Wrong About the Guy (22 page)

I
had to tell Heather. We always shared the important stuff. And keeping this a secret from her would only make my betrayal worse when she eventually found out.

I called her from the car on my way back from school on Monday. After we'd said hi, I took a deep breath and told her that her friendship was one of the most important things in the world to me and that it was hard for me to tell her what I had to tell her.

“What's going on?” she said. “You're scaring me. Did you hear about college? You did, didn't you?”

“No. This is about George.”

“He told you he doesn't like me. Oh, God. Did you bring it up? Why would you bring it up?” The hysteria in her voice was mounting.

“It's not that!” Deep breath. “It's just . . . he and I are sort of going out now.”

“What?” she said. Then again.
“What?”

“I didn't know,” I said. “When we talked about him and you said you were interested, I swear I wasn't—or at least didn't know I was—or I would have told you. But then we were running some errands together and somehow I just realized that I liked him and he realized that he liked me and things kind of went from there.”

“Let me get this straight,” she said, her voice trembling and tight at the same time. “You waited until I said
I
liked him to decide that
you
liked him? Is that what you're saying?”

“The last thing I wanted to do was go behind your back or hurt you.”

“Oh, well, thanks,” she said. “Thanks for not wanting to hurt me.” Then, “What about everything you said? How he was too old for me? How it was weird for a guy his age to date a high school student? About how you didn't want to date until you were in college?”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I was stupid and wrong about everything, especially about myself.”

There was a long pause. Then: “Well,” she said in a very cold, very distant voice, “I guess this proves what I've always known, which is that the great and powerful Ellie Withers gets everything she wants and I don't get anything I want
ever
.”

“Heather—”

“I have to go,” she said, and hung up.

Once I was home, I tried texting and calling her but
she wouldn't respond, and later that night her mother answered her cell phone and told me to leave her alone, then hung up on me.

It hurt a lot. Especially since I blamed myself for her unhappiness: I'd thought she liked Aaron when she liked George, and I'd thought I didn't like anyone when I basically worshipped George. If I'd just been more aware, less dense . . . But the damage was done.

The one thing that cheered me up a little was that Luke and Mom went out to dinner alone that night, and Mom told me after they got back that Luke had—for the first time—let her talk freely about her concerns about Jacob and told her he'd read whatever she wanted him to with an open mind. “I've never loved him more,” she said, and even though she said it lightly, I don't think she was actually joking.

Tuesday was the last day of school before Thanksgiving. That afternoon the members of the Holiday-Giving Program assembled food baskets for the shelter residents. Students and their families had been donating nonperishables for the previous few weeks, and then that morning everyone brought fresh bread and frozen turkeys. Most of them were donated by school families, but Skyler's uncle had a friend whose family owned a supermarket chain, and they had donated a few dozen turkeys, so we were in good shape.

We gathered in the student lounge to pack the baskets, which were really just cardboard boxes, also donated by the supermarket. We had the core group of me, Ben, Skyler, Riley, and Arianna, and then a bunch of volunteers to help us. It was pretty hectic, but even with all the running around and heavy lifting, I couldn't miss the bolts of hatred Arianna was launching at me.

Yes, my self-proclaimed “best friend” (at least on Instagram) was now apparently my worst enemy. She sighed loudly when I gave directions, glowered when I thanked everyone for coming, turned her back on me whenever our paths crossed, and told everyone who would listen that I was a snob who thought that because my stepfather was famous, everyone was supposed to worship me. I knew exactly what she was saying, thanks to Riley, who spent the afternoon listening eagerly and reporting every word to me, despite my attempts to convince her that I actually didn't
want
to know every single horrible thing being said about me that afternoon.

“She's so awful,” Riley said with horrified delight. She liked drama. “She's just tearing you apart out there. Do you want me to tell her to stop? I will if you want me to.”

“I honestly don't care what she says about me,” I said. “I just want to get these baskets packed.”

I really
didn't
care about Arianna, but I was disappointed in Ben. He had always been friendly in a
businesslike kind of way. We had been good teammates. But now he was cold and standoffish, abrupt to the point of rudeness. Maybe I should have admired his loyalty to his girlfriend, but mostly I just felt disgusted with them both. Was I supposed to have tolerated her inappropriate snooping just
because
my stepfather was famous? I wished I hadn't said anything about it to Ben—and I wouldn't have if I'd known he was her boyfriend—but she was the one who had behaved badly, not me, and it bummed me out that Ben couldn't see that at all.

We finished packing up the boxes and loaded them into Skyler's mother's minivan, then Skyler, Ben, and I drove them to the shelter, where people there helped us unload them. The warmth and gratitude of both the staff and the residents made me feel a lot better. This was what mattered. Even Ben seemed touched enough by it to say an almost civil “Happy Thanksgiving” to me when we parted back at school.

A little while later, I walked into my house with that incredible feeling of lightness that comes from knowing you have five days of vacation ahead of you—and will be seeing your new boyfriend as often as possible during those five days—and found Lorena and Grandma sitting and chatting in the kitchen.

Lorena was a good listener and Grandma loved talking, so they had always gotten along well, but I think
the last couple of weeks, when they'd spent a lot of time alone together in the house, had turned them into real friends.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, joining them at the table.

Grandma said, “Your mom and Luke took Jacob to an appointment with that doctor she wanted him to see.”

“The developmental pediatrician? I thought they couldn't get an appointment for like two more months.”

“The office called this morning—there was a sudden cancellation.”

I raised my eyebrows. “And Luke Weston's kid just happened to jump to the top of the waiting list?”

“We don't know that,” Grandma said primly.

“I'm just glad for Mom's sake.”

They walked in a little while later. Luke was carrying Jacob, and Mom was close behind them. Lorena was instantly on her feet; she held her arms out for Jacob and whisked him off.

Mom said, “Who wants to make me a cup of tea?” as she sank down on a chair.

“I will,” said Grandma, getting up. “You relax and tell us what happened at the appointment.”

Luke said, “I should go work out. I had to cancel with my trainer today.”

“Not yet,” Mom said, and patted the chair next to
her. “Let's all talk about this for a second.”

He sat down and reached for her hand. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of their clasped fingers—whatever they'd heard hadn't driven them further apart. “What did the doctor say?”

They looked at each other and then Mom said slowly, “She does think Jacob falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. But she also thinks he's incredibly bright and that he can learn pretty much anything we want him to, with just a little bit of work.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt like I should have a bigger reaction to the news, but we'd been inching toward that possibility for so long that I guess deep down I'd already kind of accepted it. “It makes sense, right? What do you think, Luke?”

“You'll be happy to know I listened quietly to the doctor.”

“Because you promised me?”

He nodded. “But also because you were right. It was time for me to shut up and listen. Plus I really liked her.”

I beamed at him. I felt like a proud parent. “And?”

“I told her I still don't like the idea of labeling a two-year-old, and she said she completely understood and that the label didn't matter anyway—the important thing was just to recognize that Jacob's a little behind other kids his age and we need to help him catch up. Which I'm fine with.”

“Me too,” Mom said.

“Whatever it takes.” He brought Mom's hand to his mouth for a swift kiss. “Can I go now?”

“You may go,” she said. “And thank you,” she whispered to me as he left the kitchen. “I don't know what you said to him, but it made all the difference.”

“I have awesome powers of persuasion.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Speaking of which . . . can I persuade you to let me stay out past one tonight? I'll just be at George's. You know you can trust us.”

“Curfew's midnight,” she said. “Same as always.” Grandma put a cup of tea in front of her and Mom nodded her thanks while Grandma sat down with her own cup.

“I know,” I said. “But I'm on vacation. And you should be proud of me for not sneaking home later than curfew without permission even though you're usually asleep and don't even notice what time I get home. I'm always honest with you. Which is why you can trust me. And it's not like I want to go drinking or anything. I just want to hang out in George's apartment and watch movies with him, and it's so much nicer not to have to rush home early.”

“That's all?” she said. “You're just going to watch movies?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I used to tell my mother that, too,” she said, and the two of them looked at each other and laughed a little too loudly.

“Don't worry,” Grandma said to her. “I already had the condom talk with her.”

“And I endured it without complaining,” I said. “For that alone I should get one night without a curfew.”

Mom laughed some more and gave in.

C
rystal took the baby (and Megan, who never seemed to get any holiday off) back to her parents' house in Boston for Thanksgiving, so Mom invited Michael and Aaron to have dinner with us.

We ate in the dining room, which we saved for big formal dinners—which meant we almost never used it. I don't know about the adults' end of the table, but Aaron, Jacob, and I had fun at ours. We piled mounds of mashed potatoes on our plates and sent cranberries crashing through them on skateboards made of turkey, while Aaron told me stories about life in the hotel—it sounded like he was basically an older, male version of Eloise, wheedling everyone who worked there to give him free food and drinks, making friends with the other guests, and driving the staff crazy. He was having fun, he said.

“I'm over all the drama,” he told me right after he
had stuck green beans in the corners of his mouth and pretended to be a walrus to amuse Jacob, who just stared at him, then looked away again, unimpressed. Aaron tossed the beans back onto his plate. “I'm avoiding it in the future.”

“Make it your New Year's resolution,” I suggested.

“That'll be one of them,” he said. “Sticking close to good friends I can trust—that's another.”

I fluttered my hands to my chest in an exaggerated
You mean me?
kind of way and he grinned and raised his wineglass to me. We were both drinking wine, but I was still on my first glass and he was on his second. Or third.

The plates had all been cleared when George and Jonathan arrived—they'd had dinner with the Nussbaum clan first, but had been invited to join us for dessert.

I watched from a distance as Luke got up to shake George's hand and Mom reached up to give him a hug and a kiss, and I felt as lucky as people were always telling me I was.

Jonathan circled around the table and reached me first. He leaned over to give me a kiss and whispered in my ear, “I want you to know I don't approve of this at all. You're way too good for him.” He cuffed me on the shoulder and nodded in Aaron's direction. “Hello,” he said coldly. Apparently (and probably not coincidentally) he shared his brother's dislike of Aaron.

Jacob stretched up his arms and Jonathan scooped
him up. “All right then,” he said, and carried Jacob over to the adults' end of the table, where he sat down next to Luke, arranging Jacob comfortably on his lap.

George said hello to all the adults before coming to our end of the table, so he reached us a minute after his brother.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, and rested his hand on the back of Jacob's former seat. “Mind if I sit here?”

“Do you really want to know or are you just being polite?” Aaron asked.

“I'll take that as a yes,” George said, and sat. I nodded a greeting at him but didn't indicate in any other way that for the previous couple of days we'd basically spent every hour we could alone in his room, twisted around each other. I got home at four in the morning on Tuesday night—or, rather, Wednesday morning—but last night I had to be back at midnight. Mom wanted me up at a normal hour to help her get the house ready for guests.

I hadn't told Aaron about me and George yet. This was the first time I'd seen Aaron since things had changed, and it seemed awkward to just bring it up out of context. And why should I rush to tell him about my private romantic life when he'd kept his a secret from me? It felt good to turn the tables, to have information he didn't. I mean, if he'd asked me specifically about either George or my love life, I might have said
something, but Aaron didn't ask people questions about themselves. He liked the conversation to be about him.

The three of us chatted for a while about nothing important. Aaron kept trying to make George feel like an outsider: he'd whisper funny little observations into my ear that George couldn't hear and catch my eye whenever George was talking, making faces and mouthing words to distract me from listening.

At one point, when George was still in the middle of telling us a story about his sister's boyfriend, who had come to their Thanksgiving dinner and been terrified at the number of brothers all sizing him up, Aaron cut him off by turning to me and abruptly saying, “I feel like we've been sitting here forever. My butt hurts.”

“We could all move to the living room.”

“How about we sneak out to a movie?”

I glanced over at George.

“You could come too if you wanted,” Aaron said to him begrudgingly.

“Thanks,” George said. “I don't want to strand my brother—we came in one car.”

“So how about it, Ellie?”

“I'm fine staying,” I said.

Aaron leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I'm going to scream if we sit here any longer. Can't we just run out and do something? Anything? Just us two?”

“I'm really happy here,” I said, and shifted sideways
in my chair so I could lean back against George. His arms went around me just like I knew they would—not in a proprietary way, just settling me against his chest. “You see?” I said to Aaron. “Happy.”

He stared at us. “Excuse me?” he said.

I put my hands over George's and pressed them hard against my arms. “He's a really good tutor,” I explained.

It took him another moment. “You two?” he said. “Seriously?”

“Define ‘seriously,'” I said. “I mean, I make a lot of jokes about it. . . .”

“I can see why.” He forced a laugh. “This is . . . unexpected. You could have said something.”

“Yeah, I really should have,” I agreed. “I hate when people sneak around and don't tell you the truth about their love lives, don't you?”

“Ah, I see what you did there. Clever.” He stood up. “Excuse me. I'm going to need a lot more wine to process this.” He picked up his glass and stalked down to the far end of the table, where another bottle had just been opened.

We sat quietly for a while. I watched Jacob—now on Grandma's lap—methodically stab his pumpkin pie with a fork until it was completely dead. Apparently he wasn't a fan.

“When you move your head, your hair tickles my nose,” George said sleepily.

“Your nose tickles my hair.”

He slid his fingers up my neck and tugged at my curls from underneath. “There's so much of it. Maybe you should cut it all off.”

“Never!”

“It's just dead cells, you know.”

“Yes, but my dead cells are so much more beautiful than anyone else's.”

“Vain, aren't we?”

I tilted my head back to look up at him. “Have you
seen
my hair? It's extraordinary.”

“It is,” he said.

My phone buzzed and I moved back into my own seat to glance at it.

Meet me in the kitchen.

“I'll be right back,” I said, and got up. I went into the kitchen, which was amazingly clean. The servers Carlos had arranged for us had left already, but they had washed all the dishes and counters and put all the leftovers in the refrigerator. You wouldn't even have known that an entire Thanksgiving meal had been cooked and eaten there that day—except for the good turkey and pie smells that lingered in the air.

Aaron was leaning back against the counter, his arms tightly folded across his chest, his wineglass next to him.

“We need to talk about this,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it's so clearly a mistake.”

“And again I say, why?”

“Because you're—” He waved his hands in the air. “You're fireworks and symphonies. He's moldy books and everything that's boring. And he's way too old for you.”

I regarded him amiably. “Aaron, my love, are you really going to go there? Living in that glass house of yours and all?”

“That's
why
!” he said, flailing his arms around. I was beginning to think maybe he'd had too much to drink. “I've been down that road. Learn from me. There are healthy relationships and sick ones. There are right people and wrong people. I can teach you, little Ellie grasshopper. I can lead you in the right direction, but you have to trust me.”

I put my hand on his arm. “Here's the thing: I like George a lot, and if you can't be nice to him and about him,
he's
not going to be the one I cut out of my life. Got it?”

“Really?” he said like he couldn't believe it.

“So really. Just be a good friend and be happy for me.”

“Bleargh,” he said miserably. “Happiness.”

I squeezed his wrist. “I know things have been bad. They're going to get better.”

He pushed my hand away. “Traitor,” he said. “You
were supposed to belong to me. What about
my
needs? What if I'm sad and lonely and you're the only person I can stand to be with, but you're off with
him
?”

“Then I guess you'll have to wait for me to come back.”

“If I have to, I will,” he said. “But I'd rather have you all to myself. I'm supposed to be the most important guy in your life.”

“Yeah, no,” I explained.