Eight Months Later
“Okay, turn left here,” I said, “now it’s going to be the fourth house on the left. Yeah, that one with green siding.”
Jada pulled into Mom and Dad’s driveway and parked the car. I still didn’t own a car, having decided to keep walking to work and save my money for college, so I usually depended on getting rides with Nathan if I wanted to visit Mom and Dad in Durham. More often in the months since Dad and I had reconciled at Christmas, they’d come back to Brocksboro to visit instead, visiting old friends from the neighborhood and church as well as me. But today they’d asked Jada and me to stop by for a visit on our way to East Carolina University, where I would be starting college in a couple of days.
I had texted Mom to let her know we were getting close as soon as we got off I-85, and she’d apparently started watching by the front window at that point, because as soon as Jada parked, the front door opened and Mom came out to meet us before we’d even gotten out of the car.
“Lauren, Jada, it’s good to see you,” she said. “Excited about college?”
“So excited,” I said, hugging her.
“Hey, Mrs. Wallace,” Jada said.
Mom hugged her, too, saying, “Come on in, I made caramel fudge.”
“Ooooh,” I oooohed as we followed Mom into the house. Dad was there to greet us as we came in.
“Good trip so far?” he asked.
“Yeah, we haven’t run into any heavy traffic or accidents or anything,” Jada said. “The maps app says there’s going to be some slowdown on our way out of Durham, though.”
“Yeah, we can only stay about an hour 'cause I’ve got a freshman orientation thing to go to at four o’clock, and I want to allow time to unload the car and do some unpacking first.”
“We kind of have to, we can’t keep it parked by the dorm for long,” Jada said.
“Well, come sit down,” Mom said. “I know Lauren wants some fudge; how about you, Jada?”
“Yes, please, and some sweet tea if you’ve got any?”
“All right. You too, Lauren?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We moved into the dining room and sat down with Dad. Mom brought us small plates of fudge and glasses of tea and joined us at the table.
“Mmmmm!” I exclaimed around a mouthful of fudge. “So good,” I added after chewing and swallowing.
“So,” Dad said, “another two days and you’ll have your first college classes, right?”
“Yeah, Monday morning,” I said. “Principles of Biology at nine-thirty.”
“Well, don’t do like I did...” He proceeded to tell the story I’d heard several times before, but which Jada hadn’t, about how he’d stayed up way too late arguing philosophy and theology with his new roommate and a couple of their neighbors in the freshman boys’ dorm, and consequently slept through his alarm and was super late to his first class. I laughed politely, Jada uproariously. Mom smiled at us.
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” I said. “If I don’t go to bed when I should, Steph will remind me.”
I’d wanted to room with Jada, but as a condition of helping me out with tuition and housing, Mom and Dad had asked me not to share a room with my girlfriend. Jada and I had talked about it, and decided it was worth it to get that help. Even after working full-time at Metamorphoses for a year and getting raises at three months and six months, and with the absurdly low rent I was paying the Ramseys, I still didn’t have anywhere near enough to pay for college without extensive loans. With Mom and Dad’s help, I was still having to borrow some of the difference, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much and I’d probably be able to pay off the loans within a few years. So I’d asked Steph if she wanted to room with me, and she’d enthusiastically agreed. And Steph, Jada, and I had already worked things out with each other and Karen, who would be Jada’s roommate this year, arranging how we’d give each other privacy when we needed it.
“She sounds like a sweet girl,” Mom said.
“She’s sweeter than this fudge,” Jada said, pausing between bites, “and that’s saying something.”
We talked some more about the classes Jada and I would be taking that semester, which led to more stories from Mom and Dad about their first year of college, and the time flew. My phone alarm went off and I saw that we’d already been hanging out with them for an hour.
“I guess we’d better go,” I said, standing up. “I love you. See you in a few weeks?”
“Yeah, let’s plan on the first weekend in October unless something comes up,” Dad said. “We love you and we’re so, so proud of you, Lauren. You too, Jada.”
I teared up a little as I hugged him goodbye. “I’ll try to make you even prouder,” I said.
Jada hugged Mom and shook hands with Dad, and after a few more minutes of prolonged goodbyes, we got back on the road.
“That was a good visit,” Jada said. “I liked hearing your parents’ college stories.”
“Yeah, that was fun,” I said. “Things are so much better between us than they were a year ago. It would be nice if my dad’s parents and siblings would come around too, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
“Yeah.” She took one hand off the wheel for a moment and patted my leg. “I still don’t know how my grandma and my aunts and uncle are going to react when I come out to them. I think Tamily and most of my cousins will be fine with it, but I’m a little nervous even about them.”
“I’ll be there with you when you come out to them if you want,” I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d made that offer.
“It can wait,” she said. “We’ve got lots of stuff to do first!”
“Classes! Studying! Term papers!” I exclaimed.
She glanced at me for a moment and wiggled her eyebrows. “Well, yeah, but I had other things in mind.”
“Oh?” I inquired innocently. “Such as...?”
She told me exactly what she had in mind, and I squirmed in my seat. I hastily changed the subject.
“I wonder what our plushie selves are getting up to?”
* * *
“Oops,” Desiree said, looking at the lamp that we’d accidentally knocked off Britt’s bedside table. Fortunately, the bulb wasn’t broken, but it looked like the metal frame of the lampshade was bent.
“Oops,” I agreed. On our second day of being Britt’s plushies, we’d gotten bored after a few hours of Britt working on cars with her dad, and Desiree had proposed a game of tag.
In Britt’s bedroom.
“Let’s see if we can put it back,” I said.
With a herculean effort, we managed to stand up the lamp on the floor and bend the lampshade frame into something closer to the right shape. But getting it back up on the table was impossible for creatures our size without rope and pulleys or some such. Britt found us still futilely trying when she came in from the garage to wash her hands for lunch; she passed by her bedroom door and saw us. We hastily backed away from the lamp and looked innocent, which is pretty easy for plushies to do.
“What have you silly girls been up to?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Desiree said.
“The lamp fell over and we were trying to put it back,” I said.
“It just fell over, huh?” she asked with a bemused look. “C’mere.” She bent over and picked up the lamp with one arm, and me and Desiree with a couple of other arms, and hugged us to her chest while she put the lamp back on the table. “I love having you here and snuggling you, but I need you to be more careful, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and “Sorry,” Desiree said.
“Let’s go, I’m hungry,” she said. “You can watch me eat and not have any as punishment for knocking over the lamp.”
“Oh no!” Desiree exclaimed. “However shall we endure!”
I giggled. I loved my girlfriends so much.
Darn. The worst part of a good book is always that fact that it ends. I quite enjoyed this book, and with the amount of recommendations you've given, I'll have lots of books to read after this.
A good book.