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Thirty-three
Conner
June
Ibought Henley a ring from a little shop in Cambridge.Not an engagement ring or even a promise ring, although I suppose it could be used for both. It was an impulse buy. Not something I meant to do. I had an exam on constitutional law and a meeting with one of my professors. Between the two I have about an hour to kill so I kicked around, poking in and out of vintage book shops. A record store. And a place about as big as a broom closet, stuffed with tacky fake Irish shit like faire wind chimes and shamrock tea pots.
That’s when I saw it.
Sterling silver. Nothing fancy.
When she saw me eyeing it, the sales clerk started going on and on about it was handmade in Ireland, and the meaning behind it. Half-listening, I imagined giving it to Henley. Asking her to wear it. Explaining that it could be our secret. No one would know where she got it. She wouldn’t have to tell anyone. But it would be something I could look at, while’s she busy ignoring me in Calculus class or hurrying past me in the halls, and know that she was with me.
Even if no one else does.
So I bought it.
I was going to give it to her that day in the hammock but then Tess showed up. That was a couple of weeks ago and I’m still carrying it around in my pocket, like a chicken shit.
I reason that it’s a big step. That we’ve only been dating a few months. That I don’t want her to get the wrong idea.
What idea is that, Genius? That you can’t stop thinking about her? That she’s the only girl you want to be with? That you’re seventeen years old and you already know that there is no one else for you. That you’re going to love her forever.
Most girls would love to hear that kind of stuff. They’d melt and cry and throw their arms around you if you said those kinds of things to them. It’s been firmly established that Henley is not like other girls.
Like right now, she’s in the kitchen with my mom, baking cookies. I’m in my dad’s study, down the hall, reading and listening to them talk and laugh. I like that she likes spending time with my family. That sometimes, I’ll come home from school and she’ll already be here, hanging out with my mom. Or that if I have a paper due, she’ll still come over to watch the game and yell at the television with my dad while I work on it. I’ve never said she’s my girlfriend and they’ve never asked but I think they know.
I try to keep her as far away from Declan as I can. Sometimes I catch him looking at her. I can tell something about her makes him angry. That he doesn’t like us together and whatever that something is, it goes beyond him not thinking she’s pretty enough or the fact that she’s Ryan’s little sister.
Sometimes, I think he doesn’t like her because she makes me happy.
“What are you reading?”
I look up from my book to find Henley standing in the doorway of the study, a stack of cookies wrapped up in a napkin in her hand. I turn the paperback in my hand, flashing her the faded cover of Gatsby with BOSTON CITY LIBRARY stamped on the back of it.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “That’s my book.”
“We’ve been over this, Hennie,” I say, slipping an old receipt I’m using as a bookmark between its pages. “It’s not your book. It belongs to everyone.”
Now she’s scowling at me to keep from laughing. We do this, pretty much every time she catches me reading it. “Says the guy who stole it from the library.”
“I didn’t steal it.” I set the book on the arm of the chair I’m sitting in. “I borrowed it—that’s how libraries work.”
“Are you ever going to give it back to me?” She shifts around in her shoes. They’re new. My mom bought them for her. She doesn’t know that, though. Mom bought a bunch of stuff—clothes and shoes—and pulled the tags. Ran it all through the wash a few times to wash of the new and stuffed it all in a box. Told her it was a bunch of stuff that belonged to Patrick’s sister that didn’t fit her anymore. Somehow, I’m going to have to figure out how to get her a backpack. One she’ll actually use.
“Probably not.” I scoot across the wide leather seat of the chair I’m in, making room for her “What kind?” I say, glancing at the cookies in her hand.
“Oatmeal butterscotch,” she says. Liberating a cookie from the bundle, she bites it in half.
“They for me?” Oatmeal butterscotch are my favorite and she knows it.
“No,” she says around a mouthful of cookie but she’s lying. They’re for me.
“Can I have one?”
“Can I have my book back?”
“Are you proposing a trade?”