He doesn’t say anything.
I shake my head. “I organized my whole life around becoming the person he might, one day, be proud of.” My voice is even. That’s the part I can’t stand. How even it sounds when I feel like I’ve completely lost myself. “And tonight he said it. He said the decisions I’ve made. And the only reason he said it is because he thinks I’m in love with you.” I stare at my hands. “And I’m not, so it’s humiliating.”
“Aspen—”
“It’s humiliating, Stanley.” I look at him. “I’ve done everything that I could to make him proud, and I couldn’t get it out of him. And…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Now I get it becauseI’m with you? An Ermington? Like I get it, you’re really good at hockey, but is that seriously all that matters?”
He uncrosses his arms and says, “No, it’s not all that matters, Linwood. What matters is character, how someone treats you, whether you like them or not––”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like you, Ermington.”
The room falls quiet.
“Are you jealous of me, princess?” he says, probably to ease the tension before I cry. After all, one of hisoff-pagerules was no tears.
I roll my eyes. “Jealous?”
He says, “I can get your dad to stop liking me in about two seconds flat. Say the word and I’ll have it done before they clear dessert.”
“Stanley—”
“Or do you need me to do something genuinely terrible, so you can earn his disapproval back the hard way and feel like a self-made woman again?”
I look at him leaning against my vanity in my father’s shirt with his tie hanging loose around his open collar.
“Or you can trade skins with me, Linwood. And know the weight of the family name on your back.”
It lands heavily on my chest the moment he says it like that. He acts so nonchalant that I didn’t even know it bothered him.
“Tell me which one you want, Linwood.”
I fall back onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling.
“I want to go back in time and let Gavin hit on me at that party.” I fold my fingers together on top of my stomach. “I want to politely decline, and then I want to walk away.”
“Why didn’t you do that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It was bad,” he says after a moment. “Wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Aspen.” And there it is — my name, my actual name, in his mouth, with all the clowning gone out of it. “I’ve known since we were kids that you’ve never liked me. Tonight it’s very clear that you can’t fucking stand me. So I’m asking you. What did Gavin do to you, to put you in a position with no way out except grabbing me?”
I stare at the ceiling.
And all of it comes down on me at once — the wine, my father standing up, the wordproud, the cornbread I couldn’t eat, the napkin folded on my plate, the three pies, the lattice, Aunt Lisa’s hand over mine under the table — all of it, at the same time, with nowhere to go.
Two slow tears slide back into my hair. I open my mouth. I close it. I open it again.
“Have you ever been in a situation where you were terrified of what was about to happen to your whole life?”
He doesn’t say anything.
I keep my eyes on the ceiling. “We’d been together for four months. I was late on my period.”
The room holds its breath.
