Marcus tells me how last year Joey would talk about nothing but horses even though she is allergic to them. How her best friend, Stella, is a self-professed “fashion guru” and how together they’re on a mission to spread pink far and wide. Everything about Joey sounds delightful, but especially the way Marcus’s face lights up when he talks about her. It reminds me of the Marcus I met last July.
“Dad and I are, like, ogres. Who knows if we’re doing or saying any of the right things to her?”
I laugh, but the obvious amount of love Marcus has for his sister makes my heart melt.
“I know I just met her,” I say, even though I’m not sure it’s my place, “but she honestly seems like she’s going to be just fine to me. Which tells me that you and your dad are doing an amazing job with her.”
Marcus ducks his head. “Thanks,” he says a little shyly. “Should we go back to mind melding?”
“I actually just remembered—there’s this one bookstore I forgot to put on your list. My dad was friends with the owner.”
Marcus wanders over as I pull up the website on my phone, then draft an email to the owner. His face is inches away from mine, his breath warm. If I leaned just the slightest bit to the left, we would be touching. A slightly different angle, and we would be kissing. The idea is…not repulsive, and I immediately feel guilty.But then the same thought I had when Joey was here hits me: I’m not anyone’s girlfriend.
ButMarcus, Zadie?
He’s the worst…or so I thought.
“You smell good,” he says, voice husky, a second before I can break the spell by saying something stupid.
He’s Jason’s cousin.
My heart pirouettes in my chest.
“Thanks,” I say. “Let’s get back to business.”
Twenty
“Are you really not going to college?” I ask Marcus from where I’m now sitting on the bench in his garage, watching him work. It’s high enough that I can swing my legs off it like a little kid, and it’s strangely delightful.
Marcus looks up from where he’s leaning over the innards of a car and gives me a wary smile. “Having fun there?”
“You don’t even know,” I say.
We were in his living room trying to mind meld again after Joey left when Marcus started getting antsy about all the things he wasn’t doing. I’d never have put Marcus down as a secret workaholic. Ishouldhave taken the hint and gone home, but I was actually having fun hanging out with him, so here I am.
“Probably not,” he says, in answer to my question about college, and swipes the back of his wrist over a spot on his face.
“But what about soccer?” I ask.
“I know I’m important, Cartwright,” he says, “but the sportwillcontinue on without me. Unlikely as it seems.”
I roll my eyes. “I bet you could get scholarships.”
“I’m still figuring it out,” Marcus says, with no sense of urgency. “I like making things, working with my hands. Helping my dad out. College-level soccer would probably also be great. And contrary to popular belief, my grades don’t suck that badly. I have a lot of options.”
As I’m trying to wrap my mind around this, he says, “It’s not mandatory, you know. College. Princeton.”
I feel a strange tightness in my chest at his words. Most likely because this kind of talk is forbidden in my daily life, in my mind. It takes me back to the night we met, the only time I’ve ever allowed myself to admit the truth about how and why I chose my future out loud. That it was based on criteria that had nothing to do with me.
It still mortifies me to think I told him that, but I would have answered anything Marcus asked that night. Ididanswer everything Marcus asked.
“Do you know what I liked about you last year?” I ask him, voice soft.
“Like, a body part?”
I sigh. “Can you be serious for one second?”
“I’ve been told I have a trustworthy face,” Marcus says with a grin.
