Family Ties — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

“My dad’s on a trip and doesn’t know if he’ll make it back to Atlanta in time. So I told my mom I’d pick her up on Friday.”

“Okay. Are we driving?”

“No, flying. The funeral’s in South Carolina.”

“Oh. Okay. When do we leave?”

“Leave? We? What’re you talking about? You don’t have to go.”

She smiled. “Of course I do. I’m your girlfriend.”

“But… you didn’t even know him.”

We sat in silence for a long time.

I felt a profound sense of relief that Christy would be with me, but then I realized what that meant: I’d have to tell her about camp, sooner rather than later.

I put off the talk about camp with Christy until the night before we were supposed to leave, when I finally ran out of time and excuses. We were hanging out in her studio, where she was curled up on her favorite beanbag with her sketchbook. I was sitting on the couch with my current book, although I hadn’t actually been reading for a while. Instead, I’d been going back and forth about what to tell her.

“Hey, we need to talk.

She gave me a startled, anxious look, and I realized what I must have sounded like.

“Whoa, lemme try that again. Everything’s fine. But I need to tell you something about tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry ’bout that. Poor choice of words. And I’m supposed to be good with ’em, right?”

“Normally you are. But not this time.”

“No kidding. Next time I’ll rehearse my opening a little more.”

“Yeah. It’s what I do. I go through a conversation in my head and figure out what I want to say.

we’d have the ‘what’re your intentions…?’ talk, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I probably should’ve done that tonight. In hindsight, I guess I was…”

“You’re chattering.”

“I am not. Well, not really. I’m explaining.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right. I was chattering. See? I told you… you’re changing me as much as I’m changing you. But I’m still doing it, aren’t I?”

She nodded. She was a lot more patient and relaxed once she realized we weren’t about to have a breakup talk.

“Okay…” I drew a deep breath. “Let’s try this again. Here goes. I need to tell you something about tomorrow and give you an excuse if you want to back out.”

“Excuse? Back out? Now you’re starting to worry me again.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, but… well… it’s something about me that you need to know. I hadn’t planned to tell you this soon, but Gunny’s funeral kinda changes things.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.