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“How are Basil and Briar doing in school?” Hazel asked. “Are they getting ready for the SAT yet?”
Martha scoffed. “They’re just freshman.”
“Hence, why I asked. Some people start early these days. It’s harder to prepare for now that they changed it. There’s more math and more historical readings.” Hazel shrugged. “I would’ve struggled with the new version, and I know B and B don’t like reading all that much.”
“The boys are fine, Hazel. Why do you have to judge?”
Hazel bit her lip and tipped the squash into the pan with the other vegetables. If she wanted something to eat besides mashed potatoes, yams, or some other kind of tuber filled with sugar, she had to make it herself. It had been that way since high school, and it was most of the reason she’d learned to cook, and why she showed up early to make sure most of the vegetables were made without butter slathered all over them.
“Hey! What’s our little hippy up to these days?” her stepfather Steve asked as he went to get another beer from the fridge.
“Just grinding out her senior year,” Martha said. “I think you’re working too hard, sweetie. You look tired.”
“I have a lot of professional opportunities right now.” Haze pulled out the sliced eggplant from the fridge and took it to the sink to rinse. “I have to work hard if I want the last few years to pay off.”
“That’s the spirit, kiddo.” Steve reached over and mussed her hair. “You know, if you ever need something to get by, there will always be a spot at the office for you.”
“I appreciate it, Steve, but I’m not really interested in the insurance game.”
“No, just in the businesses-that-don’t-make-money game.” Steve laughed at his own joke.
Hazel flattened her expression. “Yep. That’s me.”
Martha shook her head as she put together the yams. “You should at least make the time to date a little, Hazel. I know you’re into politics and everything, but college is the time for you to be looking for someone to spend your life with.”
That stung. Even if those two thoughts didn’t have anything to do with one another, her mother would always connect her life failures to her choice in major. And, unfortunately, she couldn’t just tell them that she had been sleeping with her professor for the better part of two months. “Okay, you know it isn’t the 1950s, right? I’m not getting a Mrs. Degree.”
“Don’t get snitty with me.”
“I’m just saying… women don’t have to meet their husband in college.” Hazel sprinkled her herb mixture in with the vegetables and olive oil and started to stir. “You met Dad in college, though, and that worked out just awesome.”
Steve snorted.
“If I hadn’t met a husband in college, the world wouldn’t have been blessed with your miraculous self,” Martha said.
“Yeah, that would be a huge loss.” Steve laughed again and kissed Martha on the cheek. “Don’t clog up the oven with that rabbit food. We gotta get the turkey in there.”
“Don’t worry. Rabbit food cooks faster than bird corpses,” Hazel drawled.
“Oh, don’t be vulgar,” Martha said.
Hazel rolled her eyes and arranged the vegetables on the roasting pan.
***
Hazel didn’t think she was going to make it through dinner. The smell of the turkey was more overwhelming than she remembered. Plus, it was a little overcooked because her mother always got distracted by watching football with the boys. Hazel tried to close off her nasal passages by force of will but only succeeded in forgetting to breathe. She got up and excused herself from the table.
No one noticed.
Hazel went into the bathroom and shut the door. After splashing water on her face a few times, she put the lid down on the toilet and sat on top of it. She pulled out her phone and sent a message to Ian.
Should have taken you up on Chinese food Thanksgiving. How is it?
She stared at her phone, hoping against hope that he would get back to her. It was pathetic, being so dependent on this guy she couldn’t even call her boyfriend, but she couldn’t help it. They saw one another almost every day. They worked together. She was halfway through writing his book. He’d even expanded his company’s charitable contributions just to keep her around.
Even so, they had never talked about where things were going. Beyond fun. Beyond sex. After New York, which had been wall-to-wall sex and expensive outings (with a couple of business meetings attached), Ian had made a point to find places to take her whenever possible—day trips to nature preserves, nights out dancing, tickets to the symphony. Hazel spent more time with Ian than anyone else, but she still couldn’t bring herself to ask him where all of this was going. The longer it went on, the longer she worried that he was just having a nice fling with his student, and it would be over once the semester ended, or he grew bored.
