Chapter 3

After that night when he came to my house on his ridiculous bicycle, Elliott was the only guy for me. He made me realize what trash the other guys at school were. They just wanted to fuck me and didn’t actually care about me at all. Even though we teased each other constantly, Elliott was very concerned with how I was feeling, how I was handling life and what problems I was facing. However, he was remarkably bad at guessing what I was thinking or feeling, he’d often get the wrong completely idea, but I was learning that he always cared, and that felt incredible.

All the while though, I was painfully aware that he hadn’t said the magic word “boyfriend”. We weren’t going out, he just cared about me, whatever that meant exactly. I hadn’t made a big deal about it at the time but it increasingly bothered me. Now, most girls in my group at school don’t really have boyfriends, the guys we’re into can’t be pinned down like that, but it felt like Elliott and I had something special, so why couldn’t he be my boyfriend? I worried that despite his nice, caring facade, maybe he too was secretly like every other guy who just wanted to fuck a pretty girl.

But in the grand scheme of my life there were just more important things to worry about right then. I flunked a math test the next week and dad freaked out. I’m not the greatest student but I am in advanced classes and usually manage mostly B’s. I suppose I had been focused too much on cheerleading and that lovable idiot I called Elliott. Dad tried to help me but math isn’t his strong suit either.

“How about you get a tutor?” he said after he’d calmed down. We were in the kitchen and it was just before dinner. “Do you think you would do that for me at least, Haley?”

I shrugged. “I dunno,” I said, obviously not enthusiastic about it. I’d never really had a tutor before but it didn’t seem like a very exciting concept. I thought about it for a second then said, “Hey, uh, if I have to put up with some math nerd, why not Elliott? He’ll probably be coming around anyway.”

Dad’s eyes lit up at that. He was so preoccupied with Elliott’s mom that he hadn’t noticed the wacky romance brewing between me and her nerdy son. Even better than that, Dad was still in the phase where he was actively encouraging me to hang out with and get to tolerating my probably-soon-to-be-stepbrother. “Oh, yeah, Linda says he gets great grades,” he said, the wheels turning in Dad’s head.

“He’s got a 4.0 GPA, daddy,” I said, “He’s going to Harvard.”

“Yes, he does seem to have it all together. If he’ll put up with you as his student then yeah, that sounds great actually,” he said, “I’ll talk to Linda about it. You really wouldn’t mind? You guys are always bickering.”

He was so oblivious, but that sure suited my purposes. “Nah he’s annoying but another tutor would probably be even worse. Might as well go with the devil you know,” I said craftily. That was one of Dad’s favorite expressions.

I decided to leave the talk of Elliott at that, as even Dad might get suspicious if I was too eager to be tutored by that dork. “You’ll talk to Linda soon then I guess. You talk to her a lot huh, Daddy?”

“Yeah,” he said with a goofy grin. Then he said seriously,”I guess I’ve been neglecting you, Haley.”

I giggled. “Oh is that why you think I failed the test? No, I did that on my own, Dad.”

He smiled in relief. “Still, I have been spending less time checking your homework and making you study,” he said.

“I’m almost 17 years old, you shouldn’t have to be a helicopter parent for me to get a B- in math anymore,” I said, “Besides, I’m glad you’re spending time with Linda.”

“Really?” he said eagerly. “I sometimes feel like a heel, having a girlfriend and all.”

“Well, some of your exes were pretty trashy,” I couldn’t resist saying, “but Linda is great. There’s nothing wrong with you having a good woman in your life ... well, a second one of course, other than me! You’re a good man, you deserve a good girlfriend.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Haley,” he said, smiling. “But I’m always ready to dial things back with her and spend more time with you.”

“I think I’ll manage. So when are you gonna get down on your knee and ask her to get married?” I said with a wicked grin.

“Haley!” he almost choked with embarrassment, “It’s a sensitive topic! But ... you really think it’s time I proposed?”

“Yeah! You get all goofy happy when you talk about her, and she’s into you too,” I said. “But she might not wait forever.”

“You think she might be getting impatient?” he said, suddenly full of apprehension.

“Oh geez, I don’t know, but if I were her I’d probably be wondering when you were going to ask,” I said, “You’ve been dating for a year, you go on vacations together, you’ve introduced your beautiful daughter to her nerdy son ... the relationship is getting pretty advanced, from a woman’s perspective.”

“Well um, thanks for the womanly insight,” Dad said with a laugh. “Do you think she’ll say yes though?” he sounded nervous. Dad usually had a lot of confidence so I could tell he was worried about this.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I think so, but I’m not a mind reader. You just have to talk to her, feel her out.”

“I’d hate to ask before she’s ready and ruin everything,” he fretted. “But that’s probably more than I should have bothered you with. Thanks for talking to me about this Haley, you’re getting to be so mature lately. I’ll talk to Linda.”

“No problem Dad!” I said and hugged him. “And don’t forget to ask her about Elliott.”

Linda thought that her son tutoring me was a great idea. He told me she came to his room with his favorite snack to sweet-talk him into it, not knowing he’d jump at the chance to see me more. I knew I could pull the wool over Daddy’s eyes with no problem, but I was glad Elliott wasn’t letting on anything about our relationship to his mom.

I probably should have seen it coming, but I was still surprised when Elliott was actually dead serious about tutoring me and didn’t just use it as a convenient opportunity to get into my bedroom. Even though we were in one of our rooms with the door closed for our sessions, he insisted we (mostly) study. Thankfully he was a great tutor. He didn’t treat me like an idiot, but instead he showed me little tricks and explained the algebra stuff in a way I could actually understand, unlike our ancient teacher at school who just droned on all day.

That stupid math teacher had the audacity to schedule a test on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, so I asked to go over to Elliott and Linda’s that Sunday to be tutored. I told Daddy he could use the chance to spend the afternoon with his girlfriend down in the living room and we’d be quietly up in Elliott’s room studying. Dad didn’t take much convincing.

Elliott’s room was not quite the filthy hive of dorkiness that I’d feared, but I still felt like I was betraying the code of the cheerleader by being in a nerd’s bedroom like that. Instead of nerdy movie posters or worse yet ones of half-naked fantasy chicks, he had tasteful framed nature photographs, all of which he’d taken himself, along with a picture of the stupid chess team of course. The walls were a boring beige and the floors were a bland grayish carpet, but he and his mom just rented a townhouse so it’s not like they had decorated the place. The room was clean, but I suspected Linda had made him clean it for my visit, or she’d done it herself for all I knew. The main feature of his room was his big desk with his computer tower that he bragged about having built himself.

Now, okay, I figured that Elliott might do more than just tutor me on math, but I did need the tutoring session. Thankfully, Elliott is such a nerd, he tutored me sincerely for a whole hour until I know all I could stand to know about binomials, trinomials, and transgendered nomials (okay maybe the last one isn’t a thing).

He finally agreed that I didn’t need any more tutoring so we laid on his bed and started making out. I think it was the first time we’d had an ordinary teenage bedroom encounter and just kissed and touched each other through our clothes. Our parents were in the living room right underneath us and we could faintly hear them talking through the walls, so we knew we couldn’t get up to anything too sexy. Making out with a boy you’re actually into is nice, though. He’s a good kisser and was very into it, pressing his lips to mine and holding me, not being in a big rush to stick his tongue in my mouth.

Making out got pretty hot. His glasses fogged over and we ended up just laying there on his bed holding each other. Elliott smelled so good, even though being a nerd he didn’t own a single bottle of cologne (and actually bragged about that). He took a shower every day and kept his clothes clean as well. He felt very good to cuddle up with, so warm and safe.

“Hey,” I said eventually after we’d broken the kiss. We were still on his bed and I was in his arms, feeling pretty good. “We need to talk about our parents. My dad is being a spaz. I think he should propose to your mom soon.”

“Really?” Elliott said, “I guess that would be good. I think she wants him to.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, “That’s useful. He’s afraid she might not say yes.”

Elliott shrugged. “I think she’d say yes,” he said, “But you’re learning how bad I am about guessing what women are thinking.”

I laughed. “Don’t put yourself down, baby,” I said, “If you tell people you’re bad at something, they will tend to agree with you.”

“Okay,” he said, seeming to be listening to my advice.

“Do you want them to get married though?” I asked.

“I want mom to be happy,” he said, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t apprehensive about having a step-dad though. Your dad’s all macho and manly ... and I’m not, obviously.”

“What did I just say about putting yourself down?” I said. “But I get it, I think. Dad’s not an asshole though. I doubt he’d be all insisting you join the football team and knock up a cheerleader.”

“Well I could probably handle the latter actually,” Elliott said wryly, and I cackled.

“I told you I’m on the pill, idiot,” I said. “I think Dad will be happy that you get good grades and stay out of trouble. He was impressed when I told him you were going to Harvard.”

Elliott rolled his eyes. “I said Stanford,” he said, “And that’s just where I want to go.”

“Oh they’re all the same,” I said, intentionally being obnoxious in my usual way.

Elliott coughed. “At any rate,” Elliott said, “If you think your Dad is okay with who I am, then yeah, I’m okay with our parents getting married.”

“What about uh, living together?” I asked nervously, “You and me.”

“Well,” he said, “It seems fine. I care about you, like I said. And it would be convenient to be just down the hall from each other. For tutoring!”

“Sure, for tutoring,” I said knowingly. But again, he was saying cared about me, and that it would be nice to be able to fuck me more conveniently, but nothing about me being his girlfriend. I sure hoped he’d take the hint soon.

“So anyway, I’ll try to talk dad into proposing to your mom,” I said, “And you find out if she’ll say yes, and how she wants him to propose to her.”

“What is this, The Parent Trap?” he chuckled. Again with that movie! I elbowed him. “Okay okay, Lindsay Lohan. I’ll try to make sure Mom wants him to propose.”

“Great!” I said. Dad was calling and I hastily got up and straightened myself. It had felt good to spend quality time on Elliott’s, even if he wasn’t technically my boyfriend yet. “I’ll see you for Thanksgiving.”

The brief two-day school week before Thanksgiving flew by. I did well on the math test. As lame as it sounds, being tutored by a guy I was into made all the difference in how well I paid attention to the material, but it helped that Elliott was actually good at teaching me. I even asked if he wanted to be a teacher, but he had bigger goals in life than teaching high school.

Thanksgiving was going to be interesting. Dad was an only child and he just has his mom (my grandmother) who is in a retirement community now. He feels bad about having her there but she actually likes it, they cook her meals and clean her room, and she just gossips with the other old ladies and plays games in the community room all day.

After Dad picked me up from school on Tuesday we got Grandma too so she could come to stay the whole Thanksgiving holiday with us. In the past we’d had some other relations in for Thanksgiving, sometimes people from my late mother’s side, or dad’s cousins and other far-flung relations, but this year it was just Grandma, Linda, Dad, me and Elliott. It seemed like it would be nice, but I’d never had Thanksgiving with Elliott and Linda so I had no idea what to expect.

Linda was a very traditional woman and insisted on cooking Thanksgiving dinner in Dad’s kitchen. Grandma was trying to help, even though Linda had it all under control, so I ended up playing Scrabble with Grandma in the living room to contain the old lady. Elliott came to play with us after getting bored from watching the first football game of the day with dad. Not surprisingly, Elliott wasn’t that into watching sports, but Dad wasn’t making him feel bad about it, to my relief.

Grandma is a real demon at word games, especially since we got a bunch of them on her tablet and she plays them all day long in retirement. She usually goes easy on me at Scrabble, but Elliott, being Elliott, is very sharp at word games so she was playing him seriously and they were using all these bizarre words I’d never heard of and going for the triple word scores left and right. They were destroying me but I was having fun anyway since Grandma’s a hoot and I was crushing on Elliott pretty hard by then, it was so sweet to see him having fun with my family. For her part, Grandma loved having a proper challenge and warmed up to Elliott tremendously.

We had an early 5 o’clock dinner, which we were very hungry for after just having green salads for lunch. Dad said grace and then the feast began. I normally watch my weight but I ate a bunch of turkey and a good amount of the side dishes, even though they’re mostly loaded with carbs. It’s okay to have fun once in a while, and Linda’s cooking was pretty good. Elliott meanwhile was shoveling biscuits, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and everything else into his mouth indiscriminately. I was attracted to the boy for his personality and the way he treated me, and he was cute in the face, but I was going to have to talk to him about his weight eventually. He wasn’t obese, but a few more Thanksgiving dinners like this, and I thought that he might be!

When dinner was over, Grandma insisted on putting the silverware away, since it was a family heirloom and of course only she knew how to clean and organize it properly. I volunteered to do the other dishes since Linda had been on her feet for over six straight hours cooking it all (I never realized how much work went into a big dinner like that when everything is made from scratch). I made Elliott help me since I’d never seen such a mountain of dishes, and it was the good stuff that had to be washed by hand.

We might have all been so helpful on our own, who knows, but this after-dinner business was all something we’d planned. Elliott and I had texted about it and I’d clued Grandma in on the plan. We had even whispered about it over Scrabble. With Elliott and I doing dishes and Grandma fussing over the silverware in the dining room, Linda and my Dad retired directly to the living room after dinner for some alone time by the fireplace. Pretty romantic, huh?

“Did you like the dinner?” Elliott asked as he washed plates. I stood next to him, making sure he got each item cleaned properly and then drying it off.

“Yeah, your mom’s a good cook,” I said, “You sure seemed to love her cooking.”

“Yep, it’s so delicious, especially those rolls,” he said. “She makes them from scratch.”

“She probably used a whole stick of butter on them,” I said. “As a girl, I can only eat like this a few days a year.”

He groaned. “Good thing I’m a boy then!” I rolled my eyes.

Before I could say anything about his gluttony, Grandma leaned into the kitchen. “Come on kids, he’s about to do it!”

We dropped what we were doing and followed the old lady on tiptoes into my house’s little entry foyer, where we could look into the living room. Linda was on the couch and dad was on an old fancy chair, another family heirloom of Grandma’s that she gave us when she moved out of her old house. Dad had a big fire going in the fireplace and the lights were low.

They didn’t see us. Elliott held out his phone to film surreptitiously. I’d told him he had to film this or else. After an anxious minute of holding our breath, Dad got on his knee and said something softly to Linda and she started to cry then leaned in and hugged him. We heard her saying “Yes, yes, yes” and we all ran in loudly hooting and hollering. They were getting married!

Dad had initially felt obligated to do some flashy and elaborate wedding proposal like men often do, but Elliott, in a rare moment of social aptitude, had sussed out that his mother would be mortified to see her proposal in 10-foot letters on a hill outside her workplace or something like that. Instead, she just wanted a simple and sweet proposal, so that’s what Dad gave her. Dad was embarrassed that we’d all sneaked a peek at the intimate moment, but he still has the video saved away on his phone and I’ve caught him watching it, so I know he liked our spying.

We had a big night after that, celebrating the engagement by the fire, Grandma playing Christmas carols on the old piano for us to sing along. I wanted to put my arm around Elliott, given all the love in the air that night, but I figured that would just derail everything since nobody knew about us yet. It was a fun evening anyway, as family evenings go. I was warm to Linda and she was nice back to me. If I had to have a step-mom, she seemed like about as good as it was going to get.