“Okay. Mom, does Dad know you’re giving me condoms?”
“Yes. We talked about it. You know you can talk to him, too, but-”
“Oh, yeah, big but. It’d feel really weird.”
“On both sides.” Jenna patted Lil’s thigh as she rose. “Don’t stay up too late.”
“I won’t. Mom? Thanks for loving me.”
“Never a problem.”
RELY ON YOURSELF, Lil thought. Her mother was right, as usual, she decided as she packed provisions. A woman had to have a plan, that was the key. What to do, when and how to do it. She’d made the arrangements. Maybe Coop didn’t know all of them, but the element of surprise was also key.
She put the packs in the truck, grateful that her parents had gone to town, so there didn’t have to be any awkward be carefuls, even if they were unspoken.
She wondered if Coop’s grandparents knew what was going on. Really going on. She’d opted not to ask her mother that one. Talk about awkward.
Didn’t matter, don’t care, she thought as she drove with the wind shooting through the open windows. She had three days free. Probably her last in a row for the summer. In another few weeks she’d be on her way north, on her way to college. And another phase of her life would begin.
She wasn’t leaving until she’d finished this phase.
She’d thought she’d be nervous, but she wasn’t. Excited, happy, but not nervous. She knew what she was doing-in theory-and was ready to put it into practice.
She turned the radio up and sang along as she drove through the hills, passed tidy farms and pastures. She saw men mending fences, and clothes flapping on lines. She stopped-she couldn’t help herself-to take pictures and some quick notes when she spotted a good-sized herd of buffalo.
She arrived at the farm in time to see Coop saddling up. She hitched on her pack, grabbed the second, then gave a whistle.
“What’s all that?”
“Some surprises,” she called out as he walked over to help her.
“Jesus, Lil, it looks like enough for a week. We’re only going to be a few hours.”
“You’ll thank me later. Where is everybody?”
“My grandparents had to run into town. They should be on their way back, but they said not to wait if we were ready before.”
“Believe me, I’m ready.” She hugged that exciting secret inside. “Oh, I talked to my college roommate today.” Lil checked the cinches on the mare’s saddle. “We got our dorm assignments, and she called, just to touch base. She’s from Chicago, and she’ll be studying animal husbandry and zoology. I think we’re going to get along. I hope. I’ve never shared a room before.”
“Not much longer now.”
“No.” She mounted. “Not much longer. Do you like your roommate?”
“He stayed stoned pretty much through two years. He didn’t bother me.”
“I’m hoping to make friends. Some people make friends in college that stay friends all the rest of their lives.” They moved at an easy pace, all the time in the world, under the wide blue plate of sky. “Did you get stoned?”
“A couple of times and that was enough. It seemed like the thing to do, and the grass was right there. He’s all, Dude, fire one up,” Coop said in an exaggerated stoner’s tone that made her laugh. “So why not? Everything seemed pretty funny-and mellow-for a while. Then I was starving and had a headache. It didn’t seem worth it.”
“Is he going to be your roommate again this term?”
“He flunked out, big surprise.”
“You’ll have to break in a new one.”
“I’m not going back.”
“What?” She jerked her mount to a halt to gape, but Coop kept going. She nudged the mare into a trot to catch up. “What do you mean, you’re not going back? Back east?”
“No, back to college. I’m done.”
“But you’ve only-you’ve barely… What happened?”
“Nothing. That’s pretty much the point. I’m not getting anywhere, and it’s not where I want to get, anyway. The whole prelaw shit was my father’s deal. He’ll pay as long as I do it his way. I’m not doing it his way anymore.”
She knew the signs-the tightening of his jaw, the flare in his eyes. She knew the temper, and the bracing for a fight.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer, especially not the kind of corporate stooge in an Italian suit he’s pushing on me. Goddamn it, Lil, I spent the first half of my life trying to please him, trying to get him to notice me, to fucking care. What did it get me? The only reason he’s paid the freight on college is because he has to, but it had to be his way. And he was pissed I didn’t get into Harvard. Jesus, as if.”
“You could’ve gotten into Harvard if you wanted.”
“No, Lil.” Exasperated he scowled at her. “You could. You’re the genius, the straight-A student.”
“You’re smart.”
“Not like that. Not with school, or not that way. I do okay, I do fine. And I fucking hate it, Lil.”
Sad and mad, she realized. The sad and mad was back in his eyes. “You never said-”
“What was the point? I felt stuck. He can make you feel like you don’t have a choice, like he’s right, you’re wrong. And Christ, he knows how to make you toe the line. That’s why he’s good at what he does. But I don’t want to do what he does. Be what he is. I started thinking of all the years I’d have to put into becoming what I didn’t want to become. I’m done with it.”
“I wish you’d told me before. I just wish you’d told me you were so unhappy with all this. We could’ve talked about it.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know this whole deal’s about him, not me. Him and my mother, and their endless war, and endless pursuit of the right appearances. I’m finished with it, too.”
Her heart broke a little for him. “Did you have a fight with your parents before you left?”
“I wouldn’t call it a fight. I said some things I wanted to say, and I got an ultimatum. I could stay and work in the family firm this summer or he’d cut me off. Financially, as he’s cut me off in every other way since I was a kid.”
They forded a stream in silence, just the splash of hooves through water. She couldn’t imagine her parents stepping away from her, not in any way. “So you came here.”
“It’s what I’d planned to do, what I wanted to do. I’ve got enough money to get my own place. I don’t need much. I was never going back to live with my mother anyway. Just never going there again.”
A little bubble of hope swelled inside her. “You could stay here, with your grandparents. You know you could. Help out at the farm. You could go to school out here, and-”
He turned his head toward her, and she felt that little bubble pop and dissolve. “I’m not going back to college, Lil. It’s not for me. It’s different for you. You’ve been planning what you were going to study, what you were going to do, ever since you saw that cougar. And decided to chase cats instead of pop flies.”
“I didn’t know you were so unhappy. I get law wasn’t your choice, and it was unfair of your father to push you there, but-”
“Fair’s not the point.” He shrugged, a gesture of a young man too used to unfair to be bothered by it. “It’s not about that, and from now on it’s not about him. It’s about me. The whole college scene? That’s not about me.”
“Neither is staying here, is it?”
“It doesn’t feel like it, not yet or not now anyway. I don’t know what I want, for sure. Staying would be easy. I’ve got a place to stay, three squares, work I’m pretty good at. I’ve got family, and you.”
“But.”
“It feels like settling, before I know. Before I do something. Out here, I’m Sam and Lucy’s grandson. I want to be me. I enrolled in the police academy.”
“Police?” If he’d leaned over and shoved her off her horse she’d have been less stunned. “Where did that come from? You’ve never said anything about wanting to be a cop.”