Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,75

passenger seat, I registered again how sore I was.

“Just like you don’t ask about George. Or Todd,” Tina said. “Honestly, it’s not that I think you’re jealous. But anytime something doesn’t make sense to you, you decide you just don’t care about it. Being a good friend is more than just sitting at the same lunch table and going to the movies.”

“I don’t want to get into the Candace stuff,” I said as she started the car. “But there are . . . other reasons, maybe, I don’t bring up Todd.”

“I’m waiting,” Tina said. She loosened her grip on the gear shift.

“It’s because you’re my friend with such a handle on things,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t imagine you needing anything from me because you’re four hundred times more together than I am.”

Tina squinted at me. “Why do you think that?”

“You’re looking at colleges, you have a boyfriend, and you’re strong enough to deal with all the challenges with the distance and your mom, and like, you’re tall, and hot, and I’m me. Like, I don’t even know why you’re friends with me.”

“All right, I’m stopping you there before this turns into a pity party. But I’m your friend, which means I’ll tell you what you need to hear, even if you don’t deserve it. One, you know you’re plenty hot and you could have had Jeff if you wanted him. Two, Suzie Q, everybody you know is a mess. Even me.” She released the clutch and pulled out of the lot.

“If you’re a mess, how come I’ve never once heard you grind the clutch when you drive?” It was another joke, but it got Tina to smile.

“Well, like the college thing. I want to go, don’t get me wrong. I even like that my mom mails away for brochures from places I’ve never heard of. But that also means pressure. Like, she looks at everything I do like it might make or break my chances. Last week, I was leaving for school and she made me take my blouse off so she could iron it, like she thinks at any minute some college dean might see me and write me off because my shirt’s wrinkled.”

Tina laughed to herself, and I mumbled. “It’s nice that she cares, though.”

“Yeah, of course it is. But if she cared less, maybe I wouldn’t be hiding Todd from her. Do you know that I make him lie when he calls my house? If he gets my mom or stepdad, he has to pretend to be ‘Billy, Tina’s lab partner,’ or ‘Roger,’ who I’m tutoring in English. . . .”

I thought about the first time I’d met Tina’s mom. Tina hadn’t been nervous to introduce me at all, and her mom had invited me for dinner within the first ten minutes. I knew it was different—a friend versus a boyfriend—but still, I said, “Your mom is cool. Do you really think she’d have a problem with Todd? I mean, I know she gives money to Reagan but . . .”

With a sad laugh and a head shake, Tina cut me off, but gently. “She wouldn’t love Todd’s politics, but they wouldn’t be a big deal to her if they were going to lead somewhere she can imagine. All the guys my mom wants me to date? They’re college-bound, goal-oriented guys with plans. The reason I love Todd is he’s not those things. He’s smart and he works hard, but he’d rather go pick litter out of rivers than go to college. And I can just hear my mom saying, ‘What kind of life will he give you?’”

I could hear Tina’s mom saying the same thing. Once she’d asked about Tonia, out in California, and when I told her my sister was a free spirit, Mrs. Tate (her second husband’s last name) had looked horrified.

“You don’t have to introduce him as Todd, a guy with no plans,” I said. “He could just be ‘my boyfriend, Todd.’”

Tina nodded. “I know. I’m a shitty girlfriend. He introduced me to his parents. He had talked me up so much that his mom and dad practically kissed the ground I walked on when they met me.”

I was gaining more and more respect for Todd.

Tina drummed on the steering wheel. “I keep wishing I would wake up and just not love him anymore, so I don’t have to do anything to disappoint my parents. Did you know, once I went out with one of the guys my mom invited for dinner?