True (True Believers #1)(44)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“No, you can’t. The irony is that your dad and I don’t look like we belong together either, but of course he doesn’t see the parallels. I’m sure once he recovers from the muscle tone and the tattoos, he’ll be fine.”

Good thing he didn’t know about the penis piercing. That would give him a heart attack. Or the fact that I had seen the penis piercing. I grinned, glad Susan couldn’t see me. “I hope so. Tyler is a great guy.”

“By the way, I’m going to suggest that you and I have a quick obligatory birth control conversation right now, so that I can tell your dad we did. Then he won’t attempt to have that conversation with you himself, thus resulting in mortifying all of us on Thursday and him popping seventeen antacids. I want him to enjoy dinner, and I don’t want you humiliated in front of the whole family.”

“Oh, God,” I said, horrified. “He wants to talk to me about birth control?”

“Unfortunately, yes. So let’s nip this in the bud. Are you using it?”

I didn’t see any reason to deny what we were doing, and we were being safe. So I told her truthfully, “Yes.”

“Okay, perfect. We’re good then. I’ll tell your dad we had a lengthy heart-to-heart and we bonded and that you’re not sleeping with Tyler at this point.”

I laughed. “Great idea.”

“Because really, is it any of his business? Not particularly.”

“Um, it’s not.” There were some things you just didn’t need to share with your father. Like how late Tyler had kept me up the night before, doing quiet and delicious things to me under my comforter while my roommates slept.

Redirecting my thoughts, I reminded myself there was a point to this conversation. “So, do you mind if Tyler comes for dinner on Thursday?”

“No, of course not. I think that’s a great idea, actually. What about his family? Does he live too far away to go home?”

“No. He actually lives right here in Cincinnati. But he doesn’t exactly have a standard home life. His mom is a bit of a mess,” I said, trying to downplay the truth. “And he basically takes care of his younger brothers. Soooo . . . can they both come, too?”

In true Susan fashion, she didn’t change tone at all. “Sure. How old are they? The older they are, the more meat they eat, in my experience. Little guys just like corn and bread.”

“Seventeen and ten.”

“Perfect. Are you still coming tomorrow?”

“No. I’ll just come Thursday morning with Tyler. That way Dad doesn’t have to drive down here tomorrow and pick me up. He can just take me home on Sunday.” I adjusted my backpack and squinted against the sun. “Should I call him and tell him?”

“I can pass it on. See you Thursday.”

“Thanks, Susan.”

When I hung up the phone, I changed my mind and decided to call my dad. He shouldn’t have to hear secondhand from Susan. That wasn’t fair. It had just been me and him for a decade, and I didn’t want our closeness to shift and fade away.

But it was his voice mail, so I left a message.

Thursday morning I realized that he had never actually called me back.

Chapter Fifteen

“Whoa, Rory, this is where you live?” Jayden asked from the backseat as we pulled into my neighborhood. “Holy crap, you must be rich.”

“No. Just middle class,” I said, feeling awkward at his awe. I tried to see the subdivision through his eyes, not mine. To me, it was just a regular suburban neighborhood of houses built in the mid-nineties, fake colonials with brick fronts, vinyl siding wrapping around the rest. The houses weren’t on top of one another, but they were close, though the builder had snaked the streets to give the illusion of privacy. There were five floor plans, and only on rare occasion did some wacky homeowner deviate from the holy trinity of shutter colors—black, burgundy, or hunter green.

It was all very ordinary. Basketball hoops and cul-de-sacs and perfectly edged front lawns. At any given moment from March to October, there was a middle-aged man taming his minimal plot of land into a perfect emerald postage stamp, with conical bushes and staggered foliage, so something was always in bloom. Women planted flowers. Kids traveled up and down drives on scooters.

At ten, I had assumed everyone except poor people in Africa lived that way.

By twelve or thirteen, I had a slightly expanded view of the world, and by eighteen, had considered myself knowledgeable of the plight of America’s working poor.

But until I rode through my own childhood neighborhood in Tyler’s dilapidated car and saw those streets through Jayden’s eyes, I hadn’t really understood. This felt alien to them, I could sense it in the tension that rose in the car. This felt unattainable. This felt like it was mocking them.

“Maybe I should have worn a tie,” Tyler said wryly.

“You don’t have a tie,” Easton told him from the backseat. “Do you?” The idea seemed to intrigue him.

“No.” Tyler lit a cigarette as he turned down the street I pointed to. “And I don’t want to.”

I recognized that tone. His jaw was set and he was dragging hard on his filter, blasting the smoke back out. He was uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted this to be fun for them, for me, not something everyone was dreading.

“This street is called Chamomile Court? Is that for real? What’s one block over, Lavender?”

I didn’t say anything, because he’d put me in a position where nothing I could say would be right. If I mocked it along with him, I was mocking my upbringing, which I didn’t think I needed to apologize for. If I tried to put a positive spin on it, it would just irritate him.

There was no question that Chamomile Court was a stupid name for a street. But there were a lot of stupid street names. There were whole blogs dedicated to Butt Hole Lanes and Divorce Ct. signs, right alongside intersections like Love Lane and Disaster Drive.

Whatever.

Maybe Tyler realized his mood had altered mine because for most of the drive up from Cincinnati, we had all been laughing and talking, and now I was silent. His hand snaked over and linked through mine. Sometimes I still stared in awe at our hands entwined, amazed that we were together. Our relationship felt like a Christmas gift that you hadn’t asked for and weren’t expecting to receive, but the minute you saw it, you knew it was perfect for you.

“Don’t worry,” I told him finally, brushing his skin with my thumb. “They’ll like you.” I pointed to the beige house with the red-brick facing. “This one.”