The Fragile Ordinary

Unless...

An ugly thought prodded past all my hopeful ones.

Maybe he and Jess had already hooked up.

Was he using each of us for different things?

I couldn’t bring myself to really think of Tobias as a user. It didn’t feel like he was using me when we hung out together, because we both got something out of it.

I didn’t have long to work myself into a nervous stupor, because Tobias showed up at the house only fifteen minutes later. He must have hurried his cute little arse off.

Don’t think about his arse, Comet, I said to myself as I swung the door wide-open to let him in.

“Your parents don’t mind me hanging out?” he said, stepping into the hall beside me.

He towered over me.

I kept forgetting how much bigger he was than me despite my long legs. A whiff of yummy aftershave almost made my eyelids flutter in rapture and I mentally cursed myself again for being that girl. The one whose intelligent brain melted out of her ears around a beautiful boy. I shook off my attraction, determined not to be that girl.

“They’re not here.” I closed the door behind him and locked it, and then walked down the hall to my bedroom. “This way.”

I was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for him in nervous anticipation, and was pleased at the surprise on his face when he walked in and realized we were in my bedroom.

“And your parents won’t mind that they’re not here and I’m in your bedroom?” His gaze swept over the room, lingering over the bookshelves and the quote I had painted above my bed. I’d already made sure the room was clear of anything embarrassing, like underwear.

Then Tobias’s eyes fell on the poster I had on my wall. It was of a certain gorgeous Hollywood actor who played one of the heroes in a heroine-led book-to-film franchise.

He and Tobias shared a striking resemblance.

Tobias cocked an eyebrow, threw me a pleased smirk as I blushed from head to foot, and then he shrugged out of his jacket. As he settled into my armchair I cursed myself for not taking the damn poster down before he got here.

“So...” I sat down on the edge of my bed and scrambled to think of anything that would make him forget about the poster. “The party was boring?”

“Yeah.” He was still staring around at the room, drinking in every little thing. I wondered what he found so fascinating. “People are fake. I wasn’t in the mood for fake tonight.”

Meaning he thought I was real?

I flushed at the compliment. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Soda if you’ve got it?”

When I returned with a glass of Coke for him, his fingers brushed mine as I passed the tumbler to him. A frisson of awareness shot through me and I felt things in my body—tingles in places I only ever got tingles when I was reading a romance.

Knowing I was probably glowing tomato red, I turned around and willed myself to calm down, before I slumped back on the bed to face him.

“What’s with the banner?” He pointed to the wall adjacent to my bedroom door where I had a University of Virginia pennant I’d bought online pinned to the wall.

“One day that pennant will be pinned to my dorm room wall.”

He seemed surprised. “You want to apply to the University of Virginia?”

“They have a great writing program.”

“I’m sure colleges here have great writing programs, too.”

I shrugged. “They aren’t thousands of miles away across a massive ocean.”

His eyes were filled with questions and, to my surprise, I realized I trusted him enough to provide him with answers. “You asked about my parents. If they would mind you being alone in my bedroom with me. They won’t care, Tobias. They don’t care.”

His brows hitched toward one another as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What does that mean?”

Even though my heart was beating hard in my chest at the very idea of anyone knowing just how empty things were between me and my parents, I found that I wanted Tobias to know why I wrote the kinds of poems that I did. Why I wrote his favorite one in the notebook he’d read.

“They didn’t want me. I was an accident.” I shuffled back against my pillows, getting comfortable. “They’ve always been distant with me, even when I was little. I didn’t know any better then. And to be fair, Carrie—my mum—was more hands-on then than she is now. Marginally. She had to be, I suppose. Dad was always a little more enthusiastic. But as I got older, more independent, Carrie lost all interest and with her disinterest came my dad’s. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong.” I rolled my eyes, the bitterness rising up inside of me. “I still don’t. I think they tell themselves that it’s okay, that they’re artists and artists are a little self-obsessed. But not all artists who are parents are self-obsessed. Men and women can write books and paint pictures and still be good parents.

“But not Kyle and Carrie Caldwell.” I huffed. “I always used to wonder why Dad would show interest in me and then suddenly just stop. But one day, a few years ago, I overheard a conversation I wasn’t supposed to.”

I was silent so long, remembering that day, that Tobias prodded. “Comet?”

I blinked and looked across the room at the boy who was staring at me with such concern and tenderness that I wanted to launch myself into his arms.

No one ever just hugged me anymore.

Never my parents.

Vicki and Steph had stopped.

I pushed the thought away. “I think something happened to my mum. Dad’s parents died before I was born but Carrie’s parents are alive. And she has a sister. I’ve never met any of them. I think they hurt her growing up.”

“Hurt her? You mean...like abused?”

I nodded. “I think so. Whatever happened, I think it messed her up good. And I think my dad saved her. All she cares about is Dad and art. And she’s not good at sharing. I think... I think she feels threatened by me. Afraid that somehow by loving me, Dad would love her less. They argued about him helping me with a project at school—that she needed his attention now more than I did. So I started to wonder if maybe that’s why my dad would suddenly stop helping me with homework or change his mind about going to a museum with me.

“Is it her, to appease her? I don’t know.” I shrugged, the action belying my depths of feeling on the matter. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is. The results are the same. They have no time for me. They don’t give a crap. Which is why I’m applying to the University of Virginia and getting as far away from them as possible when I graduate.”

I wasn’t looking at Tobias when I finished. I was ashamed. A child should have changed Carrie—should have given her someone to love and trust beyond my dad. But somehow I wasn’t lovable enough.

“Comet. Look at me.”

His voice, the kindness in it when he spoke to me, had become addictive. And I think that’s why I’d told him the truth about my family. I wanted him to absolve me of the part I played in not being who Carrie needed me to be, and not being the kind of kid my dad would choose over her.

I looked at him and found what I was searching for. Concern, anger, tenderness, all blazed from his beautiful eyes. For me.

“Now your poems make total sense,” he said.

I nodded.

“Your parents are assholes, Comet.”

Succinct. To the point. And I was afraid very, very true. I smiled at him gratefully even though I held a sadness inside of me I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to relieve me of. “Thank you.”

“My dad was an asshole,” he said. “He pushed me all the time to be the best. I had to make straight As for him because he’d never gotten anything lower than a B. I had to play football and campaign for class president. I had to be perfect. Because he was perfect.” He scoffed, and I winced at the rage I saw in the darkest depths of Tobias’s eyes. “He wasn’t perfect, Comet. He was a hypocrite. He died in a car crash with the woman he’d been screwing behind my mom’s back for years. Worst part? My mom knew. She knew, and she let him do that to us all the while he preached at me the whole time. And I worked my ass off!” He flinched when he realized he was yelling. Sighing, he settled down and I fought the urge to walk across the room and hug him. “I wanted so badly to make him proud, because he did so much for us. He was this big shot lawyer and because of him I was going to be a legacy pledge at his fraternity house at Northwestern. I’d be pre-law just like my old man.