Page 66 of The Goal

“I thought maybe because this is your last year and you guys weren’t doing well, that you’d be allowed to spend the entire break with me.”

“Doesn’t work that way. Besides, soon I’ll be underfoot all the time and you’ll be begging me to leave,” I warn her.

But even as I say it, my mind zips back to Sabrina. She’s going to be in Boston for the next three years. I wonder how we’re going to make that work.

I wonder if she even wants to make it work.

It’d be a lot easier if we’d met last year. Or hell, even last semester, but we’ve only got a few more months where we’ll be in the same zip code, and for reasons I’m not fully prepared to examine, especially with Mom at my side, the coming distance between us bothers the shit out of me.

I fight the urge to climb back on the plane and return to Boston. But I’ll have to settle for texting, phone calls, and maybe if I’m lucky, a little video chatting. I’d like to see how she uses her toy when I’m not around.

I nearly run into Mom’s SUV, lost in my thoughts about Sabrina and her vibrator. I clear my throat. “Mind if I drive?”

She tosses me the keys. “I’d never complain about you being aroundtoo much. You know I’d love it if you came back and lived with me.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening. No woman alive wants to go out with a guy who lives with his mom,” I say, holding the door open for her.

She climbs in with a frown. “What’s wrong with living with your mother?

“Everything, and you know it.” Then I lean forward and press another kiss on her forehead to take away the sting.

During the four-hour ride home from Dallas, she catches me up on the local gossip of Patterson. “Maria Solis’s daughter is home from UT. She gets her hair cut in Austin now, but she still has the nicest manners. She stopped in the other day just to say hi.”

I nod absently, wondering if I had invited Sabrina to come home with me for the holidays if she would have said yes. I figured the invitation would be unwelcome, not just because she’d view it as a sign we were moving too fast, but because she needs the money from work. Before I left, she was nearly beside herself with happiness about the time and a half she was going to be making.

“You should ask her out.” Mom’s voice penetrates my daydreams again.

“Who?” I ask.

“Maria Solis’s daughter,” she replies impatiently.

I glance away from the road to give her an incredulous stare. “You want me to date Daniela Solis?”

“Why not? She’s gorgeous and smart.” Mom sits back in her seat and crosses her arms.

“She’s also gay.”

Her mouth falls open. “Dani Solis is gay?”

“I guess the appropriate term islesbian,” I say, remembering my gender studies course.

“Are you sure? Maybe she’s bi. I know they say kids experiment in college.”

“She took Cassie Carter to prom! You did both their hair.”

“I thought they were friends.”

“They had to go as friends because the prom folks wouldn’t let them attend as a couple.”

The small West Texas town I grew up in is a tad on the conservative side. Dani and Cassiewerefriends, only ones that kissed and felt each other up in the hallway. And drove every teenage boy in eyeballing distance right out of their ever-loving minds. I’d spent many a teenage night fantasizing about the things those two girls did in private. It was totally inappropriate, but the majority of my thoughts from about age ten to seventeen fell into the inappropriate category.

Mom slumps in her seat. She’d obviously worked out an elaborate plan in her mind about Dani and me getting together.

“Remember when I told you that I met a girl?” I say slowly, deciding that I better get this out there now before she starts trying to pair me off with every single girl in Patterson.

“Oh?” Her voice is guarded. “I thought it wasn’t a thing?”

“It is now. Look, you’d like her. She’s got perfect grades, works two jobs, and just got accepted into Harvard Law.”

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