“My time with my grandma didn’t go like I thought it would. She had offered to pay for me to go to school and give me a free place to live in exchange for helping her out in her home. I knew she’d get progressively worse, but we must have made all the arrangements on a day when she’d been very lucid. By the time I got there, months later, she’d fallen for an email scam, which had taken most of her savings, and her cupboards were almost completely bare. She’d been surviving on bread and water. Her social security check came every week, but most of that went to paying down gambling debts I also had no idea she had. When she died, her estate couldn’t even pay them all off.”
I glanced at Duke and was surprised to see his gaze intent on my face. I forced myself to keep going.
“Anyway, I had been so set on going to school, so I enrolled at a community college in Fargo and took out a student loan, which was something I’ve always tried to avoid, but by this time, I was so desperate for something to work out. I didn’t want three years to go by and not be going to school. Anyway, the loan paid for the first year of college, but halfway through, my grandma had gotten a lot worse, so I could only make it to class half the time. I ended up flunking out. If you remember how I retook a test because I’d gotten a B, you can probably imagine how that affected me. But she needed full-time help, and there was no one else, so I had to.” I took a shaky breath. Part of me died inside telling him this, but I kept going. “I paid back some of the loan with my savings, but I also had to use some to pay for groceries. And to keep her car running. So by the time my grandma had passed and I made it back to Utah, I was in crazy debt with literally nothing to show for it.”
Duke sat frozen, staring at me with such an intense expression of disbelief on his face that I immediately regretted my words.
“Does your grandma have any other kids to help out? Why was this falling on you and not your mom? Or another sibling?”
I gave him a wan smile. “This is my dad’s mom.” Might as well paint him the whole picture. “My sisters and I all have different dads. I never knew mine, and he took off when I was really young. Nobody was able to track him down when she passed away. My grandma reached out to me when I was young, and we grew somewhat close throughout my teenage years. But by the time she passed away, I was the only living relative she had.”
The more I spoke, the more I wanted this all to end.
“So, anyway. It’s okay. Lots of people have student loans. But that day, I had also gotten notice that my rent was raising in a couple months. Combined with the fact that, an hour later, my tire blew and what little I had in savings was now almost all gone. It was a big morning.”
Other than his hand moving up to cover his mouth while I spoke, Duke still hadn’t moved.
I had to kill the awkward silence. This was why I kept things locked inside. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that. It’s fine, I promise. I’ll figure it out. I’m glad I was there with her in the end, no matter all of that…she was so lonely and—”
“Nora—“ he broke off, seeming lost for words. I desperately wanted more words to change this awful subject.
“Duke. It will be fine. I shouldn’t have said anything. Money talk always makes things weird, but you asked.” I stood to go, laughing nervously. “See,thisis why I should have only stayed for five minutes.”
Before I could move, his hand reached out, locking onto my forearm. I made the mistake of meeting his eyes as he eventually pulled me back down beside him.
“What bothers you the most?” I looked at him, confused, before he continued. “About all of that. Your student loan? Your rent?”
That answer came easily. “It’s the fact that I can’t ever seem to get ahead. The student loan eats at me, but it’s so much more than that. I’ve dedicated my entire life to working and saving, but something always happens, and I end up worse off than I was before. I have no social life. I rarely date. I work two jobs. Every time I get some money saved, without fail, something will happen that takes it all. This time, it was tires. Last time, it was my mom’s storage unit bill. She’s in Florida, with a new husband, and I’m stuck being the adult, paying for things I shouldn’t be but feeling guilty when I try to put my foot down. I keep trying to let her fall, like we talked about, but I can’t ever seem to do it.” I risked a glance at Duke, already regretting my loose tongue. “That’swhy I was crying. Because I started the weekend proud of having a measly eight hundred dollars saved up, and by the end of Monday morning, I had no money, but I had four new tires and my mom still had her storage unit.”
I stopped almost as abruptly as I began. Instant regret filled my body, the weight of my words leaving a strange energy between us.
Duke leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. “That sucks, Nora. Can I—“
“No. I don’t need help.” I stopped him before he could ask the question. “That’s not why all of that came flying out of my mouth.” I slunk back in my chair. “You’re the worst, by the way. Asking me a question like that.”
He actually looked like he had more questions to ask, but I cut him short, desperate to change the subject. I had planned to leave, go back downstairs and finish cleaning, but another thought came to me instead. One I liked much better. “You owe me a question now.”
He took a moment to respond, probably jarred at the change. “What?”
I reached for the broccoli container. “I’ll eat my two pieces of broccoli, and then you owe me a question.”
He held the container away from me, his eyes narrowing. “That’s not fair. You like broccoli.”
“Not my problem.”
He set the container down on his side and, instead, reached for his open can of Coke and handed it to me. “Two big swigs or no deal.”
Grumbling, I took the can, which was now half full, and held it in front of me. “You’re forcing me to climb Mount Everest.”
“Stall all you want. I could stay up here all night.”
I plugged my nose and took a drink. And then another. My face contoured to weird expressions as the carbonation sliding down my throat delivered a disgusting taste in my mouth that took forever to subside. “Oh, that’s so bad.”
“I’m sad for your taste buds. What’s your question?”
Now that my moment was upon me, I chickened out. My first thought went to Rachel, but I couldn’t find it in me to ask him about her so directly. I might as well carry a flashing neon sign that saidI’mjealous. So I took the roundabout way, hoping we’d arrive at the same place.
“Unless it’s business stuff you can’t tell me, what happened when your parents were here? What made you so upset?”
