Chapter 34
Andy
We file off the bus, our collective energy buzzing from our win against UConn as we step onto the slippery sludge, the late winter air having warmed just enough to melt away the snowy blanket we’ve all been hiding under.
The dark mornings, the freezing evenings—they’re usually enough to plunge me into a darkness of my own.
But it was different this year. I know it was different because the addictive unease of longing that I’ve been convincing myself can’t be love has been there every morning when I open my eyes, taunting me with its impermanence. Every morning, I have to shove it away.
Sloane offered to drive up, just for the game, but I knew to tell her not to. Between the new sets for the conservatory’s spring show and the piece she’s been working on for her art competition, she would’ve been giving something up. And I don’t want her giving up anything for me. For anyone.
A smack on my shoulder jolts me back to the icy road I’m on the edge of, and I blink up to see Grant smirking at me. “Who knew you’d make another winning shot?”
“Me. I knew!” Ben says, knocking his head toward us as he walks towards the athletics center that looms large in the darkness.
Grant shakes his head, chuckling. “Seriously, man. Nice to see what you can do without Chapman.” Another smack before he saunters off toward his car, where I spy Gen leaning against the door, a grin on her face, having just arrived after following us back from Connecticut.
Liv passes by and smiles at me, just as I notice a figure in the shadows, clad in a black suit propped against a town car.
My dad. His silent nod is a tug on the leash, and I’m overcome with resentment. Fear. Regret. There isn’t any part of me stupid enough to think the other shoe isn’t going to finally drop, and I walk over, jaw tight, steeling myself.
“You can run,” he starts to say as I approach, his smile waxy and pliable, “but you can’t hide.” The way his features slot in and out of malice is disturbing, and I can’t help but wonder if I used to do that. If I oscillated between performances to get what I needed in such an obvious way.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my letterman. “Was I running, or just at a game?” I tilt my head, trying to remain unaffected, but his amusement flattens into something sinister. My stomach drops.
“Cut the shit, Andrew.” He pauses, scanning my face, and I wait, internally frozen. “That was you in my office.” A statement, but I attempt to refute it anyway.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is there something you need or—”
“Something I need,” he mutters, and he’s agitated. My mind spins, and I think he knows I haven’t been playing my part. “This is about what you need. Always has been. But I think you forgot you need my help a lot more than I need yours,” he spits, and I hate that I flinch.
A false memory of him slapping Ian plays across my memory, and my skin crawls. All the money in the world can’t erase his violence, and maybe I should’ve known that but I didn’t. Overeagerness will do that to you—make you naive.
I glance over my shoulder, sensing someone’s attention, and catch the red glow of brake lights as Grant’s truck speeds out into the black night.
“I asked you about Elliot. I told you I need more information.”
“You haven’t told me shit.” The heat of his voice turns into frost as he steps toward me, and the height difference is exaggerated. I lift my chin and look down on him, and watch his nostrils flare at the insult.
“Can’t make up information, Glenn. Maybe Scott could give it a try for you,” I tell him, walking a thin line.
It’s worth it, I think, to rile him up, at least a little.
But when he huffs, the laughter is sick, sends a chill through my spine, and if I could press my heel into him like an insect, I probably would.
“You’re not half as stupid as I thought.” He walks back to his car, and I’m sure he’s going to leave. Victorious relief starts to wash over me, just as he turns back around.
He lights a cigarette. Leans back against the car door. Smiles, slowly. Then, my phone rings.
Molars grinding, I check the ID.
“Mom?” My voice wants to shake, but I ground myself for her sake. “What’s up?”
“Uhm,” her voice is muffled, and I can imagine her sitting at the table, head in her hands.
“Do you think you can talk to someone at your school about those conservatory scholarships? For Carm?” Her voice breaks when she says my sister’s name, and I look up to find Glenn’s vindictiveness bleeding into the otherwise innocent night.
“They, uh…they pulled it. I can probably pay a quarter of it. Maybe if—”
“Of course. I’ll figure it out. I promise.” She sniffs, and I know she’s nodding. “Seriously. Don’t worry about this, okay? I’ll handle it.”
“Yeah, okay,” she says, her voice gritty from tears that I know she’s trying hard to rein in. “You get in okay? Jesus—how was the game?” It comes out so quietly. Painfully.
“We can talk about it tomorrow,” I tell her, wishing I could fix everything now. Hating that I did this to begin with.
“But you won, right?” I hear her throat bob on the other end of the line.
“’Course we won. Get some sleep.” I hang up before she can say anything else.
I hold Glenn’s gaze, watch him blow a plume of smoke in my face as I step forward.“Was that really necessary?”
“You tell me. Did you really have to go behind my back? Team up with my son?” His eyes crinkle with feigned sincerity, and I almost laugh.
“You mean my brother? Am I not your son, too?” It’s the oddest feeling, but there’s this bone-deep sadness when I ask him, and it wraps itself around my disgust. It cracks itself against my soul, wondering if deep inside me I’ll find what I’m seeing in him.
His lips twitch. “A waste, isn’t it? To have two perfectly useless sons?
” The words are leaden in my gut. There is, I think, some small part of me that will never stop wanting his approval, no matter how much he hurts me.
The disappointment must flash across my features because he stands up taller and slots into a new expression.
“You can still prove yourself. To me. The chairman of the conservatory’s board is just a phone call away. ”
I almost want to ask him how many people he’s got, how many people he’s a phone call away from black mailing, but I don’t actually want to know. I want to be done with all of this. Want to be clean of whatever the fuck he’s doing. It hasn’t been until now that I’ve considered I may never be.
“What do you need?” Deceive, deceive, deceive.
“It’s your lucky day. You get to pick,” he whispers. “Chapman’s being difficult about coming back to Astor. Get him here, and consider yourself back in my good graces. Or you let me know what the Fielder girl is saying to that reporter. If you want to sweeten the deal, get me a recording of—”
“Absolutely not.” Adrenaline threatens to rip the bones of my chest apart and I feel horrible. Fragile. “Nothing on Sloane. She’s off limits.”
He sucks his teeth, glancing at the ground before shooting his narrowed gaze back up to me. “You don’t know this girl, Andrew. Swearing allegiance…” he shakes his head, turning around to pop his door open before facing back to me with an overstuffed file in his hands. “Here.”
It looks just like the manilla folders we rifled through that day in his office, but this one’s crisper and has Sloane’s name drawn across it in thick sharpie.
Freshly compiled, I think. My jaw flexes of its own accord and my father’s lips spread a grin before he tosses me the file, leaving me to catch it.
“Look at it. Decide for yourself if you should waste your time with her.”
I chuck the file back at him and he doesn’t even try. Her photo slides into a small puddle as he laughs.
“I could give two fucks what’s in the folder,” I tell him, trying to not to look down.
“Suit yourself,” he says, scanning my face. “Let’s hope William’s in the mood to listen to you, then.” Pulling the door open, he drops into the seat of the town car. No driver in sight, because this must’ve been unexpected. My defiance surprised him.
“Wait—” I stop the door from slamming with the palm of my hand. “I’ll convince him. But you need to fix Carmen’s scholarship.”
His tsk grates against my skin, and I drag a breath through my nostrils as he shakes his head. “You deliver Chapman. I’ll fix that girl’s scholarship.”
“Carmen.”
“Whatever.” He shrugs, and I bite my tongue. “Better get going, son.” He peels out of the spot, icy water spraying up the sides of his wheels and all over the now soggy manila folder.
I grab it, clutching it by the open ended side, like I can stop her secrets from spilling out.
The noise of someone travels through the door after only a few knocks. Will opens it, dipping his head at me like I’ve broken some unspoken rule. Like I’ve popped his bubble.
“Spellman,” he says, eye crinkling as he squints and smiles. “You missed me. Of course you did. Come in.” He nods, inviting me into the fiery warmth of his grandfather’s townhome, and I glance around looking for the old man. “He’s at the farm in Penn. Annual shareholder’s meeting, with my parents.”
“Dan’s a shareholder?” The Cabot’s dairy is an empire. They are dairy, actually; their role in the milk lobby was mentioned in my freshman year marketing seminar. Being family owned and operated, boasting about their puritanical lines of succession, is part of the brand.
“My dad?” he scoffs as I trail him toward the back of the town home where he asks a woman in an apron to make two cappuccinos.
I begin to lift my hand, tell her I can do it myself, but gravity has me dropping it.
“No. I mean, he is through my mom. He only gets his shares once I come of age, or whatever.”