Page 29 of Ten Years and Then…
He took a deep breath, headed out of his bedroom, down the stairs and into the living room and, sure enough, Dad was sitting in his recliner with a very stern expression.
“I guess we know why your grades slipped, don’t we?” His father had never been one for small talk. At least you never had to doubt where you stood with him.
“It’s not like that, Dad.” Except, obviously, it was. His father wasn’t stupid, and Daniel had learned as a young boy that excuses didn’t impress him. “Okay—I’ve been spending a lot of time with Nora. I didn’t study as much as I could have before finals.”
His father nodded, but his frown didn’t ease up at all. “You’re nineteen years old, Daniel. You’re not a high school boy with his first crush. You’re smarter than that. You should be able to get your schoolwork done without letting this girl get in the way.”
“Her name is Nora, Dad. And she’s never in the way. She’s—I love her, Dad. And she loves me.”
He knew as he was saying the words they were only going to make this worse. “Daniel! You’re there to get an education, to get your degree, to be able to get a good job so you don’t have to fight for every inch of life the way me and your mother had to. We’re not paying all that money for you to play house with some little—”
“Shut up, Dad!” Daniel hadn’t really understood the expression “seeing red” until this moment. He’d never said anything like that to his father before, never heard the raw anger in his voice that he said it with. “Don’t you call her—I don’t even care what you were going to say. You don’t know her! You don’t know how amazing she is! You don’t know how she looks at me, how she sees past how nervous and uptight and whatever the hell else I am, and she loves me anyway! How she didn’t even care that I …”
His voice trailed off; even having lost nearly all control of his emotions, he knew enough not to finish that sentence.
His father wasn’t frowning anymore. He looked shellshocked, but that probably wouldn’t last long. Thankfully, his mother picked this moment to come running in from the kitchen, and she stood behind Dad, talking to him in a soft voice; Daniel’s heart was pounding too loudly for him to hear what she was saying.
And then the phone rang, and Daniel was both thrilled and terrified that it might be Nora calling.
Nora, at the same time
Rachel had gone well above the call of duty. She’d cashed in frequent flyer miles to pay for Nora to fly to New York. She’d arranged a car to pick Nora up from LaGuardia. And she’d even called Nora’s father and made it sound like the out-of-the-blue trip was her idea, while omitting entirely the little detail that she wouldn’t be there and Nora would be all alone in Manhattan.
And now, here she was, in Rachel’s gorgeous two bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park. It had never before occurred to her to wonder how on earth her aunt could afford this place. But a semester of being—sort of, anyway—on her own and having to watch her budget carefully had opened her eyes to a few of the realities of adult life.
She could ask Rachel about that some other time. Right now, something far more urgent took priority. She didn’t even bother to put her suitcase away before she picked up the phone to call her boyfriend.
It only rang once. “Daniel?”
A woman answered. Her voice sounded older—it had to be his mother. “He’s right here, I’ll put him on.”
A moment later, she heard him. His voice was shaky, what was going on in his house? “Hello?” Maybe he was just nervous about talking to her in front of his mother. That made sense. Especially if he hadn’t told them yet that he had a girlfriend. But surely he had, by now. Right? Or—did he not want to talk to her for some reason of his own?
“It’s me!” She couldn’t hold her excitement in. “And, guess what? I’m in Manhattan! We can get together!” They were only twelve miles apart—she’d measured it on a map.
“Really?” He was still—what? Nervous? Upset? Had he told his parents, and they had a problem with her? Well, not with her specifically, but with the idea of Daniel having a girlfriend at all. Then she heard him breathe deeply, and she could picture exactly how he looked. His eyes always got all serious when he was gathering up his courage to do or say something really hard. “Do you want to come over and meet my parents today?”
She could hear a low, angry voice that she couldn’t quite make out—his father? And then Daniel talking back to him, which she heard perfectly clearly. “You can see for yourself I’m not wasting my time or throwing away my future, okay? I never ask for anything, but I’m asking for this. I want you to meet her so you’ll love her as much as I do.” There was more low talking, both his father and his mother, and then he was talking into the phone again. “I know it’s short notice, but I really want you to meet them, if it’s okay with you.”
It wasn’t really okay. She wanted to see him, more than anything. And she did want to meet his parents. But not under duress—was that even the right word? Whatever the word was, it didn’t change the feeling.
If she said no, though, that would be worse. Then in addition to whatever his parents thought about her already, she’d be flaky and unsupportive of their son. And she’d be leaving Daniel to face all that disapproval on his own.
On the train home, she’d graded herself with an A for being supportive to Daniel, even though he’d never needed her to support him. Well, here was her chance to earn that A.
“I would love to meet them. Just tell me how to get there.”
Daniel, two hours later
Daniel thought about driving over to the Metro North station, to spare Nora the ten minute walk back to his house. But he wanted that walk and that ten minutes to warn her about his parents—well, his father mostly.
Except she had to already know. She must have heard him yelling at his parents, and even if she didn’t catch every word, it was hardly difficult to figure out what was going on.
He only had to wait a couple of minutes for the train to arrive, and—down at the end of the platform, stepping out of the last car, there she was. She wore her heavy blue winter coat, the one she said she rarely wore because “I can barely move my arms in it, like the little brother in ‘A Christmas Story.’”
He ran to her, threw his arms around her and kissed her, right there on the platform, in front of—well, nobody, she was the only one who’d gotten off the train. But he would have kissed her in front of everyone on the train, or 56,000 people in Yankee Stadium. He didn’t let her go until she pulled back to gasp for air.
“Wow,” she said, still catching her breath, but smiling brightly—the smile that was just for him. “I missed you too, Daniel. Even if it’s only been two days.” He led her back to the stairs up to the street, and gently pushed her ahead of him. “What, you’re not going to hold my hand?”
