Rise (6 page)

chapter 7

Marme stood in front of the stove stirring up one of her wonderful dinner concoctions. The house smelled like roasted garlic, and my stomach was already growling in order to make sure I knew it was past our usual dinnertime. Marme was a planner, and even my stomach had learned her schedule, but school being back in session meant we were on a new routine. Riley had football and I had cheer practice every day, and then I also had class at the university on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting next week, so dinner was officially pushed back to seven thirty on all weekdays but Wednesday due to church. With four people and four active lives, life was going to get confusing, and my stomach and I would have to get used to the new routine.

I stepped toward the sink to grab a tomato and practically trampled Baby. She too was unsettled with the changes and hadn’t left my side since I’d been home. She’d settled with me seeing as how Riley hadn’t made it through the front door yet. Baby didn’t seem to enjoy ten hours a day with no humans at home to answer her every demand. Boomer, of course, sat like a bump on a log in his chair, and I was sure that he offered her no company whatsoever. He was too old and out of shape for a puppy with so much energy, and entertaining a lonely Baby was the last thing on his aging mind.

“No youth group tonight?” Marme asked.

I shook my head. “Nope. Not sure why. Something about schedules, I think.”

“How was school today? No drama, I hope.”

“No, ma’am. It was a relatively calm day. Tiffany was a little witchy at practice, but that’s nothing new.”

“I wish she’d just move on already.”

“Do you know if Pops got anything out of her about the uniform situation?”

“I haven’t heard. But if she didn’t act up at practice, maybe he scared her enough to keep her under control.”

“I sure hope so.”

“And what about Bob? How are you two doing at school?”

“Fine. We only see each other between classes every once in a while.” Marme and I had grown so accustomed to calling Riley “Bob” that it was now second nature and we were now calling him “Bob” in every conversation, not just to avoid the awkwardness of talking about me dating her son.

“So you do realize you need a plan, right?”

“A plan?” I stared down at the tomato in front of me. I’d never been very good at getting them sliced without all the insides squeezing out. “I think I’m doing this wrong.”

“Who cares what they look like? Just get them in the salad.”

“I thought you cared.”

“You’ve lived here for almost four months and you’ve prepared over fifty salads. I’m kinda used to them not looking perfect.”

“Oh.”

“And,” she continued, “I think your messy salads taste much better than my pretty ones ever did.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not. Now seriously, we need a plan.” Marme could change a topic faster than Riley could change the channel on the remote, and both would leave me in slight confusion until my brain caught up.

I carefully held the tomato so that I wouldn’t cut my finger as the knife blade made its way through. “A plan for what?”

“A plan for you and Bob. You know, some guidelines.”

“Good grief, Marme, I’ve already got boundaries coming out the ying-yang. How many more do I need?”

“I’m not talking about boundaries. I’m talking about guidelines. There’s a difference.”

“They sound the same to me.”

“Boys like a challenge, and with you and Bob living under the same roof, it’s going to be difficult to be a challenge.”

I tossed the tomatoes into the bowl and grabbed a cucumber. “What kind of challenge are we talking about? I think Riley—I mean Bob—sees me as a challenge already.”

“There’s a difference between being a challenge in the way you’re talking about and the way I’m talking about. You don’t have a choice but to be a challenge in the way you’re talking about—we’ve laid out rules about it. I’m talking about something totally different.”

My cloud of confusion hadn’t lifted yet. “Then what are you talking about?”

“I think girls today don’t respect themselves enough. They don’t realize how special they are and that they deserve to be pursued—they shouldn’t be the pursuer.”

“Hasn’t Bob already done the pursuing? I mean, we’re together.”

“I know, but you can’t ever let them take it for granted. Boys tend to get lazy, and no matter how great I think Bob is, I betcha he’ll get lazy if you let him.”

“Lazy?”

“If they know you’re going to make all the effort, they don’t.”

“They don’t?”

“Nope. Trust me. I’ve been a schoolteacher for years, and I see it happen all the time. The guy gets lazy and stops calling or texting or whatever it is you kids do these days, so the girl is the one calling all the time. Guess what happens?”

I stopped peeling the cucumber and looked at the strips of green peel that had piled up in curls. “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

“The once lazy boy turns into a bored boy. The chase is over, and they’re ready to move on.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“As a matter of fact, what I hear most boys say is the girl became ‘needy.’”

“Needy? Well, I’m certainly not that.”

“I know you’re not. And not only are you not needy, what you are is special, and Bob or any other boy needs to treat you like you are. If they don’t, kick ‘em to the curb.”

As weird as it all sounded, she was actually making complete sense. I started peeling again.

“When I was in high school, I wasn’t allowed to call boys. My mother always told me that if a boy wanted to talk to me, he’d call. Now at the time, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, but now I look back and think she was a genius.”

“So you never called a boy?”

“Never. Not even if the boy was my boyfriend.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. It gets better. One of my dad’s rules was that I wasn’t allowed to go out with a boy unless he asked me at least the Thursday before the weekend.”

The cucumber slipped out of my hand and onto the floor. Quickly glancing over my shoulder, I made sure she didn’t notice, picked it up off the floor, wiped it on my jeans, and started cutting it into chunks.

She was none the wiser and kept right on talking. “It sounds crazy. But his point was that if a boy wanted to go out with me enough, he’d plan in advance to do it; and if he waited until the last minute, then I probably wasn’t his first choice. He was a guy, so I figured he’d know.”

“So what did you do if a guy asked you out on Friday morning?”

“I told him no or told him that if he wanted to spend time with me, he could come hang out at my house with me and my parents.”

“And what did they do?”

“If they really liked me, right then and there they would ask me to go out the next weekend. A few, including Pops, even came over and hung out with my family.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Some of them thought it was stupid and never asked me out again, which was fine by me because I figured if they weren’t willing to do that for me, they weren’t worth my time. But the good ones caught on and followed the rule. If they wanted to go out with me, they asked me early in the week.”

All I could do was nod at her brilliance.

“Look, Bob loves you. And I’m not telling you to mess with his head or play games or anything. All I’m suggesting is that you put systems in place that require him to make you the priority you should rightfully be. I also believe that you tell them what your expectations are.”

“I’m in.” I threw the cucumbers into the salad and reached for the box of croutons. “So what do I do—or not do?”

“Don’t call him or text him first—ever.”

“Ever?”

“Ever. He needs to have the chance to miss you, and if you’re in constant contact with him, he’ll never get to that point. So no matter how much you want to talk to him, wait and let him contact you.”

“That sounds painful.”

“Trust me. If a boy really likes a girl and he knows that she isn’t gonna be calling him, he’s gonna be picking up that phone and making contact.”

“Okay, I won’t call or text Bob first. What next?”

“Tell him that if he wants to go out with you on the weekend, he needs to make sure to ask you before Thursday. Otherwise, you’ll be making other plans.”

“What else?”

“At least one weekend a month, make plans to be apart. Neither one of you should be so into each other that you can’t hang out with your friends every once in a while when the other one isn’t around.”

“Fair enough.”

“In order for a relationship to be healthy, it needs to be respected. You and Bob are very special people, and you should treat each other that way. You probably need to ask him if he has any requests he’d like to make too. He might have one or two. I know Pops did.”

“What were his?”

“He just had one. He’d always hated it when he was dating a girl and she would hang all over him in front of his friends. It embarrassed him. So I never did. As a matter of fact, I never even made contact with him if his friends were around. I figured if he wanted to talk to me, he would. And guess what?”

“He did.”

“He always did.”

“I wonder what Bob’s going to say about this.”

“If he has an issue with it, tell him to take it up with us. That’s what I did. I always said that they were rules that my parents made and I had to follow. So they could either follow or get lost. Bob will follow the rules; you don’t have to worry about that. And just wait, you’ll feel more special than you ever have before.”

“Why is that?”

“Because every time that phone rings and you see it’s him, you’ll know he’s calling because he wanted to talk to you. And every time he holds your hand in front of his friends, it’ll be because he’s proud to have you there. You’ll know that you’re important to him—important enough for him to make an effort.”

“That does sound nice.”

“There’s nothing wrong with making a boy work for it a little bit.” She peeked over my shoulder at the salad. “Whether Bob and I were related or not or whether you were like family or not, I’d want both of you to be treated well by the people you choose to spend time with. Like Dr. Phil always says, ‘Ya teach people how to treat ya,’ and you’re ensuring that Bob’s gonna treat you the way you deserve—not that he wouldn’t have already, but this ensures it.”

She grabbed the breadbasket off the counter and made her way toward the table. “Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Don’t think I didn’t see you drop that cucumber.”

“You saw that?”

“I’m a mom. I see everything.”

Riley burst through the back door. “That’s no lie. She does see everything. You can’t get away with anything around here.”

He slid past me toward the sink, and as he did, he allowed his hand to slightly graze my back before reaching into the salad bowl for a piece of cucumber. I slapped his hand just before he grabbed one.

“Wash your hands first. You’re dirty from practice, and I don’t want my salad all gross with germs.”

Marme looked up at me and smiled but kept my cucumber-dropping incident between the two of us.

He placed his mouth right next to my ear. “Since when are you concerned about getting my germs?”

“Step away from the young lady,” Marme announced. “You know the rule; leave enough room between you for Jesus to walk through.”

“That’s the most ignorant rule I’ve ever heard. Where did you come up with it?”

“Your grandfather gave the same one to me, so I’m passing it on to you.”

He flipped on the faucet. “What does it even mean?”

“It means to stay away from her, that’s what it means.”

“Gotcha.”

I picked up the salad bowl and took it to the table. “And speaking of which, Riley, is there anything I do that annoys you?”

He stopped lathering his hands and looked over at me. “Is this a trick question?”

“What do you mean? Is there a lot that I do to annoy you?”

“Uh … ”

“Would you like me to rephrase the question?”

“That might be a good idea.”

“I know I do a lot that drives you crazy, but I mean more like, in front of your friends. Do I do anything in front of them that you wish I wouldn’t? Or is there anything other girls do around guys that you want to make sure I don’t do? You know, stuff that’ll embarrass you.”

He started lathering again. “I don’t think so. You don’t do most of the annoying stuff other girls do, so I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well, what do other girls do that annoys you or your friends?” Marme asked.

She and I both sat down at the table and made ourselves comfortable as Riley contemplated whether or not he wanted to incriminate himself.

He turned off the water, flapped his hands in the air to dry them, and then jumped onto the counter and wiped them on his jeans. “What’s all this about?”

“We’re conducting research,” Marme said.

“What kind of research?”

“What do girls do that annoys boys kind of research. We really want to know. Just boy and girl interaction type stuff, not generalities or anything.”

“I can’t speak for all guys.”

“Then just speak for guys like you. The good guys. The kind a girl like Attie would actually want to get attention from.”

“I don’t want her getting attention from other guys.”

“Stop being difficult,” she snapped. “You know what we mean.”

I could almost see his brain turning in his head as he stared into space. “Well … calling all the time, texting every other second … ”

Marme and I looked at each other and shared a grin.

“ … acting too needy for attention. Most guys don’t like that. And then, as a general rule, stalking would be a definite no.”

Marme leaned forward. “And by stalking you mean what?”

“Following them around school, driving by their house, asking people for information about them all the time. You know, stalking-type stuff. I mean, let’s be honest, how many girls who acted like that actually landed the guy they were stalking?”

“Probably not many. Go on,” she said.

“Talking real loud and shrieking to try to get a guy’s attention—that really drives me crazy. Basically, I think girls just need to act normal. I don’t know of any of my friends who are attracted to a girl that tries too hard.”