When he looks up at me, his eyes are cold. “Why do I feel like you’ve been waiting to say that to me?”
“I haven’t—” I start to say, then stop, realizing he might be right. “It’s just…it’s a little hard to recognize you right now.” I glance around the room. “Especially with all this stuff.”
“I like all this stuff.”
“Sure, but it’s…” I pause, trying to collect my thoughts. “Well, remember how your dad used to bring you all those presents when he was on a winning streak?”
He glares at me. “This isn’t the same.”
“I know. I’m just saying maybe there are other things you could be doing, other ways you could be spending the money. I mean, what about philanthropy? You haven’t even mentioned giving some away—”
“Give me a break,” he says. “I’ve had the money for, like, two days. I’m obviously gonna donate some eventually. You’re just annoyed that I haven’t askedyouabout it. Because you think anything having to do with charity is your territory.”
I press my lips together. “Well.”
“Well, what?”
“Well, I’ve been volunteering since I was little. It was what my parents—”
“Exactly,” he interrupts, and I go tense.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighs. “You only do it because you feel like you have to. For them.”
“That’s not true,” I say, my heart thudding. “I do it because—”
“You’re still looking for their approval.”
He says this as if it’s an undeniable fact, a simple statement of truth, something we’ve discussed a thousand times before, and I feel a quick burning anger, because is this what he’s really been thinking the whole time? That I’m just going through the motions, trying to follow in my parents’ footsteps? Is that what everyone thinks?
“That’s not true,” I say coldly. “I do it for me too.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Teddy says, shaking his head, and I clench my teeth, because of course it matters. All of this does. But he continues, his voice steely and his eyes hard. “The point is that it’s not fair for you to be disappointed in me already.”
“It’s not that—”
“Especially since I offered you half.” He practically spits the words at me. “So if you had so many opinions about how this money should be spent, maybe you shouldn’t have been so stubborn about it. Then you could’ve been doing it all yourself.”
This is true, but hearing him say it now, just moments after invoking my parents, a new fear washes over me. Because for all my worries about that snap decision—what it might’ve meant for Aunt Sofia and Uncle Jake, and Leo too, what it might’ve changed between me and Teddy—I somehow hadn’t thought once about my parents or what they would’ve done.
Or maybe I had, and somewhere deep down I wanted to believe they’d have made the same choice. But now I wonder if I’m wrong. Maybe they’d have taken the money and done something good with it, something big, something important.
Maybe that’s what I should’ve done too.
My eyes prick with tears at the thought, and I bow my head so that Teddy won’t see.
“But you said no,” he continues, “and I’m not going to sit here like everyone else and pretend it’s because you were being noble. You said no because you’re a coward.”
Each word is a jab that lands square and true. I open my mouth to respond, then close it again. My mind feels muddled and thick and impossibly slow. I’m not sure how we got here, and I wish I knew how to get back out again.
“You passed up the opportunity of a lifetime because you were afraid. And because you didn’t have the guts to try doing something great with the money yourself.”
“That’s not—” I start to say, looking up at him again, but Teddy has too much momentum to stop now.
“You don’t want it—fine,” he says, his eyes blazing. “But you don’t get a say in what I do with it. You don’t get to sit there thinking I don’t deserve it. And you don’t get to judge me.”
Something inside me snaps back at this.
