Acceptance Letter
Riley
When I got home, I threw my purse on the counter. I sorted through the mail that I’d grabbed from our mailbox downstairs. After getting turned down by Yale via their website portal, I wasn’t too excited to read any other denials. I hadn’t applied to too many schools, since we didn’t have the money for me to go run off and attend a four-year university right now. My older brother, Paul, said that I wasn’t ready to live on my own yet. He wanted me to stay at home until I was an old maid. He was way too overprotective after our parents died. He still thought of me as the six-year-old little girl that I was when he left for college, and he never let go of it. I’d been through my growth spurt, but he still called me Squirt.
Squirt’s major ambition in life was to be a professional actress and singer, not that surprising in LA. So Paul didn’t understand my desire to become a social media maven. Facebook was something to him that was where you went to share pictures of your children, not an advertising platform of increasing relevance for businesses. He thought wanting to go into social media marketing was on par with a six-year-old girl’s dreams of stardom.
I sorted the mail into two piles: my letters and Paul’s bills. I knew that I had to leave them on the front table, but I hated watching his shoulders get tense when he got home and saw the pile of bills.
At the bottom of the pile of mile, I saw a huge yellow envelope that made my heart beat faster. Denials were short and polite. They arrived in thin envelopes. This envelope was huge and fat.
I took a look at the door. Paul would be home soon. I needed to move to my room. I took my mail into my room, even the dumb Valu-Pak envelope. I closed my door before I opened the fat yellow envelope. The return address said University of SoCal, one of the few colleges that allowed undergraduates majoring in marketing to concentrate on social media marketing.
I tore it open, even though my hands were shaking. Please. Please.
I looked at the letter on the top which started with “Congratulations.”
I didn’t know exactly what happened, but one moment I was upright and the next moment I was staring at my ceiling. Was this letter real?
When the room stopped spinning around me, I calmed down enough to read the rest of the material. I finished reading the letter, which said how excited they were to admit me, and then read through all the first-year residential materials. I had to figure out the course catalogue and make a lot of decisions.
I swallowed hard when I looked at my housing options. It was a huge stretch to try to cover the cost, even with the generous tuition help they gave to National Merit Finalists, which I was. Even if I worked my way through college, there was no way that I could afford any of it. I didn’t care. I logged into their website and officially sent my acceptance of admission, money be damned.
I heard the front door open. Paul’s footsteps thumped into our home. “Riley?”
“I’m here!” I called. I needed to figure out a safe place to stash my acceptance letter. I normally could hear the roar of his motorcycle when he got home, but I must not have been paying attention. I looked around. I saw the door beginning to open and shoved it under my pillow. Unoriginal, I knew, but I was pressed for time.
“Hurry up. We’re going out for drinks with Desmond in five. If we don’t get moving soon, we’re going to miss happy hour.”
I didn’t know what had happened to my big brother. He used to wear a hoodie and flip-flops year-round when he was off duty. Cheerfully irresponsible, never serious besides work. Now he was really boring and always stressed out. When our parents had died, they’d left substantial debts for us, the heirs, to pay. On top of Paul’s business loans, he was always fighting to stay afloat. Leaving the military had destroyed his life, but he’d done it for me.
I’d tried to tell him that I’d get a job, but it was hard to find anywhere with openings in this economy. I’d been to every restaurant within walking distance of our home, and nobody had been willing to hire me except this one creepy guy.
He’d had a thin pencil mustache and tried to convince me that by letting him take me into the alleyway behind the restaurant, I’d somehow be able to “work” my way into working. I booked it out of there. I didn’t tell Paul about it, either, because he would’ve gone insane.
I checked my hair in the mirror and re-applied some lip gloss. It was dumb for me to primp for Desmond, but I’d always had a crush on him. He treated me like Paul did, though, just an annoying little sister.
“I swear to God,” Paul said, “if you’re going to spend another hour in there putting on makeup, I will break down this door.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” With a last glance over my shoulder, I opened the door. “Why are you so impatient?”
“I’m going to get my dick wet tonight, that’s why.”
“Ew!” I heard him with girls in his bedroom, even though I had zero desire to do so. I’d learned to put on noise-cancelling headphones when he had a lady friend over. Or two.
Paul just laughed at my squeamishness. “Dez is coming over to pre-game. Do I smell okay?” Paul’s question was clearly rhetorical, because he lifted his arm and sniffed his armpit. “Oh, that’s rank. Gonna hit the shower for a minute. Open the door for Dez when he gets here. Tell him that I have whiskey in the liquor cabinet. He’s supposed to bring something, too.”
Paul was pulling his shirt off as he went into the bathroom. He was in way better shape than he should be, considering how much he drank.
Less than thirty seconds after I heard the water start, I heard a knock on the door.
“Hey man,” I heard Dez call. I smoothed my hair and yanked open the door.
Inexperienced
Riley
I was breathless when I opened the door and saw him standing there in a suit. It clung to him lovingly, following the breadth of his shoulders, which were so wide that he had to get his suits tailored. His suit probably cost five times what my dress did. He looked good enough to eat. Bright blue eyes that were the color of a cloudless sky. So tall that I had to lean back to look at him. Chiseled cheekbones that you could cut yourself on.