Chapter 8 #3
“Yeah, I changed.” He stopped at the edge of the water and bent to grab a rock.
It didn’t seem like he put in much effort when he threw it, but it went very far.
“When I was in Arizona, I went by the house where my friend and I drove up on the roof. It’s hard to believe that I thought it was funny back then.
” He paused. “It was a little funny,” he told me.
“The guy’s face when he saw…but no, it wasn’t funny.
My grandma was furious and she made me work the whole summer to pay for the damage we’d done.
She said we were lucky that we weren’t arrested over it. ”
That was probably true, but I’d been struck by another part of the story. “You were sixteen?” I clarified, and he nodded. “You weren’t going to get a job until she made you?”
“No. My parents gave me a credit card and I used that for whatever I needed. I was all football, all the time. I never did jack for school, either. I paid a kid to do my work so that I could keep a decent average for college.” He looked down at me. “You seem stunned. Didn’t you know kids like me?”
“My sister never cared about grades or studying,” I said slowly.
“I knew a guy in our band, the oboe player, who went behind the bleachers to smoke weed rather than going to class. I never heard of paying someone to do homework, though. And I was mostly thinking about you not having a job. I started babysitting for the people across the street when I was twelve, and then I had to forge my mom’s signature on the forms so that I could get a real job when I turned fourteen. ”
“I think my brother and sister did stuff at my parents’ company.” He threw another rock, even farther this time. “I just never did.”
“Well, you’re making up for any lost income now,” I said. “You must be. Don’t you get paid a lot?”
“This year it will be the league minimum.”
On this beach, there was a faint cell signal from across the water in far-away Wisconsin, so I typed in my question and held up my phone, hoping to catch it. Eventually, the answer came back and I saw the number on my screen. “That’s the league minimum?” I asked. “The minimum?”
“If I get the starting job, it will be a huge joke,” Everett said. “Other starting QBs earn a lot more. A lot, like the minimum salary times fifty, and then there’s all the money you can make in endorsements. Hey.” He grabbed my arm. “Are you going to faint?”
“No,” I answered, but my voice was weak. Fifty times that number? I’d known that they earned a lot, but geez. Geez!
I had caught something else, too. He’d said “if” he got the starting job. There had been no question of “if” before today.
“Do you want me to get you a glass of water?” he suggested. “You look like you need something.”
“I would like to go in the water instead,” I said.
I had on my bathing suit, after all, and it might have been embarrassing to strip off my clothes and wear it in front of him, except that was what friends did.
I’d heard all about people swimming and boating together, going out as groups.
So it wouldn’t be embarrassing to be in my bathing suit with nothing over it, especially if I never looked at his face or met his eyes. And I really did want to go swimming.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” he agreed, and without any hesitation, his T-shirt came off. He threw his sunglasses on top of it and went right in.
Now, I had seen his social media, all those shirtless workout sessions that he’d done in Arizona.
I had also seen him topless on the floor of the storage room closet in Woodsmen Stadium last fall.
It shouldn’t have affected me now to see him dive into the waves, come up, give his head a brisk toss to sweep back his hair, and then smile at me.
“What’s the matter, Zoey? Are you thinking about the league minimum salary again?”
I shook my head—the liquification of my brain made it impossible to speak. I walked semi-normally into Lake Michigan, and the chilly water snapped me out of it. “I’m not a great swimmer,” I announced. “Don’t worry if you think I’m drowning.”
“I going to worry if I think you’re drowning,” he said.
“Just because I look terrible and am totally unathletic, it doesn’t mean that I’m pathetic,” I told him. “I’m not.”
“Did I say that?”
“No, but that was what I heard today.” I swallowed. “I overheard it.”
Everett waded over to me, his skin glistening. He’d been doing all that outdoor exercise, so he had a lot more color than I did, the person who sat in various dimly lit rooms for most of the day. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What did you overhear?”
I ended up telling him the story of the two women, who they were and what they’d said about me.
“I don’t care,” I stated. “They can think whatever they want about why I was there but the truth is, I only went to that party because my sister is insisting that I have to make up with Boyd, and also because I was afraid that she’d go out on a boat and get into trouble.
She’s a worse swimmer than I am. She just sinks, and she probably wouldn’t wear a life jacket because it wouldn’t look cute so I’d have to be around to badger her about it. That was why I went.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me. They don’t have a fucking clue.” He sounded angry, very. “They think that your sister is doing you favors? They have no idea of everything that you do for her. That’s bullshit.”
“It is! It was bullshit.” But I hesitated. “I was looking forward to the party, though. Not seeing Boyd or his parents, because they all suck, but just…getting out. Doing something different.” Now, that sounded pathetic. Very un-Fun Girl.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. “You do?”
“Sure. It’s like you said, I didn’t have much of a vacation.
I’ve been eating the same things every day so I can get the right nutrition.
I spent all those hours at the gym and I’ve done so many laps around the track that I should have gotten dizzy.
I wouldn’t mind something different. I wouldn’t mind if I could stop worrying for a while.
” He leaned back and splashed into the water.
I felt kind of stupid. I had been concerned about him making the Woodmen roster, although (as my sister kept repeating) it shouldn’t have mattered to me—and I’d known a little about how much he was preparing, how hard he was working to make it happen.
But it really hadn’t ever occurred to me that he was worried himself.
He’d seemed so sure and confident as he’d said that he’d be the starter, that it was going to happen.
“I tried to make the all-state marching band,” I commented when he surfaced. “It wasn’t about money, though. It was all about the glory. Anyway, I practiced a lot and I tried my hardest, but I didn’t get it.”
“But you weren’t upset because you don’t get upset by things. That’s what you told me.”
“I did?” I asked, surprised. “Well, that’s true. I was sorry at first about not making it but then I realized how impossible it would have been to get myself to the practices and to the concert. It had been enough of a problem to go to the audition, so it worked out for the best.”
“Yeah, you also said that things don’t always go the way you want but it could be the better outcome.”
“I guess I try to give you a lot of advice, which is a little weird.” I looked back up at the house.
“Because here you are living in a mansion, doing your dream job, and driving a truck with four good tires, and I…” I was not a person who had those things.
I wasn’t a person with the job that I wanted.
I lived in a rental with my sister where we shared a bed, and I was still saving up for a new tire.
I had probably spent too much on the tacos for my birthday.
“I’m interested in your advice.” He floated over to me. “You remind me of my grandmother.”
I looked down at my bathing suit. When I’d put it on this morning, I’d heard a similar comment from my sister: “Zo! Don’t you have a bikini? That’s what grandmas wear.”
Now I nodded. “I guess I act old.” Not mature, just old.
“She used to talk to me,” he said. “Coaches always bitch, but she used to listen and tell me if she thought I was being an asshole.”
“I don’t think you’re an asshole.”
“Kind of. Sometimes,” he said, and I shrugged. Maybe kind of, sometimes. But not to me.
Anyway, I knew that his grandma was someone he had loved a lot. That was obvious from how he’d talked to me about her, so was it terrible that I reminded him of an elderly woman who had worn modest clothing, like a bathing suit with lots of coverage, and had dispensed prudent advice?
Yes. I held my nose, submerged, and then made my best attempt at swimming. That way, I didn’t have to look at Everett for a while.