Authors: Ruth Houston
"Come in," I said, closing the door behind her.
"You're feeling better, right? I –"
She stopped as I caught her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek, unable to stop myself. It occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn't have been taking these liberties without asking her first, but when I saw her pleased smile, and that she was as flushed as I felt, I figured she could have stopped me before, but she never had.
"Much better," I said.
"Well… that's – that's good to hear," she said, trying to regain her composure. I smiled secretly to myself. "I just came to check up on you and see if you were awake. I brought your homework." She gestured at her backpack.
I groaned. "Is it a lot?" I asked, motioning for her to follow me upstairs.
She took off her shoes, leaving them at the door as she followed me. "Crap load," she grinned, though her tone was sympathetic. "And you missed a unit exam for AP Spanish."
"
Great
," I said. "In that case, wanna help me study?"
She shrugged. "I could. Sure. It wasn't that hard. It was just that unit vocabulary stuff, and that review on the command form and the subjunctive."
By now we had reached my room. I gestured at her to enter first.
"Hey, it's kind of dark in here, don't you think?" Winter asked, going directly to my curtains and drawing them back. The waning afternoon sunlight, weak in the winter, streamed in through the window, and I squinted, adjusting to the light as it flooded my room. Winter was always doing that – bringing light.
She sat herself down on my window seat, crossing her legs Indian style. I sat down on the floor in front of her. My bed was right behind me, so I leaned back on it.
"Okay," she said in her All Business voice. I grinned. How much more adorable could she get? Winter extracted a dark blue binder from her backpack and flipped through it. "Two review worksheets for AP Spanish – we did those in class before the exam; problems one through 53
odd for unit 4.9 out of the textbook for Calculus – you probably need to borrow my lecture notes for that; we have another essay due for English in two weeks, here's the sheet on the prompt; and…wait, there's one more thing, what is it? Oh yeah, I think Rebecca mentioned some homework that you guys have for AP Physics. Why are you taking that class anyway?" She wrinkled her nose.
I laughed. "Because it's the easiest AP course Branner High has. Robinson's class is a joke. Jeez, that's a lot of homework." I took all the papers from her. "Thanks."
"No problem. Can't have you sitting at home all day getting on a sugar high from all that orange juice, after all," Winter grinned at me.
I was astonished. "Are you
physic
? How did you know about Victoria practically force-feeding me orange juice?!"
It was her turn to laugh. "You talked yourself to sleep yesterday. You mentioned it."
I shook my head. "Remind me never to do that again otherwise I'll end up revealing something horribly embarrassing about myself to you. Wanna help me with this
subjuntivo
form and the
mandatos
for Spanish? I never did understand it."
"They're basically the same thing," Winter shrugged. "Just order people around. Take the
yo
form, change the ending to an
a
if it's
er
or
ir
, and
e
if it's
ar
…"
We spent the next hour or so like that, her helping me catch up with my homework and doing her own homework, as I worked and stole glances at her every once in a while. I did so presently, and saw that she was thinking hard, concentrating, and had caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Automatically my gaze strayed to her mouth, just as she licked her lips absently.
Oh, crap; no, bad, bad, bad idea Zack
, I thought, now unable to tear my gaze away from her delectable, luscious mouth –
No, we weren't going to go down that path right now.
Definitely
not.
"What?" Winter's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. She had caught me staring at her.
"Huh? Oh," I said, coming up empty as I searched for an excuse. "Uh, nothing. Sorry," I muttered, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. What? Me,
blushing
? Not possible. I turned my head away so she couldn't see. A moment later I risked a quick glance at her – keeping my eyes firmly on the upper half of her face – and saw that her dark chocolate eyes were smiling in amusement.
"What?" I said.
"Uh, nothing," she said. "Sorry."
"Are you mocking me?"
"What? No, why would I be mocking you?"
"You are."
"I'm not."
"You
are
mocking me."
"I am not."
"Are
too
."
"Am
not
."
"Are – hey, stop laughing at me." I tried glowering at her and failed miserably.
"You're paranoid Zack. First you say I'm mocking you, then you say I'm laughing at you?" Winter kept her expression serious, though her eyes were dancing with mischief. Absolutely adorable.
I turned away to hide my grin. "So are you doing your homework or what?"
"Doing my homework, of course," she said with a charming smile. "How could you possibly think otherwise?"
And so we carried on with our homework. She soon tired of that though, as I knew she would, because Winter dislikes sitting in silence for extended periods of time doing boring work. So she started chatting with me, and though it was distracting, I didn't mind too much, because her voice was deliciously attractive. I wanted to keep her talking.
"Did you know that J was the last letter to be added to the English alphabet?" she asked me idly. By now she had taken off her sweatshirt and was sprawled out on her back on the window seat, the folded sweatshirt pillowing her head, which was turned sideways toward me.
"No, I did not," I chuckled. "How did you know that?"
"Katherine told me. She's so full of random knowledge," Winter told me. She stretched languidly and turned onto her side. I decided to give up on my Calculus homework.
The mentioning of Katherine brought up the thought of the Westleys. "How are the Westleys anyway?" I asked her.
"They're doing better," Winter replied. "Did I ever tell you that Mr. Westley got a fiancée?"
"
What
?" I stared at her.
She nodded. "Her name is Emma Wilbourne. She's a fashion designer."
"Um, is that supposed to tell me something?" I asked quizzically.
"Not really, but Eva likes introducing Emma in conjunction with her profession, so I do it too," Winter shrugged.
"Have you met her yet?"
"Nope. I'm invited to their wedding though. It's in December up at Tahoe."
"Tahoe." I arched an eyebrow. "What, are they going to get married on a ski slope or something? Have the theme be black diamonds? Or maybe blue squares? Or wait – actually, I hear the new in thing this season is green circles."
"Don't be mean!" Winter laughed, reaching down from her perch on the window seat to slug me on the shoulder. "You want to come with? Cause a deliberate commotion during the objection part by pretending you got frostbite?"
I chuckled. "As long as I'm your date I swear I won't try to pull something like that."
"I can live with that," she grinned.
We fell into quiet for a pause.
"So…" Winter hedged. "I was wondering…our conversation the other day kind of got interrupted. I was wondering if you wanted to keep talking about that stuff…"
"Sure," I said simply, watching her. "What do you want to know?"
She had turned onto her stomach now, and was playing with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, eyes concentrated on a thread that had wiggled its way out of the fabric. "I'm confused. You just up and left Italy. Your parents couldn't have been happy with you. You're still a minor, so technically they can make you do whatever they want. So why didn't your dad drag you back to Italy?" Now she looked at me, awaiting my answer.
I nodded. "You're right. My dad was furious with me. I thought I'd seen it all – I pissed him off so much on a regular basis. But when he came home from a charity gala and found me gone…" I shook my head now. "He saw it as a violation of respect, as the last bit of control he had over me slipping away. I guess it was exactly that, though at the time I didn't really analyze it like that. I figured I was doing what was right for me, you know? I still think I did the right thing.
"But he was
so
mad. You can't even imagine how angry he was. He called my house every day, sometimes in the middle of the night so Victoria and I couldn't sleep. We ended up unplugging the phones at night so his calls couldn't come through. I finally picked up because I got sick of dancing around him. He told me, he couldn't believe what I had done, and how could I diss him like this, how bad this must look to his corporate buddies, and I'm going to cut off your allowance until you get your act together young man and I have already bought a ticket for you to come back." I shrugged. "He used to wire over whatever money Victoria and I needed. He threatened to cut us off from his bank account if I didn't get on that plane, and if Victoria didn't see to it that I got on that plane. Of course I didn't get on the flight. Victoria was pretty pissed too." I grinned. "Never seen her so mad at my father in my life. She went and sold that plane ticket back to the travel agency and we kept the money.
"But anyway, that made my dad even madder, right? A disobedient underage son beyond his control
and
an insubordinate house employee? Totally unacceptable. But he was unwilling to give up the time to fly over here and physically force me to go back, so what could he do? He gave me an ultimatum: Come back here to Italy within the next week – I'll even shrink the deal, all you have to do is finish the fall semester at the American school – or I'll cut you off from my bank account
forever
. He gave me that ultimatum about halfway through September."
"Wait, so how do you get by for money now?" Winter interrupted, alarmed.
"Patience,
principessa
. Obviously I didn't go back to Italy. He called one last time. Victoria picked up first, and I think she got an earful, because she was pretty mad too when she handed the phone to me. So here's how it went down: he gave me another ultimatum."
Winter rolled her eyes. "The point of an ultimatum is that it's all or nothing, not that you get a second chance."
"I know," I said. "But he was changing it. He told me I had better get my ass back to Italy within the next week again, otherwise he was going to sell this house, fire Victoria, and refuse to support me financially in anything."
Winter's eyes were wider than I'd ever seen them. By now she had hopped down from the window seat to sit right in front of me. "Talk about drastic," she said, sounding a little amazed and impressed.
"No kidding," I replied. "So he sold the house, fired Victoria, and refused to support me financially in anything."
"You're joking," she said.
"No, I'm not." I smiled, though it was a bitter one. "This house got put on the market at the beginning of October. Someone's already bought it. We're moving out by the end of the month – so that makes it, what, three more weeks to go? Victoria found a little apartment for the two of us. Nowhere near as nice as this mansion," I chuckled, "But that's alright. It's a little studio apartment on the cheaper side of town; one bathroom, one bedroom, kitchen, living room. It's tiny. I guess I'll have to sleep on the couch or something. Victoria's working as an accountant now, which is the job she used to have before she was widowed and started working for my dad. It's a mess. My dad is pissed, I'm financially dependent on Victoria, and my mom is left heartbroken."
I let Winter absorb all this for a moment. She looked torn. "And your mother… You never said that she was siding with your dad."
"She wasn't," I said softly, sighing. "She supported me in my decision, but was unable to convince my father to give up the fight."
Winter nodded slowly. "Do you have enough money to get by though?" she asked. "You know, regular expenses…gas and electric, water, food, stuff like that?"
I nodded. "Yeah, Victoria's got us covered. She took it upon herself to take care of me, which I really appreciate. I told her I could find a way – bunk at Brock Davis' place or something – but she wouldn't have it. She said she wanted to keep an eye on me anyway." Winter smiled slightly at this. "My father sold this house, including most of the stuff in it – the furniture, the paintings, the household appliances…the piano." I cleared my throat roughly.
"Oh, Zack."
"It's a beautiful piano."
"I know."
"I think he just likes to be cruel. Anyway," I said, swallowing painfully, "My mom offered us financial help if we ever need it. But that's on the down-low. My father would blow a gasket if he ever found out."