Page 68 of The Progressions

Miss Gail herself spoke, somewhere in the background of my thoughts. “There’s a lot of natural light, which is lovely.”

“And the windows are new,” Iva said, leafing through the disclosures. “They’ve redone a lot of this house but it was a family place, not flippers. I wonder what’s under this carpet…Kasia, wake up!”

“What? I like it,” I told them, and then realized that they’d moved on. “No, I don’t like the carpet,” I said. It was much the same color as my mustard dress.

“It’s all in great shape, though,” Miss Gail put in. “You can see that they were taking care of this place.” Baby Balderston, still just baby Balderston, made an unhappy noise in his carrier and they both focused on him.

This was a nice house, but it was also the third one we’d seen and I felt much the same as he did. I was ready to go, although I wasn’t going to cry in the same heartbreaking way. I had some homework to do because no, I hadn’t quite dropped out yet. When I’d had the meeting with the registrar at the college the week before, she had given me more to think about.

“You don’t have much to go to complete your degree,” she had told me as she looked over my transcript. “I would be much happier if you took a leave if you’re absolutely not able to continue this semester.”

I was able to continue, because I could still handle all this—but the point was, I didn’t know if I wanted to. More like, I didn’t know if I should. I had told her about the full-time admin position I’d applied for, the one with benefits and better pay, and she had suggested that I wait until I knew if I got it before I made any decisions about school.

“You have a little more time. Actually, I’ll put a note here about giving you a longer grace period,” she said, but it was coming down to the wire and I hadn’t heard yet about the new job.

The funny thing was, it was hard to be too worried about any of that, because…Tyler. I realized that I was smiling all the time, like at strangers in the grocery store and at my professors in class. I’d even smiled at Oren before I’d realized what I wasdoing and wiped it off my face. That time on the beach when Tyler and I had kissed? It hadn’t been a singular occurrence; we’d been kissing every chance we got. He’d come into the trailer office, look at me, and pull me into his arms. I’d say that I needed to go upstairs to check on something, and we’d end up on his bed, our mouths crashing together, our tongues tangling, our hands reaching beneath each other’s shirts and…

And Zach Santiago had been right. It was impossible to have “time alone” when neither of us was really alone. It was awkward to break apart in my office because a delivery had arrived that I needed to sign for, and it was embarrassing to walk down the staircase of his condo and lie to Iva, saying it turned out that the weatherstripping around his window really looked great. No maintenance issues after all!

“We can’t tell people?” Tyler had asked me. “You know what? I really like this mustard dress.”

It was because he could run his hand up the back of my thigh and grab onto my butt. It was hard to hold a conversation when he was doing that, and it got worse when his fingers started dipping into the top of my leggings.

“Hold on, wait,” I had gasped. There must have been a reason…oh, right. “I don’t want to rub this in Iva’s face and I don’t want to make your mom uncomfortable.” Also, I didn’t want my dad to know because he would have thought he was right and that Tyler had finally realized that he was in love with me, since I was the prettiest and smartest girl in Michigan. That wasn’t what was happening between us.

And that was why I put all my ideas of blush pink wedding gowns firmly out of my head as we ended the house tour and said goodbye to Miss Gail’s real estate agent. “I really like this one,” Iva said to us in the driveway. “It’s close to the stadium, close to the hospital, and close to the condo complex. That will be nice for you, Gail, to visit Tyler.” She paused. “I’m not sure why I’m even giving my opinion, since this will be your house and I’ll only be renting a room from you.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course you want to like where you’ll live!” Miss Gail told her. She shivered and checked on baby Balderston. “I think we need to start bringing down blankets for him.”

It was fifty degrees above zero and not below, but Iva agreed that he might be cold and got busy putting him in the car.

“I like this house, too,” I volunteered to Miss Gail. “It’s really nice.”

She nodded. “I think this is the one. I don’t want to say yes until Ty sees it, though, since it will be his purchase. If he agrees, then I guess I’ll spend a while in Georgia to pack. I planned to go this weekend anyway, since I’m doing so much better with walking.”

“If he buys this house, will you stay up here all the time?”

Now she hesitated. “I’ll need to think about it more. I have a life down there that I put on hold for a while, and I’ll have to decide if I want to make it permanent. It would be a change for Ty, too, to have me around all the time. This is a lot for him to do for me.”

“He would love to have you here, and he’s so happy that you’re considering it,” I said, because I was sure that was true.

“He’s generous, but I don’t like to feel as if I’m taking advantage. He doesn’t owe me anything just because I’m his mother.”

“You’re not taking advantage,” I assured her. “It makes Tyler really happy to know you’re comfortable. He wants Iva and baby B to have a good place to live, too.”

“My son is a sweet boy,” she told me, and I watched her tear up. “I’m so proud of him.” She hugged me and added, “I’m so glad that he—”

“Are you ready, Gail?” Iva asked. Baby Balderston was secure in the car and they had some doctor appointments to get to, both for him and for Miss Gail. “It’s going to be a cold winter,” she commented, and then explained something that her shell-expert friend Oisín had told her about ocean currents affecting our weather. “He’s so smart,” she added admiringly.

We agreed that he sure seemed like it, and took off in our separate directions. As I went, I carefully kept my mind clear of wedding dresses. Was I bananas? There was no way that I’d be needing one of those! No one, not anyone at all, was considering marriage. There was no way that I could leave my dad, either, so it wasn’t even worth thinking about.

So I wouldn’t, and I also wouldn’t think about the kissing because those memories made my whole body heat and get trembly inside. I felt another smile start to lift my lips. I drove to the condo complex and didn’t really notice the thumping sounds that came from the back of my car every time I wentover a bump, because some of the wire must have loosened and things weren’t quite as stable as I would have liked.

Anyway, I made it all in one piece (or, at least, I didn’t leave any pieces behind me on the road). There were several messages and emails from residents and various vendors and I scrolled and listened, taking notes as I did. It was only the usual, until…sweet Jesus. There was a message from the big boss, two levels above Iva. I had never dealt with her before, and Iva never had either. We only knew the person below this woman, the man we’d had to talk to when the last maintenance guy had quit without notice, and then our onsite snowblower had disappeared. Luckily, it had been spring and only a week or so later, Oren had arrived and the boss above Iva had told us that “this guy has connections in the office, family stuff. Don’t bother him too much.” That had been about a year and a half ago, and we’d been dealing with Oren’s lack of work ever since.

But this couldn’t be about him, because I hadn’t submitted the documentation that Iva had been keeping regarding his total lack of ability to do his job…unless it did have to do with Oren. Maybe he’d finally ratted on me for working for Tyler when I should have been sitting in the trailer office, watching dust motes in the sunbeams and waiting for the phone to ring. Was I getting fired from this job, too?

In ninth grade, after Cody had humiliated me in front of the band with stories about my messed-up vag, I’d played sick and stayed home for a few days while my dad went to work at the pickle factory. From that experience, I’d learned that things wouldn’t get better if you put them off. By the time I’d made itback to the high school, the stories had gained traction and had gone much too far for me to do anything about them. A new rumor had even spread that I had been out of school because I was in Detroit for corrective surgery.

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