“So
when do we get to meet this boyfriend of yours?”
I
had been mostly tuning out on my conversation with my mother. She was describing some new sort of diet to
me. The diet involved something like, I
don’t know, eating only rat dropping or something like that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter—I’ve officially
given up on diets. All she has to do is
say the word “diet,” and I zone out automatically. It’s like I’ve been hypnotized.
“Huh?”
I say.
“The
boyfriend,” my mother says impatiently.
“The man you’re seeing. The
crippled one.”
“That’s
not very PC,” I say. Although actually,
Brody will sometimes refer to himself as “crippled.” I think it’s like the N-word. If you’re black, it’s okay to use it, but if
you’re not, it really isn’t.
“I
didn’t realize I had to be politically correct when I’m talking to my daughter
on the phone,” Mom sniffs. “So are you
still seeing him? What was his
name? Brandon?”
“Brody,”
I say. “But I thought you felt like he
was no good. That he was taking
advantage of me.”
“Why? Do you think he is too?” Mom asks anxiously.
I
sigh. For a moment, I debate pretending
that Brody and I broke up. But she’d
find out the truth eventually. So I
reluctantly agree to bring Brody over for dinner at the Davisons.
Brody
is very agreeable about the whole thing when I tell him. I think he likes the idea that we’re getting
serious enough to meet each other’s parents.
Of course, there’s the problem of how he’s going to get out to my
mother’s house, which isn’t very accessible by bus. Finally, Brody’s mother eagerly volunteers to
drive both of us over.
As
we pull onto the street where I used to live, my parents’ house comes into
view. Including the two steps to the
front door. Damn. How did I forget about those stairs?
“I
forgot about the stairs to get to the front door,” I say miserably.
“Don’t
worry!” Maggie says cheerfully as she pulls up to the curb. “I always carry a portable ramp. Believe me, Emily, this happens all the
time.”
The
portable ramp is made of metal and sort of looks like half a ladder. Maggie shoos off my offer to help, and she
lays the top part on our top step, and the bottom part on the ground. Brody is able to drive up the stairs without
a problem, at which point Maggie takes down the ramp. I notice that our next
door neighbor, Mrs. Jenkins, has stopped mowing her lawn and is just staring at
us, slack-jawed.
“So
I’ll come get you when you call,” Maggie says to Brody. “You’re going to spend the night at our
house, right?”
Brody
nods. “Yeah.”
Maggie
looks over at me. “You’re welcome to
stay as well, Emily.”
“Oh.” I am momentarily surprised by her offer. “Do you have a guest bedroom?”
Maggie
laughs. “A guest bedroom? You’d sleep with Brody, wouldn’t you?” She seems amused by my pink cheeks. “My son is a grown up. I certainly don’t mind if he shares his bed
with a young lady.”
“I
think I’ll just go home after,” I mumble.
I glance over at Brody, whose cheeks are just as pink as mine feel.
Maggie
smooths out Brody’s hair and straightens his tie out, until he says, “Please, Mom. Quit it.
I’m fine.” Then she makes her
exit, and I ring the doorbell, although I have a bad feeling that my mother has
been peeking under the window shade and witnessed the entire spectacle.
Sure
enough, roughly one second after I ring the doorbell, my mother throws open the
door. She has a smile plastered on her
face that doesn’t even come close to reaching her eyes. “Hello, Emily,” she says. She looks at Brody and squares her
chest. “It’s nice to meet you, Brody.”
She
holds out his hand to him, which I guess is a normal thing to do if I hadn’t
told her he’s a quadriplegic. Brody, to
his credit, tries to make it work. He
bats at her hand with his, and my mother looks properly horrified.
“Shoes
off,” Mom reminds me as we enter the house.
I slide my loafers off, and Mom looks critically down at Brody’s
wheels. “Brody, we have a lot of
carpeting in this house that I like to keep clean.”
“Oh!”
Brody glances down at his wheels. “I,
um… I could go back and forth a few times on the welcome mat…”
Brody
and I spend the next ten minutes attempting to get his wheels clean. I end up
grabbing a towel from the linen closet to help, because the last thing I want
is my mother complaining about tire marks all over her carpet. I’d never hear the end of it.
“I’m
really sorry, Emily,” Brody murmurs to me.
“Don’t
be sorry,” I whisper back. “It’s my
mother’s fault for having this stupid white carpet. She’s tortured us with it our whole life.”
And
of course, while I’m on my knees, cleaning the tread of Brody’s dirty tires,
that would be the moment my sister Camille walks into the room.
“Brody
Nolan!” I hear her say. I look up and
see her standing in front of him, all long legs and shiny, dark hair. The dress she’s wearing is tight enough that
you can see every curve of her perfect body.
Is she trying to impress Brody?
“Cammy
Davison,” he replies, sounding less than thrilled.
I
struggle back into a standing position.
Screw the tires. They’re clean
enough.
“Actually,”
Camille says, “I go by Camille now.”
“Camille,”
he repeats obediently.
“Brody.” She lays her hand on his shoulder, and I
cringe internally. “You look good.
Really good.”
Brody
laughs. “Okay, whatever. It’s good to see you too, Cammy.”
I
want to give him a hug for calling her “Cammy” two seconds after she instructed
him not to. I love the way her lips turn
into a straight line.
“Emily
said you got married,” Brody says. “So
congratulations.”
“Thank
you.” Camille beams. “And you’re dating Emily then, huh? That’s… very nice.”
My
mother comes into the foyer then to recruit my help in the kitchen. I always end up helping in the kitchen—never
Camille. Camille would always complain
that working in the kitchen made her too hot and sweaty.
“Carrots,”
Mom says to me, pointing out a pile of ten large carrots. It seems like an awful lot of carrots for
five people. Is this the start of some
new all-carrot diet? “Peel them and chop
them.”
“Okay,”
I agree.
I
peel carrots for a minute in silence, trying not to think about what Brody and
Camille are discussing in the next room.
My mother breaks the silence: “Emily, this is really too much.”
I
put down the knife, relieved. “I knew it
was too many carrots. How many do you want? Three?”
“Not
the carrots,” Mom says. Damn. “That boy.
Brody. I can’t believe you’re
really… seeing him romantically.”
I
should have known this was where the conversation was going. “Well, I am,” I mumble.
“It’s
so weird, Emily,” Mom says. “Nobody really dates men like that.”
I
don’t respond. I just focus on the carrots.
Peel, peel, peel. Chop, chop,
chop.
“You
know,” she continues, “Camille knew that boy in high school, and she didn’t
have one good thing to say about him.
She said he was always on drugs, Emily. Drugs.”
When
I don’t answer her, she keeps talking, “He’s probably trying to get more drugs
from you, Emily. I bet that’s his
game. Did he ask you for drugs? Are you getting him drugs?”
I
don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Brody don’t even drink alcohol, much less take drugs. And if he wanted drugs, I’d be the last
person who would know how to get them for him.
My
mother puts down the spoon she was using to stir her sauce. “I’ll give you $5,000 dollars right now if
you break up with him,” she says.
I
almost choke on carrot fumes. My parents
are not wealthy, and offering me $5,000 is kind of a big deal. That’s not money they would just throw
around.
“Stop
being ridiculous,” I snap at her.
“That’s
a serious offer, Emily.”
I
lay the knife down on the table. Part of
me is scared that if I don’t put it down, I’ll do something dumb with it. “I
need to go to the bathroom,” I say to my mother, before she can offer me more
money.
There’s
one bathroom in my parents’ house located under the stairwell. Usually, I hate that bathroom—it’s so tiny
that I feel like I have to take a deep breath just to fit inside. If there’s anything on the rim of the sink,
my butt knocks it over before I can get out.
But
right now, going to the bathroom serves a dual purpose. Well, three purposes, actually, because I
really do have to go to the bathroom—for some reason, I’ve been peeing
practically every hour lately… I hope I don’t have some new fungal infection
that I need to return to Dr. Richmond to treat. But the second purpose is that
I get to escape my mother. And thirdly, you
can hear absolutely everything going on in the living room from the bathroom. The minute I get inside, the voices that were
once distant are now loud and clear.
“She’s
a school principal now!” Camille is saying.
“Can you believe it?”
Oh,
thank God. It’s just Camille talking
about her stupid friends from high school.
“Uh
huh,” Brody says politely.
“You
remember Charlotte, don’t you?”
“Um,
not really, to be honest.”
“Well,”
Camille sniffs, “you probably don’t remember much from high school.”
Brody
laughs. “Yeah. That’s kind of true.”
“So
Brody.” Camille sounds a little peeved that her insult missed the mark. I’m proud of Brody for not letting her get to
him. “You and Emily. What’s the deal with that?”
“We’re
going out. I thought you knew.”
“Ha
ha,” Camille mutters. “You know what I
mean. Emily doesn’t remind me too much
of the girls I used to see you with.”
“Yeah,
well. I’m a little different than I was
when I was sixteen. You know?”
“But
you can’t really like her, Brody.”
There’s
a long pause while I press my ear against the wall so hard that it starts to
ache. Finally, Brody says, “What is that supposed to mean? Just because she’s a little overweight…”
“A
little overweight!” Camille hisses. “Oh
please! Emily hasn’t been ‘a little
overweight’ in the last ten years. She’s
gigantic. And she’s just getting bigger.”
“So
what? I think she’s pretty.”
“You’re
so full of shit, Brody,” Camille says.
“You don’t really mean that—nobody could. She’s never even had a
boyfriend. My mother has been hassling my husband for years to find Emily a
date. He tricked one guy into agreeing
to go out with her without seeing a picture first, and the guy saw her sitting in the restaurant and
called her to cancel. And she was
thinner back then—she’s gained at least fifty pounds since college, probably
more.”
I
feel sick to my stomach. I remember that
night. Camille talked me going out with
some guy named Jared—a friend of Rob’s.
We talked on the phone and he sounded nice enough. Then when I was waiting for him to show up,
Jared called me and said a family emergency had come up and he wouldn’t be able
to make it. I felt bad about it, but
figured at least he wasn’t rejecting me because I was too fat. So much for that delusion.
“I
don’t know what to tell you,” Brody says tightly. “I like Emily. I don’t care what some asshole friend of your
husband did.”
“Is
it that you think you can’t get anyone better?” she asks. “Do you get high all the time so you don’t
have to think about who you’re actually hooking up with?”
“How
could you talk that way about your own
sister?” Brody snaps at her.
“That’s
why I’m trying to protect her,” Camille retorts. “I can tell you haven’t changed at all since
high school. I know what kind of person you are, and I know there’s no way you
could really like Emily.”
“You
haven’t changed at all either,” Brody says.
“You’re still a self-righteous bitch.”
“Fine,
don’t ‘fess up,” Camille says. “I’ll
just tell Emily you hit on me while she was in the kitchen. She’ll believe anything I tell her.”
“Whatever,
Cammy,” Brody says. “Emily’s a lot
smarter than you seem to think she is.”
“Book
smart maybe,” Camille concedes. “But not
smart enough to see through your little act.”
“It’s
not an act,” Brody says, so quietly that I have to strain to hear. “I love her. And if you’re not cool with
that, then you can go f—”
Brody’s
profanity gets cut off by my mother banging on the bathroom door. “You okay in there, Emily?” she calls to
me. “You didn’t get stuck in there again,
did you?”
I
swear, that only happened once.
______
Dinner
is a tense affair. My father shows up
just before the food is ready, and he greets Brody with just as much suspicion
as the rest of the family. I’ve never
had a boyfriend before, but I’ve seen Dad give the first degree to Denise and
Camille’s boyfriends, so I know what’s coming.
I already warned Brody that my father can be “intense.”
“So
you’re the one dating my daughter, huh?” Dad says gruffly. He peers across the dining table at Brody as
we wait for my mother to serve our food.
“Yes,
sir,” Brody says politely.
“What
are you in that wheelchair for?” my father demands to know.
Brody
doesn’t bat an eye. “Car accident. I
broke my neck.”
Dad
snorts. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing
you can’t drive anymore.”
“Actually,”
Brody says. “I can drive.”
I
look at him in surprise. I had
absolutely no idea he was able to drive.
I can’t even imagine how it’s possible.
Dad
shakes his head. “Yeah, right.”
“I
can,” Brody insists. “I had a car back
in college because I was a commuter student, but it was too expensive to keep
it in Manhattan, so I gave it up.”
Dad
looks Brody over, focusing his attention on his hands. “How in hell are you able to drive?”
“Hand
controls,” he explains.
My
father raises his eyebrows. “You can operate hand controls?”
Brody
slides his right hand into his lap self-consciously. “Well, yeah.
With some modifications.”
“No,”
Dad says. “Sorry, I do have some medical
knowledge. There’s no way you could
drive a car. It’s just not possible.”
Brody
glances at me, then back at my father.
He seems to be internally debating something in his head. Finally, he says, “Um, okay.”
Mom
bursts into the dining room, holding two plates of chicken with rice and
carrots. She places one plate in front
of Camille and one in front of my father.
Brody already has his splint on and he’s working to get the fork in
place. He’s just gotten it when my
mother puts his plate of food in front of him, and then a plate for me.
I
look down at my plate of food, which has one tiny piece of white meat chicken,
a dime sized scoop of rice, and more than half the plate covered with
carrots. I knew the carrots were some
sort of diabolical plot on my mother’s part to get me to diet. And of course, everyone else at the table has
an entirely normal portion of carrots in front of them.
“Carrots
are really healthy, Emily,” Mom tells me.
“You should eat more of them.”
I
love how she’s called attention to my weight in front of the first boyfriend
I’ve ever brought home. Also, I don’t
hate carrots, but I don’t want them to make up 75% of my dinner.
“I
was reading that Demi Lovato lost a lot of weight by snacking on raw carrots,”
Mom adds. “In fact—”
“Excuse
me, Mrs. Davison,” Brody interrupts my mother’s soliloquy on carrots. “Do you have any straws? Usually I carry them with me, but I guess I
ran out…”
He’s
looking at his water glass. I’ve never
actually seen Brody drink a beverage without a straw.
“Sorry,”
she says. “I don’t believe in straws.”
My
mother doesn’t believe in
straws? What does that mean? I had no idea she
had any sort of strong opinion about straws.
“Okay,”
Brody says quietly. He glances at
me. “Emily, do you think you could help
me with the… you know, the chicken?”
My
mother has given him a large chicken cutlet.
I’m guessing the only way he’d be able to eat it would be to stab it
with his fork and eat it whole. I lean
forward and slice it for him into smaller chunks while my entire family gawks
at me. Well, at least we’re not talking
about carrots anymore.
I
feel bad for Brody because I can tell he’s meticulously avoiding his water
glass, but my mother makes the saltiest food in the world. The carrots aren’t too bad, but the rice is
generously salted, and the chicken may as well be a salt lick. I have a taste for salty foods, thanks to
years of my mother’s cooking, but you definitely need a drink with it. I’d kill for a soda, but if I didn’t at least
have my water, I’d be in physical pain right now.
It
takes about ten minutes of eating in awkward silence before Brody cracks. He leans his head forward as far as he can,
his upper body straining against the belt, and he grasps the sides of the water
glass with his wrists. He tilts the
glass forward carefully and is just barely able to take a sip. I can see his arms starting to shake with the
effort of the whole process, and sure enough, he drops the glass, and water
spills all over the table and the floor.
“I’m
so sorry!” Brody cries as my parents glower at him. “I’m really sorry.”
Of
course, they couldn’t possibly have hated him more before he spilled the water,
so what’s the difference? He could
literally set fire to their house at this point and it probably wouldn’t change
their opinion of him.
“I’ll
clean it up,” I say. I push myself away
from the table and head in the direction of the kitchen to grab some
napkins.
Camille
leaps out of her seat too. “I’ll help
you.”
I
glance at my sister in annoyance.
Cleaning up a spilt glass of water isn’t exactly a two-person job. It’s obvious what Camille has in mind, so it
doesn’t surprise me one bit when she grabs my arm the second I enter the
kitchen. “Emily,” she says, “we need to
talk.”
I
start yanking paper towels off the roll by the kitchen sink. “No,” I say.
“We really don’t.”
“You
can’t seriously like him,” she says.
It’s
pretty much the same thing she said to Brody about me. It makes me wonder if she meant it both
times. Does she think we’re both so
completely undesirable that nobody could really like either of us?
“Well,
I do,” I say as I crumble a wad of paper towels in my fist. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Camille
sighs loudly. “Look, Emily. I didn’t want to tell you this, but while you
were in the other room with Mom, Brody… well, he hit on me. I told you that he used to like me in high
school, and… I guess he still does.”
I
wonder if I hadn’t heard everything Camille said to Brody, I would have
believed her story. The truth is, I
might have. That would have really hurt.
“He
was saying all these completely inappropriate sexual things to me,” Camille
says. “As if I would ever be interested
in a guy like him! Even if he wasn’t
your boyfriend, obviously.”
“Camille,”
I say quietly. “I heard everything that
you said to Brody. I was in the
bathroom.”
Camille’s
lips form a surprised little circle. It
takes her a good few seconds to recover her composure. Despite everything, it’s slightly amusing to
watch.
“Okay,
fine,” she hisses at me. “He didn’t hit
on me, okay? He was ridiculously loyal
to you. But it doesn’t matter. Brody Nolan is not a good guy. You need to
trust me when I say to stay away from him.”
“Yeah,”
I snort. “I trust you, Cammy.”
“I
don’t want a guy like him in my family!” Camille says.
I
roll my eyes. “Right. Because it’s all about you.”
Camille
puts her fists on her hips. “Emily, this
is for your own good. You have zero
experience with men, and I… well, I’ve got lots. More than I’d like, to be honest.” She drops her arms to her sides. A sad expression comes over her. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. And I know Brody will hurt you. I know
him. I’ve seen him hurt so many
girls. I’ve seen him hurt himself.”
For
a moment, my resolve is weakened. Nobody
would ever say that Camille and I are close.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve called her in the last
year… hell, in our entire lives. But
I’ve known her my whole life, and I can tell she means what she’s saying. She genuinely believes that Brody’s going to
break my heart.
But
she’s wrong.
“Camille,”
I say. “I love Brody. And if you’re not cool with that, you can go
fuck yourself.”
_____
The
rest of the meal is mostly silent.
Nobody offers to refill Brody’s water glass and even if they did, I’m
pretty sure he’d rather die than attempt to take another drink. In the end, he leaves over the majority of
the food, explaining that he wasn’t very hungry. Nobody suggests dessert or coffee.
I
walk him outside, where he’s able to carefully bump down the two steps to my
parents’ house. Obviously, he can’t go
anywhere until Maggie gets here, and she’s also going to be my ride to the
train station, since it’s too far to reasonably walk without major thigh
chafing.
“Your
family seems nice,” Brody says, as he watches the street, the wind tousling his
brown hair.
“You’ve
got to be kidding me,” I snort.
Brody
grins up at me. “Well, they didn’t try
to stab me or anything. So that’s a plus.”
“Just
you wait,” I mutter.
Brody
looks up at me with nervousness in his blue eyes. “When you were in the kitchen with your
sister, she didn’t… I mean, did she say anything about me?”
“I
know you didn’t really hit on her,” I assure him.
His
shoulders sag. “Okay, good. I would never, ever… like, not in a million
years, Emily. I love you. I promise, you can
trust me.”
“I
know,” I say.
And
for some strange reason, I think again of what Camille said to me: I know Brody will hurt you. He won’t though. I know he won’t.
To be continued...
Ugh Emily's family is awful! I loved the update though but am a little nervous about the possible foreshadowing with all the mentions of Emily believing Brody would never hurt her. I love these two characters and just enjoy watching them fall in love and a deeper understanding of one another. Thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely isn't going to be entirely smooth sailing for Emily and Brody, but I hope what happens doesn't disappoint you.
DeleteFrom the carpet to the water glass my heart ached for Brody and Emily. But they made it through (thank goodness for cozy bathrooms!)This story is really great. I look forward to each update.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it.
DeleteThe family's behaviour is awfull... unacceptable...
ReplyDeletebut Brody and Emily seem to be a really strong couple if they can handle it.
Yes, I think that they love each other a lot.
DeleteBrutal chapter! Hope they get even!
ReplyDeleteBTW Loved "Forget You" last year.
Thank you! I always thought people didn't like that story as much, so I'm glad to hear that feedback.
DeleteI love forget you! I was getting a masters in Illustration abroad so I didn't want to be on the internet and get distracted but my only exception was Sunday so I could read that story. I care so deeply about Riley and Maggie. I love all your stories (this one is amazing) and have bought all your books :) keep on with your wonderful eWorld please :D (another anon who's interfiering in this combo :S)
Delete*work
DeleteWhat a hideous family. Can't imagine putting anyone through thAt. Ok, why didn't she help him with the glass? Loved the chapter though. Thanks
ReplyDeleteIt might've been even worse if she had to start feeding him! ;)
DeleteThe dinner engagement from Hell! Great story. I wish Emily would spend the night, though . . . ;)
ReplyDeleteIt will happen!
DeleteI was so scared for Emily and Brody but they made it through. Love this story!
ReplyDelete