Surrender

August 15, 2013

7:30pm

"What the hell happened to your face?" Paul drops my chin and walks past me to the refrigerator. Paul has been a fixture in Katherine's life for about a year and a half now. He has dinner with us a few nights a week, and since tonight is Taylor's going away dinner, he's gracing us with his presence. As much as he likes to give Taylor a hard time, I know he'll miss her, too.

"I kicked the road's ass today," I reply. He laughs.

"So that's what happened to the road." Taylor grabs a slice of bread and opens a jar of Nutella. I grab my plate and fill it with Katherine's latest vegan concoction. Katherine's cooking is an acquired taste, one that Taylor still hasn't acquired after four years. Paul, on the other hand, is Katherine's twin incarnate, so he doesn't mind the cooking. Tonight's menu consists of something I can't even pronounce, but it's completely animal-product free, like it always is. Katherine doesn't force me to eat vegan, so unless I'm home, I usually eat what I want.
Everything Taylor eats is only eaten to compliment her main course of Nutella. Tonight, she's having a cheese and Nutella sandwich. I don't know if I could ever acquire a taste for that.

"So, when are you moving in?" I ask Paul. He and Katherine have been discussing the next step, but they can never seem to get past the hump of her strict anti-technology rule. Well, Paul can't get past it. It's not a hump that will ever be scaled by Katherine.

"Whenever your mom caves and gets ESPN," Paul says. They don't argue about it. I think their arrangement is fine with both of them, so neither of them is in a hurry to sacrifice their opposing views on modern technology.

"Blair passed out in the road today," Katherine says, changing the subject. "Some adorable man-boy carried her inside."
I laugh.

"Guy, Mom. Please just say guy." Taylor glares at me from across the table and it occurs to me that I haven't filled her in on my afternoon run. I also haven't filled her in on my first day of school. It's been an active day today. I wonder who I'm going to fill in after she leaves tomorrow? Just the thought of her being on the other side of the world in two days fills me with dread. I hope Louis can fill her shoes. Well, he would probably love to fill her shoes. Literally. But I'm hoping he does so in the figurative sense.

"You okay?" Paul asks. "It must have been a pretty good fall to get that shiner." I reach up to my eye and grimace. I'd completely forgotten about the black eye.

"That's not from fainting. Taylor elbowed me. Twice." I expect one of them to at least ask Taylor why she attacked me, but they don't. This just goes to show how much they love her. They wouldn't even care if she beat me up, they'd tell me I probably deserved it. After Paul and Taylor leave, I help Kayherine in the kitchen with the dishes.

"So why won't you cave and let Paul move in, I know technology can't seriously be the only thing...?" She grabs another plate from me to rinse, then lets out a sigh.

"I love Paul. I just love me and you, too. I like our arrangement and I don't know if I'm ready to change it, but Paul is so intent on moving forward." I turn the water off and wipe my hands on the hand-towel.

"I'll be eighteen soon, Mom. As much as you want our arrangement to stay the same...it won't. I'll be off at college after next semester and you'll be living here alone. It might not hurt to entertain the idea of at least letting him move in."
She smiles at me, but it's a pained smile just like it always is when I bring up college.

"I have been entertaining the idea, Blair. Believe me. It's just a huge step that can't be undone once it's taken."

"What if it's a step you don't want undone, though? What if it's a step that just makes you want to take another step, and another step, until you're full-on sprinting?" She laughs.

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of." I wipe off the counter and rinse the rag off in the sink.

"I don't understand you, sometimes."

"And I don't understand you, either," she says, nudging my shoulder. "I'll never for the life of me understand why you wanted to go to public school so bad. I know you said it was fun, but tell me how you really feel." I shrug.

"It was good," I lie. My stubbornness wins every time. There's no way I'm telling her how much I hated school today, despite the fact that she would never say, "I told you so." She dries her hands and smiles at me.

"Happy to hear it. Now maybe when I ask you again tomorrow, you'll tell me the truth." I grab the book Louis gave me out of my backpack and plop down on my bed. I get through all of two pages when Taylor crawls through my window.

"School first, then present," she says. She scoots in on the bed next to me and I put the book down on my nightstand.

"School sucked ass. Thanks to you and your inability to just say no to guys, I've inherited your terrible reputation. But by divine intervention, I was rescued by Louis, the adopted gay Mormon who cant sing or act but loves to read and is my new very bestest friend ever in the whole wide world." Taylor pouts.

"I'm not even out the door yet and you've already replaced me? Vicious. And for the record, I don't have an inability to say no to guys. I have an inability to grasp the moral ramifications of premarital sex. Lots and lots of premarital sex." She places a box in my lap. An unwrapped box. "I know what you're thinking," she says. "And you should know by now that my lack of wrapping doesn't reflect how I feel about you. I'm just lazy." I pick the box up and shake it.

"You're the one leaving, you know. I should be the one getting you a gift."

"Yes, you should be. But you suck at gift giving and I don't expect you to change on my account." She's right. I'm a horrible gift giver, but mostly because I hate receiving gifts so much. It's almost as awkward as people crying. I turn the box and find the flap, then untuck it and open it. I pull out the tissue paper and a cell phone drops into my hand.

"Taylor," I say. "You know I can't..."

"Shut up. There is no way I'm going halfway across the world without a way to communicate with you. You don't even have an email address."

"I know, but I can't...I don't have a job. I can't pay for this. And Katherine..."

"Relax. It's a prepaid phone. I put just enough minutes on it to where we can text each other once a day while I'm gone. I can't afford international phone calls, so you're out of luck there. And just to keep with your mother's cruel, twisted parental values, there isn't even internet on the damn thing. Just texting." She grabs the phone and turns it on, then enters her contact info.

"If you end up getting a hot boyfriend while I'm away, you can always add extra minutes. But if he uses up any of mine I'm cutting his balls off." She hands me back the phone and I press the home button. Her contact information pulls up as Your very, VERY bestest friend ever in the whole wide world. I suck at receiving gifts and I really suck at goodbyes. I set the phone back in the box and bend over to pick my backpack up. I pull the books out and set them on the floor, then turn around and dump my backpack over her and watch all the dollar bills fall in her lap.

"There's thirty-seven dollars here," I say. "It should hold you over until you get back. Happy foreign exchange day." She picks up a handful of dollars and throws them up in the air, then falls back on the bed.

"Only one day at public school and the bitches already made your locker rain?" she laughs. "Impressive." I lay the goodbye card on her chest that I wrote to her, then lean my head into her shoulder.

"You think that's impressive? You should have seen me work the pole in the cafeteria." She picks the card up and brushes her fingers over it, smiling. She doesn't open it because she knows I don't like it when things get uncomfortably emotional. She tucks the card back to her chest and leans her head on my shoulder.

"You're such a slut," she says quietly, attempting to hold back tears that we're both too stubborn to cry.

"So I've heard."