“Hey, sugar. She’s been sleepin’ most of the morning,” she warns me.
“Really?”
“Yeah. They gave her somethin’ to calm her down. She was real nasty when she first woke up this mornin’. Wouldn’t listen to nobody.”
I nod in understanding. “Thanks for letting me know.”
She leaves, dropping her hand to my shoulder in quiet support, and then I pull up a chair beside Nan’s bed, reaching out to take her fragile hand in mine. Her skin is papery thin as I run my thumb back and forth across her knuckles. I sit like that for a while, just studying her as she sleeps peacefully.
“Sorry you had a bad morning, Nan. Want me to read to you for a bit?”
I pull out a heavy textbook from my bag and plop it on the edge of her bed so I can flip open to the chapter I started reading last night. If Nan were awake, she’d be happy to listen to me read. She was the one who first encouraged me to study hard and focus on my education. She fostered my love of learning, and even though my courses at Caltech were a bit over her head, she was so proud to hear about what I was up to in California.
When I was little, she’d tell me all the time, “You’re gonna go to the moon one day, Birdie.”
Turns out, I’m going nowhere but here.
In Piggly Wiggly later, I grab what items I need and add them to my basket, tallying up the price in my head as I go. I can’t spend more than twenty dollars and I’d like to get Nan some of her favorite caramel candies, so I put back the grapes I was eyeing and grab some bananas instead. As I stand in line at checkout, everyone’s chatting on about Ben and the rest of the basketball players. It’s all anyone wants to talk about these days.
“I hear they’re only in town two more weeks before they head to Tokyo,” Debra says to the customer she’s ringing up. “We’ll miss them when they go. That fancy chef of theirs has been putting in huge grocery orders to feed ’em all.”
The world seems to shrink around me as I process that news.
Two weeks.
A blink.
Somehow I’d forgotten Ben wouldn’t be staying long.
“What about you, Birdie?”
I look up and realize Debra’s staring at me expectantly.
“Sorry. What?”
She laughs. “You guys over at Dale’s gonna miss them when they go? I’ve heard they come in and eat there sometimes. I’m sure they leave good tips and such.”
My stomach hurts too much to give her a decent reply, so I just nod.
Yeah, we’ll miss them.
I pull up to the trailer just as the sun’s going down and unload the groceries from the passenger seat. After I put them away, I check my phone and see another missed call from Professor Olmsted. I know I’ll have to give her a call back one of these days. I can’t keep putting off the inevitable. For now though, I turn off the phone and shower before fixing myself some dinner. I’m sitting at the table a while later when there’s a knock on the door of the trailer.
I leap out of my skin.
Holy—
No one ever comes knocking, and definitely not at this time of night.
Once my shock subsides, I realize it’s probably Sheriff Corbin wanting to pass along some of his wife’s cooking. He does that from time to time, and I’m always appreciative.
“Hold on!” I holler. “I’m coming.”
I stand up and edge around the side of the table so I can grab a sweatshirt to throw over my tank top since I’m not wearing a bra.
“Birdie?”
Ben’s voice stops me in my tracks and I spin on my heels, making my way for the door before I think better of it.
I fling it open, half surprised, half relieved to see him leaning against my doorjamb wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from a shower.
He looks up and his brown eyes pierce me.
There’s no joy there. No relief in the fact that I opened my door to him.
There’s accusation in his narrowed gaze and furrowed scowl.
“You’re a Goldwater Scholar,” he blurts accusingly.
I rear back in surprise.
“What?”
“Yeah. Not just that,” he says, pushing off the doorjamb and making his way inside my trailer without my permission. “A National Merit Scholar too, and a Fulbright Fellow.”
He brushes right by me, jostling me to the side.
There’s no time to assess the fact that I’m very inappropriately dressed. Shorty shorts and a flimsy tank top don’t hide a damn thing. Worse, my hair’s still air drying from my shower, starting to curl and riot.
I cross my arms over my chest as if that’ll help—not—and listen as he keeps on ranting.
“You had a full ride to Caltech. There’re a dozen articles about you online. A lot of them are about Professor Olmsted, but your work is mentioned too.”
“Are you done yet?” I say, my voice dripping with sass.
“No,” he steps forward, his finger pointing at me and everything. “They were throwing grant money your way trying to keep you there. Jesus, it sounds like they would have changed the name of the damn school for you if you’d asked them to.”
I roll my eyes and look away. “So you know how to use Google, good for you.”
“Birdie, what the hell are you doing here?” he asks, stepping forward until his shoes brush my toes. Still, I don’t look at him.
“I already told you that,” I say through clenched teeth, keeping my face to the side.
“Yeah? Taking care of your grandmother? No one else can help you with that?”
I hate that my lip quivers as he needles the most sensitive part of my humanity. No, Ben. There’s no one else to help me. There is no one but my nan and me. Is that what he wants to hear? Is that what he wants me to admit?
’Cause if so, I’ll tell him.
I’ll give him this part of me and make him feel the weight of being Raelynn Birdie, if only for a second. I turn to him, my gaze hot and angry, and I let him have it.
“You go snoopin’ around online, figure you know shit about me, and then show up here like this? Pissy as all get-out? I already told you why I’m here, Ben. You know the answer to all these questions you’re asking. I’m a girl with the oldest story in the book. Teenage parents who loved drugs and drinkin’ more than dealing with a newborn. They left me with my nan and never came back. Last I heard, my mom was shacked up with some meth head near Jersey and my dad was locked up.”
The shift is so subtle on his features, someone else might miss it. The pain there, the pity he feels for me. It’s not obvious, and he’s trying so hard to keep it tamped down. I get some sick, twisted satisfaction out of doing this to him, dumping my life right over his head and making him wallow in the waste like I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember.
“I have fifty dollars to my name, no family, no one to lean on except for my grandma. I’m doing everything I can to take care of her the way she took care of me. You think I—”
“I can help you, Birdie.”
That…
That is not what I was expecting.
I sneer, taking full offense at his gallantry. It only pisses me off more. I’m not a damsel.
“I don’t want your help.”
“You just said you have no one.”