Also, I’d be free labor for Dad. Though of course, Ethan was also free labor; he could afford an unpaid internship. He’d probably started in order to get a nice recommendation for college.
I just wanted to spend time with my dad.
“Don’t you worry about us,” Dad said.Us.I wasn’t part of his “us.” “You’ll be happier with a job where you get to meet people! Where you don’t have to hang out with your old dad.”
Right. I got the message. He didn’t want me here. My plan to hang out with him all summer, to remind himIexisted, not just Ethan, and I was competent and smart and had my shit together—that was all down the drain. I really should have talked to him about this earlier; now he’d think, once more, I was being impulsive.
“Sure. Got it.” I stomped toward the door, catching a flicker of some expression on Ethan’s face as I left—pity?
Sweet. Really loved pity coming at me from the hot guy I’d hooked up with. Made me feel super sexy.
“Ethan can give you a ride to town—”
“It’s cool,” I said. “I’ll walk.”
“It’s three miles,” Ethan said.
Oof. Further than I’d expected. Unfortunately, I was too proud to back down. “I like walking.”
Dad peeled several crumpled dollar bills from his wallet. “Here. You can catch the bus.”
So much for my grand exit. I took the cash. “Thanks.”
I caught the bus.
***
If I disliked anyone more than Ethan Barbanel, it was Benjamin Franklin.
But why?!one might ask.Benjamin Franklin did a bunch of cool stuff! Unlike most of the Founding Fathers, he did eventually, belatedly, become an abolitionist.
And yet he incurred my wrath and jealousy, for much the same reason Ethan did: because my dad devoted more time to him than to me.
Here’s what, when I was a mere inkling of a girl, I used to know about Benjamin Franklin:
Etched onto one-hundred-dollar bills, which were occasionally referred to as “Benjamins” in media, but never real life
Something about lightning?
Maybe had a rivalry with Edison??
People in France hated him and put him on chamber pots
