Today Tonight Tomorrow(49)
“I… don’t know.”
I’ve always been able to be honest with my parents. I even told my mom when I lost my virginity. Romance novels made me so eager to talk about it.
The thing is, I’m afraid.
Afraid of saying I want what they have.
Afraid they’ll dismiss it as a hobby.
Afraid that if they read my work, they’ll tell me I’m not good enough.
Afraid they’ll tell me I’ll never make it.
Her hand brushes my cheek. “Endings are so hard,” she says, and then laughs at the double meaning. “I should know. We spent all day trying to get ours just right.”
“Yours are always perfect.” And I mean it. I was my parents’ first reader, their first fan. “Did you ever—” I break off, wondering how to phrase this. “Did you ever have people who looked down on you and Dad for writing children’s books?”
She gives me this look over her glasses, as if to say, obviously. “All the time. We told you what his parents said when the third Riley book hit the New York Times list, right?” When I shake my head, she continues: “His father asked when we were going to start writing real books.”
“Grandpa does only read World War II novels.”
“And that’s fine. Not my cup of tea, but I understand why he enjoys them. We’ve always loved writing for kids. They’re so full of hope and wonder, and everything feels big and new and exciting. And we love meeting the kids who read our books. Even if they’re not kids anymore,” she says with a nod toward the dining room.
“Have you ever thought…?” I chew the inside of my cheek. “What Grandpa said about your books. That’s—that’s sort of how I feel sometimes.”
“About romance novels? I’d never argue that they’re not real books, Rowan. We each have our preferences. We can agree to disagree.”
I try to keep my heart from sinking. It’s not progress, not exactly, but at least it doesn’t feel like a step backward. It’s going to have to be enough until I meet Delilah.
“Speaking of romance,” my mom says. “Is there something going on between you and Neil?”
My hands fly to my mouth, and I’m sure there’s an expression of abject horror on my face. “Oh my God, Mom, no, no, no, no, no. No.”
“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”
I roll my eyes. “No. We teamed up for the game. Completely platonically.”
But my mind trips over the way he said the kiddush, the sound of those words I knew so well in a voice I thought I did. My fingers tingle at the memory of sitting on his bed, touching his shoulder. An unusual moment of physical contact between us. Then the pointillism of freckles across his face and down his neck, the dots that wrap around his fingers and crawl up his arms. And his arms—the way they look in that T-shirt.
It’s probably just that I’m really into arms.
“Well. I hope you enjoy the rest of your game,” my mom says with a smirk before she heads back into the dining room.
HOWL CLUES
A place you can buy Nirvana’s first album
A place that’s red from floor to ceiling
A place you can find Chiroptera
A rainbow crosswalk
Ice cream fit for Sasquatch
The big guy at the center of the universe
Something local, organic, and sustainable
A floppy disk
A coffee cup with someone else’s name (or your own name, wildly misspelled)
A car with a parking ticket
A view from up high
The best pizza in the city (your choice)
A tourist doing something a local would be ashamed of doing
An umbrella (we all know real Seattleites don’t use them)
A tribute to the mysterious Mr. Cooper
7:03 p.m.
“EATING CREAM CHEESE straight out of the tub,” Neil says with a shake of his head as we drive down Fremont Avenue. “You barbarian.”
“No one has manners when they’re eating alone,” I say as I pull into a parking spot. “I’m sure you have plenty of terrible habits.”
“I’m actually quite sophisticated. I put things on plates before I eat them. You’ve heard of them, yeah? Plates? See also: bowls.”
Toward the end of dinner, we strategized: the Fremont Troll (the big guy at the center of the universe) and then a view from up high. When I suggested Gas Works Park, made famous by the paintball scene in 10 Things I Hate about You, he scoffed. “Is that really the best view in Seattle?” he asked. “It’s a view of Seattle,” I said. “It doesn’t need to be the best one.”
Fremont is busy on Friday nights. It’s not dark yet, and voices spill from bars and restaurants. Next week, during the summer solstice, Fremont will celebrate with a parade and a naked bike ride. The troll, which is nearly twenty feet tall, has a hand wrapped around an actual Volkswagen Beetle and a hubcap for an eye.
I check the time on my car’s dash for about the tenth time in the past minute. Delilah Park’s signing is in an hour, and I am now officially panicking.
She’ll be elegant, of course, like she is in all her photos. And kind. I’m sure she’ll be kind. I’ve met my parents’ author friends, but it’s not quite the same. Delilah is someone I discovered for myself, not someone my parents have over for late-night drinks whenever they’re in town. Horrified, I realized I forgot to swap my stained dress for something clean. I pray it’ll be dark in the bookstore. I don’t want to sit in the front row, but I don’t want to sit in the very back, either. What do normal people do when they go to events alone? Maybe I’ll leave my backpack on the seat next to me, pretend I’m saving it for someone.