“The lawyer’s daughter.”
Dad’s head jerked in surprise, which meant that no, Mom still hadn’t mentioned that fact.
He grunted unhappily. “Seriously?” Without waiting for an answer, he sighed and rubbed his eyes.
My stomach sank. My father was about to tell me why things wouldn’t work out between us. “I might have a shot,” I said. “I might be able to go pro.” Even as I said the words, they felt like unwarranted optimism. None of the top-tier schools had reached out to me yet.
His brows creased in confusion. “What does going pro have to do with you dating Madeline?”
“You just said that most women choose money and then sighed in disappointment when I told you I was dating Madeline. I know we’re from different worlds, but if I’m in the NFL, I’ll make good money.”
He cocked his head at me. “I sighed because if you’re dating Madeline that means your mom will still run into Tate. She’ll go over to his house to pick you up. Things like that. Maybe she’ll decide he’s the one that’s best for the family.”
“Oh.” I’d read that all wrong.
My father’s head remained tilted to one side. “The fact that you’re worried about being from different worlds says something, though.” He gestured around the kitchen at the worn cabinets, the out-of-date tile floor, and the secondhand table and chairs. It was small and cluttered. Nothing like the Seibold’s spacious one. “Would Madeline be happy if this was the sort of life the two of you had?” He was watching me, waiting for a response. “Does she like you for you?”
I didn’t have an answer. Earlier, when Madeline and I sat at the vet’s office and held hands, I’d thought I’d known how she felt about me. Now, I was second-guessing myself. Maybe she’d just been vulnerable, and I’d been the one who was there.
“Yes,” I said. I knew that was the right answer and didn’t really want to talk about my relationship with Madeline anymore.
Dad read his own meaning into my hesitancy and spent the next few minutes telling me how important it was not to live beyond my means or be with a girlfriend who couldn’t control her spending. “I know you’re only in high school, but you marry who you date. Only go out with the sort of women you’d be happy with long-term.”
I wanted to point out that I knew I had to live within my means. I’d been doing it even before he quit his job as a trucker. The thought never made it to my tongue. Only a little while ago, I’d offered to help Madeline pay her vet bill, and that hadn’t been cheap.
Mom came back into the room wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was no longer in a bun but loose around her shoulders. She looked casual, like her normal self.
She heard my father giving me dating advice and smiled. It had been a long time since I’d seen her with that sort of smile—one that was full of history.
When she sat down, my father turned his attention to her.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she said, still smiling. “It’s nice to have someone else telling him all the parenting stuff. We can tag team on the lectures again.”
“Have you been lecturing Cooper about Madeline?” Dad asked. “What do you think of her?”
Mom picked up one of the chocolates and unwrapped it, considering her words. “Madeline is a lovely young woman. However, I’m worried they’re getting too serious too quickly.”
That pronouncement rang alarm bells in my father’s mind. Before he could launch into another lecture, I said, “I need to change my clothes,” and headed down the hallway.
They lowered their voices, but I still knew they were talking about Madeline and me. I hadn’t heard the end of it. Ironic. Mom’s relationship with Mr. Seibold might be over, but her worries about Madeline and me would live on to haunt me.
25
Madeline
Sunday afternoon, the vet called me and said that Mascot was doing well enough to be picked up. When I got to the office, a woman in scrubs carried him out. He wore a plastic cone around his neck that made him look like a feline satellite dish. His flank was shaved where they’d given him stitches and he had a blue cast wrapped around his back leg. He stared around the room glumly.
She handed him to me with a perky smile. “The cone is to keep him from licking his stitches. We don’t want those to become infected. He’ll need to wear it until his follow-up appointment in ten days.”
Mascot looked at me and meowed unhappily, but he didn’t try to escape from my clutches. Maybe between the vets and me, he considered me the lesser of two evils.
She scheduled the follow-up appointment, gave me feline pain pills for Mascot, and told me I should limit his activities for the next four to six weeks until the cast came off.
I wondered what activities cats had that I ought to belimiting, since as far as I could tell, Selena’s cat just lay around on various pieces of furniture. I didn’t want to appear ignorant, though, so I nodded, planned to google it later, and left.
I realized almost immediately that I should’ve bought some sort of box or cage to transport Mascot in, but I hadn’t thought about that when I’d been at the pet store picking up food, a litter box, litter, a bed, treats, and toys for him.
I put the roof on my convertible, set him on the bed, and attempted to win his friendship with treats. He showed no interest in them. I had to take some pictures of him for myThis cat needs a homesocial media posts, but he looked distinctly hostile and more than a little wretched as he huddled on his bed, glaring at me from his cone collar.
