The next student walks in, and Briar motions for him to leave the door open. She puts the grilled cheese on a paper towel and hands it to him. “Ten bucks.”
He hands her a ten and then drops two extra dollars into a paper cup that sits at the tip of the ironing board.
“I can’t tell if this is real or not,” I say, the words thick and sleepy on my tongue.
“Real,” she says as she slathers two pieces of bread with mayo before adding three slices of cheese without looking up. “I spent twelve dollars on ingredients at the dollar store and I’ve already made over a hundred bucks tonight.” She presses the iron down on the first side of the next sandwich. “You want one? No neighbor discounts. Sorry. I’m a small business. You get it.”
I rub my eyes again and shake my head. “I—I have to pee.”
She shrugs and I scurry down the hallway to the bathrooms.
When I return, two more students have joined her line.
“Last call,” she says, her head poking out of the door. “I have enough for three more sandwiches.”
The last girl in line groans and shuffles away.
“Clover,” Briar says. “If Dylan or any other RA-shaped humans ask you if you saw me selling grilled cheese tonight, no you didn’t, understand?”
She sounds sufficiently threatening and I’m too tired to push the point. I still don’t fully know what the hell I’m seeing right now. “Understood.”
I let myself back into our room, and Bennett, still mostly asleep, mutters, “Does it smell like grilled cheese in here?”
CHAPTER 6
Bennett
Surprisingly, sharing a living space with Clover feels normal when I’m not thinking too hard about it. Prior to the summer before junior year, I don’t remember a time when Clover and her mom, Beth, didn’t live at our primary family residence. Graves Coffee is headquartered in Portland, but we only have a penthouse there for when one of us is in town. The cliffs of Cannon Beach are home.
But before that came into our life, I spent the earliest months of my life in hospitals under constant monitoring. After I had a surgery to rectify my congenital heart defect and my parents were told I would lead a mostly normal life other than having a cardiologist for the rest of my life, my parents moved out to the Cannon Beach estate. They divorced when I was eighteen months old because it turns out when they had nothing left to fight against (whether it was my grandfather’s disapproval, infertility, or my health issues), they figured out that they didn’t actually like each other.
Now, my father, Brady, is happily living on alimony checks inSouth Carolina with Priscilla, his second wife and a retired Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who is seven years and four days older than me. But he was never a real parent to me. Not in the way that Beth or my Grandpa Dean were.
Of the three adults in my life, though, Beth was the warmest, and it felt unfair that she was Clover’s mom. Clover, who would squirm away from hugs and flush with embarrassment when her mom whistled at her choir concerts.
My mom has never been affectionate like that with me. Beth would always say that was just her way, but that didn’t stop my mom from doting on Clover. Maybe I’m not the son she expected. Or maybe she just tried so hard to have me only to nearly lose me that it feels safer to keep me at a distance.
When I’ve woken up the last few mornings, it seems that my body has found some way to touch Clover regardless of how many pillows are between us when we fall asleep. I wonder if I am just subconsciously that fucking desperate to feel some kind of connection.
I’m pathetic.
Which is why I am avoiding going back to the dorm for a while in favor of drinking at the town house by myself while Tex and Julian are god knows where. I scroll through a dozen calendar invites from Whitney, my mom’s latest assistant—they never stick around for more than six months. There are charity dinners, meetings in Portland she wants me to sit in on, and a few scheduled phone calls labeledmother/son check-in.
At least when Beth was still running the show, she never let me know that quality time with my mother was a window that had to be carved out of her calendar.
As kids, Clover and I spent time together in a de facto sense. We were a year apart. Our mothers’ lives were more intertwined thanmost marriages. Clover attended the same schools I did. She was given as many Christmas and birthday presents as I was. When my mom and I went on vacations, Clover and Beth did too. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I realized that, for as much as Beth and Clover were treated like family, they were still just the help.
Still a little groggy and possibly tipsy from last night, I’m just beginning to wake up as Clover backs into our dorm and closes the door gently. She jumps the moment she sees that I am awake and very much trying to ignore the way wet droplets from her hair roll down her shoulders and then over the tops of her breasts only to be absorbed by the seam of her towel.
I would like to be a towel. That would be a good life.
“Oh!” she says with a gasp. “I thought you would still be asleep. Sorry, I just forgot my clothes—”
I throw a pillow over my face and with muffled speech say, “I’m not looking, I swear.” Because I’ve already seen enough to be hard.
“Oh. Okay. Uh. I’ll be quick.”
My breath is hot against the pillow as the seconds tick by and I force myself to think of anything but how naked her body is under that towel.
