in trouble with the law for hacking or coding or whatever it is. I simply don’t want you getting mixed up in these things. You’re too wonderful of a woman to give anything else to that riffraff.”
My mouth hangs open. “I … I don’t even know what to say to that, other than you’re wrong. And when I do eventually bring him over here for dinner, at Mom’s request, I won’t tell him all the horrible things you’ve said about him! He doesn’t deserve to know the lies you’ve told me about him.”
My father just scrolls through his phone, not bothering to look up as he sneers. “Don’t bother, it won’t last long enough for your mother to cook him a meal.”
The chair scrapes the tile as I thrust it backward, and I’m in my car pulling out of the driveway before the tears even dare to form.
27
Lily
Lily: I’m almost done here, just have to write up my assessment of the fourth-grade project I was helping the elementary school with. Want to grab dinner?
I send the text in hopes that Bowen will say sure, and suggest Carlucci’s, the only Italian restaurant in Fawn Hill. I’ve been stewing for days over what Penelope and Presley said about laying down the law with him when it comes to our relationship and where it’s going. And ever since my father lit the match, I’ve begun to burn with the tension this issue is causing in my mind and heart.
If we’re together, we should be together. No more not talking about what we’re doing … because we’ve been doing that all summer. And now summer is over. No more only seeing each other behind the closed doors of our homes. I want to be wooed; I want to date Bowen. As shallow and stupid as it sounds, I want to be seen about town with him. If not to quiet the rumors of our breakup so many years ago, then to show off how much I love him.
Bowen: Sorry, late customer here at the shop. Then need to head home. Maybe you can come over later?
And there it is again. This is the third time I’ve asked to go out for a meal, twice for dinner and once for brunch, that he’s turned me down. Now it’s becoming a pattern. And the fact that he turned it into me coming over to his place later … it makes me feel cheap and hidden. Like a booty call or a woman he is ashamed of being seen with in public.
Lily: No, if I go home, I’m in for the night. Guess I’ll see you another time.
My response is a little bit petulant, but a whole lot honest. I mean it; if he doesn’t want to share a public meal together, then I’m not driving over to his house after ten p.m. to take off my clothes and sleep in his bed. My friends are right … I’m not going to settle for being a good-time girl when Bowen had never treated me that way before. Just because we’re adults now, and the way we define relationships might be murkier in this day and age, doesn’t mean I’m going to agree to something I don’t want.
Because what do I want? I want love and commitment, eventually marriage and a family. I want those things with Bowen, and we’ve fought through hell and back to even stand in the same room together let alone sleep together. It would be a shame if our generation’s ridiculous dating pitfalls were the thing that ended us for good, but I’m willing to let them if he isn’t willing to commit.
Bowen: Sorry, baby. Working late. And I just want you to myself.
Lily: Those are bogus excuses. We both know it. I want to go out to eat with you. If you don’t want to do that, then I have no problem going home alone.
He hit me with the baby … probably as a cover-up tactic because he knows how much it melts me. But I’m not falling for it.
Texting always makes it easier to say how we truly feel because you’re not standing right in front of that person. You’re venting all of your frustrations at a screen, writing them out instead of having to articulate them in real time. It’s both a pro and a con, because I know that I say things I wouldn’t be bold enough to say to Bowen in person. But it also can’t be read