Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) (18 page)

“As long as you keep attacking John, I don’t have any
thing to say to you,” I said. It hurt me to cut her out that
w
ay, but I wasn’t going to take her constant, ignorant
bashing of John.

“I don’t trust him, Denise. I wish you didn’t, either.
You’re only going to get hurt.”

I started walking in the direction of my car.

She followed me, calling my name repeatedly.
“Denise. Dating out of your race only causes trouble.
Look what happened to my mom. Bethany still has never
met her father.”

I stopped and turned to look at her.

She held open the passenger-side door to her car.
“Get in. It’s too cold to stand out here.”

I got in and so did she. She started the engine up and
we sat there hugging ourselves, waiting for the air coming
out of the vents to get warm.

“Bethany’s only my half-sister. Her father’s white,”
Astoria said.

“I thought she was just really light-skinned.”

Astoria ran a hand over her face and shook her head.
“No. This man and my mom were fooling around. He
never meant her any good. The moment she told him she
was pregnant, he said he didn’t want anything to do with
it. He told her to get rid of it or give it away. And that
was the last she saw of him.”

“Astoria, that’s terrible,” I said, reaching out and put
ting my hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah, and I don’t want to see that happen to you,
Denise.”

“I know you’re worried, and that’s a terrible thing
your mom had to go through, but that was a long time
ago, Astoria. Things have changed.”

“
Twenty-eight years isn’t all that long a time ago.”
“It is to me, but let’s just say it’s not. John’s not that
guy. John is not Bethany’s father.”

“He’s close enough.”

“You’re judging John without getting to know him,
Astoria. How does that make you any better than the
people you show so much anger toward?”

“John’s perfect, huh? He’s been so wonderful to you,
right?” Astoria narrowed her eyes at me.

“He’s a good guy. Nobody’s perfect.”

“He’s a lying, manipulative white male who thinks he has all the power and the world revolves around him and he always gets what he wants. I don’t have to be all up
underneath him or spread my legs for him to know that.”

“That’s it. I’m out of here,” I said, seeing that Astoria
was determined to remain ignorant about this.

“You know I’m right and you don’t want to hear it.”

“I know you’re being ignorant. You want to be small-
minded and mean because of the things other people
have done that nobody can control? Certainly not John?
Fine. But I don’t have to sit here and listen to it.” I got
out of the car.

“Go be his sex toy, then, ’til he gets tired of you and
goes back to Sasha.”

I slammed the car door behind me in response to
that.

HOME TO CONNECTICUT

I was high on love all through the first part of winter
break. I was home with my family for Christmas and I
was going to meet John’s parents for New Year’s in
Connecticut. John had earned extra points with my par
ents by calling them for Christmas. They loved him. I
loved him. Things were perfect.

And then I got to Connecticut. I took the train up
and John picked me up at the train station in part of his
Christmas present. His parents had given the
Kompressor to Thom, John’s younger brother, who was a
sophomore at Princeton. John had his parents’ S-Class
that was only a year old. And John’s parents had a new S-
Class in addition to their older Mercedes SUV. So every
body traded up.

“Hey.” I grinned after a nice, long, warm, make-you
forget-it’s-December-in-Connecticut hello kiss.

“Hey you,” he said, hugging me close to him. “How was your trip?”

“Decent. I mean, my back hurts a little,” I said as he
picked up my suitcase.

“I’ll take care of that later,” he said with a mischievous
smile. I smiled back, hoping so. “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Let’s grab something on the way back.”

“Okay,” I said. I thought it was a little weird that we
weren’t going straight back to his house. But I had never
met parents before. I was a little nervous. And I was in no
real hurry to get to his house. However, I couldn’t help
observing, neither was he.

We stopped at a small diner near the train station in
Stamford. John lived not too far away in Greenwich. His dad commuted to Manhattan. His firm did a lot of work
with hedge funds and so they worked with all these
financial heavyweights. John’s mom worked at a firm that
was also somewhere on Wall Street. I didn’t really know
all the particulars. John still had not opened up about his
family. Every time I asked, he gave me an elusive reply
that always concluded with something about the fact that I would meet them over winter break.

He seemed a little anxious, but I tried to ignore it. I
was just happy to be with him. We hadn’t gotten to spend
a lot of time together since we’d started dating. We’d basi
cally had Thanksgiving break and a few moments in
between studying for finals. And most of that, we hadn’t
even been alone. Either my family or friends, minus
Astoria, had been around. It didn’t bother me any. Out of
John’s friends, only Ral hung out with us. The others
didn’t spend a lot of time around me. I think they
thought I was shady because of what had gone down with
Sasha.

That afternoon, I thought John was probably second-
guessing himself and that made him act strangely. I
c
ouldn’t stop thinking that had the roles been reversed, I
would have been second-guessing myself, too. I tried to tell myself that those feelings were just related to nerves
and being in a new place surrounded by strangers, but I wasn’t so sure.

“So how was your Christmas?” I asked, not really
knowing what to say.

“Okay. How was yours? Did you like your gift?” John
fired at me rapidly. Yeah, he was being weird. Even for
John. I smiled. He had gotten me a good gift, though. A
gift card to Barnes & Noble with a very sweet card about
that first night of studying being the best night of his life. I hadn’t been able to stop smiling.

“It was great. To both. How’d you like your gift?”

“Considering I already knew what it was?” John
asked. We laughed. So I hadn’t been so slick at finding
out what his size was and whether or not he liked the
sweater I wanted to buy him. I had never bought a guy a
gift before. Not a boyfriend, anyway. And I’m not a very
creative gift-giver. I hadn’t wanted to mess up. “I loved it.
Thanks.”

“Sure,” I said, smiling. I jumped as my phone
vibrated. I took it out of my pocket. I had a text message from Astoria.

Are you in the Whiter Wonderland yet?
it read.

I closed my phone and tossed it aside. Astoria was still at it. She’d been a little hurt we wouldn’t have our whole
one-year-old tradition of getting drunk at yet another
trashed Bottom club. And she felt I was choosing John
over her and good sense. I couldn’t see why she expected
m
e to want to spend time with her when all she did was
harass me about John.

“Astoria?” John asked.

I nodded.

John shook his head, looking out of the window.
“Your friends don’t like me very much, huh?”

“I could say the same about your friends,” I said.

John didn’t say anything. He didn’t even defend him
self like he usually did by telling me his roommates were
not his friends and that Ral liked me and that I shouldn’t worry about anyone else. He just kept staring out of the
window.

“My family likes you. Suse likes you. Who cares what
Astoria thinks? You know she’s crazy, anyway.”

“Denise, would it matter if they didn’t?” John said,
suddenly turning to me. There was an intensity in his
eyes that freaked me out a little. It was almost despera
tion. I didn’t really know what to say. I was glad our food
came at that moment. I started in on my Cobb salad and then realized John hadn’t even touched his fork.

“What?” I asked.

He was still staring at me. “Would it matter if your
family didn’t like me?” John asked, his eyes still trained on me.

I shrugged and pretended to be very interested in my
salad. I mixed my salad dressing in and tried to ignore his
intense gaze.

“It would matter, wouldn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t it matter to you?” I countered. I getting
more and more edgy. I was already nervous about
meeting his parents. He was only making it worse.

“Not really,” John said with a shrug. He sat back in the booth and went back to staring out of the window.

“John, have you invited me up here knowing your parents have a problem with it? And you didn’t tell me?” I said, suddenly losing my appetite.

“No. They’re gonna love you,” John said softly, still
looking out of the window. I dropped my fork onto my
plate with a sigh.

“Aren’t you gonna eat?”

“I guess,” he said with a shrug, turning his eyes
directly to his plate. What was with him? He was
avoiding my eyes when I looked at him, but staring at me like some kind of freak when he thought I wasn’t looking.

“What is it, John? You’re acting really weird about
this. If your parents have a problem with me, I want to
know about it. If they don’t like me for some reason and
they haven’t even met me, I want to know about it. Is it
because I’m black? Poor? What?”

John finally looked up at me. A strange look flickered
in his eyes. It was gone before I was sure I’d seen it. “It’s
just—I think they really want me to be with Sasha.”

I wasn’t convinced. But I sighed, nodding. I picked up my fork. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but I wanted to
take my time getting to the house. I had a feeling John wasn’t telling me the truth, whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.

We ate the rest of our meal in relative silence. By the
time the check came, my stomach was in knots. John
paid and we left. I was thanking Mercedes overtime for
seat warmers as we got in. It was freezing out. I already d
idn’t like Connecticut. I didn’t like John because of the
way he was acting. And I didn’t like Astoria because I was
feeling more and more that she was right.

“What are you thinking about?” John asked as we
pulled out of the parking lot.

“Oh, nothing,” I said airily. If John could lie, I could lie.

I knew I was out of my league when John drove into
a gated community. I knew I was in trouble when I saw
the size of the houses. These things could fit three or four
of my parents’ house in them. And I knew I was in the
shit when John pulled up in front of the biggest one I’d
seen at the back of the community. I thought for a
moment maybe we weren’t there yet. Maybe we had
stopped at the mayor’s house for a minute for some
reason. Then I saw that we had parked behind John’s old
Kompressor. My heart jumped into my throat and my
stomach lurched. My Cobb salad wanted to revisit me in
a really unpleasant way.

“So are we just gonna sit here all day?” John asked with an awkward grin.

No. You’re going to take me back to the train station
because I don’t know what I was thinking by coming here
, I
thought, but I said with the weakest smile I’d ever given
in my life, “Let’s go.”