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Scheduled for Friday
by Anton M.
13: Scarves for Goldfish
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Sunday, January 22 (cont.)
A minor had several ways of owning a house in Georgia: as an heir, through a custodian or a trust, or as a member of an LLC. Technically, if my parents co-signed with me, I could be the legal owner of the house we bought, but… not only did owning it mean taking care of (and caring about) all the mind-blowingly boring details that I had no interest in, it also meant taking house ownership from my parents, something they'd both worked towards for their entire lives and now thought they had to let go of, all because of me.
So, in a tiny office downtown with my financial advisor Miss Avayah Goodman, I did something I hadn't done before. Well, not on this scale.
I went against my parents.
They wanted me to own our future house through a trust by co-signing, and I wanted to gift it to them. My financial advisor advised against writing a property in my parents' name because that would give them the legal right to renovate it however they wished (I would only hope so), demolish it (how about we buy it first, guys), sell it (I'd be so proud), or kick me out when I was eighteen (that's hilarious, we should stage that). My parents would also take on the upkeep, tax liability, and legal responsibility for our hypothetical property, but we could set up a contract that would force me to help pay for maintenance if they wanted to purchase a mansion and my judgement was hindered by getting hit over the head with a tampon stun gun.
Obviously, I would contribute to the maintenance costs willingly, but a contract like that would reassure my parents that, in the unlikely event that we'd grow to hate each other, I'd still cover those costs.
My parents did not, in fact, wish to buy a mansion—quite the opposite. They were terrified that the Lord of Morality and Justice would tase them if they bought anything bigger than 1,500 sq feet and had a specific room for watching TV, or puppetry, or… aquascaping, and lightning would certainly strike down if they got a master bedroom with its own bathroom. Mom had always dreamed about an office, dad would've died of a happy heart attack if he got a room equipped with tools for lampworking, and honestly?
The types of fancy neighborhoods with their gates and picket fences we were planning to view were unlikely to offer anything with less than three bedrooms.
What nobody told me when I suddenly earned a lot of money was that large amounts of money did not feel real. Truly, someone should've warned me. My parents and I had had endless discussions about the pitfalls of poor people like us suddenly seeing a lot of money with no experience in how to invest (as my financial advisor told us, poverty was excellent preparation for saving but not for investing), so there was a lot of fear involved in putting my money into a trust. I'd always assumed my salary as a minor would be owned by my parents, so when they convinced me that it was the right way to go I didn't think much about it. I was so thrilled to be Nala and so overwhelmed by all the documentation I didn't have the bandwidth to comprehend what the changes meant for me.
But whenever my Miss Goodman showed us the money I owned, all I saw were commas and numbers. It didn't feel real. We'd set a budget of 600K for buying a house (outright), and my parents (and Miss Goodman) argued for the better half of an hour against me gifting it to my parents, but somewhere between dozing off in the world's most boring meetings, I did learn that I (and by I, I mean my parents and I) could submit an IRS form 709 with all the information about the size of my gift and if it didn't surpass a lifetime sum of 5.6 million for each of them, I didn't have to pay tax on my gift… which was totally outrageous when you thought about it. I could understand it for immediate family—parents, children, spouses—but no tax until 5.6 million? It's no wonder we were stuck in a single-wide trailer for more than a decade while a Walmart shareholder didn't even have to fart for too long to have earned two million during it.
By lunch, I'd proven to Miss Goodman and my parents that I was, after all, my parents' daughter, with all the stubborn pride that came with it, and when my parents and I sat down for brunch at Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours before meeting our realtor, they were uncommonly quiet. We ordered, we ate, and I stared at the black pipes in the ceiling as I pretended not to see their meaningful glances at each other. I couldn't quite figure out if they were angry, upset, in shock, or all three. When we were done, mom put down her utensils and fisted her silvery wavy hair in her palm as she rested her jaw against her hand.
"Honey," she said, quietly. "We know we cannot stop you from doing this. It's your money."
"Yes, it is."
"But it's just—it's too much."
"It is not too much," I argued, holding back a scoff. "Mom, you've both put your careers on the back burner to cater to mine. You chauffeured me around even before this role, before we ever thought I'd have a big break. You get up at ungodly hours just for me. You stay up, just for me. You make sure I'm fed and safe and happy. It's not too much, it's not enough."
"Sweetie…"
"And what if I turn into one of those pretentious asshole kid actors who are so insufferable you can't wait to throw me out of the house? You'll need a home if that happens."
Dad laughed. "That's not going to happen."
"How can you be sure? Plenty of teenage actors get fame in their heads. What if I'm one of them?"
"You won't be, sweetie," he replied. "Because we're your parents, and we're awesome."
Dad grinned. It was sweet and cocky, what he said, but also true.
"I don't know why we're still arguing," I replied. "I'll pay for the house but it'll be in your name, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Mom paid for the food before we got up, and dad wrapped me in a tight, warm hug. "I don't know what we did right in our lives to deserve you."
"Plenty," I smiled. "And I like that you think I'm being kind."
"Are you not?" mom asked.
"No. I'm very selfish. If anything breaks, I don't want to hear about it, I'll just write you a check and you handle it. I never want to call a plumber in my life."
Mom laughed and tucked me by her side as we began to exit the restaurant.
"Oh, God, what will this do to our relationship?"
"What, why should it change anything?"
"How many chores are you going to get out of using the excuse that you bought our house?"
I laughed. "That is an excellent idea, mom. I'm thinking… all of them."
"You get one a year," dad said as we began walking to our car.
"Five," I argued.
"Two," mom said.
"Four—" I pointed at dad, "and I'll custom-build you a torchworking room in the basement with the highest grade annealing kiln in the market."
"Sold."
"Hey!" mom argued. "That's not fair. Our daughter cannot bribe you with torchworking."
"You get an office with the best view in the house and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase built into your room."
"A swiveling armchair?" mom asked.
"A snuggly one with a side-table covered by issues of Food and Wine and Cherry Bombe."
Conflicted, mom stifled a smile.
"Does it make me a bad parent that I'm considering this or do we just spend too much time with our daughter?"
Dad laughed.
If anyone qualified as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, it was my mom. She had an eye for high-quality brands in all (wealthy neighborhood-adjacent) thrift stores, and whenever she felt like splurging, she researched the shit out of the expensive clothes she bought. She dreamed about fine dining in beautiful restaurants so that she could dress to the nines and watch dad in a pristine button-down judge tiny portion sizes.
Dad and I were the polar opposite of mom—if mom travelled anywhere for any amount of days, we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until she returned.
Dad, who enjoyed making mom happy, totally would've taken her out every week had it been in our budget, but now that mom had landed a two-year contract for simultaneous interpreting of Mandarin to English and we were getting used to affording normal human experiences like takeout, I'd arranged for mom to surprise dad with bowling (which dad adored), and for my dad to surprise mom with fine dining at Ray's on the River, a restaurant so fancy their menu cards didn't have prices on them. I didn't care much for a restaurant like that, but making mom happy made dad happy, and making them both happy made me happy, so here we were.
It was my treat to both of them for dad's birthday, and I'd already asked Alice if I could stay at their place on Tuesday to give my parents some much-needed alone time. Mom was definitely right, too—for a fifteen-year-old, I spent way too much time with my parents.
House touring with our realtor, a ginger, middle-aged man called Ryan Daniels, was an absurd experience. He'd met my parents before, of course, and my parents had come up with a story about inheriting enough to upgrade our home and find a safe neighborhood to live in. Why else would we be driving around in a dusty grey Chevrolet Impala from 2012 while also offering a lump sum for a house?
But I also felt like we were in house hunters.
What do you do for a living? Oh, I glue spaghetti on dollhouses and my husband knits scarves for goldfish. Our budget is three million dollars.
Our budget was not, in fact, three million dollars (my parents would've never agreed), but for the upgrade 600K could bring us, it may as well have been. High ceilings, marble countertops, a walk-in closet (mom almost fainted), endless kitchen islands and al fresco dining. Our realtor got annoyed at me and mom for being so visibly in awe of the size and features of the houses we visited that he warned us to keep it in. Apparently, the owners could use their security footage as leverage in price negotiations.
After that, I made it a game to be the whiniest teenager. Ugh, so much natural light, how will I see the TV? Ugh, hidden refrigerator, do you want our guests to check the pantry and the oven before they find the fridge? Ugh, a view of a nearby lake, think of the blinding sun reflection. Aren't we just so sad and upset by these massive windows? Much sad. Such upset.
Fortunately, dad's voice of reason also balanced our enthusiasm. While my mom and I were sold by matching throw pillows, dad would walk into a house and notice things we would've never thought about, like a north-facing living room or extensive traffic noise. Once, he walked downstairs ahead of us, looked around in the beautiful spacious basement, recently painted white, squinted at the walls, and turned to the realtor, "This house has a mold problem, doesn't it?"
I'd never seen a grown man squirm the way our realtor did.
We saw seven houses near Mableton, Lithia Springs, Northwest Atlanta, and more than a few behind the border with Smyrna. Craftsman style, modern, bungalow—words that meant little to me but seemed to interest my parents. We even saw a red brick house straight out of a postcard in the gated Vinings Estate, but my parents hated the untouched, don't-walk-on-grass-or-I'll-shoot-you feel of the neighborhood with bushes so pruned they deserved to be signed up for trauma counseling.
By the evening, we had our favorites but were too wiped to discuss them, and we promised to make an offer (or two) by Tuesday. Yes, we should've seen all the available houses for many weekends and assessed everything under the sun, but we were running out of time, and fortunately, my parents and I had a few overlapping favorites.
Dad and I spoke to Tanya in the evening, and she kept a surprisingly cool head about Alice's suspicion and promised to talk to NorthDust Studios. When she heard that we'd finally, finally seen houses to buy, her 'Que bacana!' (that's awesome) was so excited she even offered to ask the studio to rent us a moving truck and do all the heavy lifting.
I almost smacked my dad when he politely declined. His I-will-do-it-myself attitude was as admirable as it was stupid, and I sent Tanya a text after our phone call to let her know that we'd be more than happy to receive their help on a date I'd determine later. Well-aware of the pride my parents took in their stubborn self-sufficiency, she sent me a thumbs up.
I was ready to fight my parents on this. I was not eager to spend three weekends of our scarce free time to go back and forth with a tiny U-haul trailer that challenged even my parents' solid relationship. Not talking from experience or anything.
On Monday, January 23, my head was so full of everything that had happened since Thursday that I'd forgotten all about Edward.
No, that was a lie.
I'd done nothing of the sort.
In fact, my feet remembered him so well that I'd walked halfway across the parking lot before I even realized where I was heading, promptly made an L-turn, and heard the now-familiar sound of his motorcycle just as I stepped off the parking lot. I barely registered the chattering students passing me in the cloudy but warm morning when I stopped to watch him. I couldn't help it.
Heartbeat thundered in my ears as he turned off his bike and removed his helmet, revealing a black barbell I hadn't seen before. He wore black jeans and a grey jacket, and I was glad to see that gauze no longer covered his fingers, but what punched me in the gut was how happy he seemed.
Of course he's happy, you dumbass. He got the girl he wanted.
I felt my blood run cold as I realized that how I felt about kissing Mike, Edward must've felt about kissing me. A mediocre, uncomfortable kiss that might've turned him on but not much more than that.
It gutted me.
I wished that, at least, some boy would've harbored a secret crush on me so that Edward could at least see that somebody wanted me. Maybe I wasn't what he wanted, and maybe I didn't even kiss all that well, but somebody out there thought that I was just the best.
Nobody did, though.
Edward sat cross-legged in front of his bike, just like the first time we met, and I didn't know what he was doing but I felt the strangest urge to walk up to him and make him laugh. I ached to see his eyes linger on my lips and lift me up with butterflies. The mere thought filled me with nervous, breathless longing.
But that wouldn't happen. Instead, his face would probably fall because he'd be hoping for Lauren, and I didn't want to witness that. In my imagination, he got that soft, affectionate look in his eyes when he looked at me, and it was unfair that he got everything he wanted and I was left with a stupid crush on a stupid boy who clearly felt nothing for me even after giving me the most tingly, breathtaking first kiss.
That apparently did as much to him as Mike's kiss did to me. I wanted to hate him for it, I wanted to accuse him of using me, but… he'd been terrifyingly upfront. He didn't lead me on.
He just wasn't into me.
Getting that feeling of being stared at as humans often did, Edward began to look around, but before I could stumble into the crowd behind me, his eyes caught another girl's—no, woman's. She had wavy red hair and wore glasses. She squeezed her handbag closer to herself as she approached him, and I should've given them privacy but I was glued to my spot.
Edward's face fell with comic speed before he lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. I couldn't hear the words they shared but Edward kept shaking his head until he stood up, walked up to the woman, and, hands flailing, started shouting. The woman recoiled. She clutched an envelope, her face vaguely turned toward me, and I suddenly recognized her as a teacher, Miss Victoria Masen. She'd substituted for Mr. Needham in September.
Were they related? His sister? Aunt? Step-mom?
I was no longer the only person staring. A student yelling at a teacher in the parking lot gathered attention, and Edward lowered his voice the moment he realized this. But, jaw clenched and face red, he narrowed his eyes at her, as if daring her to defend herself, and when Miss Victoria Masen offered the envelope to Edward, he crunched it up into a ball, threw it into her open handbag, and the low, sharp, "Fuck you," I heard from him certainly wasn't imagined.
Holy shit, what did she do?
She stared at him for a few quiet seconds before she walked away with her head down. Edward leaned against his motorcycle, rubbed his face, and looked around. Multiple people suddenly began walking, but I was still in shock, and Edward caught my eye. He grabbed his backpack and gave me an embarrassed smile as he approached me, as if to say 'I guess you saw that, huh?'
I felt like crawling out of my skin when his eyes lingered on my face, and his scent caused a flurry of butterflies to lift off in my stomach. He had blueish shadows under his eyes, but his green-eyed gaze was breathtaking as ever, and I felt the urge to throw myself inside his jacket and bury my face in his scent.
"People will think you're cheating on Lauren if we talk," I said quietly, somewhat aware of the pretending-not-to-be-looking attention we were gathering from the other students.
"Let them. Spice up their boring gossip for a day."
I felt torn, torn to still have this breathless, tingling response to him after the avalanche of proof that I was better off drowning my feelings in a trench. I didn't know what I'd expected, but his normalcy around me felt alien, like he was oblivious to the ache that gripped my insides and swallowed me whole.
We walked to a white hickory in front of the school, and his casual, lean, tall presence beside me sent a flutter of nerves through me.
"She's my aunt," Edward explained with no prompting. "Dad's younger sister. Would be easier if the police knocked on our door on a Sunday and announced that she'd walked into traffic. Easier for the kid, easier for us. Just easier."
I must've looked horrified because Edward lifted both of his hands.
"Not saying I'd murder her. Or maybe I would. She'd deserve it."
"What'd she do? Can I ask?"
Edward crossed his arms and rubbed his forehead, suddenly looking years older than his age. "Mother of the fucking year, that one. Left home on Friday to go binge-drinking with her friends only to return today morning before work. Functioning alcoholic or whatever. Left my five-year-old cousin Riley home alone. Riley walked three blocks in the middle of Friday night, scared out of his wits, and I slept on the living room carpet for three nights because he is terrified that we will leave him alone. Rightfully so, I'd say, given what a delight his mother is."
"Are you serious?"
Edward pursed his lips in a bittersweet smile, and he didn't have to reply.
"And he knew the road?"
"Thank fuck he did, he did it in daylight a few weeks ago. I nearly pushed Vicky in front of traffic myself when that happened, and CPS won't do anything. Not entirely their fault, underfunded as they are, but… all she had to do was give us a call on Friday. That's all she had to do. Fucking hell, drink until you die, I don't give a shit, just don't whine about how clingy your kid is when you're the one giving him abandonment issues. Fuck."
Edward gestured with his hands, venting and curling his fingers as if gripping an invisible force, and he slowly lowered his arms as he took a breath and calmed down. He felt so vulnerable, then, protective and furious and maybe a little taken aback by his own sharing. Before I knew it, I'd wrapped him in a hug. His cold zipper pressed against my cheek, and he relaxed into our brief but tight hug before I pulled away.
"Sorry," I whispered. "You just looked like you needed a hug."
Edward tilted his head to the side, but only slightly, and he didn't narrow his eyes or squint but his eyes lingered on my face as if he'd never seen me before. There was a sudden indecipherable intensity in his gaze, like an unacknowledged discovery that made me feel lightweight and breathless, as if he was about to wrap himself around me and kiss me. He licked his lips as he eyed mine, and tingly as I felt, I would've given anything to know if maybe he did, in fact, enjoy our kiss, if even a little.
It was all in my head, of course, but it felt so real, and I knew then that I was probably better off distancing myself from him. He probably didn't look at me in any particular way, but I loved and hated and craved the way I felt when I was near him.
Edward cleared his throat and crossed his arms, smiling. This time he did narrow his eyes.
"What is it about you that makes me tell you everything? Does everyone just spill their secrets around you or am I special?"
"It's everyone." I grinned. "That's why the hair's so curly. It's all the secrets."
Edward laughed. I could've died happy in the deep, attractive sound, and his soft eyes lingered on my hairdo.
"Good," he said. "Keep the secrets. They suit you."
I didn't know how to express how warm and accepted his comment made me feel, so I just smiled.
He hesitated. "I'm sorry for dumping all that information on you, but, speaking of secrets… could you keep what I told you to yourself? Much as she's not my favorite person, I have no intention of getting my aunt fired."
"Obviously. You don't have to ask."
He nodded but gave me that look again, that absent-minded unreadable intensity that made hair in the back of my neck rise.
A few seconds later, he blinked, as if realizing the entire school was heading for the first class.
"Oh, fuck," he cursed. "I was supposed to meet Lauren by the—"
"Go, go," I whispered, feeling the bucket of reality dump a giant load of ice water on my chest. "It's fine."
He squeezed my forearm and replied, in a near-whisper, "Thank you, Bella."
I felt the urge to sniff my jacket where he'd touched it, but instead, I grabbed hold of his wrist before he'd run away.
"Edward," I said, sharp and loud enough to catch his attention before I tapped the back of my neck twice. Confused, he squinted, and I lifted myself on my tiptoes. My fingertips tingled from the warmth of his neck against my skin as I tucked the price tag in his shirt, and something inside me died in the knowledge that he'd bought a new hoodie to impress Lauren. I kind of missed the ragged edges of his old ones.
Even if he didn't mean anything by it, his smile twisted my insides.
"I'll catch up with you later, okay?"
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