Page 9 of Boyfriend
“Ooh, finance? That sounds hard. I'm currently suffering through Modern Global Markets.”
“Huh, I loved that class,” I admit. “Plus, the business degree is practical. I’ll be on my own after graduation. That’s why I accelerated my degree. But it’s been so stressful. And all my extra time is spent delivering wings to drunk hockey players, so there isn’t much else to tell about me.”
“Oh, sure there is,” he says. “If we’re dating, I would know more about you than the basic facts. What’s your favorite song? What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite color? Give me something to work with.”
“Let’s see.” I chuckle. “Food? Lately just anything that didn’t come out of the fryer at The Biscuit in the Basket. My favorite color is orange. My current favorite song is “Ain’t No Man” by the Avett Brothers.”
“Ooh, good one!” Weston says. “Put it on. Do you want to take the chorus or the verses?”
“Uh, what?” I reach for my phone and unlock it. Then I hand it to him, because Vermont has a law against holding a device while driving. “Go ahead and play it.”
“Okay, but you’re singing with me. We’ll do the chorus together.”
A few seconds later the guitar intro starts up. Weston starts clapping his hands with the syncopated beat. “Ready?” he says. And then he launches in.
And it’s rude not to join him, right? So I sing along. And we sing loud, the same way I would if I were alone.
Weston doesn’t embarrass easily, I guess. He sings every word of every verse, and I belt it out too. Three minutes later we’ve done the whole thing.
“Whew!” he says, leaning back against the headrest. “That was fun. I always sing loudly before tests too.”
“Is today stressful for you?” I ask. “This was your idea.”
He laughs. “Not at all. I’m fine, but you look ready to barf.”
Huh. He’s probably right. A trip to Dalton’s always stresses me out. Although the words you look ready to barf were not part of my fantasy date with Weston.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I won’t barf. They’re not really worth it. I just have to show my face on the holiday, make nice, eat some gourmet turkey and then it’s over until Christmas.”
“Fair enough. Where’s the rest of your family? Out of state?”
“Well…” Oh man. I was hoping he wouldn’t ask. I swallow carefully before speaking my truth. “This is actually all my family.”
“Oh,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. What a stupid question. Way to put my foot in it.”
“No, it’s okay. I never met my dad. And my mother passed away three years ago.” I can say it smoothly now. For a while there I couldn’t really talk about losing my mom. I don’t remember the last part of my senior year in high school. I spent it curled into a ball, in shock that my mother had taken my dog to the vet one morning, and then died in a car crash an hour later.
It’s not supposed to happen to a forty-year-old woman. But it did.
I clear my throat. “So tell me about you. I bet you come from a huge family.”
“Uh…” He chuckles nervously. “It’s kind of true. I have a million cousins. And an older sister and a younger brother. Thanksgiving can get rowdy.”
“That must be fun. No wonder you like the holiday—it must be a huge party. How big is your table?”
“Big,” he says. “And my Aunt Mercedes practically has to drive an eighteen-wheeler to shop for Thanksgiving.”
“I can’t even picture it,” I say. Although I’ve always wanted to be part of a big family. My mom didn’t marry Dalton until I was twelve. So for years it was just the two of us, living in various run-down apartments around the greater Burlington area.
My mother had been Dalton’s receptionist. He married her about eighteen months after his first wife left him. They were married for six years. So now he’s on wife number three.
I moved out about ten minutes after his recent wedding.
Dalton isn’t a monster. But I am not his child, and neither of us ever did a good job of pretending differently. He owed me literally nothing after my mother died. She had no assets to speak of. She cut back her working hours after she married him, because he wanted her to have time to take care of his home, and to cook and to entertain.
My mother loved this arrangement. She learned to play tennis. She went out to lunch with friends.
What she didn’t do was buy a life insurance policy. Or put any savings in my name. And since my mother entered her marriage with no assets, save for a beat-up car and a nice collection of 90s music on CD, there was nothing for me to inherit.
