28. Tiffin Talks Blame It on Daddy D’s #3
“… and on the way to the clinic, like in the truck, I started bleeding.” Taylor wipes her nose, which is pink with sunburn. “I miscarried. So then it was over, I didn’t have to choose, which was good, I guess because I was having second thoughts.”
“You were?”
“I’m sorry, Hakeem. I should have told you, but I was already dealing with so much. And I didn’t want us to have a big drama, I wanted things to stay like they were. We only have a couple months left.”
Hakeem collects Taylor in his arms, kisses the part in her hair.
He is so fucking angry right now. She made a unilateral decision, and then she told Dub, not him.
But overriding this anger is Hakeem’s love for Taylor.
He knows her. He knows she takes care of other people before herself.
She would have wanted to spare him the anxiety—and there’s no question that him accidentally impregnating Taylor would have caused him anxiety.
He probably would have wished she hadn’t told him.
“I’m sorry you had to go through it by yourself,” Hakeem says. “I’m glad Dub was there. If I got pregnant, I would have gone to Dub too.” This gets a little laugh. “So that’s what’s been bothering you.”
Taylor nods against his chest. “I’m terrified it will happen again.”
Hakeem lifts her chin and looks her in the eye. “It won’t happen again until you’re ready, Tay. And you know what? Someday, if that’s what you choose, you’re going to be an incredible mother. The very best.”
Now Taylor is full-on crying into his nice dress shirt, but Hakeem just holds her tighter and rocks her back and forth. Royce calls from the tent, “What’s going on, are you guys getting engaged?”
Hakeem waves him off, though a part of him is tempted to get down on one knee because in that moment, he suddenly wants it all—a wedding, a bunch of kids, a happily ever after. Hakeem and Taylor forever.
It’s far away in the distance, but he can picture it.
Charley has successfully avoided going to Daddy D’s.
The second night got her off the hook for the third and fourth nights, the fifth night was the cocktail party at the Briland Club (where Charley and East had an intense stare down but did not speak), and the sixth night, Daddy D’s was rented out for a private party for the kids from Brooks.
Which brings Charley to their final night of the trip. Davi is adamant: Charley is going to Daddy D’s.
“If you don’t go to Daddy D’s, it’ll be like you didn’t even come to Harbour.”
Will it, though? Charley thinks. She considers not setting foot in the club a badge of honor.
But Charley has had a good week. She’s lightly tanned, she read four novels and has one left for the plane home (yes, she is that nerd), she took afternoon naps floating in the villa’s pool, she ate conch and wahoo, she has learned that rum will make her puke but tequila won’t.
She has spent quality time with everyone in the house, except Royce Stringfellow.
(Every time he gets within five feet of her, he starts talking about his GPA.
He’s desperate to beat her out for valedictorian.)
Most importantly, Charley feels the possibility of healing, in time, from her breakup with East. Seeing him at the Briland Club didn’t leave her as shattered as she thought it would.
She could tell just from the expression on his face that he was still deeply in love with her, and she thought, Your loss.
“Okay, I’ll go,” Charley says to Davi. “But I’m not sure how long I’ll stay.”
Davi snaps into action. She produces a minidress covered in lavender paillettes for Charley to wear and offers to do Charley’s makeup.
“Fine,” Charley says.
Davi announces to the rest of the house that Charley is going to Daddy D’s. Royce pumps Rihanna’s “Breakin’ Dishes,” and Madison J. makes margaritas in the blender.
When Charley descends the stairs, there are whistles and catcalls.
Bahama Mama! Charley takes the first tart sip of margarita, and everyone crowds into the kitchen for a toast, even Taylor and Hakeem, who have been going through something this week but who now look even happier than their usual disgustingly happy selves.
Royce says, “Here’s to Tiffin Class of 2027!” and they all touch glasses.
Tonight, Charley thinks, will be a night they remember forever. She can tell already.
Daddy D’s is located on the second story of a prominent corner in the middle of Dunmore Town.
The neon sign flashes, and there’s a pulse of bass loud enough to give Charley goose bumps.
The line to get in snakes down the stairs and around the block.
Davi assures Charley the line is part of the experience and it moves fast. Charley won’t complain, she’s had two cocktails and ate a plate of fries at Valentines.
This must be some kind of magical combination because she feels like she’s floating in a golden bubble.
When Charley gets to the top of the stairs, she shows the bouncer with the penlight her ID, taking pains to assure him that she actually is eighteen (he doesn’t care), then she steps inside the club.
The place is one dark room with a DJ booth and a mobbed bar. Some kids are dancing, some are throwing back shots, vaping, laughing, and snapping selfies in front of a sign that says: LET’S GET DRUNK, MAKE MISTAKES, AND BLAME IT ON DADDY D’S.
Davi goes to the bar while Charley bops around to a remix of “Lavender Haze.” A hand lands on her back and she turns, expecting to find Willow or Taylor, but it’s some extremely hot guy she doesn’t know.
“Hey?” she says.
“What’s up? I’m Colin. I go to Brooks.”
“I’m Charley,” she says. “I go to Tiffin.”
“Charlie?”
“Short for Charlotte.”
“Tiffin doesn’t have a hockey team,” Colin says, “so I’ve never been there.”
“Do you play hockey?” Charley asks.
“I’m the goalie, yeah. I’m playing at Michigan State in the fall.”
“East Lansing!” Charley says. She knows where Michigan State is but not one thing about hockey. Is a follow-up question expected? Colin is taller than East, and broader. He moves his hand up her back into her hair, which feels kind of nice. “Do you like to read?” she asks.
He laughs. “Honestly? I barely know how.”
When Davi appears with shots, Charley shouts over the music. “This is Colin from Brooks! He plays hockey!”
Davi gives him a thumbs-up, she has nothing to say, everyone at Tiffin is hockey-illiterate, but who cares, they have tequila. They click the glasses together and do the shots. Charley grimaces, Colin squeezes the back of her neck and whispers in her ear, “You’re pretty.”
Charley grins. “Thanks.” Tall, hot, hockey Colin thinks she’s pretty, and although he barely knows how to read, she considers letting this thing progress.
It’s liberating somehow to be just a pretty girl instead of Charley Hicks with all her signifiers: bookworm, possible valedictorian, ’Bred Bulletin editor, ex-girlfriend of Andrew Eastman.
However, at that moment, Charley notices Madison J. a few feet away giving her a death stare. But why? Then Charley remembers—shit! Madison J. told Charley she was scheming the Brooks hockey goalie!
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Charley tells Colin. She leads Colin over to Madison J.: Madison, Colin, Colin, Madison, I’ll be back, I just have to go…
Charley spies a shadowy hallway where she suspects she’ll find the ladies’ room. She crosses the dance floor—but stops dead in her tracks. She squints, willing what she’s seeing in front of her to make sense.
East is on the dance floor with a leggy blonde in his arms—and that blonde is Pippa Sacks.
The song is a remix of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me”—laughably appropriate—and Charley watches as Pippa grinds up against East, runs her hands through his hair, and sings into his ear.
Although Charley hears Davi’s panicked voice calling her name—Davi must be seeing what she’s seeing, which means it isn’t her imagination or some kind of tequila hallucination—she storms over to where East and Pippa are dancing and yanks on Pippa’s arm.
Pippa whips around with a snarl, but Charley will not be intimidated. “Nope,” Charley says. “No way. He’s mine.”
“He is?” Pippa says.
“I am?” East says.
When Charley locks eyes with East, she thinks back to the Move-In Day cookout a year and a half earlier.
Back then, it was East who could barely read, but over the past eighteen months, she has changed him.
They have changed each other. They now think the same way, value the same things, walk in step.
“Yes,” Charley says to East. “You are mine.”
Years from now, when we look back on our sixth-form trip to Harbour, we won’t remember everything, but we will remember the moment on our final night when we witnessed Charley Hicks and Andrew Eastman making out on the dance floor at Daddy D’s.
Would it be overly dramatic to say we felt our world click back into place?
Every single one of us clapped and cheered—except Olivia H-T, who beelined over to console Pippa, and except Royce Stringfellow, who figured Charley’s grades would probably soar now that she was no longer heartsick—because we were just so happy to see East and Charley back together.
Davi takes a picture of the happy couple and posts it on her private story with the caption: Blame it on Daddy D’s.