One Pink Line (10 page)

I made a weird face that was part excited, part apologetic. “You know I’m going home to see Ethan,” I said, trying hard not to be a buzz kill. “He would kill me if I went to New York instead.”

She was vibrating with energy as she sat down on the edge of my bed, and started talking really fast. “Listen, you’ve never been to New York, right?” she confirmed and I nodded. “Okay, so Ethan would not want you to miss out on an all expense-paid weekend there would he?”

I acted as though I was considering what he’d want. “No, I’m pretty sure he could give a shit about me going to New York over break. He and I have been obsessing about seeing each other for the past two weeks…and my sister is going to be home too,” I said. “I’m sorry, trust me, it sounds amazing, but there’s no way I can change my plans.”

Jenna must have known there was no way I’d go with her. She probably knew it before she asked, but thought she’d give it a try anyway.

“I understand,” she rolled her eyes. “We’re staying at the Plaza,” she dangled one last carrot.

“You suck, that’s awesome, but I can’t.”

She jumped off my bed and buzzed towards the door. “I gotta pack!”

Louise weighed in quietly from her desk. “You made the right decision.”

The last day of classes, Jenna flew to LaGuardia, and I put my name on a carpool board and got dropped off at the Carson Pirie Scott just off the expressway at Edens Plaza in Wilmette. My sister was there waiting for me with a bag of fried chicken from Little Red Hen in Glencoe. My favorite.

Seeing her face almost made me cry. “Hi, Ken,” I said as we hugged. “I missed you…and fried chicken,” I said and inhaled the aroma seeping out of the greasy brown paper bag in her backseat. When Kendra turned sixteen, my parents bought her a red, convertible Volkswagen Cabriolet. When I turned sixteen, I was allowed to invite three friends to dinner at Ron of Japan, where they cook the shrimp at your table.

“Hello, gorgeous, you look tired.”

“Do I look tired or gorgeous?”

She drove me home, and we endured an afternoon with my parents, then dinner at the mall. My mother was actually quite tolerable that first night, and made only two negative comments in regard to my appearance. The first was that my oversized hooded sweatshirt wasn’t appropriate attire for dining out, and the second was that I needed a haircut. Both equally mild on a scale of one-to-offensive.

Kendra was in her senior year at the University of Illinois, and that weekend wasn’t an official school break for her, but she’d come home to be there for me.

“So how much time do I have with you?” she asked.

“Ethan’s not getting in until noon tomorrow.”

“Good, we can go for breakfast together!”

I rubbed my belly, everything revolved around food, and the free soft serve machine in the school cafeteria wasn’t helping my waistline. “Can’t we just go for coffee or something?”

“No, we cannot, you love that Walker Brothers Pancake House; we’ll go there for apple pancake fritters, or whatever.”

“Fine,” it really wasn’t hard to convince me.

After breakfast the next morning, Ethan called and said he was having lunch with his mom, and he’d come over once they were through. I couldn’t wait.

My being home from college didn’t seem to make an impression on my mother’s schedule at all, which turned out nicely for me. She had two tennis matches on Saturday, and a friend’s birthday lunch on Sunday that she ‘really hated to cancel.’ I begged her to keep her plans, assuring her that I wanted to spend time with Ethan and Kendra.

“Do you want to borrow my silver earrings?” Mom asked.

“No thanks, Mom.”

“Are you sure, here, why don’t you take them back to school with you,” she handed them to me. “You love them.”

Finally, I realized there was only one way to make her stop asking, so I took the earrings. “Thank you, I do love these.”

She smiled. “I can tell you’re excited to see him.”

“I really missed him, Mom.”

“Well then, I’m happy for you sweetie. Have fun, and be smart, okay.”

“Always am,” I assured her.

I watched the end of my driveway for fifteen minutes from the window in my bedroom, and began to pant like a dog as I saw the front end of Ethan’s car come around the edge of our trees. I ran downstairs as he put the car in park, flung the door open, and attacked him.

“Oh-My-God, you smell so friggin good,” I spoke, my voice muffled, buried in his shirt.

He kissed my head, and squeezed me really tight. “I missed you Syd,” he said.

Ethan was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved, white cotton, waffle-knit shirt, and a baseball hat turned backwards. He looked as big and wonderful as ever.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

Ethan gestured to the blankets in his backseat. “To the beach of course.”

We spent hours catching up under Ethan’s childhood comforter on the cold sand at Gilson beach. His body was like a radiator, and I warmed every last appendage of mine on it. The air was about sixty-five degrees and we lay like a burrito talking, kissing and nuzzling each other until the sun began to set.

CHAPTER TEN

J
enna and I pledged the same sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and were inseparable for the remainder of our freshman year. My mom got a new car that winter, so I was allowed to take her old Chevy Blazer back to campus during second semester. When summer came, Jenna and I drove back home together, and I dropped her at her parents’ penthouse apartment at 1040 Lake Shore Drive. She spent two of those summer months, between our freshman and sophomore year, in Aspen, and I spent the summer at Camp Ethan.

I had convinced my dad that the pressures of college were so much harder than I’d expected, and my appreciation for an employment-free summer break would manifest itself in the form of housework and errand girl. I promised him that he and my mother could have me at their beck and call, if only I didn’t have to serve Cobb salads at Onwentsia Country Club anymore. He acquiesced, and helped me convince my mother. Kendra opted for summer school at University of Illinois, and so did her new boyfriend.

Camp Ethan consisted of hanging out by his parents’ pool, having one of his sisters make sandwiches for us, and spending evenings at the beach with all of our high school friends. On the days when Camp Ethan was closed, I would settle for the equally enjoyable, Camp Taylor.

“Don’t you ever wish you had your freedom at school?” she asked me one afternoon, as we sat inside cabana four.

“What are you getting at?

“Well, I mean, are you really going to cut yourself off from college guys completely, for the next three years? You know I love Ethan, but you are really missing out…and so is he.”

“Thanks.”

“My concern is more for you, of course,” she said and shifted her body so that she was facing me. “Did I tell you that I made out with three guys in one night? It was a stupid Pimp n’ Ho theme, but Ho was it fun! I just can’t imagine not having the freedom to let loose and experiment.”

“And be a Ho?”

She laughed. “Trust me, you are going to want to be able to live a little. We will never have another chance to behave like this in all of our adult life.”

I admired Taylor, I really did, and there was almost nothing she did without schoolgirl enthusiasm, but she and I were different when it came to dating. She had her pick of the litter, and I was typically left with her pick’s friend.

“I love Ethan, and he loves me, and the fact that we met each other right before college does have its complications, but it keeps us close,” I told her.

“You know I’m not saying you should break-up, I just wish you could experience the fun and the men. That sounds stupid, but you know what I mean,” she said, then inched closer to me. “Do you think he’s been loyal to you?” she sniffed.

Of course I thought he’d been loyal to me, why wouldn’t he be? But her putting the question out there made me concerned. “Yes, I do.”

She sensed my insecurity. “No, I’m sure he has, don’t take that the wrong way; I just wondered if you two ever talked about being allowed to date other people, or whatever.”

“We haven’t, but we probably should, I guess…I don’t know. So far we’re having a great summer, and that’s all I care to concern myself with,” I said and rested my head back down on the chaise.

When August rolled around, and camp was over, Ethan and I continued what would be our annual ritual of parting ways. Him leaning against his car, me buried deep within his arms sobbing, and the clock ticking well into the night.

We never did have a discussion about dating other people. It was just understood, Ethan and I were in love, and why would anyone who’s in love with someone want to date anyone else?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
hree years of college passed almost as quickly as people had told me they would. Every adult I’ve ever known has always bored me with tales of years flying by and what seemed like empty threats of my youth slipping away from me. But by the time I was about to enter my senior year at Purdue, I felt like I truly understood what they meant. Time had indeed flown by like a Learjet, and I was a new woman. One who was educated, mature, used to living without rules, and nervous to give up my credit card with its two-hundred dollar limit, that my dad paid for each month. My relationship with Ethan over the years had stayed strong on the friendship-end, but not so solid when it came to romance. We’d had our struggles over jealousy, distance and apathy over the years, but we remained committed to repairing our emotional wounds, and making it work.

Ethan graduated college in June of 1990, and was set to move to Boston to start a job as an IT Manager. His parents took him and his sisters to Italy for a graduation gift, so I didn’t get to see him until late July. I remember not being very upset about it at the time. Instead, I spent my days working at the country club, only that time I was answering phones and working in the Member Relations department. Fielding complaints from disgruntled members about flat Diet Coke, pool towels with frayed edges, and how they had to wait over 45 seconds for the valet. All were met with gasps and profuse apologies from me. It was a grueling task, but since it fell within my hospitality major, I was awarded two college credits for all my genuflecting. And once I realized that I should treat my mother like one of the club members, we began to get along swimmingly.

My job at Onwentsia didn’t leave me much time for Ethan or my friends however, so he’d pick me up after work most nights, and we’d go to the beach or hang out at his house for a few hours. The week before I was due to go back to school, he took me out for dinner and pinned me down for a heart-to-heart.

“Syd,” he started over a potato skins appetizer at Timbers restaurant. “I was thinking maybe we should have a talk, about us.”

I placed my menu on the table and looked him in the eyes. “What about us?”

“About our relationship,” he said. “You’re going into your senior year, and I’m moving to Boston; I mean, don’t you think we should talk about where we stand, and how we plan on staying together or seeing each other,” he studied my face. “Do you ever give any thought to our future?”

I knew my answer should have been ‘of course I do, all the time’ but I couldn’t honestly say that to him. “Yes, I’ve given it some thought,” I assured him. “But, we’ve been apart for the past few years and made it work, so I really didn’t think this was going to be much different.”