I shot her a look that said she was crazy.
“What?” She dropped her sandwich and raised her hands innocently. “I mean, yeah, he’s Lakeview royalty, but he seems . . . different than the others.”
“The only thing different about him is that he thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”
Her brow crinkled with worry as she glanced from him back to me. “Well, what are you gonna do? I mean, you’ll do it, right?”
I unscrewed the cap of my water bottle and took a long pull, thinking about my answer.
I told Principal Bell I’d take the job, but could I really follow through? Tutoring meant sitting across from Topher several days a week. Breathing the same air. Talking to him and spending time together outside of class. It meant swallowing my pride to help him after years of bullying me.
Okay, maybe Topher hadn’t been the one to bully me in recent years. Usually it was JT or Mikey or one of his other cronies. Sometimes randoms even joined in on the fun as if that might garner his approval, but did it really matter? He was an accessory to the crime. He always stood by and laughed as if he couldn’t be bothered to stop them.
I sighed and shoved my lunch away, my appetite gone. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll hint around to my dad, see if there’s any way we can swing the extra tuition. But if we can’t . . .” I glanced behind me.
Topher sat with one foot propped up on the coffee table in front of him, an arm draped casually over his knee with the other one slung over the back of the chair, looking completely comfortable, so utterly entitled as one of the lunch ladies scurried over to him with his food.
I snorted and turned away. He even had the lunch lady serving him now.
I picked up my spoon and ripped the foil top off my yogurt with a pop and forced a smile. “But if we can’t,” I continued, “I guess I’m just going to have to find a way not to puke in my Cheerios every morning at the thought of spending time with Topher Elliot.”
Chapter 5
PENELOPE
After school, Scarlett drove me home in the second-hand Volvo she received as a gift for her sixteenth birthday, an anomaly at Lakeview because nearly every other rich kid got their pick of new wheels. In fact, the school parking lot was like a live advertisement for Porsche, Mercedes, souped-up Mustangs, and BMWs alike.
She pulled up to my house, and I got out, waving goodbye as I walked over our lush green grass. It was as thick as a carpet and perfectly cut. It also happened to be the nicest part of our home. Not surprising, considering my dad was in the lawn business. Our small ranch wasn’t bad per se, but it was in desperate need of maintenance only time and money could provide, neither of which my father had. That, and square footage was sparse. I shared a room with my little sister, Sara, which sometimes sucked, but mostly worked.
I stopped at the front door in need of a fresh coat of paint and unlocked it, then pushed my way inside with a sigh of relief.
Home at last.
I toed off my sandals, noting the sticky heat, then immediately headed for the air conditioning unit in the window. Air wheezed sluggishly from the vent, but when I cranked the temperature down further, it whirred louder and a burst of cold air blasted my face.
Satisfied, I made my way into the kitchen for a glass of water, where I’d start dinner, then settle in at the table to do what little homework I had before getting Sara off the bus.
I grabbed a glass from the cupboard, then turned to the fridge. A note from my father was stuck to the aging appliance that read, Be home by 5:00, Love Dad.
I smiled and opened the refrigerator, took out the water pitcher, and poured myself a glass as I eyed the contents and debated our options. I doubted most kids my age regularly handled the family meal—a Royal would probably faint at the mere suggestion, lest they get their baby hands dirty. But even they would probably learn to sling a spatula if their options were my father’s cooking or going hungry. I learned long ago if I wanted something edible, it was fully up to me, considering Sara was only nine and the one time she tried to make eggs, she nearly burned the kitchen down.
No joke. Scorch marks still stained the cupboards next to the stove.
Settling on tacos, I grabbed the lettuce and tomato off the shelf, then bumped the door closed with my hip and took them to the counter, where I pulled out a knife and a cutting board. I’d chop veggies, do my homework, get Sara, then brown the meat.
Allowing the monotony to soothe my nerves, I got to work. A couple hours later, I sat at the little round table in the eat-in kitchen with my father and sister. The remnants of dinner sat in front of us, ready to be wrapped up in containers. And while Sara had already filled us in on her epic day of fourth grade, which, sadly enough, made mine look pathetic, I still hadn’t found the opening I needed to inquire about assistance with my tuition.
My father stood and Sara followed, taking our plates to the sink while he began clearing the table. Cooking was my job, so she assisted him with clean-up every night while I usually slipped off to our room for the evening. There wasn’t much privacy when you were seventeen and shared a bedroom with your nine-year-old sister, so you took every chance you got to be alone.
But tonight, I sat there, mustering up the courage to ask my father for money I knew he didn’t have just so I could get out of tutoring Topher. It was selfish. I knew it, and though thinking about it made me squirm, my continued presence must’ve tipped him off because he paused on his way to the sink and glanced back at me.
“Something wrong, P?” he asked, his forehead knotting in concern before his gaze darted to the fingernail polish I was unconsciously picking at.
I knew what he was doing, checking my mood.
“Um, yeah, sure,” I said, cursing myself for being such a wimp. He turned back to the dishwasher and my stomach squeezed as I blurted, “Actually, it’s not. Okay, I mean.”
He glanced back at me with a frown. “Something you wanna talk about?”
“I guess there was some funding issue and they canceled a couple of the classes I need, so my scholarship is in jeopardy,” I said, testing the waters.
“So, what are they gonna do?”
“Well,” I squeezed my eyes closed and took a deep breath, then elaborated. “I talked to Principal Bell, and he said I just have to make up the difference somehow.”
My father reached up and grabbed the dishtowel slung over his shoulder and wrung it between his hands, his face a mask of worry as he stared at the fading linoleum, his mind working. “What kind of money are we talking about?”
He knew what the tuition was at Lakeview.
My heart twisted in my chest as I watched him mumble something about taking extra hours, maybe doing some side work, and I couldn’t do it. Dad already worked hard enough. Much more and we’d never see him.
I cleared my throat. “No worries, Dad. Bell suggested I take an open tutoring position to pay for it.”
He hesitated. “It’s not your responsibility to pay for school,” he said, though I could tell a weight had been lifted. “I can handle it. I’ll figure something out.”
I shook my head. “No, seriously. I mean it. It’s all taken care of. No biggie.”
Relief flickered in his eyes, and he hesitated. “If you’re sure . . .”
“Positive.” I nodded.
With a smile I didn’t quite feel, I hurried to my bedroom and over to the little ivory vanity my father bought me for Christmas my first year of high school and pulled open the top drawer. A rainbow of nail polish stared back at me.
With a sigh, I chose pure black. The color of the highest level of stress and anxiety. The color of mourning. Darkness. Sobriety. All things truly awful. Because it was official. As of tomorrow, I was Topher’s tutor.
TOPHER
I kicked the front door closed behind me to the scent of chocolate chip cookies.
My stomach growled at the sugary scent as Mom appeared, rushing into the foyer. “Oh, honey. Here, let me help.” She helped me with my gym bag before s
he disappeared into the coatroom, her voice echoing from inside. “I saved you dinner, and there are cookies for dessert.”
“Thanks. I’m starving.” I slid off my shoes as heaviness settled in my chest. The envelope from Bucknell in my pocket felt like an anvil. “Um, is Dad around?” I asked.
“He’s working in his office, but he was waiting for you to get home. I’ll go get him while you eat. Your plate’s in the oven. Cookies are on the counter.”
I nodded and my stomach twisted at the thought of telling Dad about the scholarship offer, so I shoved the thought aside. If I dwelled on it, I wouldn’t be able to eat a bite and, at the moment, I felt like I could eat a whole cow, though it was always that way after practice. Swimming for hours on a good day was enough to make anyone ravenous. Add in the equivalent of a basketball-soccer fusion in water and my stomach felt like a bottomless pit.
Mom bustled out of the room while I made my way to the kitchen, my bookbag still slung over one shoulder. Once inside, I opted to have dinner at the island like I often did when practice ran later and I missed the family meal. Truth be told, I enjoyed eating alone. It meant space from my father and his prying eyes.
Slinging my bag next to the island, I headed to the oven, grabbed a potholder, and removed the hot plate covered with foil. With my other hand, I opened the utensil drawer and grabbed a fork before I sat down.
When I folded the foil aside, steam rose from a plate piled high with pasta. Some kind of fancy seafood linguine. While a lot of my friends had family chefs, Mom insisted on cooking most of our meals from scratch herself. At one time, she’d wanted to be a chef. Before she met Dad. Before she married and he made all their money, negating her need for a job, and she settled on staying home.
Part of me wondered if she regretted it. Especially now . . .
My mind flashed to Ms. Stone and my father, and my stomach turned. Regardless, I shoved the thoughts aside and dug into my food. The flavor of garlic, shrimp, and scallops exploded in my mouth, and even though Mom gave me enough to feed three people, I ate every bite, sopping up the remaining sauce with a piece of crusty bread.
After I finished, I cleared my plate and leaned against the counter, plucking a cookie off the cooling rack as my father entered the kitchen.
“Do you have schoolwork?” he asked. No pretense. No How was your day? or formalities. Straight down to business.
“Nope.” I brushed the crumbs from my hands and straightened. “Finished it at school.”
“Good. You have your essay to work on.”
I averted my gaze and scratched the back of my head.
“What essay?” I asked, even though I knew very well what essay he was referring to.
“For UVA,” he said like I was dumb.
Ah, yes. The University of Virginia. My dream school. JK. I had zero desire to go there. But it was the best business school in Virginia and just so happened to be only a forty-five-minute commute, which meant I could attend school, study, and still work for the family business. Lucky me.
“You should have no problem getting in, but you still need to start working on your essay and application, so we can get it in early. It shows initiative. Eagerness . . .”
My desire for higher education. Yatta yatta.
I stopped listening, drowning him out, because I’d heard it all a million times before.
I fingered the envelope in my pocket and swallowed. “What if I had another option?”
“What?” My father huffed out a laugh like the idea was preposterous. “We talked about this. I need you here, running the business if I’m going to try a mayoral run next year. UVA has the best program in the state, and it’ll allow you—”
“Yeah, I know what we talked about, but . . .”
More like what he talked about. Like I cared if he became mayor. I just agreed to it because what other choice did I have?
“Coach gave me this today.” I stepped forward, mustering every ounce of courage within me to pull the letter out of my pocket and hand it to him despite the fact it felt like the nerves in my stomachs were doing jumping jacks.
He stared at it like I handed him a grenade. Mouth a flat line. Eyes wide. Jaw twitching.
When he stood there, motionless like he was unsure of what to do with it, I grabbed it back out of his hands and removed the letter of intent, pointing at the words. “See here, it’s a national letter of intent from Bucknell to play water polo for them. They want me to tour the campus and facilities, and if I like what I see, they’re offering a scholarship.”
I glanced up from the letter to my father’s face. Maybe if he knew how good I was. If he realized I might have a future doing something other than running his business. If he realized someone else believed in me enough to give me a chance. Maybe he would too.
But he wasn’t even looking at the letter. Instead, his eyes were planted firmly on my face. A frown pulling at his lips.
“No.” His voice vibrated between us.
“What?” I blinked at him like I heard him wrong. He wasn’t even giving me a chance.
“I said, no. I won’t have my son wasting his life on some stupid sport with zero potential for a future.”
“That’s not true. I can coach—”
“You can coach?” He scoffed. “I’m sure that’ll bring in a lot of money.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
It was true. I didn’t need a lavish lifestyle.
“Look around, son.” Dad spread his arms wide. “Do you think all of this is free? Do you think I got it from messing around in some pool, flinging a ball? No. I got it from hard work. Real work. From starting a business and building it from the ground up and watching it flourish.”
A jolt of irritation ripped through me. I snatched the letter and envelope from his hands and folded them, shoving them back in my pocket. I was a fool to think I could talk to him about this and he’d actually listen. Crazy to think he might change his mind.
“Do they even pay most coaches?”
“Yeah, they pay them,” I snapped, although, to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how much.
Anger slid under my skin, burning like a hot poker. “But I’d teach, too. I wouldn’t just coach. I’d get my teaching degree, and I’d do both.”
“I bust my butt to set you up for life, and you want to throw that in my face for a shitty teaching job?”
“Oh, what? It’s good enough for you to screw a teacher, but you can’t have a son that’s one?”
My father’s hand shot out, roughly grabbing a fistful of my shirt and yanking me toward him until I could feel the heat of his breath, see the bit of parsley stuck in his teeth. “You watch your dirty little mouth, young man. This isn’t the school locker room, and I’m not one of your pals.”
He shoved me backward so hard I crashed into the counter, knocking a rack of cookies onto the floor with a resounding clang.
“Hey, what’s going on in here?” Mom appeared inside the kitchen, hands on her hips, while her gaze darted from the cookies to me, to Dad.
The breath puffed from my chest as I stared at my father. Hate roiled inside my gut like a bed of snakes, wriggling to life as he turned his saccharine smile on her. “Nothing honey. Just messing around.”
Mom frowned. Doubt flickered in her eyes, but still, she said, “Well, clean it up. You know I hate waste. I’ll be in the den if you need me.” Her eyes lingered on my face a beat longer than necessary before she turned and left us staring at each other like two caged lions ready to fight.
Without another word to him, I turned and began picking the cookies up off the ground, placing them, along with the others, in a plastic container. For Mom. Not for him. And because it was all I could do to keep from turning around and doing something I’d regret. Like wiping that smug look from his face.
By the time I finished, he was gone, and I made my way to my bedroom where I sunk down into the mattress.
I focused on my breathing, staring at the ceiling. A few
minutes later, I heard a soft knock on my door and tensed before my mother peeked her head inside and I exhaled again.
“Can I come in?”
I shrugged. “It’s your house.”
She stepped inside and made her way to my bed, taking a seat on the edge. The honey blonde hair I inherited from her hung over her shoulders and her blue eyes bore into the side of my face. “What was that really about?”
I glanced up at her, then down again to a snag on my comforter.
What was that about? UVA, Bucknell, or Dad and Ms. Stone?
Something told me it was the latter. Regardless, I said, “I got a scholarship offer, but Dad’s set on my going to UVA.”
“Ah,” she said like I need say no more. “I know he can come off as harsh sometimes—”
“If by harsh, you mean a dick, then yeah, I know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Language, Topher.”
“Sorry,” I said, guilty, because this was Mom I was talking to and she didn’t deserve any of the crap thrown her way.
Mom nodded, reaching out to grip my hand in hers. “He just wants what’s best for you. He wants to see you succeed. To see you have a good future. Everything he’s worked so hard to accomplish has been for our family. For you and for me.”
Everything? I wanted to ask, Including his romps with Ms. Stone in the utility closet at school?
But I clamped my mouth shut because I had no idea if Mom knew or not, and I didn’t have the heart to be the one to tell her if she didn’t.
So instead, I said, “It’s not what I want.”
“Then you need to tell him.”
“What do you think I just did? He won’t listen. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Face it, Mom. He’s selfish.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Her mouth pressed into a firm line, and I could see that she believed she could make a difference. Oh, Mom.
“Thanks,” I said because what else was there?
She squeezed my hand once more, then pulled away, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
My phone chimed as she backed out of my room, so I pulled it out of my pocket, along with the Bucknell letter, casting the envelope with one last look of longing before setting it on my nightstand and checking my phone.
Hate Notes: A Sweet Enemies to Lovers Young Adult Romance (Lakeview Prep Book 1) Page 3
