“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was really thoughtless of me. You’re right, and I’m sorry, really.”
He looked at me for a second and then shrugged. “Whatever. I’m too tired to deal with it right now. See you guys.”
I hurried after him to the front door. “Sean, I’m sorry,” I said again. “I hope I didn’t ruin the night. I mean, it seemed like you were having fun and everything.”
“Yeah, it was okay. There’ll be another party soon anyway.” He gave me a half-smile, then walked out the door, and I watched him start jogging up the block toward his house.
When I turned around, Gretchen was sitting on the living room sofa, waiting for me. Her body language and tone of voice said it clearly: I hate you right now. “Since when are you interested in Conor?”
“Since…a while ago. I mean, not that long, but he really, I don’t know, grew on me, I guess you could say. I kind of just figured it out myself,” I admitted as I sat across from her.
“Does everyone else know?” she asked.
“No. Why would you ask that?”
“Because! You tell your friends more than you tell me. You always have,” she said in a hurt tone.
“They don’t know either, okay? It’s private,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about everything with everyone. Some things should be private.”
She buried her face in her hands. “Private. That means you’re having sex, that’s why you didn’t come home until two in the morning—”
I felt like throwing a magazine from her cutesy wood magazine rack at her. “No, it doesn’t! That’s not me at all. You don’t even know me.”
“I do,” she said. “And that’s why I think you should really consider staying with Sean.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“No. And I resent that. I think I know a little more about guys and relationships than you do, Kirsten.”
“Okay, Mom,” I said. “Spill. Tell me your wisdom.”
“I think things could really work out with you and Sean. He’s a great guy—”
“So is Conor,” I interrupted. “Do you know how many nice things Conor has done since I got here?” I told her about the times he’d made sure I was okay. I left out the bit about insulting me and running over my foot with a grocery cart.
“So he likes to follow you around,” she said. “Does that prove anything?”
“Yes. Actually, it does,” I said. “You don’t know Conor. You said so yourself.”
“But what’s wrong with Sean? And how could you just ditch him at that party? He asked you to go with him, and you run out with his brother?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said.
“I bet.”
“Honestly! First of all, Sean and I were already, like, running on fumes. We didn’t have anything in common. And once we hit the party, that was so obvious. He kept hanging out with his pals, and these other girls—we danced together like twice.”
“He said you had a nice time, until you vanished,” Gretchen said.
“So you’ve never known two people to have different versions of the same events?” I just stared at her. “Sean barely knew I was there. But that was okay! Maybe I was keeping my distance, too, maybe that was part of the problem. Because I’d realized I wanted to be with Conor.”
“You went about it all wrong,” Gretchen said. “You made a mess of everything. And I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just break your date with Sean if—”
“I know, I probably should have,” I said. “In retrospect. But at the time, I felt like I had to go through with it. Sean was counting on me, you were counting on me—”
“So now it’s my fault?” She shook her head. “Kirsten, you have a lot to learn about maturity.”
“So do you,” I shot back. “You sit around here doing nothing but telling me how to run my life and how I should look and what I should wear and who I should date. You know, I’m really sorry about your divorce and I’m sorry about your leg, but that doesn’t give you the right to tell me how to live my life, okay? ’Cause I don’t really admire the way you live yours. So why don’t you focus on your own for a change?”
I took a deep breath after all the words came out. I guess I’d been saving them up for a while.
Gretchen practically snorted. “You don’t know anything. The reason I’m so mad about staying up late tonight is that I have an interview tomorrow and I’m going to look like—like—crap, thanks to you!”
“What?” I asked quietly, still feeling guilty about my mini-tirade.
“I have an interview. For a job. It’s a second interview, actually,” she said.
“No way.” I started to laugh a little. Everything was out in the open now, and we were still talking. “Really? That’s so cool.”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her cast with her wrist. “Do you think I can handle it after all this time off?”
“Gretchen. You can handle anything,” I said. “I’ve been watching you handle stuff since, you know. Forever.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. So tell me about it,” I urged.
“Well. Since you got here, I’ve been doing a lot. You probably didn’t notice, you were either too busy with Brett, or out with those guys. Maybe you were really focused on yourself, not me,” she said. “Did you ever think of that?”
I shrank down in my chair. She had a point. Whenever I focused on Gretchen, it was to find fault with her constant shop & spend & sofa mode.
“Anyway, first I went to a career counselor, and I found out what I really wanted to do.”
“You did? When?”
“The first week when you were here. I asked you to drop me at the doctor?” she reminded me. “And all those mornings that you went to the bakery, I was doing online job hunting, while Brett watched ‘Sesame Street.’ And whenever you took Brett places? I tried to do phone interviews, and work on my resume, send out letters and stuff.”
“So, wait a second. You’ve been doing all this over the past month while I’ve been here? Seriously?” I asked. “What’s the interview for? Is it a job you really want?”
She nodded, and smiled. “It’s retail management.”
“What else,” I said. “Of course that makes sense!”
“That day we went to the Mall of America, and you took Brett to Camp Snoopy, I went to a few stores. It wasn’t easy on crutches, but I managed,” she said. “Anyway, this would be to roll out and manage a new store, at a different mall.”
I just sat there, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It made complete sense: The woman who was born to shop and spend would now help others do the same thing. And she was great at it, and now she’d get paid for it. And I’d helped, even though I didn’t know about it. But, wait a second, I thought. “Did Mom know about this?” I asked.
“Yes. It was her idea that having you here might help me get around to doing the job search. She said she’d give me a month to get my act together.” Gretchen leaned back on the sofa and sighed. “She was very un-Mom-like. She didn’t say anything about things working out—she said the only way to make that happen was to work them out myself.”
“But…you did break your leg, right? Or was that fake?” I asked.
“Of course I did!” She laughed. “But it’s not as bad as they thought. It should be okay in another couple of weeks. Then if I can just find a daycare that will work with my hours.”
“I’ll stick around until you do,” I said.
“But don’t you need to get back home?”
“Yes. And no,” I said. “We can work something out.”
“You are the best. Even if your waltzing sucks. And your taste in boys is questionable at best. And you’re only staying so you can be with Conor.”
“That’s not the only reason,” I said. “You know that, right?”
“I think so.” She smiled. “Now what did you bring home in that bakery bag, because I could go for something sweet.”