“Tessa,” Owen says in a tight voice that seems to be taking everything he has to sound less panicked. “What. Happened.”
“In a nutshell? My friends got me to the hospital, where they did surgery to put a pin in my broken leg. They say I’ll get out of the hospital soon, and I’ll get a cool boot to wear around campus for a while. I called Mom first, and then I called you.”
I know just from hearing Owen’s footfalls that he’s hurrying around his townhome. “I’ll hop on the first flight they’ve got to Denver and hopefully be there tonight.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Owen, I barely finished talking Mom out of ‘hopping on the first flight to Denver.’ That was exhausting enough. Don’t make me do it all over again. I mean,I just had surgery. Making me expend that kind of energy wouldn’t be a very brotherly thing to do.”
“Tessa, you’re going to need help. Whatever they gave you during the surgery is going to wear off, andyou’ll be in a lot of pain. You’ll need someone there with you.”
“You do remember that I share a dorm withsevenother girls, right? Trust me, I’ve got plenty of help. There’s always someone around. Plus, the guys with the skateboards feel terrible about what happened and are already smothering me with offers of help. I’ll be okay.”
There’s silence for a moment, and I don’t know if it’s because Owen’s pacing has taken him too far away for me to hear or if he’s just busy trying to control his breathing. I realize it must be the latter when I hear his sister say, “I mean, really. If you want to be worried, it might be better to worry about my academic probation.”
“What?” Owen says, clearly taking her advice to worry now.
“I mean, at least that’s what I’m hearing through the grapevine. It’s not official yet. But skateboarding on that ledge is against the rules.”
“Andyou knew?”
“I didn’t think anyone was watching!”
Their conversation continues for a few more minutes, and I can tell that Owen is trying to be a patient big brother and be there for his sister. But I can also tell that it really stresses him out. Especially because even after their phone call ends, I can still hear him pacing. I can still sensehis worry.
I should do something. I am practically being pulled toward him.
No. I’m avoiding him at all costs.
I stand and walk closer to our wall. Maybe I should ask if he’s okay. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe he would rather pretend I’m not home, or that I wasn’t really able to hear any of his private conversation.
I’m debating with myself for a long minute before it hits me that these walls aren’t exactly opaque. With his pacing, I’m sure he’s turned to see me standing next to the wall, unmoving. Like a giant eavesdropper.
Since it’s a good bet that he’s been made aware that I’ve overheard everything, I throw all caution to the wind and knock lightly on the wood stud. Then I say, “I can offer a listening ear if you’d like it.”
There’s a pause in his pacing, then his blurred silhouette nears. A moment later, I hear the sound of painter’s tape being pulled off plastic sheeting, so I pull it off the door cut into the plastic on my side, too, and we each open our floppy doors. He just looks at me for a moment, and then he nods. “Come in.”
He holds his piece of plastic open, and I walk through the narrow opening to his place and follow him to his living room. And my mental image was right! There is folded laundry on his coffee table, and a basket half filled with clothes sitting on the couch. I’m still reveling in that swoon just a bit.
That is, until I spot a pair of his underwear peekingout in the basket, which not only reminds me of my towel incident earlier, but also of the very first time that I met Owen—when a laundry bag mishap made me leave a trail of my underwear on our shared front yard for Owen to discover, and my face heats up.
I force the thought away. I’m not here to be embarrassed. I’m here because Owen is sad.
“So I’m guessing you heard all that?”
“Most of it,” I say. “Sorry—I was just sitting on my couch, reading a book, so it was kind of hard not to.”
Owen sits on the couch, and I sit in a side chair. With his elbows on his knees, he drops his head into his hands for a few minutes, his fingers in his hair. It hurts to see him like this. I feel such a strong need to do something that I get up and move to sit next to him on the couch. I do manage to keep my hands to myself instead of patting or rubbing his back. It’s the closest to ‘avoid him at all costs’ I can manage.
Eventually, he lifts his head and says, “I just worry about her, you know? She’s always been more of a risk-taker and doesn’t make the best long-term decisions. And now, she’s at a university that’s over sixteen hundred miles away, so if anything happens, I can’t even be there quickly to help. And I worry about the friends she’s made if she feels like she has to break school rules and do dangerous things. I mean, why didn’t they stop her?”
“You didn’t make any bad choicesin college?”
He chuckles and shakes his head, and it releases a bit of the tension in the room. “Okay, you’re right. I made my fair share. Several that I wish I could take back.”
“Everyone makes bad choices in college. Well, we do every day, too, but college has its own special brand of them. You just have to hope she isn’t making catastrophic choices.”
