Chapter Six

six

After two semesters in her classroom, there’s no shortage of titles I’d expect Professor Meyers to give me. Most frequently tardy would be appropriate, or maybe least improved . I figured she thought of me only as the slacker sidekick of her favorite student, Kathryn Fleming. But referring to me as Ellie’s girlfriend—her daughter ’s girlfriend—isn’t just unexpected. It’s downright nonsense that I can’t make heads or tails of. The longer I stare out the open car window and into the expectant eyes of my accounting professor, the more my brain spins out of orbit. You must be Ellie’s girlfriend. I’m more capable of reversing the full two miles home than collecting the words to correct her.

“I…me? What? You’re…I’m…It’s not…”

Ellie cuts off my stuttering with a soft squeeze of my thigh, which simultaneously shuts me up and sends me into yet another spiral. A fresh wave of nausea hits, and I’m not sure whether the hangover or the situation is to blame. Either way, I shut my mouth and wait for Ellie to jump in with a correction that smooths over whatever weird misunderstanding we’re caught in, but when she speaks up, it’s only to say, “We’ll meet you inside, Mom.”

My jaw drops in solidarity with my plummeting stomach. Ten seconds ago this girl said we were just friends. Now she’s squeezing my leg and letting her mom jump to conclusions? There’s a ten-car pileup of questions just behind my forehead.

Before I can protest, Ellie’s grip on my thigh tightens, and I close my mouth again as she smiles and waves her mother back into the house. Once we’re alone, she lets go of my leg and lets out a long, blow-out-a-birthday-candle-type breath. Like she’s the one who’s going through it.

“So,” I say, “wanna tell me what the fuck that was?” I fold my arms tight over my chest, waiting not so patiently for some much-needed answers from Ellie. Ellie Meyers, that is. As in Professor Meyers, the woman with my grade in her hands and a complete misconception of my relationship with her daughter. Jesus, I’m too hungover for this.

“It’s an honest mistake,” Ellie says. “I told you, my ex was supposed to come home with me to meet my parents this weekend.” Her teeth start to chatter as she rubs her hands up and down the arms of her coat, trying to spark some warmth. “Aren’t you freezing? Turn the heat up.”

I ignore her and shove my hands into my coat pockets, both for warmth and to stop myself from grabbing Ellie by the shoulders and shaking answers out of her. “Why didn’t you let me correct her?” I ask. “Why did you lie to your mom?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Ellie says, sounding flustered. “I just…I don’t know. I panicked. And I haven’t…” She stills for a moment, and her guilty gaze flits from the Subaru to the stereo, anywhere that isn’t me. I’m confused at first, but when the explanation dawns on me, my jaw unclenches and falls open with a gasp.

“Oh my God.” I breathe a laugh of sheer disbelief. “You didn’t tell your parents you got dumped.”

Ellie’s shoulders droop, and her gaze finally settles on her own feet. “I haven’t had a chance.”

“Did you also not get a chance to tell them her name?” I ask. “Because whatever it is, I bet it’s not Murphy.”

“It’s Mary,” she says flatly. “And I’m not exactly close with my parents, okay? I don’t think Mom and I have had a personal conversation longer than ten minutes since sophomore year when I told her about the whole bi thing.”

My stomach bottoms out. “The whole bi thing?” I repeat back to her, spacing each word out to give it room to breathe. The? Whole? Bi? Thing? I lock eyes with the plastic red flag on their mailbox.

“You know what I mean,” she says. When I turn back to face her, her features stiffen, but she still won’t quite look me in the eye. “You know.”

A breath leaks through my gritted teeth. I try to put myself in her shoes, to remember how things felt when I first came out. It was an endless parade of firsts—first kiss with a girl, first date with a girl, first girl I brought home to Mom and Dad—all set to the tune of constantly slipping up and falling flat on my face. It was clunky and wobbly and new, like testing out your first baby steps in a pair of stilettos. Or maybe not stilettos. Maybe Doc Martens. A new pair that still needs breaking in. But I was a kid, and everything sort of felt that way. Coming out was just another portion of puberty for me, and as hard as it was to be the only gay kid in my grade, there are perks to knowing who you are from the get-go. I’ve had nearly ten years of practice navigating the queer world, so my shoes are well worn, but I do know what she means. I’ve been there, too, and I remember the blisters, even if they healed long ago.

“I do know,” I admit, and my jaw softens as I catch her gaze for the first time since her Mom showed up. “I get that breakups are hard. I get that telling your family about it is hard too. But you can’t just lie your way through this one. You really need to go tell them I’m not Mary.”

“Right,” Ellie says. She swallows, then in a small voice adds, “Well…or…”

“Or?!”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you could just go with it for a second, it would really save me a world of hurt.”

I blink back at her in disbelief. “I…what?”

“It doesn’t have to be a huge deal,” she says. “You don’t know how obsessed with Mary my mom’s been. She’s gonna think it’s my fault, that I let a good thing go, and I just…I can’t deal with that right now. So can you just come inside for a second, say hello, maybe mention something about the New York internship? And then you can go and I’ll deal with the rest. I know it’s weird but…please? I’d owe you one.”

I stare at her, dumbfounded, my mouth forming a perfect O. I’m sure she’s gone off the rails until I remember I have one major detail that she doesn’t. “What does your mother do for a living?” I ask, shouting as much as a whisper allows.

She jostles her legs with impatience. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question.”

Ellie huffs. “She’s an accountant.”

“And an accounting professor,” I add, drawing out my words to give her time to process. “ My accounting professor.”

The slight annoyance on Ellie’s face slips into a pale, ghostly expression. “Oh my God. I didn’t…” she trails off, blinking in bewilderment into the early winter wind whipping through the window. “She only teaches one class.”

“Right,” I say. “My class. The one I’m failing.” A deranged laugh leaks out of me and, by the way Ellie’s pupils are dilating, I’d say she’s feeling a little off-kilter herself. She pushes out a shallow breath that fogs the air, then takes the words right out of my mouth.

“This is unbelievable.”

“Unbelievable!” I echo, then dial my voice back a few notches. “No one could make this shit up.”

“And she thinks you’re my girlfriend,” Ellie mutters to herself. The pieces are just now falling into place, showing her the whole messy picture. She rakes her fingers through her hair, slowly shaking her head. “God, that’s so awkward.”

“So you get it,” I say. “You need to tell her the truth.”

“Right,” Ellie says, but her frown doesn’t budge. “Well, or…”

“Again with the or?!”

“Listen, I know this sounds crazy,” she says, “but I think this might actually be a good thing.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You sound crazy.”

“I’m serious,” she whines, and I watch her reddish-blue fingers roll into fists for warmth. That or she’s about to deck me. Time will tell. “Please,” Ellie begs, “just hear me out.”

And I do. Because what the hell, we’ve made it this far.

With a twist of the key in the ignition, hot air blows full force from the vents, chapping our faces in a welcome way. I roll up the window and shift sideways in the driver’s seat, propping my arm on the steering wheel and my head in my hand. “I’m listening,” I say. “Shoot.”

Ellie lowers her voice to a hush that can barely be heard over the full-blast heat. “As far as my parents are concerned, Mary was the best thing I had going for me,” she says. “A future CEO. A Marcus type. She was the first girl I ever seriously dated, and they were all-in on the two of us. But without her, I’m just their wild card daughter who wasted their hard-earned money on an art degree.”

I wait for more of an explanation, but I get none. “So?”

“So they’re not going to give me more money for grad school if they think I’m just wasting it, which they will, if I don’t have my totally-has-her-shit-together girlfriend on my side.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’ve got this whole marketing thing going with Sip,” Ellie says. “We could spin that as you having a job lined up, starting your own business as a marketing consultant.” She drums her fingers on the center console, and I can practically hear the motor in her brain whirring and overheating. “The marketing department is part of the business school, I think, so it’s not that much of a stretch to call you a business major. And I didn’t—”

“Enough.” I slice my hand through the air, miming my own decapitation. “I see what you’re getting at, and it’s not gonna happen. I’m not cosplaying as your girlfriend just so you can go to grad school.”

A flicker of something wicked flashes through Ellie’s eyes. “That’s fair. But would you do it to pass accounting?”

I blink back at her, my mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. “Do you think…could that actually happen?”

She shrugs. “I already told you. Mom plays favorites.”

I rake my teeth over my lower lip, remembering Kat’s strategy to pull off a passing grade in this very class. She wasn’t a star student, but she was charming, so Professor Meyers liked her anyway, and it paid off with a passing grade. What better way to make her like me, too, than to play the part of her daughter’s stable, successful girlfriend? It’s a wild idea, but what are my other options? Schmooze Professor Meyers on my own? Unlikely. Pull off an A on the final? Borderline impossible. This could be my ticket out of community college—or it would be, if I had any confidence that we could pull it off. I don’t give Ellie a yes or a no, just a single fact. “You’re overestimating my acting abilities.”

“Am I?” Ellie lifts a brow. “Not to be rude, but is it that far of a stretch to pretend to be into me? You asked me out, like, ten minutes ago.”

My cheeks go hot with a twinge of embarrassment. “Yeah,” I grumble, “before I found out you were my accounting professor’s daughter. Now I look at you and I see equations.”

“Bullshit.” Ellie huffs a laugh and folds her arms over her chest. “Look me in the eye right now and tell me all you can think about is math.”

I roll my eyes before allowing myself to look into hers. Ellie is partially right—my first thought has nothing to do with accounting. Instead, I’m wondering how those sea glass eyes might look behind a set of horn-rimmed glasses. She’s not a carbon copy of her mother, but that hooded stare of hers is straight from the playbook of Professor Meyers. “You look a little like her, you know.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re not actually dating,” she reminds me. “You can look past the resemblance for a day, can’t you? Not even a whole day, either. Just for Thanksgiving dinner so we can make each other look good and both get what we want.”

I twist the dial and bring the heat down a notch, but it doesn’t stop the sweat pooling near my lower back. “But then what?” I ask. “What about after?”

“Then I get to go to grad school and you pass accounting. You’ll transfer to U of I and I’ll eventually tell them we didn’t work out. Easy.”

“You’re really putting this plan together quickly,” I mutter.

“Thanks.” Her lips quirk up in a proud smile. “So you’ll do it?”

“No.”

“Come oooooooon.” Ellie stamps her feet either out of frustration or just to circulate blood flow to her thawing toes. “Please?” she begs again. “Why not?”

“Because this isn’t some Hallmark holiday movie,” I say. “This stuff doesn’t actually work in real life.”

Ellie bites her cheek to hide an incoming smile. “Of course it’s not a Hallmark movie. Have you ever seen two gay women star in one of those?”

“Exactly! Fake relationships for the holidays? This is some straight people shit, Ellie!”

“Oh come on.” Her voice drops to a low grumble, and if I hadn’t just turned the heat down, I might not hear what she says next. “It’s not like you were planning to do anything else today.”

My heart trampolines up to my throat before burying itself in a newly formed pit in my stomach. She’s hitting below the belt now. I direct my words more to the steering wheel than to her. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. You were just saying how cleaning the house would give you something to do.” There’s something in her voice I don’t like. Some know-it-all tone, like the worst of the sixteen-year-old baristas I work with. “And you weren’t really talking that quietly on the phone with your mom, either. I heard what you said about skipping Thanksgiving with Kat.”

The silence is too long, both of us waiting for the other to give in. If we’d known each other even a little bit longer, she’d know better than to try to out-stubborn me. “Murphy,” she finally says, her voice steadier than it’s been all morning, “I know what it’s like not to be the favorite.”

I want to tell her she’s wrong, but she’s not. Marcus is the favorite child, and Kat was the favorite student. I wasn’t even my own best friend’s first choice of company this weekend.

“Will you at least think about it?” Ellie pleads.

My lip twitches at the compromise. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll think about it. But I’m thinking about it at home. I don’t want your mom coming back out to ask why I’m idling in her driveway.”

“Okay,” Ellie says. “Just let me know.” She reaches to open the passenger door, but for the second time today, her fingers pause on the handle for just a moment too long.

“Did you forget something?” I ask.

“No. I just…” She reaches over the console to squeeze my thigh again, and regardless of who her mother is and where she’s headed next fall, my skin lights up like a sparkler at her touch. “No matter what you decide, I’m glad we met, okay?”

“Me, too,” I say. I can feel my cheeks turning pink.

“Good.” Ellie smiles just enough for her dimple to show. “Because I really do want to be friends.”

“Right,” I say. But I can’t quite make myself agree.