Totally and Completely Fine(29)

It made me feel closer to him. And I didn’t want him to leave.

But I wasn’t going to be his mother. I wasn’t going to make him feel like he had to choose. He was the only person I knew who really loved school. Loved learning. College was going to be the place where he really blossomed.

Spencer being Spencer, he did exactly as he promised. Every Friday night he was back. He spent Saturday with me, went to church with his mom on Sunday, and then headed back to school. Occasionally Gabe would join him, but that stopped after he was cast in the college’s upcoming production of Cyrano de Bergerac and started spending his weekends in rehearsals.

“I thought he was there to play football?” I asked Spencer when he told me the news.

“He is,” he said. “But I guess it’s the offseason?”

Neither of us really knew anything about football. Not that we knew much more about theatre either, but I was way more interested in going to see Gabe acting than trekking out there to watch him play a game I didn’t understand or care about.

“He said he did it to meet girls,” Spencer said.

I rolled my eyes. “Between that and football, how many girls does he need?” I asked.

Spencer shrugged. “I think he likes the attention. And he can drink more when he doesn’t have to do drills and stuff.”

It was the first time he’d mentioned Gabe’s drinking.

I’d noticed, of course. Before leaving for college, Gabe always seemed to have a beer in his hand. I knew it wasn’t that hard to get a six-pack in Cooper, even if you were underage, and I imagined it was even easier in a college town.

“Bet there’s a lot of partying,” I said.

We were hanging out in the basement. It seemed so small now—the video-game console sitting dusty in the corner, the ring-stained coffee table, the couch that squeaked literally any time you shifted. Which was the main reason we were sitting and talking instead of making out.

“Yeah,” he said.

His hand was playing with the edge of my sleeve. I’d begun mending my own clothes. Last week this shirt had a hole in the shoulder and the sleeve. Now all that was visible of my handiwork was a loose thread that Spencer was tugging at.

I slapped his hand away. “Don’t unravel it,” I said. “Are you going to these parties with Gabe?”

I didn’t want to be jealous.

But I was.

“Sometimes,” Spencer said. “But they’re mostly on the weekends.”

He sat forward. The couch squealed its unhappiness.

“My mom is having surgery,” he said.

I rarely saw Diana, but my animosity for her was clearly mutual. She referred to me as “that girl” to other people—I’d overheard her once in the grocery store before she knew I worked there. But even if I wasn’t her biggest fan, I didn’t wish harm on her.

“Is she okay?”

“It’s her knees,” Spencer said. “They’ve been bothering her for a while, and she’s decided to get surgery on both of them.”

“Isn’t that kind of a big deal?” I asked.

“The surgery is pretty straightforward,” he said. “But it’s a long recovery. She’s going to need help.”

I eyed him, pretty sure I could tell where this was going and not liking it at all.

“I think I’m going to take some time off school,” he said. “Just a semester, so I can be there for her after the surgery.”

“You’re in the middle of a semester,” I said. “She can’t wait until May?”

He shook his head, but I knew he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t pushed. Diana had said she needed him, and Spencer was going to abandon everything to help her.

“You can’t drop out of school,” I said.

“I’m not dropping out,” he said. “It’s just for a semester.”

It wasn’t, of course. Diana’s knees were still bothering her by the following fall, and when Gabe went back for his sophomore year, he went alone.

Chapter 18

Now

I’d submitted Lena to a cruel array of tortures over the years, but apparently, the worst of them all was forcing her to be seen in public with me while we went shopping for a new backpack.

“My old one is fine,” she kept saying.

“It has a hole the size of my fist,” I said. “How can you carry anything in it?”

“Backpacks are for kids,” she said.

I considered reminding her that she was, technically, still a kid, but I also wanted to make it through the next hour in one piece, so I said nothing. It was my best parenting tactic.

I’d promised her that she could go to the movies with Eve afterward, which was the only thing that seemed to make her smile these days.

We went to the walking mall, and while Lena decided between two nearly identical green backpacks （for someone who didn’t need one, she had very strong opinions about which one to get）， I thought about Ben.

I didn’t do it on purpose, but I found myself imagining the kind of shopping trip I’d drag him on if he were here. All the places I’d told him about. There was Birds and Beasleys, of course, the local hot spot for birders and nature lovers alike. They had a little parakeet named Button that was basically a town mascot, though we didn’t talk about the fact that the current Button was actually the third in a line of identical birds, carrying on a noble tradition.