Page 33 of My (Not So) Perfect Plan

I wander around through the rooms. Friends hail me but soon enough turn away to bigger and better adventures, like beer pong and girls like Tina who are well on their way to getting plastered.

After an hour of sitting around trying way too hard to be happy I order an uber and go home.

The rest of the weekend is just as bad. Texting with Claire, and then falling asleep to the sound of her voice Saturday and Sunday night are the highlights of my days.

We still hadn’t discussed the problem I had created in calling her my girlfriend. I haven’t thought about it either because I’m too scared to. I only know she is one of the few bright lights in what is becoming a depressing existence. My “dad” is hardly around anymore and seemed to make of a point of not being home whenever I was. Our interactions are even more stiff and uncomfortable than they were before and the way he avoids looking at me (because I was temporarily injured?) makes me wonder what it would take for him to look at me like he cared. I really try not to take out my surly mood on my mother, because I knew that isn’t fair to her, but it happens now and again, and then my mood deteriorates further as the guilt fills me.

As Monday wears on, though, anticipation sets in. I’m too jittery to watch movies and too bored to not do anything. I actually offer to fold clothes and manage to make it through two baskets before I take a shower and shave, style my hair, and spray on my most expensive cologne. My head is on a countdown timer despite all my talking myself back from the ledge.

“Hey, mom?” I ask a few minutes before Claire is due to arrive.

“Yes?” she peeks her head out of the laundry room down the hall.

“I’m taking Claire to get her driver’s license today.”

Mom comes down the hall and leans against the wall to my room while I lean on my crutches in my door way.

“That’s nice of you,” she says. I can tell she’s being careful about what she says to me lest I shut her out. But I know I owe it to her to be honest considering how much of a bear I’ve been for the past couple of days.

“Yeah. She tends to bring out the best in me.” I drop my head, unable to meet her gaze.

“Seems like you really like her.”

“Yeah. I do,” I nod.

Mom looks away. I thought she would be happy for me, but instead she just seems worried.

“Claire isn’t like the girls you usually date, Evan.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What if,” she purses her lips like she’s afraid of saying the wrong thing. “What if you don’t end up liking her as much as you think you do?”

I nod my head. “I know. I’m scared of that too.” I sigh and pick at a loose piece of tape on my crutches because it’s easier for me to think and speak without having to see how she’s responding to me.

“Like, maybe it’s just because we spend so much time together,” I continue. “Or maybe it’s just because it seems like she’s the only one of my peers that actually cares about my situation. I don’t know if those are enough for a relationship or not…. Or if it’s fair to her. What if my ego is just bruised because I can’t do football anymore and I’m using her like a pick me up? I don’t want to be that guy.”

Mom pats me on the shoulder and then reaches up to draw my chin down so she can kiss me on the cheek.

“You’ll be fine.” I can hear the confidence in her voice, which seems like a one eighty from her worry not two seconds ago.

“Why the sudden change of heart?” I ask as she walks back down the hall to the laundry room.

“Now I know that you are worrying about it, I don’t have to,” she explains with a smile. I pinch the bridge of my nose. She really has no idea how much I’m trying not to think about all these things.

Claire is a bundle of nerves on the way to the DMV. She drives and only has two mess-ups – a right turn on red without stopping and failing to check for cars on a yield. Thankfully, no one was there both times, but I made sure to emphasize the point. She did much better when she wasn’t panicking over the upcoming test.

I wait for her in the office while the testing officer takes her out. Now I’m nervous for her, worrying about all the ways this could go wrong, but when she comes back in, she has a huge smile on her face. She passed, barely, but passed.

The picture they take of her is surprisingly good. She looks like a model and I wonder why it is that most people, myself included before I really knew her, thought she was plain. She’s a beautiful girl, just quiet, unassuming, focused and determined.

“We should celebrate,” I say as we go out to my truck. “My surgery is tomorrow, so we should do something today. Ice cream?”

“I don’t know. I need to hurry up and get home and we still have your therapy and our tutoring to do.”

“Fine. How about a shake at the drive through then?”

She agrees to that and we hit up Dairy Queen for a few blizzards that we enjoy on the way to my house.

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