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Okay, bye now.
Sincerely,
Lettie
I stared at the letter for a while longer before I smelled it one more time and placed it back into the envelope. I liked the idea of keeping in touch with Lettie when we were apart and especially of getting mail while I was gone.
Reading her letter made me realize that the reason Lettie loved Aveline so much was because she felt just as out of place in her home as I always had in mine.
In a world where the two of us had absolutely nothing in common, we had that.
THIRTY
LETTIE
Theo had madereservations for a restaurant in town as though we were a couple of thirty-something adults instead of two teenage kids. He pulled the chair out for me, and I sat down, watching as he walked over to the other side of the table and sat across from me.
“I hope this is okay,” he said, his voice slightly trembling.
“It’s great, Theo. Thank you,” I replied. I had never seen this side of Theo, and I was taking mental notes to remember these tiny moments of anxiety the next time he was insufferable around his friends. Maybe there was more to him than I had originally thought.
Theo nodded. “I’m glad you were agreeable to a date. I have been wanting to go out with you for some time now. I don’t think it was much of a secret though.”
I smiled awkwardly. “No, not much of one.”
He shied away. “Yeah, not much gets past Avery, does it?”
“Not really. She is a sucker for gossip.”
We ordered, and there was a lull of silence that felt uncomfortable. I straightened the napkin in my lap several times and took a couple sips of my water. A few times, Theo opened his mouth as though he were going to speak, but shut it again, apparently lacking confidence in what he had to say. It was awkward, and I was wracking my brain, trying to find conversation. I couldn’t help but think how it was never this hard with Tuck.
“So”—I cleared my throat—“do you have any plans for the summer?”
“The usual. My family always takes a trip to the Hamptons and then my father and I will go sailing. How about you? Any big plans for Violet Carlton this summer?”
I had plans.
Plans to go to Aveline and to work at the pet clinic. Plans to see Tuck as often as possible and gorge myself with pastries.
But none of that was anything I could admit, so I just said the obvious.
“Nothing, really. Just etiquette classes and then the deb ball in September. I have a lot of preparation for that.”
Theo looked up from his plate. “Oh, yes. My sister is desperate for her turn at the deb ball. She still has two years until it is her time, but she has already been practicing her walk, and she squeals every time she sees a white dress in a shop window.”
I chuckled in an obligatory way and nodded as though I understood.
I didn’t though.
The debutante ball had been something I’d dreaded for as long as I could remember. I had tried to find a way to bail from the duty of being a deb but with no luck. It was tradition that the women in our family become debs the summer going into their senior year, and since I didn’t turn eighteen for a few days after the ball in September, I didn’t have much of a choice.
Theo cleared his throat. “Do you, uh…” he stammered. “Do you have a date yet? You know, an escort… for the ball?”
I lowered my eyes slowly and picked up my glass to give myself a little more time to come up with an answer.
No, I didn’t have an escort to the ball.
And no, I didn’t want my escort to be Theo Martin.
