The Fragile Ordinary Read online

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Just tired.”

  “Com, look at me.”

  Not wanting to, but knowing enough of Tobias now to know he was dogged when he wanted something, I unwillingly lifted my gaze to meet his. He frowned at whatever he saw in my expression. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. I told you. I’m tired.” I looked down at my book and didn’t utter another word for the rest of class. Not even when Tobias tried to crack jokes under his breath that would normally have had me repressing giggles and kicking his shin beneath our desk.

  When the bell rang, I quickly gathered up my stuff and hurried to leave for my next class. Tobias caught up with me and dropped his head to ask, voice low, sounding worried, “Did I do something?”

  Guilt suffused me at the bright concern in his eyes. “No,” I assured him. “No...it’s just...girl stuff, okay. Vicki and Steph...”

  “Vicki and Steph what?”

  “It sounds immature.”

  “Comet.”

  “I don’t think they like me very much anymore.” My lower lip trembled as I fought back tears and I laughed hollowly at my ridiculousness. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” He looked around, shifting, and I wondered if he was worried about people finding out we were friends. The thought was supremely depressing. “Look, we can’t talk here. Meet me tonight?”

  “I can’t,” I said, the refusal immediate and instinctual. As guilty as it made me feel, I went with it, because clearly I wasn’t ready to hang out with him alone again just yet. “I promised my parents we’d have a proper family evening.”

  He frowned so deeply I wondered if the lie was that obvious.

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “Well...you know...call me if you need me or whatever.”

  And then he was gone.

  Frustration tore through me and I felt like screaming.

  This week sucked. It beyond sucked. It was a cesspit of everything shitty and screwed up.

  This week could go to hell along with any remnants of the little social life I had.

  THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

  11

  I am your safe harbor when the waves lose their blue,

  Just tie yourself to me and hold on tight.

  And when I need you to be my safe harbor too,

  Your hand in mine will make everything right.

  —CC

  As much as I resented my parents’ attitude toward me, I resented their close friends Jo-Jo’s and Mishka’s even more. They were an artist couple—she was Scottish and beautiful and he was Russian and passionate. While Dad and Carrie at least acknowledged my existence, Jo-Jo and Mishka actually went so far as to pretend I wasn’t in the room.

  I’d disturbed their perfect little foursome, you see. My parents used to host these big parties and go traveling all the time with their friends. They’d stifled a lot of that because of me.

  Damn me and my need for food, water and protection. I was such a needy child.

  Anyway, I knew when Carrie and Dad went off to a Jo-Jo/Mishka party not to expect them home until late in the evening...the following day.

  That meant I was alone in the house on a Saturday night. I had the baseball bat at the side of my bed, most of the house lights blazing and I was curled up in my room reading Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy. I found Benny so relatable but my heart hurt reading about her friendship with Eve. It reminded me of what I currently did not have with Vicki. So when my phone buzzed with a text and Vicki’s name flashed on screen, relief and trepidation mingled.

  Vicki: I’m sorry. Miss u. u ok? Xxx

  My eyes blurred with tears of relief.

  Me: Miss u too. Glad to hear from u. u ok? Xxx

  Vicki: I’m gd. @ Ryan’s prty. wywh. Tobias is here. Steph md play for him bt Jess Reed all over him. xx

  My stomach dropped just imagining it. And what the hell, Steph? Ugh, that girl needed attention more than a day-old baby.

  Feeling sad but at least glad Vicki was talking to me I texted back: Steph must be pissed xx.

  Vicki: She’ll goi. Night, babe xx

  I texted good-night back, thinking maybe Steph would get over it, but would I?

  After that it was increasingly difficult not to become way too involved in my book when beautiful Nan sabotaged Benny and Jack. “What a bitch!” I yelled, throwing my e-reader on my bed.

  That was it. I needed a calming cup of Earl Grey before I could continue. Glaring at the offending reading device, I marched out of my bedroom and tried to talk myself down. Muttering under my breath about losing my mind, I’d had an in-depth discussion with myself about becoming overly involved in fictional worlds by the time I returned to my bedroom with my cup of tea.

  However, just as I entered the room, my phone buzzed again.

  Tobias’s name flashed on the screen and my heart leaped into my throat as I lunged for the phone.

  Okay, so I wasn’t cool or unaffected like I might prefer. Instead I fumbled to unlock the screen.

  Tobias: Thot u’d b @ Ryans. Ur friends r.

  I grinned like a fool. I’d missed him. Two nights we’d spent apart. That was all. Two nights. And I missed him desperately.

  I didn’t care if he was making out with Jess Reed—

  Okay, I cared.

  But I cared more about my friendship with him than my jealousy and disappointment, or my worry that he made me lose focus. I decided then and there I could be friends with Tobias without losing myself in our friendship again. I could care about him and still care about my other friends and my passions and goals. I could still be me.

  Me: I don’t really do parties.

  Tobias: Yeah? I’m nt feeln it either. U hme?

  YES, I AM HOME. I AM HOME RIGHT NOW!

  My fingers shook as I typed: yeah...

  Tobias: Cn I cme ovr?

  “YES!” I yelled into the room and then giggled at my nuttiness.

  Me: Sure.

  There. How was that for cool?

  I was a nervous bag of energy as I waited for him to arrive. Tobias was giving up a night with Jess Reed to hang out with me? What did that mean?

  Unless...

  An ugly thought prodded past all my hopeful ones.

  Maybe he and Jess had already hooked up.

  Was he using each of us for different things?

  I couldn’t bring myself to really think of Tobias as a user. It didn’t feel like he was using me when we hung out together, because we both got something out of it.

  I didn’t have long to work myself into a nervous stupor, because Tobias showed up at the house only fifteen minutes later. He must have hurried his cute little arse off.

  Don’t think about his arse, Comet, I said to myself as I swung the door wide-open to let him in.

  “Your parents don’t mind me hanging out?” he said, stepping into the hall beside me.

  He towered over me.

  I kept forgetting how much bigger he was than me despite my long legs. A whiff of yummy aftershave almost made my eyelids flutter in rapture and I mentally cursed myself again for being that girl. The one whose intelligent brain melted out of her ears around a beautiful boy. I shook off my attraction, determined not to be that girl.

  “They’re not here.” I closed the door behind him and locked it, and then walked down the hall to my bedroom. “This way.”

  I was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for him in nervous anticipation, and was pleased at the surprise on his face when he walked in and realized we were in my bedroom.

  “And your parents won’t mind that they’re not here and I’m in your bedroom?” His gaze swept over the room, lingering over the bookshelves and the quote I had painted above my bed. I’d already made sure the room was clear of anything embarrassing, like underwear. />
  Then Tobias’s eyes fell on the poster I had on my wall. It was of a certain gorgeous Hollywood actor who played one of the heroes in a heroine-led book-to-film franchise.

  He and Tobias shared a striking resemblance.

  Tobias cocked an eyebrow, threw me a pleased smirk as I blushed from head to foot, and then he shrugged out of his jacket. As he settled into my armchair I cursed myself for not taking the damn poster down before he got here.

  “So...” I sat down on the edge of my bed and scrambled to think of anything that would make him forget about the poster. “The party was boring?”

  “Yeah.” He was still staring around at the room, drinking in every little thing. I wondered what he found so fascinating. “People are fake. I wasn’t in the mood for fake tonight.”

  Meaning he thought I was real?

  I flushed at the compliment. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Soda if you’ve got it?”

  When I returned with a glass of Coke for him, his fingers brushed mine as I passed the tumbler to him. A frisson of awareness shot through me and I felt things in my body—tingles in places I only ever got tingles when I was reading a romance.

  Knowing I was probably glowing tomato red, I turned around and willed myself to calm down, before I slumped back on the bed to face him.

  “What’s with the banner?” He pointed to the wall adjacent to my bedroom door where I had a University of Virginia pennant I’d bought online pinned to the wall.

  “One day that pennant will be pinned to my dorm room wall.”

  He seemed surprised. “You want to apply to the University of Virginia?”

  “They have a great writing program.”

  “I’m sure colleges here have great writing programs, too.”

  I shrugged. “They aren’t thousands of miles away across a massive ocean.”

  His eyes were filled with questions and, to my surprise, I realized I trusted him enough to provide him with answers. “You asked about my parents. If they would mind you being alone in my bedroom with me. They won’t care, Tobias. They don’t care.”

  His brows hitched toward one another as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What does that mean?”

  Even though my heart was beating hard in my chest at the very idea of anyone knowing just how empty things were between me and my parents, I found that I wanted Tobias to know why I wrote the kinds of poems that I did. Why I wrote his favorite one in the notebook he’d read.

  “They didn’t want me. I was an accident.” I shuffled back against my pillows, getting comfortable. “They’ve always been distant with me, even when I was little. I didn’t know any better then. And to be fair, Carrie—my mum—was more hands-on then than she is now. Marginally. She had to be, I suppose. Dad was always a little more enthusiastic. But as I got older, more independent, Carrie lost all interest and with her disinterest came my dad’s. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong.” I rolled my eyes, the bitterness rising up inside of me. “I still don’t. I think they tell themselves that it’s okay, that they’re artists and artists are a little self-obsessed. But not all artists who are parents are self-obsessed. Men and women can write books and paint pictures and still be good parents.

  “But not Kyle and Carrie Caldwell.” I huffed. “I always used to wonder why Dad would show interest in me and then suddenly just stop. But one day, a few years ago, I overheard a conversation I wasn’t supposed to.”

  I was silent so long, remembering that day, that Tobias prodded. “Comet?”

  I blinked and looked across the room at the boy who was staring at me with such concern and tenderness that I wanted to launch myself into his arms.

  No one ever just hugged me anymore.

  Never my parents.

  Vicki and Steph had stopped.

  I pushed the thought away. “I think something happened to my mum. Dad’s parents died before I was born but Carrie’s parents are alive. And she has a sister. I’ve never met any of them. I think they hurt her growing up.”

  “Hurt her? You mean...like abused?”

  I nodded. “I think so. Whatever happened, I think it messed her up good. And I think my dad saved her. All she cares about is Dad and art. And she’s not good at sharing. I think... I think she feels threatened by me. Afraid that somehow by loving me, Dad would love her less. They argued about him helping me with a project at school—that she needed his attention now more than I did. So I started to wonder if maybe that’s why my dad would suddenly stop helping me with homework or change his mind about going to a museum with me.

  “Is it her, to appease her? I don’t know.” I shrugged, the action belying my depths of feeling on the matter. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is. The results are the same. They have no time for me. They don’t give a crap. Which is why I’m applying to the University of Virginia and getting as far away from them as possible when I graduate.”

  I wasn’t looking at Tobias when I finished. I was ashamed. A child should have changed Carrie—should have given her someone to love and trust beyond my dad. But somehow I wasn’t lovable enough.

  “Comet. Look at me.”

  His voice, the kindness in it when he spoke to me, had become addictive. And I think that’s why I’d told him the truth about my family. I wanted him to absolve me of the part I played in not being who Carrie needed me to be, and not being the kind of kid my dad would choose over her.

  I looked at him and found what I was searching for. Concern, anger, tenderness, all blazed from his beautiful eyes. For me.

  “Now your poems make total sense,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Your parents are assholes, Comet.”

  Succinct. To the point. And I was afraid very, very true. I smiled at him gratefully even though I held a sadness inside of me I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to relieve me of. “Thank you.”

  “My dad was an asshole,” he said. “He pushed me all the time to be the best. I had to make straight As for him because he’d never gotten anything lower than a B. I had to play football and campaign for class president. I had to be perfect. Because he was perfect.” He scoffed, and I winced at the rage I saw in the darkest depths of Tobias’s eyes. “He wasn’t perfect, Comet. He was a hypocrite. He died in a car crash with the woman he’d been screwing behind my mom’s back for years. Worst part? My mom knew. She knew, and she let him do that to us all the while he preached at me the whole time. And I worked my ass off!” He flinched when he realized he was yelling. Sighing, he settled down and I fought the urge to walk across the room and hug him. “I wanted so badly to make him proud, because he did so much for us. He was this big shot lawyer and because of him I was going to be a legacy pledge at his fraternity house at Northwestern. I’d be pre-law just like my old man.

  “I drove around in my GMC Sierra, wearing the best clothes money could buy, plenty of cash in my wallet, thinking even if I wasn’t living my life, I was living a damn good one, you know? How could I complain about feeling pressured when my dad had done all this before me? He was perfect. The perfect lawyer, perfect dad and the perfect husband.

  “I bought into the bullshit. But I’m done. I was done the moment my mom told me the affair had been going on for years. Some woman in his firm. She had a family, too. Fucked us all up when they died together. A nightmarish cliché.” He swiped angrily at the tears in his eyes and glared at my ceiling. “And then my mom told me she was moving us here. I didn’t want to at first, but then I realized it was good. Because here I can be anything I want to be. I can be me without being the me my dad wanted me to be.”

  Hurt squeezed my chest tight as I stared at this boy who was so kind to me when he himself was in so much pain. I found myself desperate to save him from losing who he really was. Even if it made him lash out at me. “Is that what you’re doing?” I said it gently, trying not to antago
nize him. “Hanging out with Stevie and his friends who don’t seem to care about anything. Not handing in homework on time. Mouthing off to teachers. Taking mean verbal swipes at kids who probably have their own crap going on. Is that what you’re doing, Tobias? Are you being yourself now? Because I don’t think you are.”

  He stared at me and I braced myself. I hoped he saw my question for what it was, and not an attack. Finally, after what felt like forever, he said, “When I first got here, I didn’t want to care about anything. I didn’t care about anything.”

  His use of the past tense made my breath falter. “And now?”

  “Now...” His gaze burned into me. “Maybe you reminded me that I didn’t just care because my dad wanted me to care. Maybe...I just care.”

  THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

  12

  If our friendship means being your dirty little secret,

  You can keep it.

  —CC

  Without having to say the words out loud, Tobias and I agreed that something changed in our relationship that night. Some deeper connection was formed out of the already thriving friendship between us.

  Which was probably why I got pissed off enough to cause our first argument.

  It was just after we returned to school from the October break. We’d had two weeks off and I was tired of dodging Vicki’s and Steph’s questions about what I’d been up to on the days I wasn’t with them. Maybe I was a terrible liar, I don’t know, I just knew they were suspicious I wasn’t being honest and hadn’t been for a while.

  I didn’t want to keep my friendship with Tobias from them. Or from anyone. I was proud that he was my friend and I wanted him to be proud to be my friend, too. Yet, somehow I had silently agreed that we would keep our friendship just between us, even though I didn’t know why. Since he talked happily with me in class, I’d assumed that Tobias wouldn’t have a problem with me talking to him in the lunch line.

  Vicki and Steph were already seated when I entered the cafeteria, and I was giddy to note that Tobias was at the back of the food counter line with Stevie. Anytime I saw Tobias I was giddy, addicted to his presence.