Great Big Beautiful Life(28)

I snort. “I think the green tea–drinking, morning running, salad-noshing wonder of the East Coast can have one croissant without having a cardiac event. Not even my sister eats like you, and she’s had like fourteen heart surgeries.”

His brow tightens, his smile vanishing. “Your Peace Corps sister?”

“I only have the one,” I tell him.

He sets his fork back down, jaw tense. “Is she okay?”

“Yes!” I say quickly. “Sorry! I buried the lede there. She’s fine. Healthy as a horse. Or, you know, a human with a healthy heart. This all happened when we were kids.”

“Shit.” His frown returns. “What happened?”

“It was an issue she had at birth,” I say. “So she was in and out of hospitals a lot when we were small. But she’s been doing really well since, like, high school. That was my whole point. You eat like a bird compared to her.”

“Is she older or younger,” he asks.

“Older,” I say. “Three years. What about your brother? The perfect doctor one?”

His mouth twists wryly, but I wouldn’t quite call it a smile. “I only have the one,” he says, repeating my words back to me. “Two years older. Did I mention he was the captain of our high school football team?”

“You didn’t have to,” I tease. “It was implied.”

He lets out a snort. It sounds like an angry bull, but I’m pretty sure it’s his laugh.

“What position did you play?”

Now he outright scoffs, rolls his eyes as he sits forward again, forearms once more pressing into the table. “None.”

“Basketball?” I say.

“Despite my dad’s greatest wishes,” he says, “no.”

“Hayden,” I say. “You’re like six seven and pure muscle. You could be a millionaire right now.”

“I don’t think that’s how sports work,” he says. “I think you also have to have ‘talent’ or ‘coordination.’?” He puts both basketball prerequisites in half-formed finger quotes against the table. “And also I’m six three.”

“Hm.” I nod thoughtfully. “That’s like a basketball five eight.”

“Now I’m wondering,” he drawls, “why you didn’t become a mathematician.”

“Well, if you’d like, I can get you my mom’s phone number and the two of you can compare notes about all the more impressive jobs I could’ve had, and then I can reach out to your dad and let him know I agree you should’ve played basketball in high school.”

“No, don’t give him the satisfaction,” he says. “I already know you’re both right. If I could do it again, maybe I would’ve tried it, just to see. But at that point there was basically nothing I wanted to do more than the opposite of whatever he and my mom wanted me to do.”

“So you didn’t get along?” I ask.

His huge shoulders lift and slump again. “No, I mean, we do now. They’re actually pretty great. I just wasn’t a kid who did well with the kind of expectations people had for my family. It’s better, now that I live somewhere else. It’s not like every little thing I do reflects on them anymore.”

“I get that,” I say.

“You do?” he asks, the rest of his question hanging there, unsaid: How?

I don’t talk about all this a lot, but I also get the feeling this isn’t Hayden’s usual conversational fare either, and it feels good, almost like he trusts me.

“My parents were kind of…” I search for a word that encompasses all of it. Of course there isn’t one. That’s the deal with people. They’re always more than one thing, and a lot of times they’re even a collection of contradictory traits. “They’re eccentric,” I say. “Super idealistic and passionate and…capable, I guess? Before my sister and I were born, they were actually part of this farming commune, so they knew how to do everything. And thanks to them, I know how to do a lot of things too.”

“Such as?” he asks.

I shrug. “Darning socks. Altering clothes. Cooking. Canning fruit and veggies. Gardening. That kind of thing.”

“Wow,” he says. “Pretty impressive.”

“Now, sure,” I agree. “But when I was a kid, it was mortifying. We lived in this really small, homogenous town, and my parents were hippie journalists who literally chained themselves to trees in the seventies. Growing up, my sister and I both got bullied pretty badly, because everyone thought my parents were weird. And it didn’t help that we were homeschooled until high school, because of my sister’s health problems. Or that we wore homemade clothes. Or that I was seven inches taller than every other girl in my grade. Frankly, there was a lot working against us.”

Another sliver of smile.

“But the thing is, none of those kids knew what was going on at home. What Audrey was dealing with. Just like I didn’t know what they were dealing with. Most people aren’t mean for no reason, you know? Stuff’s going on with them too.”

“Alice,” he says, softly chiding. “Some people are just assholes.”

“I know,” I say. “Some. Not most.”

This time, his amusement takes the form of a quiet huff.