“Tell me I’m gonna see you later, Tabby. Please?” he said.
“I want to.”
“Then, what’s the problem?”
“Besides that I could get fired? I’d have to sneak out.”
“I sneak out all the time. And it’s just a job, right?”
Connor could afford to think that way. I couldn’t. But his smile sent a thrill right through me.
“All right. I’ll be there.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, and I loved the sound of that.
That night at supper in the cramped kitchen, things seemed particularly grim. Grandpa Ray was suffering from his emphysema, and Grandma Jean had had a bad day at work.
“This damn recession,” she said, her face gaunt, her eyes tired behind her glasses. “They’re talking layoffs.”
“Not you, Grandma Jean. They couldn’t get along without you.”
“You’re sweet, honey.”
“You guys go watch TV. I’ll clean up.”
I washed the dishes by hand, since the dishwasher had broken last year and never been fixed. We sat on the sofa for a while and watched the History Channel. Time dragged. I could feel life happening outside the walls without me. I wondered what Connor was doing right then.
By eight-thirty, Grandpa was snoring loudly, and Grandma was nodding. A loud commercial came on, and her head jerked up.
“I think maybe we’ll turn in. Help me get Grandpa to bed, Tabitha.”
My grandfather leaned on my arm, wheezing, as we walked down the narrow hallway, Grandma Jean wheeling his oxygen tank alongside us. He hadn’t worked in years because of his condition, so money was always tight. We lived in a tiny ranch-style house in Baldwin, one town over from Lakeside, where the country club was located. The lake and the big houses were all in Lakeside. Baldwin was where the working folks lived. Our house had two bedrooms side by side with a paper-thin wall in between. If I wanted to leave the house, I’d have to walk right by my grandparents’ door.
I spent some time picking my outfit and doing my makeup, then tiptoed to their bedroom door and listened. Loud snores from Grandpa Ray. Nothing from Grandma Jean, but that didn’t mean she was sleeping. I went around the house turning off lights like I was closing up, then returned to my room, shutting the door with an intentionally loud thud. I sat on the bed and listened to the silence. At five to nine, I was done waiting. I crept out of my room, down the hall to the front door.
Outside, the night air smelled sweet, and light still glowed in the northern sky. I felt like I was taking my life in my hands for the first time, and that it had been a long time coming. I wheeled my bike down the driveway and set off. Twenty minutes later, I was at the club, hurrying past the kitchen and dining hall on my way to the TV room, praying that nobody I knew was working late.
The TV room was jammed with kids lounging on the rug. They’d taken the chairs out, pushed the sofas back against the wall. The lights were dimmed. Connor and three other guys stood on the carpeted riser that passed for a stage. They were in the middle of a song—a cover of “Desperado,” by the Eagles. He had a guitar slung across his chest, and he looked even taller and more perfect in the spotlight than he did in the sunshine by the pool. I plowed through the crowd to a spot right up front, sinking down cross-legged on the floor.
The band was called Big Summer, and they were pretty good. Connor sang in a soulful, quavering voice that was all the rage among indie singers then. I ate it up. These things that are pleasing you will hurt you somehow. I should have paid more attention to those words, but I was too busy worrying that he hadn’t noticed me come in because the spotlight was shining in his eyes. I’d risked everything to get here. What if he didn’t even see me? But I needn’t have worried. Toward the end, there was a pause in the music as he consulted with his bandmates. He walked back to the microphone and looked right down at me.
“This is for Tabby in the front row, with the long blond hair,” he said, and the band broke into a cover of “Wonderful Tonight.” As he sang of the girl brushing her long, blond hair, I trembled and wiped away tears. My heart felt like it would explode. When he’d finished playing, all his friends whooped and hollered, but he didn’t pay them any mind. He came right up to me—the pool girl in the front row, Cinderella at the ball.
“Told you I’d dedicate a song to you. Are you glad you came?”
“Totally.”
People saw us. I didn’t care. He took my hand. We went out on the golf course and made out under the stars. And that was just the beginning.
5
After that first night, as far as I was concerned, any moment not spent with Connor wasn’t worth living. Most nights, I’d sneak out of the house and ride my bike to the golf course. We’d lie together on a blanket in the moonlight, the sweet smell of the grass all around us, kissing, whispering, laughing, our hands slipping beneath each other’s clothes. I’d never known anyone like him. He was good-looking as a prince, but that wasn’t what got to me. It was the things he said, how he carried himself, everything he knew. At work during the day, I’d take the long way back to the kitchen, stopping by the tennis courts just to watch him play. When he was out on the lake water-skiing, I’d drop what I was doing to gawk. The talent, the grace—I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He’d been to private school, read great books, been to Paris and Hawaii. He was in college now, real college—not some certificate program to get a dull job that you’d spend your life doing, just to die. The boys I’d dated at Baldwin High had no ambition beyond this sorry town. And no interest in me, beyond that I was a pretty girl who might sleep with them. Connor paid attention to me. He listened. He confided in me. He sought my advice. He was as head-over-heels as I was. He didn’t ask for sex until I was ready (which, okay, happened within a week of when we started dating). He said I love you first. He made me feel worthy, like we were equals.
We had more in common than I ever would’ve guessed. The year before, his father had left his mother for a younger woman and now had an infant son. Connor’s parents’ divorce wasn’t yet final. His father was hiding assets and screwing them over on support payments. In the meantime, Connor, his mother, and his siblings were financially dependent on his grandmother. Nell Ford paid for their schools, the divorce lawyer, the mortgage on their house, but her generosity came with strings. His whole family did whatever she said, for fear that she’d cut him off.
People at the club knew there was something between us. How could they not? We’d spend all morning circling each other, hands brushing, heads together, giggling at our inside jokes. At noon sharp, I’d take my lunch break, grabbing a vanilla shake from the grill and heading to the boathouse, where he’d be waiting. It was cool inside after the glaring midday sun, with the sound of water lapping, and dark except for the shimmer of light around the boat launch. Connor would step out from behind the rows of stacked canoes and kayaks. He’d kiss me and lead me up the stairs to the storage loft. We’d lie back against piles of moldy life jackets, sipping the milkshake, kissing. To this day, the taste of a vanilla milkshake evokes the feel of his mouth on mine.
One day toward the end of summer, we were up in the loft when I heard the door open below.