Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 158: Going Steady
Saturday, June 21, 1986
We snuggled and kissed a bit before getting up. Our other conversations could, and would, wait until after breakfast.
Amy had to fetch clothing from her apartment, but she had no trouble with that. By now, she was entirely secure about how Angie, Paige, Cammie, and Mel felt about her and could appreciate any teasing for what it was: part of being in our little family.
That said, there probably wasn’t a lot, for all of the usual reasons. I was increasingly confident that Amy would one day fully fit in that way, but she wasn’t there yet, nor should she be. But, now, she wouldn’t be thrown by whatever teasing came her way.
Breakfast was fun. We had a freewheeling conversation about all sorts of things, from classes to politics to what sorts of groceries we should buy. Amy had a weakness for sugary breakfast cereals, which surprised me at first but made perfect sense once I thought about it. On the other hand, she also wanted plenty of vegetables and commented about how she was eating better here than in the dorm.
After breakfast, Jas and I took Amy to our bedroom again. I was already starting to think we needed a better seating area here. Fortunately, we had the space for one.
“Before we get into your topics, we have a couple of our own,” Jas said.
Amy chuckled a bit.
“I do have some, yes. But I’m happy to hear yours. They may even overlap.”
“The first won’t, I don’t think,” Jas said. “With the change in our summer plans, Steve and I are strongly considering taking classes in the second summer session.”
Amy bounced a bit immediately, then said, “Oh! Oh, that is very good news! It will be wonderful to have you here!”
“We thought so, too,” I said.
“That said — summer school is very busy,” she said. Her little smirk was amusing.
“We’ll make sure you get plenty of sleep,” Jas said.
Both of them chuckled a bit. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t go crazy, but I also imagined there would be more ‘more’ than ever before. That itself would help us understand more about where things were going, I suspected. That sort of intimacy does not guarantee the broader sort, but they were often correlated.
“We will be gone for a long weekend in mid-July, though,” I said.
“The wedding,” Amy said, nodding. “I saw that on your calendar.”
“Our friends Lizzie and Janet,” Jas said.
“I have heard so much about them,” Amy said. “I will be very interested in hearing about it. And in seeing pictures.”
“I’m sure there will be plenty,” I said.
“Definitely!” Jas said. “We’ll be bringing a few cameras. And there’ll be official photos as well.”
“Yay!” Amy said. “I will live vicariously through it. I’ve never been to a wedding myself.”
“This will be the first for me as a grown-up,” Jas said.
“Yup,” I said. It was a non-committal response that didn’t actually lie to Amy, while mostly appearing to. Amy was sharp enough that she might see through it. Even if she did, though, it couldn’t lead her to the right answer, could it?
“You probably had something else,” Jas said, helping change the subject.
“I ... did,” she said.
“Can I guess?” Jas said.
“Be my guest!” Amy said.
“So ... my guess is that you have questions about ... us. Meaning all six of us. Meaning ... we’re unusual, and that’s more obvious the more time you spend around the house. Or, at least, I think it is.”
Amy shifted, then said, “That is where I was going. There are ... questions. Cammie mentioned overseeing part of the remodeling of the house. She has also had to give directions to repairmen over the phone for other houses. There has been a certain amount of ... evasion ... about rent for the apartment I am occupying. And...”
She shrugged.
“Four of you took a long trip to England last summer and, apparently, did so on your own terms, not with parents’ money. It is ... things like that. I feel as if there are things I am missing. They are not my business, but...”
“But you’re curious,” Jas said.
“As I have said before: if I were a cat, I would be dead,” Amy said, grinning a bit.
“So...” Jas said. “Quite a bit of this is ... private.”
“I understand,” Amy said.
“You don’t,” Jas said, grinning a bit. “You count. It’s something we don’t share with many people. You are one of the people we’ll share at least a fair bit of it with.”
“Oh!” Amy said. “I did not understand!”
“The thing is, our parents don’t know a lot of it, nor do most people we know. There are good reasons. Our parents will know eventually, but ... much of it is complicated, and some of it depends on things we won’t, or can’t, share with you yet,” I said.
“‘Yet’ is an important word there, I think,” Amy said. “It feels as if it connects to what we said last night.”
“It does,” I said, nodding. “There are things you share with someone you are dating, and more you share when you’re ‘going steady,’ and still more when you’re ... more committed, I suppose.”
“That seems entirely fair,” Amy said.
“On the first part ... and this is, itself, a fairly big thing, I think ... we own the house,” I said.
“And your parents do not know?” Amy said. Instead of sounding surprised (in a traditional sense, anyway), she dropped nearly into her ‘Wednesday Addams’ voice. That was unusual now. It said a lot about how surprised she actually was.
“They don’t,” Jas said. “Steve and Angie had some ... unusual ... financial circumstances. Steve — and me, too, actually — because of an auto accident settlement, and Angie because of an inheritance from her father. Start with that, add some careful investing, and...”
“Even more unusual financial circumstances,” I said.
Amy nodded thoughtfully.
“That ... is interesting. I say that because ... it is obvious to anyone who is looking that you are not ‘starving students.’ But most people who look at me would not know that I am able to be here only because of my scholarship, and am able to have spending money only because I work.”
“Indeed,” I said. “We would feel silly pretending to struggle.”
“It is...” Amy said. She paused, then said, “I did not mean that, exactly. What I meant was that you appear to be ... normal. Neither wealthy nor struggling. With the means to own a house, you could presumably hold more elaborate parties or ... any of a number of other things.”
“That would be off-putting,” Jas said. “We want to be normal, as much as possible.”
Amy nodded.
“It is working. I can understand not telling your parents. It would be something of a shock.”
“It will be,” I said. “They’ll know before the weddings. What they do know is that we’re doing fairly well, and that all of us know that.”
“Because of the weddings, if nothing else,” Jas said. “They would feel weird about it if they thought Paige or I was ‘out of the loop’ on finances.”
“That makes sense,” Amy said.
“Anyway...” I said. “We really did get a good deal on this house. It took a fair bit of remodeling to make it nice, but it was worth it, both for us now and in terms of resale value when we sell it. But that also means our scholarships are funding the house we own.”
Amy chuckled a bit.
“A very nice deal!”
“We think it’s fair,” Jas said. “We need to have somewhere to live, and the university has agreed to provide that.”
“It seems fair to me,” Amy said. “My question was predicated around ... normally, a landlord would want rent for the summer, and I cannot provide rent. It would feel wrong if one of you were paying that rent. But, since you own the house...”
“We can simply let you stay here,” Jas said. “And we’re happy to!”
“And I am very happy to stay here,” Amy said.
“On the subject of Cammie and houses,” I said, “I can just say, ‘Talk to Cammie.’ I’ll be happy to tell her that we’re fine with her sharing as much as she wants to share, though.”
“That seems perfectly reasonable,” Amy said.
“And, about traveling ... we didn’t put all of their money into the house,” Jas said. “And we’ve done some careful investing. That gives us travel money and the like. We’re still just fine, but we get to enjoy things more than one might expect.”
“Also reasonable,” Amy said. “My parents would be surprised. But yours will be, so...”
“Life is that way sometimes,” I said, nodding. “You will likely be much more financially successful than your parents, if things go according to plan.”
Amy nodded quickly.
“Something I think they both understand and do not, at the same time.”
“It’s hard, I think,” I said. “People want their children to do better than they did, but few are prepared for what that might look like in reality.”
She nodded again, but a bit more thoughtfully.
“I agree. That makes sense,” she said, after a little pause.
“Since we’re talking about this...” I said. “There’s a bit more.”
“I’m very curious!” Amy said.
“You undoubtedly remember Jas winding up with a Friday date back in March when it seemed like you and I might have one,” I said.
“I ... do,” she said.
“And then, the next weekend, before the concert, our going to Austin.”
“That was surprising,” she said, nodding.
“One of our investments is in a business in Austin,” I said. “It’s going well. Quite well. And ... I’m not going to elaborate all that much more...”
Amy started to say something, but I waved her off.
“I know it’s fine if I don’t. The thing is, we have reasons to be quiet about it, but they’ll go away over the next year or so. Probably, anyway. I expect to have the occasional trip to Austin, or somewhere else, as things go on, though, and you’ll undoubtedly notice. It’s much better to say, ‘We’ve got a business thing going on, and we promise you’ll know about it in a while, assuming things go the way we all hope they do.’”
She nodded quickly and said, “I like that answer. I really do! That is a question I didn’t even know I had, but I would have realized I had it sooner or later.”
“I don’t know if it helps, but Cammie and Mel have known us for years and don’t know many of the details,” Jas said. “And Candice and Sherry know none of this at all.”
Amy nodded slowly.
“I think that does help,” she said. “It ... I think it also helps that you feel a bit embarrassed about your success. As I said, you could have used this to show off, but you have not.”
“We saw people who did that while we were in high school,” Jas said. “It felt ... fake. Wrong. We want to just be who we are, for the most part.”
“Even though who we are will inevitably change,” I said.
Amy nodded and said, “You have to be the people you are. If you are successful, you are successful. I will have the same thing, I hope. It was that way with my project. Once I accepted a leadership role, I had to be that person. It was nice, but it also meant I could not be ‘one of the team’ in the same way. Not separate, but different.”
Jas said, “I think ... in retrospect, the six of us all learned how to be leaders in high school, at least in our way. If nothing else, we were good at one thing or another, and had peers who respected that. You didn’t have that.”
“It was new!” Amy said, nodding. “But it was also wonderful. I appreciated it, and I will do it again if the situation occurs. Which ... I find myself hoping it will.”
“I imagine it will,” I said.
Jas said, “You mentioned the trips. That’s another place where we can do more than the average student can, and can do so with our own means. We sometimes have to be a bit cagey about what we do on our trips when talking with our parents, just so it doesn’t feel as if we are as well off as we are. But we are still taking things at a reasonable level.”
“That is interesting,” Amy said. “I imagined you were, but it is good to talk about it.”
“It also brings up a point,” Jas said. “I’m not sure if it’s exactly for right now. But ... you mentioned it yesterday.”
“I did?” Amy asked.
Jas nodded and said, “You said you want to do things when you can, meaning when you have the means to. You also said something about ‘not yet.’ That ... is ... connecting the dots to our discussion yesterday, it feels like there may be a point where we can invite you along on some sort of trip you would not otherwise be able to take.”
Amy paused, clearly weighing that in her mind. After a bit of thought, she said, “I think that is fair enough. It is ... it’s even what I meant by ‘not yet,’ now that I think of it. I wasn’t thinking of it that way then, consciously, but unconsciously, perhaps I was.”
She paused, then added, “If we back up and use the words for traditional couples, one might take a date on some sorts of trips, but not others. Someone you are ‘steady’ with might open the doors to other sorts. Once you are engaged, still more. And, of course, once you are married, then anything is possible.”
“That’s where we are,” Jas said. “And ... well. If we offer something you cannot accept, you won’t hurt our feelings by turning us down. We will try not to offer too much, either.”
Amy nodded quickly.
“That sounds like what I mean. I had ... well. When I said that, we hadn’t actually discussed our relationship. I do want to find my own place and do things on my own, but ... I also do not want to reject every offer for the next several years simply because I cannot do those things on my own. Perhaps it will be more that, one day, I will be the one offering.”
She paused, grinned just a bit, and then said, “Though ... since you do have a considerable head start, I may always be the one with fewer means.”
“At a certain point, means aren’t the biggest consideration,” I said. “What matters is time, commitment, attention — things like that. Even just when we were dating, it mattered more to me that we could spend time together pleasantly than who was paying for it.”
She smirked a bit and said, “Tiffany would hardly approve of any of this!”
After a tiny hesitation, she added, “So it is very good that none of us thinks she is a good source of relationship advice.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She seems to have made a very effective point about ‘more.’”
Amy chuckled loudly.
“She did indeed! Not the point I think she intended to make, but it has served me very well.”
“It’s served us very well,” I said.
“Yes!” Amy said.