Tethered (11 page)

I had so much fun. I felt so alive. I felt happy. It was one of few times in my life where I can say I was one hundred percent happy. One of the other times was sleeping in the arms of a certain guy.

The crowd started to disperse a little after midnight. Many kids had a two hour drive ahead of them and even more had curfews. The few kids that were staying at the shore headed back towards their respective shore houses, hotels and motels, including us. Sam was up waiting for us when we got in, but she went to bed soon thereafter. Emmy managed to make it another hour, but she couldn’t stop yawning, she went into the bedroom we shared and went to bed, leaving me alone in the living room with Emmet.

All night, I was always aware that he was near, even if he wasn’t in my immediate vicinity, but I was distracted enough to not let my thoughts stray to the ice-cream incident from earlier in the day. Now sitting only a foot away from him on the couch, it was all I could think about. I thought about going to bed just so I could stop feeling awkward about it.

Since that morning over brunch, Emmet hadn’t tried to kiss me again. He had seemingly moved on. He started dating Stella “The Mistake” Cramer and I had done my best to pretend like I didn’t care. I was nice to her and even helped her pick out Emmet’s birthday present. He treated me like he used to, like an annoying kid sister and he stopped showing up at the empty lot to board with me. He was never mean to me, but sometimes there was coolness between us that stung. That tether, however, was very much intact. I could feel him wherever I went. I knew when he was close and I knew when he wasn’t. I didn’t know if he felt it, too. I wasn’t going to ask.

As his presence on the couch became enormous and seemed to surround me, I got up. I wasn’t tired but I sure couldn’t sit there with Emmet as if everything was normal. I almost laughed. There wasn’t anything normal between us. I started towards the bedroom I shared with Emmy but then took a detour. I grabbed a room key off of the counter and started for the door.

“Where are you going?” Emmet asked. It was an accusation.

“For a walk,” I said over my shoulder without looking at him. “I’m not tired.”

“You shouldn’t go out there by yourself,” Emmet warned and I felt him closer than before. I looked back and he was walking towards me.

“I’m going for a walk,” I said it with irritation and with a note of finality.

I went out the door and hurried down the hall towards the bank of elevators. This time when I felt the tether contracting, I got irritated. I crossed my arms as I waited for the elevator to arrive.

“I don’t need you to take me for a walk,” I said dryly. I knew he was standing behind me.

“Maybe I want to go for a walk, too,” he replied.

“Isn’t it almost time for you to call your girlfriend?” I asked, referring to his nightly phone calls to Stella.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said as the elevator doors slid open. He waited for me to step on and stepped on after.

I looked at him with a look that said “Give me a break.”

“We broke up on last night’s phone call,” he said as he punched the button for the lobby.

“Why?” I asked. I was genuinely curious and maybe concerned.

“She’s going to Oklahoma. I’m going to Harvard. Long distance relationships aren’t my thing.”

“How did she take it?”

“She thinks we can make it work,” he said and then shrugged. “I don’t.”

“You won’t even try. That’s stupid.”

“Donya, don’t preach to me about ‘trying’,” he said with irritation.

The doors slid open and I stormed out.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, though I knew what it meant.

“You didn’t try either,” he said sourly as he held the door open for me.

We stepped outside and started to walk the few yards to the boardwalk.

“The difference is that I wasn’t ready. She clearly is.”

“Why are you so concerned with my relationship – or non-relationship – with Stella?” Emmet asked angrily.

I looked over at him. “Why are you so angry? I’m just saying that you could be throwing something good away because you won’t try.”

“Maybe
you
threw something good away because you didn’t try.”

I sighed in exasperation. We stepped onto the boardwalk and I immediately felt the chill from the sea. Emmet looked at me with fury, but he pulled his jacket off and handed it to me. I took it and slipped my arms inside.

“I thought we were past that,” I said to him when we started walking again.

“I’m not past it, Donya. I just put it aside.”

“Well put it aside again!”

He stopped walking and got so close to me I felt the need to take a step back, but he didn’t let me. He grabbed my arms and kept me there. He looked so mad.

“Did you kiss Andrew?” he demanded.

My mouth dropped open. Sam, Fred and even my mom were still strict about Emmy and me dating, but they finally broke down and said that if we double dated somewhere public, we were allowed to date. I was in no hurry to date anyone, but after listening to Emmy beg me for a week I agreed to go on a double date with her and Corey Newland. She set me up with Corey’s twin brother Andrew. The brothers were fun, hilarious and kind of sweet - and they were our age. So when more double dates were proposed, I went. Andrew was a good guy and I had fun with him. When he kissed me, I kissed him back. It was nice, but it wasn’t great. It wasn’t like Emmet’s kisses, and he wasn’t Emmet. The bar was set high and poor Andrew didn’t make it. I didn’t go on anymore double dates and Andrew moved on.

“That’s none of your business,” I growled at Emmet.

“You dated him. You kissed him!” Emmet yelled, drawing a few looks from the few people left on the boardwalk. “But you won’t date me and you won’t kiss me anymore. Was it good, Donya? Did he get to touch you? Maybe make it to third base? Were you ready for a homerun?”

I slapped him. Hard. My hand stung, but I wanted to slap him again, so I did.

“Fuck you, Emmet Grayne.” I took off his jacket and threw it in his arms. “Stay away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said and reached for me, but I backed away from him.

“Stay away,” I said once more and then I turned away from him and ran.

Chapter Nine

At the last minute, Emmet pulled out of the annual family trek to Louisiana. He told Sam and Fred that he wanted to spend his last few weeks before college with his friends. Fred asked him to reconsider but didn’t push. Sam, on the other hand, put up a huge fight.

“What about spending time with your family?” she had demanded over dinner two nights before our departure.

“I’ve spent the last eighteen years with my family,” Emmet snapped. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life with my family.”

“I ain’t gonna let ya stay up here,” Sam said in a tone that implied that she didn’t care what he wanted.

“It’s his decision, Sam,” Fred said patiently. “He’s not a little boy anymore.”

“He’s
my
little boy, Frederick Grayne!”

Emmy snickered beside me. I elbowed her. She wouldn’t be laughing in a few years when she was put in a similar position.

“I’ll join you guys during the last week,” Emmet said patiently. I could tell he was trying to appease his mom.

“That’s not good enough. You have cousins and aunts and uncles and friends down there that are looking forward to see you before you go away to school.”

“It’s not like he’s going to school on the moon,” I muttered.

“I heard that Donya Elisabeth Stewart,” Sam snapped.

“Whoa,” Emmy said with amusement. “Full name.”

“Ya’ll think this is funny and it’s not,” Sam whined.

Emmet put his pizza down and rested his chin on his folded hands and listened as Sam continued to rant. I felt bad for him. It was his last summer before he was forced to behave somewhat like an adult, and Harvard was no joke. There wouldn’t be too much time for fooling around. Part of me felt he wasn’t going because I would be there, but I told myself how conceited that sounded and shut the thought down.

I cleared my throat and cut Sam off.

“He should stay,” I said. I felt Emmet’s eyes fall on me. “If you force him to go, he’ll be miserable the entire time. Do you really want his last summer as a kid to be miserable?”

Sam sputtered for a moment. “But what about Lucy’s wedding?”

“I won’t miss the wedding,” Emmet promised.

“You’re not going to get your way on this one,” Fred told his wife gently. “Let it go.”

“Can I stay home, too?” Emmy asked with hope.

“No,” Sam, Fred, and Emmet said at the same time.

Sam stopped bugging, but she frowned her way through dinner and barely spoke, which appeased all.

After dinner, I left to go spend the rest of my time with my mom. I made it around the block before I felt the familiar tug and Emmet pulled to the curb. I stopped walking and hesitated before approaching the car. We had barely spoken more than a handful of words since that night on the boardwalk. He had written me a simple apologetic note that said “I’m sorry.” I didn’t acknowledge it and he didn’t push.

I stopped a foot away from the car.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“Speaking up for me at dinner.”

I gave a half shrug. “I would have done the same for anyone. No big deal.”

He flinched a little. He thought I had done it because I cared. I did, but he didn’t need to know that.

“You haven’t forgiven me,” he said, frowning.

I shrugged again. “I forgive you. You won’t be the last guy to call me a slut.”

His eyes darkened. “I didn’t call you a slut, Donya.”

“You implied it. Same difference.”

“I would never call you that.”

“Maybe not directly, but accusing me of getting felt up by Andrew isn’t any better.”

“I was jealous,” he argued softly.

“Well, I get jealous, too,” I snapped. “But you don’t see me making remarks about Stella.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve made a couple of references to couches.”

I bit my lip and crossed my arms defensively. Emmet sighed.

“I didn’t come here to fight with you. I just wanted to thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said curtly.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He gave me a final look of regret and drove off.

*~*~*

My tether was stretched to the point of pain. I thought it would get better with each passing day, but it didn’t. It got worse. I tried to keep myself busy while I was in Louisiana, even going as far as spending a day cooking and baking with Sam and arguing with her, but the ache was still there. I wondered if he ached, too? Or if he was just having so much fun with his friends and various girls that he didn’t notice?

“What’s on your mind, Kiddo?” Fred asked me one morning at our fishing spot.

I looked over at him. “Who said there’s anything on my mind?”

“A father knows these things,” he grinned. His words warmed me and I smiled. “Now tell me what’s going on in that teenage head of yours.’

I couldn’t tell him the truth, that I was in way over my head – the in part was being
in love
– with his youngest son who is supposed to be like a brother to me.

That was the first time I really admitted it to myself. I was pretty sure I was in love with Emmet. I couldn’t feed myself any BS about my tender age. Absence really did make the heart grow fonder.

“I like a guy,” I said slowly, deciding to give Fred some of the truth.

He groaned. “Go on.”

“You have to promise not to hold anything I say against me. It wouldn’t be fair.”

He looked at me with amused suspicion. “Am I going to have to crack some guy’s skull?”

The image of him cracking Emmet’s skull made me shudder. “No skull cracking,” I said, shaking a finger at him.

“I will not make that promise, Kiddo. Continue.”

I inhaled slowly and let it out in a rush. “He’s…incredible,” I said softly with a faint smile. “He makes me feel incredible. I have this really strong connection with him. I can feel him when he’s near and when he’s not, I feel…like a part of me isn’t with me at all, but gone with him.”

Fred looked grim. It must have been hard for him to sit there and listen to this from a kid who wasn’t even supposed to be dating.

“I keep pushing him away,” I admitted. “I told him I’m not ready for all of the things I’m feeling. I don’t want to be like so many girls my age. Their world revolves around these guys and when it falls apart it gets really ugly and they lose all focus on the things that matter. I lost enough of my childhood to my parents’ issues. I don’t want to lose any more of it to all of the drama that comes with relationships. I want to be a teenage, carefree kid as long as I can, because once these years are gone, they’re gone.”

Fred looked at me with a sympathetic smile. “For someone who wants to be young forever, you sure have a grown up way of thinking.”

“I just think it’s a responsible way of thinking.”

“Since when are teenage, carefree kids responsible?” He chuckled.

“You know what I mean,” I smiled. “Besides, I’m not even supposed to be dating.”

Fred straightened up in his chair. I could tell that he was thinking before speaking, something Sam never learned to do.

“How old is this kid?” Fred asked casually.

“A couple of years older than me,” I said carefully.

He looked at me thoughtfully for a long time. I felt like he was seeing right through me, that he knew I was talking about Emmet.

“Donya,” he said and then his shoulders dropped a little. “I’m not condoning a serious relationship at your age, but…” He looked like he may not finish, but took a breath and went forward. “You are a sensible kid. You
are
older than your years because of the things you have gone through. You can’t compare yourself to people in your age group because you’ve already lived a little longer than they have, at least mentally and emotionally. I don’t think that what you’re experiencing is trivial or something that will just pass as things do with kids your age. Because it’s you we’re talking about, and not say, Emmy or Lucy, I know this guy is probably as incredible as you say. You
are
young and you should enjoy these years, but…” he struggled for words and I hung onto every one. “Maybe this guy is supposed to be part of these years. Maybe you will only experience happiness and not all of the…drama as you kids say.”