same guy who called me right away after I went to LA? Who kept saying how much he missed me? "Now I see what?" I wait."Charlie?"

Without warning or signaling, he pulls the truck over to the right side of the road, putting the gears in park before answering me. "I am so sorry, Love."The visor, which has a habit of falling down, does, and Charlie whips it into place

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with more vengeance than befits the action. "Man.They're incredible, aren't they? Two minutes back in their clutches and I'm like a friggin' droid."

I lick my lips and pivot so my back is nearly resting on the passenger-side door, stretching the seat belt until I figure we're parked and just undo it."You weren't that bad."

Charlie finally looks at me directly."That bad? Thanks."

"Hey--you were the one who suggested it," I say and then let loose. "I haven't even gotten so much as a hug from you and I came all the way back from LA only to be greeted by Mr. Cold and Unemotional--a vastly different species from the person who called me every two seconds while I was gone. Not to mention having to contend with your parents--who--and this might not come as a huge shock-surprise--are not the most comforting of creatures." I get all of this out in one breath and feel an immediate release.

Charlie laughs half out his nose and then lets the sound out of his mouth. "See? There's my Love. Where were you for the past hour and a half during that stifled lemonade?"

"Where was I?" I raise my eyebrows and smooth my hair, then twist it back on itself so it stays in a bun."Where were you? I at least have the excuse of never having met your parents--or Parker, for that matter--but you . . ."

"Yeah, I live there," Charlie says in a clipped and sarcastic

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tone that would be funny if it weren't so pointed."So--the Fourth of July dinner, right?" I nod."I make my announce ment about going back to school. I swear, the reaction from my parents was like I'd been critically ill and then suddenly in remission. . . ."

Charlie looks at me right after he says this and then blushes. Comparing his former student status to being sick might be truthful but it doesn't hit me well--my aunt's death from breast cancer is still too recent, too raw, for me to appreciate the comparison."Sorry."

I shake my head."It's okay."

"Anyway, my point is . . . they're basically all about ap pearances. My parents love that I'm going back to school. Another Harvard boy--"

"What about Parker?"

"What about him?" Charlie asks."He sets the gold stan dard and I'm doomed to follow in his footsteps. Mikayla gets off without the familial duty because she's a girl--and my parents have lower standards for her. Pathetic, but true."

"God, it sounds awful," I say, my mouth grimacing as though I've tasted something rotten. "Mikayla isn't subject to scrutiny because of her gender?"

"No--she's totally subjected to it, just a different kind. My mother attacks the way Mikayla looks, whom she dates, her clothes--and Parker gets off scot-free; he always has.

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Even when we were kids, he'd do something wrong--break a glass, drink my father's scotch, throw a party at their house--and I'd somehow get blamed."

I reach out and touch Charlie's arm again and this time he responds taking my hands in his. Feeling his skin on mine brings a wash of warmth over me and for the first time since seeing him again, I feel connected."I missed this." I squeeze his palms.

"I missed this." Charlie slips an arm around my back, pulling me into him, and places the other on the back of my head, holding me at an angle while kissing me.The kind of kiss they do in movies when a sailor is shipping out to sea for a year.

"So," I say when we pause the kissing.

"So, what was the deal with you and the beer?" Charlie gives me a quizzical look.

My hand flies to my mouth."Was it that obvious?"

Charlie's lips cover his teeth and he nods."Um, yeah."

"Do you think your parents knew?"

"Yep."

I tuck and retuck strands of my hair that have freed themselves of the bun."Great. Now they think I'm a lush as well as undeserving of you. . . ."

"No. They don't think that at all.They're not stupid--they saw you with Parker.They know what he's like. . . ." Charlie

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thinks of something, then looks at me, his eyes flashing from amused to concerned."Why were you with him?"

From his mouth, his expression, I gather that Charlie isn't concerned about the beer, more that I was with Parker."Are you asking if . . ." I hope my voice conveys the unlikelihood of what I think Charlie means.

"So . . . the first thing you should know is that, despite the fact that I'm always getting blame for whatever crap Parker pulls, he's incredibly competitive with me."

I nod, still enjoying the feel of Charlie's arms around me, but going cross-eyed from talking and looking at him so close. I push back a little but lace my fingers with his."It was embarrassing--I showed up at your cottage. . . . I mean, your parents' cottage, and thought he was you. . . ." Charlie clearly doesn't like that I mixed up my boyfriend with his ultracompetitive brother. "But of course, you're far better looking and intelligent. . . ." I counter Charlie's frown with some humor and it works.

"And the beer? Just the inevitably bad Parker influ ence? It's so typical--he's that guy--like his persona at Hadley--the one who's so laid-back you forget he has an agenda. . . ."

"He's not evil, is he?"

"No--it's not that bad. It's more like, he's magnetic, you know? Everyone loves him--friends, girls, guys; even my

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stoic parents crumble around him.You don't know what it's like with siblings. . . ."

I push farther away this time, reclaiming my limbs."Ac tually, I don't. But I will. Probably . . ."

Charlie's mouth drops open."You mean your dad's hav ing another kid?"

I make a face. "No! I mean, I guess he could although I never thought of that--and I'm not sure I could handle any other big news at this point. . . ."

"Why, what other big, exciting things are happening?" Charlie looks at me and waits. "Are you really going to Harvard?"

I shake my head. "You know you just sounded totally like your parents, right? You ask me this wide-open ques tion and then answer it in your own way--"

"Oh, man. Just put me out of my misery now. . . ." Char lie starts up the truck, and has to turn the key twice to make the engine turn over.

"You'd think with a house like that, your parents might opt to fix the work truck. . . ."

Charlie shakes his head, the sunlight catching the ends of his hair through the open window. He has a standard prep school guy cut--short on the back and sides, longer on the top, but it's grown out now, not to the point of being shaggy, but long enough to convey images of summer fishing, of

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relaxing in a way I realize he won't be for long. "They'd never put money into this heap." He pats the seat. "That's the whole thing, isn't?"

I nod, understanding what he means. "Yeah--money into a car is so new money, right?" He nods and turns the large wheel so we're back on the road."Your whole family-- and I hope this doesn't sound too overgeneralized, but it will--is the embodiment of WASP upper-class prepster." I think back to the scene by the pool. "There's no actual ill will toward me, only a gentle not-so-subtle digging into my background."

"Yeah, well, to them--sameness is good, you know? It's like you went to Hadley and didn't interview, which over laps with their good son, Parker, and then Harvard, which is still the golden ticket. . . ."

I sigh and look out the window at the greenery--summer is reaching its peak, with all the blooms and dark leaves, the high grass and thick air. It feels like a roller coaster, and I know when we reach Illumination Night it will feel like I've hit the apex, and the quick ride to the bottom will carry me faster than ever to fall."I hate that I caved like that."

"Like what?" Charlie takes a right on the road that will lead us straight to Edgartown center and looks at me as he turns.

"In the course of a few minutes I went from being me--

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to being this girl who overemphasizes Hadley or plucks Har vard out of the heap of colleges just because . . ." I pause.

"Because you thought it was an in. I get it.We all do it."

"But I don't," I say and look at him seriously. "I'm not that person. Or don't want to be. I mean, really, did you no tice me because I was just like everyone else? Are you drawn to me because I fit in seamlessly?"

Charlie shakes his head. "No. Definitely not. But at the same time . . . ," he sighs and chews on his upper lip. I think about his lips, studying the way the top one forms a soft, cursive M shape, thinking about the times they've touched mine, and wondering where all of those times will lead."I've made my decision, and my parents are supporting me for the first time in a long while."

"So you're going back to Harvard for them?" We're closer to town now, emerging from the bubble of being to gether, and my heart starts to pound with a different rhythm than the way it did when Charlie finally kissed me. In my chest, that organ beats out feelings of nervousness since I don't know quite what to expect at Slave to the Grind II when I get there. But it also registers contentment--being in a place I love with a boy I really, really like.

"I'm going back for me, but the fact that it pleases them--that doesn't hurt, either."

The traffic merges at the busy island that forks off to Oak

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Bluffs where Chili and Haverford Pomroy live. I imagine Chris there, pining for Haverford--or maybe seeing him again and knowing he's taken will lessen the attraction. It could go either way--you see someone you can't have and you feel nada, or you see them and feel everything.

"It makes sense--of course it feels reassuring to have your parents' approval."

"And funding," Charlie adds."I got by just fine working-- but . . ." He steps on the brake as we wait out the incredibly slow last portion of the drive. "It's not my intention to go back to being the way I was pre-year off." He avoids looking at me, instead focusing on an imaginary mark up ahead. "I was an asshole, pretty much."

"I'm so glad I didn't meet you then."

"Why, you don't have interest in jerks?"

"No--not just that. I think I have a hard time seeing people for other than what they are when I first know them. It was difficult enough to get past you ditching me at the diner that time. . . ." I bite my lip remembering how much that hurt, how relieved I was to find out he didn't show up because he was rescuing his sister. "It's something I need to work on, I guess. If I met you in your asshole phase, I might never have seen you for anything else."

"But now you see the real me," Charlie says."Right?"

I nod.The real Charlie is the one I met on the docks, the

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one who wasn't Ivy League�driven, who wasn't concerned that his pockets were empty. "I do. . . . Only--you were a little . . ."

"What?" He presses the gas and we lurch forward, only to stop again by the supermarket.

"Off--you were kind of off around your parents."

"Was I?" Charlie shrugs. "I didn't notice it--but it's en tirely possible. I had you and your drunken scratches. . . ." He leans over and traces one of the bramble marks on my thigh, his finger leaving tingles up my leg."You were a distraction and--you did show up out of the blue."

"So I'm to blame for your weirdness?" I say it half joking, half not, and wait for his response.

"I'm still getting used to being back in favor with the other Addisons. Mikayla--she never cared. She's always cool. But everyone else . . . they shut you out, you know? You do something other than what's expected of you and it's not just the money that disappears." He looks at me."Everything else does, too."

"Well, I'm not like that." I offer this not only to placate him, but to show him I'm there for him no matter what path he chooses. "I don't care if you're a lawyer, a professional clown, or a mechanic."

Charlie laughs."I love that you specified professional clown, like if I were just an amateur clown that wouldn't be okay."

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I cross my arms over my chest, faux-official."A girl's got to have her standards."We laugh and the traffic finally gives way.We pass the pizza place, the fish market, and the road to the beach, and my pulse races more. I swallow."Charlie?"