You Between the Lines

Chapter Twenty-Four

“H AVE YOU DECIDED WHAT YOU’RE going to do, Leigh?”

“What?” I jolt and look up at Hazel staring at me, apparently so interested in what I’m going to say that she’s leaning far over the high table at Pete’s, where the whole cohort has gathered after Thursday workshop.

“For tomorrow. Which poems are you reading?”

Oh. I watch Will; he’s ordering a drink at the bar, his hip slumped against a stool, shoulders loose and tired. He looks more fragile somehow, breakable in a way that’s always, maybe, been there. I just never picked up on it, even at Middlebury, when he was feeling so low.

Over the last week, I’ve had this reoccurring dream. I walk into Daniel’s office. I bring out an exquisitely prepared PowerPoint—the case against William Langford getting the fellowship. I show him “Invisible Summer” and “The Summer We Stopped Talking,” the copied lines highlighted yellow. Three-quarters of the page is yellow. Daniel’s jaw drops and Erica appears out of nowhere, as dream characters are wont to do, and bestows upon me a golden plastic crown. The second I pick it up, it splinters, shattering with even the smallest pressure of my fingers. And then I projectile-vomit in front of all of them, a Leigh Simon dream signature.

I always wake up in a cold sweat, unable to fully look at Will sleeping next to me.

I don’t even care that he plagiarized—I’m confident he had a good reason. I know he had a rough time in college. Maybe he was stressed, and an innocent homage went too far. Maybe he’d read the poem just before writing, Sophie’s words sticking in his mind. It was just a class assignment, never published, a one-off lapse in judgment that hurt no one but himself. He was clearly disturbed when his dad showed it to a colleague.

And I certainly don’t think he made a habit of plagiarizing, either—I googled a bunch of phrases from poems he’s submitted to workshop, and nothing else came up.

So I already forgive him. But I haven’t brought it up. It’d be shitty of me, to confront him with something he’s surely ashamed of, right before the reading series, in which his performance could clinch the fellowship he wants so badly. I still think he’s an excellent writer—a natural —probably the best in the cohort, regardless of what he did when he was twenty-two years old.

What I resent, though, is the knowing , the power it gives me. It’s like I don’t fully trust myself with this information.

“I’m reading one of my Taylor Swift poems and then I think the One Direction poem we workshopped a few months ago,” I say as Will returns to his seat across from me with a beer.

Hazel nods with feigned interest. “Oh, those are fun. What about you, William?”

He shrugs, swirling the foam around in his beer. “One of the funeral series and then the Oberlin poem.”

“Great picks. Those are some of my favorites of yours,” Hazel says, and I internally roll my eyes. At least I think it’s internal—until Will captures my foot between his under the table and squeezes.

“I am nervous as fuck about this reading.” Houston slides into the seat next to Will. “Jeremiah Brandon is going to laugh me off the stage. If anyone has a Xanax prescription, now would be the time to speak up.”

“You’re going to do great, don’t worry,” I say. “You have an amazing voice.”

“But is it the voice of a winner ? Too much is riding on this. My IBS has never been worse.” Houston loops his arm around Will’s shoulder and pulls him into his side. “This guy here, though. Talk about the voice of a winner. Sultry, deep. I don’t know how you ladies handle workshop with him.”

I choke on my beer and look at Hazel, then at Will, who shakes his head, smirking. We haven’t explicitly “announced” this… new stage of our relationship, because we’re not celebrities and we don’t presume that other people care. But clearly people know. Will has made no effort to not stand close to me in public. Kacey can’t stop looking at us every time we’re all together.

“This guy’s not nervous at all.” Houston slaps Will on the bicep.

Will takes a long sip of beer. “It’s just a reading.”

“A reading that the fellowship could ride on.”

And my future career and happiness.

But Will just shrugs again, and it’s a tiny bit annoying that he’s not freaking out like I am. I suppose it’s the classic confidence of the white, straight literary man. Must be nice.

I could take all that away , the dark part of my brain taunts.

But I won’t. And I don’t need to. I’m going to win this fellowship fair and square.

I haven’t been with my parents in the same room together since the separation. When it happened, I was in Boston, they were in Cleveland, and it’s not like you go home for a separation. It’s not Christmas.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be there, anyway. It’s easier to pretend nothing is happening when you’re working long hours in Boston rather than flying home to create a new normal you never asked for.

But I’m genuinely excited when my phone lights up with a text from my dad: Here in your parking lot! Getting to hang out with Mom and Dad as a full family couldn’t have come at a better time. I run out of the building and see their car with the Ohio plate. My mom emerges from the driver’s side and pulls me into a tight hug.

“How’s my favorite daughter doing?” she asks, holding me close.

My dad steps out of the car, too, and waits for Mom to release me before hugging me himself. Back in the day, they’d dive into a shared hug, squeezing me in the middle. I guess it makes sense that even though they’re mending things, they need to baby-step back to normalcy. These days, I’ll take what I can get.

“How was the drive?”

They exchange a look, as if negotiating who should speak first.

“Good,” my mom says. “But baby, I need to take some calls—I promised these patients I’d get back to them. Okay if I do that before dinner? I was going to check in to the hotel, anyway, so you guys should catch up without me and I’ll join later.”

It’s her day off, but classic Mom behavior that she’s working through it.

“Yes, of course.”

And then she leaves me alone with Dad. I take him on a brief walking tour of campus, about which he has a million questions. I show him the main quad, overflowing with students tanning on a grassy knoll dubbed The Beach. I show him the place with the good coffee, the stately marble steps of Gilman Hall.

An hour in, I get a text from Will: How are the parents?

I text back: Mom went to hotel to work but I’m showing my dad all Perrin’s hot spots. Writing Center is next.

He’s quick with the reply: Will you show him the first desk to the right?

That’s between you, me, and Perrin’s night security.

“Who are you texting?” I look up at my dad, who has a knowing grin on his face. “It’s a boy, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Boyfriend?”

My brain jolts at the word. I shake my head. “No. I don’t know.”

“Is he coming to dinner with us? Or is he with his own family tonight?”

“Oh, um.” I stare at my phone. “I didn’t invite him… thought it might be too weird. But no, his family didn’t come down.”

Not that he invited his mom. He was dead set against it. “I’m not going to ask her to travel all that way to listen to five minutes of my poetry” was all he said.

I didn’t argue. In the last week, Will has been strangely detached about the fellowship, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s so calm and confident it’ll go great for him or because he’s hiding the same kind of nervousness I am.

Dad shakes his head. “Invite him! That could be good, actually.” He says the last sentence more to himself.

It’s not that I don’t want my parents to meet Will. I’m pretty sure they’ll like him. But I worry that I’m turning this into something it’s not. Will and I have clearly gotten over the hump of being too scared to touch each other. But that doesn’t mean he’s in this for the long haul.

I text him, though. I want him with me, despite my self-preservation instincts.

Would you like to come to dinner with us tonight?

He responds in seconds: Would love to.

My dad sits next to my mom, and I sit next to Will, and it’s like a bizarre double date that no one asked for. I can read Will’s body language easily—he’s not good at playing a role like I am, and it’s obvious from his back-and-forth gaze that he’s uncomfortable. The only other boy I’ve ever introduced my parents to was Andrew from college, and he was so used to firm handshakes at networking parties with his famous editor dad that meeting two Ohioans who went in-state for college was small potatoes. By contrast, Will sits up pin-straight and keeps adjusting where he puts his hands: knotted in his lap, palms on the table, playing with his chopsticks.

The night started out fine—Dad and I drove to the hotel downtown to pick up Mom, who met us outside on the curb. Then we picked up Will to go to the restaurant, a small vegetarian Vietnamese bistro near campus. When he shook their hands, my stomach pinched. It didn’t feel like this when they met Andrew. This felt heavier. More significant.

Now, though, my parents are being themselves—except dialed up 200 percent, with my mom stiff and aloof and my dad rambling and neurotic. I’m like a cruise director, shuffling us between palatable conversational topics, constantly checking in and making sure everyone’s happy. I’d like to relax before I try to convince Paul, Daniel, and Erica that I’m the better choice for the fellowship than the man next to me, but it feels like if I let my guard down, everything will become awkward, fast.

“So the Langfords,” my dad goes. “Doesn’t ring a bell, but it’s been ages, of course. Though, god, Leigh, it feels like you were at Rowan just yesterday. Weren’t those the days! I remember—”

“Will was the grade above me, so we didn’t have much interaction back then. But remember how I got published in Rowan’s lit journal junior year? Will was the editor.” I turn to look at Will. “God, that was so long ago, I doubt you remember that.”

Will smiles. “I remember.”

Dad nods with way too much enthusiasm. “Oh, right! She was so excited. And then I remember she got into that creative writing class the semester after and couldn’t stop talking about it. We always knew Leigh would be some sort of writer. She was such a reader. We took her to all the Twilight book launch parties at this little bookstore in Hudson, and the outfits —”

“Oh my god, Dad.” I flush, but Will just laughs, his shoulders loosening.

“I’m sure it was the same in your household, huh? Overloaded bookshelves, dragging your parents to Power of the Pen competitions?”

The bookshelves and writing competition trophies? Yes. But I know for sure Will’s dinner conversations with his parents were nothing like ours.

Will just offers a small nod.

“So are your parents still on Coventry Road?” my dad asks. We had gone over where Will grew up in the car—about a twenty-minute drive from where I did, in the same city as Rowan.

Parents. I feel my throat tighten at the plural. I didn’t think to warn Mom and Dad beforehand, but then again, I’m not sure of the etiquette for people whose parent has died. Is it best to conveniently just never bring them up?

“My dad, uh, passed.” I look down at my food. “My mom moved to Dayton, actually. A few months ago. We have family down there.”

“Sorry to hear about your dad,” my dad says. Will nods and then I can breathe again.

“What does your mom do?” my mom asks in her first actual question of the night.

“Consulting for high school and college admissions departments, so she can really work from anywhere, which is why she moved. Most of her work is done remotely these days, or sometimes she’ll travel to different schools. And my dad was a professor at Oberlin. He taught English.”

“So it runs in the family!” Dad fidgets with his chopsticks.

“I guess so.” Will smiles.

We start discussing school and once again Dad takes the conversational reins. My mom supplies just mhmms and nods. She’s never been amazingly socially acute, but I still figured she’d be curious about the guy I’m introducing them to, with or without the boyfriend label.

Eventually, Will leaves to go to the bathroom, though I plead with my eyes for him to stay and not leave me with them.

Once he’s out of ear range, I say to Mom, “Do you… not like him?”

She frowns. “What? Why would you say that? He’s adorable. Very nice.”

“You just seem tense.” I look behind me toward the bathroom.

My dad lifts his wrist to look at his watch. “What time do you think we should leave? I looked it up on Google Maps, but the parking situation seems really tricky, and I’m worried we won’t get a spot and won’t be able to sit together—”

“You good, Dad?” I really don’t need his anxiety exacerbating mine before this reading, so I can’t help but ask.

He’s a deer in headlights. My mom tenses her shoulders.

“Honey, can you pass me the soy—” she starts.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t just sit here like this and pretend,” my dad says. “Leigh, sweetie, we have to tell you something.”

My mom glares at him. “What the fuck, Jeff. You can’t be uncomfortable for two seconds, can you?”

“We can’t just act like nothing is happening for the sake of decorum. If it were up to you, we probably wouldn’t tell her at all.”

“What? Tell me what?”

My mom raises her eyebrows at my dad, who grimaces. “The divorce has finalized.”

It’s like a brick hitting my face. We’re all silent, letting the chatter of the restaurant fill in the gaps among us. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, waiting for a punch line that never comes.

“But you told me counseling was going well,” I hear myself say. “You drove down here together. You’re staying in a hotel together. I thought the separation was… off.”

“We’re staying in separate rooms,” Dad says, voice low, as my mom shakes her head, rolling her eyes.

“We wanted to tell you together,” she says. “I suggested a call next weekend. Not this weekend, for obvious reasons. But some of us can’t read the room, it seems.”

Now my dad rolls his eyes. “Anna.”

“It’s fine,” I cut in. It’s not fine, not even a little, but seeing them fight over this is just going to make me more upset. “Now everyone knows and everything is great. Congratulations on the big news.”

We sit there in silence. I take a sip of my water every ten seconds, just for something to do, an excuse not to talk or engage. Will comes back, and I feel even more pressure to perform a sense of normalcy.

He puts his hand on my thigh underneath the table, but I move it off. My legs feel heavy enough. I hunch my shoulders and cross my arms, shrinking myself in the hope of disappearing.

We carry on as if nothing’s happened, but my mom’s gaze is somehow even colder, my dad’s needier, guiltier. He keeps the conversation afloat, flitting from topic to topic, until we’ve run out of reasons to keep sitting there. The reading starts soon enough. When I stand up from the table, my limbs feel stiff, my heartbeat quick.

When we go back to the car to drive to the bookstore, Will opens the door for me and I get in without looking at him. For the fifteen-minute ride, my dad blabbers on about global warming and potholes and the hotel’s air-conditioning. I say mhmm and right every ten seconds like my life depends on it. My mom is silent, and poor Will sits there like he has no idea what to do with any of this, which, of course he doesn’t.

“Was a pleasure to have dinner with you, Will,” my dad says, as we jump out of the car at the bookstore.

“Thanks so much for inviting me along.”

“See you inside,” I say to Mom as she goes to park.

Will, Dad, and I funnel into the store, my spine tenser than it’s ever been, like only a carefully placed hammer could crack it. Two days ago, my biggest concern was the fellowship. Two hours ago, how I’d introduce Will to my parents. But now, it’s managing the unruly emotions of my body. The last time I felt the same swirl of anxiety, dissociation, and guilt was in a Boston bathroom stall, taking deep breaths against the door after I’d bombed a client meeting. Then, at least, I could go home to my apartment.

Now I’m not sure where home really is.