Evan
this girl, huh?”
My dad’s voice comes from behind me, and I jump away from the window, almost giving myself whiplash when I turn around to glare at him.
“Dad! What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been waiting at this window like a little kid watching out for Santa Claus to bring him his presents,” Dad says with a shrug. “Not to mention all the different ways you’ve told us how perfect this girl is. I might be smart, but I could be stupid and still be able to tell that you like this girl.”
I follow Dad into the kitchen as he talks, and absent-mindedly hop onto a seat at the kitchen counter, watching him as he makes a fresh pot of coffee.
“It’s complicated, Dad.”
“Right,” he says. “How?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
He looks up from the coffee machine, raising an eyebrow and giving me a piercing look, reminding me that I take after Dad in only one way: we both share the same blue eyes.
“I, the adult who’s been married for twenty-five years to the love of his life, wouldn’t understand anything about a teenage boy with a crush.”
“It’s not a crush, Dad.”
He gives me a long look, then turns on the coffee machine and comes to take a seat at my side, propping her elbows on the marble top of the kitchen counter and lacing his fingers together. The silent, searching look he gives me makes me realise how much I’ve missed him, missed talking to him. I wonder if I would have messed up this badly if I’d gotten to talk to him more. After all, he’s not wrong: he’s actually managed to not only go out with the woman he loved, but marry her and stay married to her for twenty-five years. And Mom doesn’t even look unhappy like those married middle-aged women on TV, so you know he must be doing something right.
Dad stays silent, waiting patiently for me to have the courage to tell him the truth.
“I really, really like her, Dad. I might even love her. But she’s—” I try to think of a way to explain what the problem is, to summarise, truthfully, succinctly, as Sophie would say, why exactly my love is so doomed. “She’s too good for me, Dad.”
He nods slowly. “Hmm. Why do you think that?”
“Because, Dad…” I take a deep breath. “I really, really messed up.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning.”
When I was really young, back in the US, Dad used to help me with my Math homework, and even though I hated Math, I used to love sitting with him at the kitchen island and listening to him explain my homework. He would talk exactly as he is doing now, in a gentle voice, calm but never patronising, and give clear, simple instructions.
“Well. You remember when I was in Year 9?”
“What is that—Freshman year?”
“No—sort of. The year before that.”
Dad nods. “Right. No, I can’t say I remember. What happened?”
“A new girl started at school.”
He raises his eyebrows. “The prefect?”
I sigh deeply. “She wasn’t a prefect then, but yes, her. She was, she is… you know. Not like us.” I give Dad a significant look, and he tilts his head mutely. “Her parents work for the school, I think she got in on some sort of academic scholarship and because her parents work at Spearcrest. At the time, everyone was saying her parents were cleaners, even though that’s not true. Anyway, you know what I mean. So of course, when she started she stuck out like a sore thumb. It was just so obvious she wasn’t like everybody else. And some kids were mean to her because of her parents and… well, also, she used to be spotty and have big feet.”
“Right,” Dad says.
At this point, I’m sure he must be wondering what the hell I’m on about, and honestly I’m half wondering that too. But everything is slowly pouring out of me and I don’t feel quite in control of exactly what I’m saying, and Dad doesn’t prompt me to hurry up, he just watches me and waits calmly.
“Well, anyway. We started talking and became friends. She was, I don’t know… funny. Clever and really funny—sarcastic, like an adult. I liked that about her. And she would always get into fights and arguments when people tried to make fun of her. She was, I don’t know, fiery. Like she always stuck-up for herself. I liked all these things about her.”
“Sounds like the start of a promising friendship,” Dad comments. “So how did it all go wrong?”
I open my mouth to ask him how he knows it went wrong, but I look into his clever blue eyes—the same colour as mine but with far more intelligence in there—and find my answer there. Of course, things went wrong. Otherwise I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in now.
“We stopped being friends.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
Dad smiles a little. “Hm.”
“Okay, alright. You remember Luca?”
“The Novus kid?”
Novus is the name of Luca’s father’s business, some chem tech company nobody knows about but somehow makes millions. I nod. “Yeah, him.”
Dad raises an eyebrow. “The one you got into that brawl with and I had to have a meeting with your headmaster?”
I groan. “Yeah.”
“I thought you two sorted your issues? Aren’t you friends now?”
“We are—well, we were, but…” I hesitate. “It was a weird friendship, Dad. Do you remember Giselle?”
“The girl you dated for a while last year?”
“Yeah. You know how Luca dated her?”
“I didn’t know that. Is that an issue between you two?”
“No—it’s not that. I don’t think I was a great boyfriend to Giselle and Luca didn’t exactly intend on marrying her, it’s not like I have a problem with that. But with Luca, being friends with Luca… you have to be ready to share. Luca likes what other people have.”
“Hm.” Dad nods slowly, his eyes narrowing. “So, what? You didn’t want him to take the prefect from you, so you torpedoed your friendship with her?”
I stare at him. I didn’t expect him to get it so quickly, and somehow hearing it out of his mouth makes it sound so much worse. It makes it sound stupid, petty, childish. Which, I suppose, is exactly what it is.
“Yeah. And then… Well, I stopped being friends with her, but I was scared Luca would know that I liked her, so I was… uh, pretty horrible to her.”
“For how long?”
“Pretty much the last four years.”
Now Dad’s composure cracks slightly. He sits forward and sighs, rubbing his short beard as he always does when he’s working out a problem or thinking over an issue.
“So you’re telling me that not only did you end a friendship with this girl, but you then went on to bully her for several years?”
“It’s not bullying. More, like… being really mean.”
Dad raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Yes, son, a very mild explanation of what bullying is.”
I drop my head into my hands. “Ugh, I’ve been a total arsehole, Dad.”
Dad pats my shoulder, a reassuring gesture which he follows up with, “It does sound like it, Ev, I won’t lie.”
I peer at him through my fingers and add, my words half-muffled by my palms. “And also she got a job because she’s worried about money because she wants to study in the US, and then I told the school about it because I was jealous she liked some other guy instead of me, and then I called her poor in front of everyone.”
Even though I’ve left out some of the worst stuff, it’s still enough to get me a shocked, “Jesus, Ev!” from Dad.
Now he’s outright glaring at me.
Then a different voice pipes up. “Why the blasphemy?”
Mom comes into the kitchen, saunters over to Dad, and they kiss as if she’s been gone for days, not just been upstairs for a few online meetings in her office.
Dad wastes no time filling her in. “You know the girl Evan has a crush on?”
Mom’s face lights up. “Oh, the Harvard girl! Yes, I’m very excited to meet her!”
“Well, our son here apparently got her in trouble with school and has been essentially bullying her for several years.”
I stare in horror at Dad, then look quickly back at Mom, whose face has dropped as quickly as it lit up earlier. She covers her mouth with her hands, drawing closer.
“What do you mean? Oh, Evan, what did you do?”
“I didn’t bully her, I—” I’m interrupted by Dad’s silent frown. “Okay, yes, I was horrible, but I was so scared somebody else would notice her, I thought, I didn’t even know what I thought, I guess I thought if I couldn’t have her I would rather nobody have her at all.”
“Have?” Mom exclaims, aghast. “Have, Evan Alexander Knight! As if this girl is—what? An object? A toy? A thing?”
I shake my head, raising my hand. In between the disappointed shaking of Dad’s head and Mom’s expression of horrified anger, I don’t even know which is worse, and I don’t dare look either in the eyes. “No, I don’t mean it like that.”
“How else can you have someone, Evan?” Mom asks, crossing her arms.
When I arrived home, she was so happy to see me. She gave me a big hug, and we laughed because we were both in the same outfit: black jeans and sky-blue tops—me in the hoodie Sophie gave me, Mom in a big fluffy sweater of the exact same colour. I could tell she’d missed me, and I wouldn’t even have been embarrassed to admit that I missed her too.
But now, her affectionate gaze and dimpled smile have both vanished.
“I messed up,” I admit miserably. “I really fucked up. I know that. I don’t know what to do.”
“You could start by apologising. Admitting you’ve messed up is a good first step, but you have to acknowledge it, too. And apologise when you’re in the wrong.”
“And do better,” Mom says. “Apologies are good, but she’ll know you’re sorry if you actually show her, through your actions.”
I nod. “I know, I’m going to try—I’m trying. Mom and Dad, I—”
Adele interrupts us, whirling into the kitchen with a casual flick of her long hair. Unlike me, she’s inherited Dad’s dark hair and fair complexion, but we both share his eyes. “Who’s the sexy girl outside?”
I turn so fast I almost give myself whiplash. “What sexy girl?”
Adele shrugs and pours herself a cup of fresh coffee. “Smoky voice, bedroom eyes, dark hair.”
“That girl,” Mom says pointedly, “is Evan’s friend we’re all going to be exceptionally nice to.”
“That girl’s your friend?” Adele says with an obnoxious expression of surprise. “She seems well too good for—Dad!”
Dad’s just swiped the cup of coffee from under her and she gives him a scandalised look. He shrugs in a perfect imitation of her own shrug earlier. “I made the fresh pot, I get first dibs. Now let’s go and welcome that girl we’ve heard so much about. Best behaviour, everyone, especially you.”
He gives me a warning look and I sigh, half wishing I hadn’t said anything to begin with, half relieved that I finally got it off my chest. As I lead everyone towards the door, I take a deep breath, bracing myself, hoping and praying that introducing Sophie to my family isn’t a massive mistake.
I open the door. Whether this week is going to turn out good or bad, it’s too early to tell, but there’s one thing that’s certain: if nothing else, this week is definitely going to be interesting.
