I was young and stupid, but that was no excuse. Everyone is young and stupid at some point in their life, but not everyone makes the mistakes I'd made. It all started when my brother Luke brought over a new friend. I was a senior in high school, a good girl. A girl my family could be proud of. I didn't go out and party like my brother. I studied. I worked hard. I was going to be a doctor one day, and that meant taking advanced classes while I was in high school, to prepare myself for college and beyond.
I was the white sheep of the family, my brother the black one. He would disappear for days on end, partying and drinking, until he finally couldn't party anymore. Even at twenty-one, he was still living at home. He worked mostly odd jobs – his latest one at a club in Chicago. Luke told me all about it, making it sound like an incredible opportunity, rather than the latest waystation on the road to nowhere he was on. But I'd listen as he told me how great it was to sling drinks and flirt with all the hot women – and to get paid for it too.
He'd apparently found his dream, and I guess that I had to be happy for him.
Every week, we had a family dinner. It was something of a tradition with my folks. Once a week, we'd all
gather around the table and eat a home-cooked meal, all in one place. During the week, my father's job kept him away a lot and Luke was, well, Luke. He was hardly ever around. But he was good about never missing a family dinner. Mostly because mom would have had his hide if he had.
But I remember clearly, this one specific family dinner, when Luke brought a friend from work to our weekly family gathering.
“His name is Reese,” he told my mom beforehand.
“Reese isn't family, dear,” she said. “Only family should be at family dinner.”
Yeah, my mom was a bit uptight. Sometimes too uptight for her own good. But I had to admit that I agreed with her. At least on this one thing. I didn't want any of my brother's scumbag friends hanging out with us. Especially not on the one night we were supposed to come together as a family.
“He has no family, mom. I feel bad for the kid,” Luke complained. “Would you really turn away a guy who has no family instead of welcoming him into ours for an evening?”
I rolled my eyes as I listened from the living room. My brother knew how to work it and play on my mom's heart strings. It made me sick.
I heard my mom sigh as I walked into the kitchen. She put the lasagne in the oven and wiped her hands on her apron. She tried a little too hard to be the picture of the perfect mom – her perfectly coifed hair, the church dress, the pearls around her neck. She had that Donna Reed thing going on, but was exactly the type of woman I aspired to be. Except, of course, that I wanted a career. I gave her props for all she did, but being a stay-at-home mom wasn't for me. In that regard, I was more like my dad – who was a doctor too, of course.
“Fine, I guess I shouldn't be so cold,” she said. “Tell him he can come over, but please – and I beg of you, Luke – tell him to make sure he dresses properly. None of those baggy jeans and baseball caps at the table.”
I snickered. It was hard enough to get Luke to dress properly, especially back then. He was trying so hard to be a gangster type – baggy jeans, tennis shoes that cost his entire pay check, baseball caps turned backward with the brim left unmoulded. He didn't want people to believe he was the adult son of a doctor and a stay-at-home wife living in middle class suburbia outside of Chicago. That would have damaged his street cred or whatever he called it.
If Luke heard me laughing, he ignored me. Instead, he agreed – reluctantly – that they'd dress appropriately for the dinner table. Though, it didn't take a genius to know that his idea of appropriate and my mom's likely didn't match up too well. I figured we'd be lucky if he wore anything that even remotely resembled appropriate dinner table attire.
When he brought Reese over though, I wasn't surprised to see that the kid was wearing the exact attire that mom had said not to wear to the table. Of course, he was. So was my brother.
But Reese, unlike my brother, made it look natural. Unlike my upper middle-class, spoiled snot of a brother, Reese actually looked the part. His brown hair was shaggy and stylishly messy. And unlike my brother, he had the decency to take his hat off at the dinner table – something that surprised the hell out of me.
My mom shook her head, mumbling to herself about ungrateful kids, but she let it go without causing a scene. She never let us argue at the dinner table and always made sure to set the example for us.
I, of course, was dressed in a pink floral skirt with a white, button-up blouse. Not the type of outfit I'd wear to school, but for family dinner, I was expected to dress a little nicer than normal. My father usually wore whatever he wore to work that day – usually a shirt and tie.
“Luke, would you care to say grace?” my mom asked, shooting him a look of pure death that was camouflaged by a saccharine sweet smile, of course.
“I'd rather not,” my brother said. “I'm sure Maya would be more than willing though.”
It was my father, the one who normally didn't like confrontation, who started the dinnertime prayer. I bowed my head, but caught myself staring over at Reese with wide eyes. He pretended to bow his head, but while everybody had their heads lowered, he looked around our dining room, his eyes almost as wide as mine, but probably for different reasons.
I was staring because Reese was actually pretty hot. My dorky brother usually had dorky-looking friends, but this time, his friend wasn't so bad on the eyes. So, sue me. I was a warm-blooded high school girl who didn't get much attention from boys because I was shy and often kept my face hidden by a book. But there was an older guy, someone with a little more experience behind him than the stupid boys in my high school class. I stared until Reese caught me staring. I quickly looked away, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
My father ended the prayer and we all started eating. I kept my eyes lowered and tried hard not to get caught staring again. I was, after all, a dorky high school girl and he was a cooler, older guy who worked at a club. There was no way, in a million years, my brother's best friend was going to look twice at me.
But a girl could dream, couldn't she?
“Dude, where did you get the money for that?” my brother asked.
We were hanging out in the living room, watching television as I pretended to study, and my brother was on the phone – talking to Reese most likely.
“I'm so jealous, dude,” he said, shaking his head.
“Could you please be quiet –” I started to ask him, but it was my mom who beat me to it.
“Please don't make us listen to your conversations, Luke,” she said. “Take it to your room.”