Page 25 of Spectacular Things
A Good Night in Tips
Home for the summer, Mia hears the brakes screech in the driveway and a car door slam just after midnight.
She turns off the reading light next to the pink floral couch and sneaks into her childhood bedroom to avoid seeing her mom.
It’s the same thing she’s done every night for the past week since she returned to Victory.
The misadventures of Mia’s first year of college already seem like a different life, a hazy dream sequence on some cutting-room floor.
But that one grainy image from the archival library still nags at her with unparalleled clarity.
Behind Mia’s closed eyes, she sees her mother in that high school photograph, smiling a state championship smile with a growing secret in her body.
Every day, Mia considers asking Liz about Q—or rather confessing what she now knows about their relationship—but instead, she finds herself walking out of the room. In the past, Liz has always referred to Q as her “great love” and “the one who got away.” It’s enough to make Mia sick.
Thankfully, circumventing her mom is just one of many activities keeping Mia busy.
She threads her own marketing internship through Cricket’s dizzying summer soccer schedule, which includes her high school, club, and Youth National Team obligations.
Mia quickly reestablishes herself as Cricket’s stay-at-home parent, although they are barely home.
Instead, Mia and Cricket gas up the momvan and drive up and down the East Coast for tournaments.
After a year apart, it’s the same but different between the sisters.
Their days, as ever, revolve around Cricket, but the keeper has evolved in her chauffeur’s absence.
“Thank you for doing this,” Cricket always says as they buckle up for another road trip.
She is keenly aware of how much she missed Mia while she was away at school.
“The drives are only fun with you,” she confesses.
“You’re the only person I can spend so much time with, you know? ”
Mia nods, because she does know, even though she doesn’t feel the same way.
The most exciting development of this summer—besides Cricket’s dramatic uptick in gratitude—is that Mia now has a serious boyfriend.
Ben is someone Mia can spend a lot of time with, which she’s done since February, when Landon paired them up late one night for a round of beer pong.
Despite the sloshy introduction in the dingy frat house basement, Ben’s quiet maturity—a rising senior majoring in microbiology—rattled Mia almost instantly.
“Are you comfortable with this?” he’d asked, holding up a red Solo cup.
“With winning?” Mia responded, feeling that particular kind of clever that arrives after the third drink.
“Sharing the same cups, I mean,” Ben clarified. “Because I can drink from a separate set if you’re concerned about the spread of virals.”
It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. She’d kissed him on the spot and they’d gone on to win the next two games, sharing the same red cups.
The only downside to dating Ben is that he’s on the other side of the country for the summer.
Unlike Landon, who has made his parents’ Nantucket cottage the headquarters for his online poker LLC, Ben is spending his last college summer interning for the Doctors Without Borders office in Oakland, California.
His absence but frequent FaceTimes are the trickiest but also the most thrilling part of Mia’s summer juggling act.
Ben’s texts throughout the day make her ache for the privacy and freedom of her life on campus.
Cricket found out about him when he called while they were driving to Connecticut, but Mia has intentionally and successfully kept Ben a secret from her mom.
The car door slams, the house keys jingle, and the doorknob squeaks.
“Guess what I have!” Liz shouts, bursting into Mia’s dark bedroom with a pungent gust of garlic and onions.
She is backlit by the hallway light, her blond bun illuminated like a thick halo and three distinct paper rectangles in her hand.
“Tickets?” Mia guesses. She sits up and tries to remember which bands she saw were coming to Portland but can’t imagine who would have her mother this animated.
“Yes, tickets!” Liz shouts, dancing maniacally. “But tickets to what?”
Mia scrunches her eyebrows as her mom shimmies in her doorway. “Disney World?”
“Try again!” Liz trills before spinning on her toes and floating down the hallway. “Let’s wake up Cricket!”
Mia follows and watches her sister’s eyes go from slits to saucers. “Are they real?” Cricket asks, jumping out of bed to examine the tickets. Her new pajama pants already look a little short after Cricket’s second insane growth spurt in May. “Are these really real?”
Liz nods vigorously. “I waited on these two guys and I guess they were bored of each other because—”
Mia and Cricket roll their eyes at each other.
Their mother blames “boredom” for crazy moments at Primo Bistro when what really happened—as has happened multiple times in the past—is that one or both men fell in love with Liz.
While on the clock and wearing her black server’s apron, their mom has been proposed to not once but twice.
“Anyway,” Liz continues, “I ended up telling them about you, Cricket, and then when they left, these tickets were on the table with a nice note—apparently they’re high up in FIFA!”
“Can we go?” Cricket asks, turning the tickets over in her hand like bars of gold.
“I think we have to, don’t we?” Liz starts her maniacal dancing again, and now Cricket joins her, and it’s like an uncoordinated octopus has taken over the room.
“Where are we going?” Mia asks.
“The World Cup!” Cricket shouts, waving the tickets in the air. “The World freakin’ Cup!”