One & Only (Canton) (16 page)

“I’ll walk with you to class,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about my folks. I’m kinda thinking of not telling them until…well, until we know what we’re dealing with.”

More pangs of guilt stabbed my gut.

“I don’t want them to freak out,” she finished. “My mom’s kind of sensitive.”

And your dad?

“Um…okay,” Dylan said. “Let me grab my keys. I don’t want to forget them, since the door locks automatically behind you when you leave.”

Was it my imagination, or had he said that part just a little bit louder than necessary?
Great, got the message, Dyl.

I heard the outer door open and close, and waited a full two minutes before I emerged from the bathroom. The steam had played havoc with my hair, and I smoothed it down some before I, too, left Dylan’s room and booked it to class, trying all the time
not
to think about what it would mean for my relationship with Dylan, for Dylan’s duties to Hannah, and for the rules my mother and I had always lived by had Hannah simply leaned over and opened the bathroom door.

***

Fortunately, I had managed to score a shift at Verde for this Wednesday evening, which meant I could fill my head with orders and refills and split-checks-please. Unfortunately, it was dead at Verde, so I was home by nine.

Dad was there. I saw his car first and then him, sitting in the living room, scrolling through his BlackBerry like this was his home.

“Mom here?” I asked as I set my keys down on the hall table.

“Nope.” He looked up from his phone. “But I’m glad you are. I feel like I’ve hardly seen you since you moved back to town.”

That may have been by design. He patted the cushion next to him and I sat down, slowly, preparing myself for another lecture on gratitude and discretion. Deliberately, Dad put his phone back in his pocket and turned to me.

“Everything all right with you? School? Work? Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“Yeah, Dad.” Had Hannah told him about her medical tests? Was that why he was suddenly so interested in playing the part of concerned father?

“The Canton coursework isn’t too overwhelming?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. I’m pretty smart, as it turns out.”

“I know you are, Tess. I just—it can be hard, when you’re used to one method of education, to make a big switch…”

“Well,” I reasoned. “I wouldn’t have had to make a switch if I’d been at Canton from the start.”

The strike landed, and landed hard. Dad flinched, and I immediately felt guilty. He’d gotten some bad news tonight. I should be more understanding.

“Tess.” He sighed. “I hope you know, I thought I was making the best decision, for all of us, at the time.”

“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to even mean, Dad.”

“Encouraging you to go to State.”

Forcing me, more like. “So I wouldn’t get my dirty little hands all over your precious alma mater?”

He looked more hurt than ever. “That’s not what I was doing. Please don’t make me the bad guy here. You’re old enough now to understand how complicated things are.”

Actually, they seemed pretty simple to me. I was supposed to stay away from the Swifts and all they’d claimed for themselves. When I did that, things were nice and neat and uncomplicated. It was only when I switched to Canton, only when I dared to try and get Dylan away from Hannah—that was when stuff got messy. If I’d followed the rules, maybe I’d be happy right now. Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here on a couch, arguing with my father, when I’d much rather be in Dylan’s bed.

Not that I’d be in Dylan’s bed. But I wouldn’t even be thinking about it.

“I want you to be happy, Tess. I want you to be successful and happy and brilliant and have everything you want in life. And if Canton is what makes that happen, then okay.”

My lips parted in shock. “Are you serious?”

He shrugged. “Of course. I love you. I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you the other day. I’m sad that you wouldn’t trust me, that you thought you had to sneak around behind my back.”

I bit my lip. Look who was talking. Sneaking was my illegitimate little family’s specialty.

“I’ve done a lot of reflecting recently, and I can see that you had good reason to think I wouldn’t let you come here. And whatever else we’ve been forced to do, I don’t want you to feel that way about me.”

This was the part where he opened his checkbook and gave me money for textbooks. This was the part where he started acting like a real dad, one who was proud that his daughter got a merit scholarship at his alma mater.

Except I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to accept another dime from him if it came with strings, with rules, with reminders that I was his daughter and Hannah was his daughter and I wanted Hannah’s boyfriend and Hannah was sick, sick, sick…

I reached out and covered my father’s hand with my own. His skin felt dry and I noticed, for the first time, the way the hair on the back of his hands had gotten darker and more wiry with age. His face had aged too. There were lines in the corner of his eyes and mouth, and white strands of hair mixed in with the dark blond on his head. You didn’t see it unless you were up close. Was it really so rare that I got up close to him?

Whatever else we’ve been forced to do
… As much as I hated to admit this, I understood why Dad had made the choices he did. I understood that he thought he could better provide for his families if he kept his reputation and his business intact. Divorce would have cost a bundle, and the scandal resulting from exposure of his dirty family secret might have cost him his entire career. I understood why we had the rules; I understood why I had to live my life like I didn’t have a father.

But maybe my mom was right, too. I’d spent so much time thinking about how much it sucked for me, I hadn’t really thought about how it sucked for him, too. For what must have been the hundredth time today, I wondered what our lives would be like if Hannah was my sister for real, out in the open, and when she’d told her family about what she was facing today, she’d told me, too. That when Dad needed some company to chase away his worries, he had a kid who would give him a hug and tell him—

“It’s going to be okay, Dad. I promise.”

He raised his eyes to mine, those indeterminate, every-color eyes that so mirrored my own, and for a second I thought maybe he knew exactly what I was talking about. Not our fight, not our disagreements over Canton and our secrets, but Hannah—Hannah, whom we both loved, though I barely knew her. Hannah, who was sick and scared and probably needed her father to stay home with her instead of running away here, where his other family was safe and sound, where his other daughter’s biggest concern—in his mind, at least—was how long her waitressing shifts were.

“You know you’re still my girl, don’t you?” he said. “You’re still my daughter, and I love you and I’m proud of you.”

Unbidden, tears filled my eyes.

“And one day, Tess, one day this will all be behind us.”

I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. Did Dad imagine a future where the rules no longer applied? Where after long last, he left his wife and married my mom and I could live openly, if not as his daughter, at least as his stepdaughter? Where I could know Hannah? Could that reality ever exist?

A bone-deep yearning lit up my soul. I didn’t even know if I wanted that anymore. And after years of watching him dangle that possibility over my mother’s head, I found it hard to imagine. It hadn’t happened when Hannah had finally grown up and gone to college, which was the usual time when broken marriages officially failed. He hadn’t divorced his wife, and Hannah was a junior, like me. Even Mom seemed to have relinquished the prospect of being anything other than Steven Swift’s mistress years ago.

But apparently, some small part of me hadn’t given up, the same part of me that yelled at Sylvia for threatening to put nuts in Hannah’s salad, that wondered if she’d tell me when to hide my eyes at horror movies, that wanted to burst into tears when Dylan had told me Hannah was sick, that wanted to put my arms around my dad and tell him that whatever happened with his other daughter, we’d face it together. If Hannah needed bone marrow, we would find some way to give her mine without anyone knowing why I might be a match.

Even if I did want her boyfriend, she was still my sister.

It was funny, in a way. I had never dared ask Dad about Hannah all these years. He got too mad. And I didn’t dare ask Dylan, either. He knew her better than anyone, I supposed. Knew which of those horror movies her Facebook profile said she loved were her favorite. Knew what made her laugh, her favorite color, her favorite flower, exactly what scared her most about whatever was happening to her. He knew those things, and I wanted to know them so badly right now. I wanted to know, I wanted to help.

“Dad, I know…” What? I knew Hannah told him she might be sick. How did I know that? I knew because I very nearly boinked her boyfriend the other day. I knew because I broke the rules.

I couldn’t risk ruining whatever was happening here and now over telling him that.

“I know you love me,” I finished lamely.

This week, two men had told me they loved me. But in the end, they both belonged to Hannah.

FOURTEEN

Dylan skipped Transport class again on Thursday morning, and I spent most of the hour with my head buried in my notebook, face flushed, trying to figure out if he couldn’t face me or if he was accompanying Hannah to her biopsy. He hadn’t texted to tell me what was going on, and from what I remembered of the “class participation” section of the syllabus, we only got three unexcused absences per semester.

Maybe it was because I was alone again, but Elaine approached me at the end of class.

“Hey,” she said, clutching her books to her chest. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior last week.”

“Okay.” I flipped the cover of my notebook closed. “Apologize.”

“It’s not an excuse, I know that, but I was getting a little overwhelmed with midterms and stuff. My Photonics project crashed and burned, Transport is my only chance, and…I freaked out about the symposium. And Dylan and I have this competitive thing going on and he scoops up the new girl before anyone knows anything, and…well, I took my frustrations out on you. I shouldn’t have. I’m just scared I can’t hack Bio-E.”

I stood up. “Is this your way of saying you’re switching to the English department and giving us our lab times back?”

She sucked air through her teeth. “No. I mean, not the English department part, at least. But yeah, I guess we can split the lab slots if you want.”

I gave her a long, hard look. How was I supposed to trust her? Dylan certainly didn’t.

“I’m really sorry,” Elaine went on. “I absolutely know I was in the wrong before. You’re new here and I really didn’t give you a nice welcome. And as much as I hate to say it, Dylan’s right. I want to beat you fair and square.” She looked pointedly at the empty seat next to me. “That is, if he didn’t drop.”

“He didn’t drop. He’s got some personal matters to attend to.” Wait, did that sound bad? “We’re still going to kick your ass.”

“We’ll see about that.” She was silent again for a second. “Anyway, I know it’s probably too late to be friends, but—could we start with lunch?”

Something inside me relaxed. Okay, so she was crazy competitive and not too fond of the man I loved. That didn’t make her evil. And maybe if she saw I wasn’t evil either, she could relax some. “I hope it’s not too late,” I said. “I’ve been here for two months and I don’t know anyone, really.”

“Dylan,” Elaine pointed out.

I grinned at her. “Yeah, but you don’t think I should be hanging out with him.”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “Well, I say that to a lot of people. They never listen.”

***

We ended up having lunch at the cafe in the biology tower with her roommate, Melanie. The one Dylan had slept with freshman year. I seemed doomed to cross paths with Dylan’s entire playbook. Melanie was a tiny pixie of a girl with short, spiky hair bleached nearly white in places and streaked with blue and teal. Her nose and eyebrow were pierced, and she had a tattoo covering most of her right arm.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting from Dylan’s first post-me conquest, but the punk rock look was certainly not it.

“Tess, Melanie. Melanie, Tess,” Elaine said, setting down her tray. “Tess is Dylan’s latest flavor-of-the-month.”

“Oh, no,” I corrected. “We’re not dating. He has a girlfriend.”

“I think I heard about that,” Melanie said, twirling some pasta on her fork. “Don’t worry, Tess, I don’t share my roommate’s disdain for Mr. Kingsley. She thinks I should still be mad at him for not calling me, like, three years ago. But sometimes you do crazy things freshman year. Mine was him.” She smiled a secret smile. “I like to think I was his, too.”

“It’s not just that,” said Elaine. “I don’t like his attitude.”

“‘His attitude,’” Melanie replied, making quote marks with her fingers, “meaning that he wouldn’t be your lab partner last year?”

Well, that also explained why she was so bitter. He beat her freshman year, then wouldn’t help her out last year… A lot of history for those two.

Elaine pursed her lips. “I probably could have done without you telling Tess that. She’s just going to go tell Dylan.”

Oh, trust me, Elaine. There are plenty of things I’m perfectly fine not ever telling Dylan.

I desperately wanted to change the subject, especially considering that if everything worked out as I hoped, I
would
be dating the guy soon enough. “So, Elaine tells me you’re a botany concentration? I worked at a botany lab at State. What are you studying?”

Melanie threw back her head and laughed. “Oh my God, you sound like you’re still at your entrance interview. Elaine, is it, like, a requirement that you Bio-E people all have boring, one-track minds?”

“I’ve heard you make that claim before, yes,” said Elaine. “But I figure since you can’t keep a thought in
your
head for more than five minutes, it works out well.” She was smiling for what seemed like the first time ever. It was nice to see this side of her.