Page 46 of Guy's Girl
It had to be. That’s what he told himself. Why else would she uproot his and Beatrix’s lives in Budapest, where he’d been happy? Why else would she subject him to classes in a language he didn’t understand, to children who laughed at his broken English and threw notes at him with words scrawled on them in shaky pencil? Words that he now understood, likeslowandretardandNazi.Surely she wouldn’t put him through this for anything less than true love. Surely it would all be worth it.
That was Adrian’s belief. And because of that belief, when he arrived home from school two years later—after he had finally adjusted to life in the United States, after the bullies had forgotten about him and he’d started making friends—to find his mother out on the curb, her stuff in boxes, her eyes puffy and bloodshot, he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand as she collapsed on Beatrix’s shoulder. Didn’t understand as she said, “I made the last payment today.” Didn’t understand as she said, “He’s done with us, now. He’s kicking us out.”
***
His mother didn’t get out of bed for a month.
After Scott forced them out of the house on Meridian Street, they moved into a tiny two-bedroom duplex in Westside, the only neighborhood they could afford. Adrian pleaded with his mother to take them back to Budapest. “Why stay?” he asked in Hungarian while unpacking boxes. His mother was in bed already. No sheets, no covers. Just a barren mattress. “If your marriage is over, what’s keeping us here?”
“Nothing,” she said in Hungarian.
“So?”
“That was it, Adrian. My savings. All of them. I used them all to pay him for our marriage.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t afford to take us back.” Then she rolled over onto her side and shut her eyes.
By then, Adrian was eleven. Two years wiser. He took it upon himself to tend to his mother. Beatrix—now fifteen, leaving the house too late and returning home even later, smelling faintly of sour alcohol—certainly wasn’t going to help.
Westside wasn’t a safe neighborhood. Beat-up houses. Crumbling bricks. Litter in front yards. Shotguns inside closets. “Everyone has one,” said a boy he met on their block. “You can buy them at Walmart. My older brother bought ours.”
At night, he sat with his mother and read to her in Hungarian. Adult books, even though he was too young for them. Hisanyadrifted in and out of sleep throughout the day. When lucid, she rarely reacted to the stories, but he hoped she was listening all the same.
This is what happens when you put your trust in another person, he thought as he watched her twitch in her sleep, fists balled around the sheets as if caught in a nightmare.This is what love gets you.He’d thought he would be able to do it, to push past theguilt he felt for his father’s death by seeing his mother find new love, to finally flourish in the way he always hoped she would.
Instead, now his guilt was even worse.
He tucked a strand of hair behind his mother’s ear. She let out a low whimper.
I don’t want it, he decided.I don’t want it, and I never will.
Ginny shuffles down the hallway and into the living room. She isn’t expecting anyone to be awake, so it’s a surprise when she finds Finch seated on the couch, feet up on the coffee table.
“Hey, how was the d—?” When he spies her puffy cheeks, Finch pulls up short. “Gin? Shit—are you okay?”
“Fine.” The last person she wants to talk to right now is Finch. Or maybe he’s thefirstperson she wants to talk to, which is even worse. She turns away and heads for her bedroom, but Finch is quickly in front of her, blocking the entrance.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
She tries to sidestep him. He moves, too.
“Was it Adrian?” His voice is angry now. “What did he do to you?”
Her head snaps to look up at him. “What do you care?” she spits out. “You never gave a shit about me in college. When did I suddenly become your problem?”
He steps back. “What are you talking about? We’re best fr—”
“Don’t you dare say that.” Maybe it’s all the drinking. She can feel the wine and the margaritas swirling around the inside of her head, pushing out words that she wouldn’t say sober. “Don’t you dare call us best friends. Yes, we’re part of the same friend group. Yes, weactlike you didn’t toss me aside for your ex-girlfriend—twice.” She swallows. “But we both know that’s not true.”
And there it is. That night senior year. The one that neither ofthem has acknowledged, when she drank too much at a Sig Chi party and ended up in Finch’s room, on Finch’s bed, sobbing, gasping for air, confessing to three years of repressed emotion. The night he told her that he didn’t return her feelings. That she was alone. As always.
“Ginny—” he starts.
“No.” She moves away. “Don’t, Alex. I have enough to deal with right now.”
His mouth opens. One hand comes up and around his head to rub at his eyebrow—his quintessential nervous tic. “Just—” His hand comes back down. “I know you do. And I worry about you.”
