My Boyfriends' Dogs (22 page)

“It's just a movie,” Amber reminded me as I tried and rejected everything in my closet.

“No. It's a movie with Eric Strang.” I held up a black tank top. “What about this with those jeans?” I pointed to the hiphuggers on my bed.

“Great, if you're trying to say, ‘I'm slutty enough to sleep with you on the first date.'”

“Amber!”

“Okay. But Eric Strang has class . . . and, I must admit, a kind of magnetism.” This was high praise coming from Amber. She dove into the pile of clothes covering my bed and came out with black Capris, a funky tank, and a green blouse that tied everything together.

“See, this is why you're my best friend,” I told her.

Eric arrived exactly on time and rang the doorbell. The dogs barked like crazy. I hadn't finished my makeup, so I sent Amber. Mom had already gone with Sarah Jean to see her son, Rudy, in his school program.

I hurried, which made me get eyeliner on my cheek. By the time I got it off, Eric was already getting the tour of our eclectic collections. I was painfully aware of how crowded the room was. Eric was no doubt used to the palatial rooms in Riverbend, the exclusive community in East Freemont. “Hi, Eric. Sorry I'm late.”

“No problem. We've got plenty of time. You look great, by the way.”

“Thanks.” He looked a hundred times greater than I did.

“I've been showing him Big D's war collection,” Amber said.

“Why?”
I mouthed to her behind Eric's back.

“He's a guy,”
she mouthed back.
“They love war.”

“This is real Depression glass,” Eric said, staring into Mom's cabinet. “My mother loves this stuff.”

“Really? ” Who knew? Mom got hers at garage sales. I had a feeling that's not where Mrs. Strang got hers.

“One question,” Eric said. “Why does your mom collect Goofy? ”

Amber laughed.

“Did I say something wrong?” Eric asked quickly. “I mean, she obviously has great taste. There are some fantastic antiques here. Great Hummels. She has two Fabergé eggs and some great Murano glass. I just don't get all the statues of Goofy.”

“You think this is something?” Amber said. “You ought to see Bailey's bedroom.”

“I confess. The Goofys are mine.” I could confess it, but I couldn't explain it. I'm not sure I knew myself why I kept collecting Goofy.

Eric put his arm around me and moved us to the door. “It's an interesting hobby,” he said. “Just promise me you won't major in interior design.”

“Promise,” I vowed, feeling as if I'd promise him anything and happily keep the promise until death did us part.

Eric gave me a choice of three movies we could make easily. Amber and I had seen the feel-good movie, and I would have loved to see it again. But I had a feeling Eric wanted to see the foreign film.

“Let's see that Russian one,” I suggested.

“The Czech film? You like foreign films? ”

I started to lie and say that I did. Then I remembered Mitch and Lubinski and where faking had gotten me. “To tell you the truth, I've seen exactly one foreign film in my whole life, and I had no idea what it was about.”

“Well then, pick one of the others, Bailey.”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I really want to see the foreign one. I want to learn to like it.” And that was the truth. I wanted to learn to appreciate all the things Eric appreciated. I even wanted to learn about Hummels and Murano glass, things I'd always made fun of until Eric admired them.

“Are you sure?” A passing car's headlights flashed across his face, and the image made me want to throw my arms around him.

“Totally sure.”

 

Three hours later, Eric and I sat at a little table at a café in Riverbend, where Eric and Jeannette lived. I was bleary-eyed from trying to read the subtitles of the most boring movie I'd ever sat through. I was pretty sure this Czech film would have been boring in any language. At least the Lubinski play had been short.

“What do you want to eat? ” he asked, handing me a menu. “They have great desserts here.”

“Hmmm . . .” I was starving. I'd turned down popcorn in the movie because Amber said I crunched too loud. What I wanted was an entire chocolate cake with extra icing. I gazed around the café and spotted three rail-thin girls eyeing my date hungrily. I ordered an herb tea that tasted like sand and flower petals.

“You girls. You never eat. Don't know how you do it.” Eric had some kind of raspberry flan. “So, what did you think of the movie? ”

I couldn't tell Eric that I'd rather watch cattle being slaughtered. “I enjoyed it.” And I did. I got to sit close to Eric for three hours.

“Really? That's great. There's an Italian director whose work I want you to see. We'll have to take in his films next month at the Riverbend Art Theater, okay? ”

“Fantastic!” Eric Strang had just talked future with me. He'd said “we,” as in Eric and
me
. I could hardly wait to tell Amber.

Eric drove me home, opened the car door for me, and walked me to the front door. Mom had defied the current energy crisis and left on enough lights to dock ships at sea. “I had fun, Bailey.” He faced me, and I wished I were as tall as Amber so I could look into his eyes.

“I had a great time, too.” I never wanted it to end. Except that I was starving. And I couldn't wait to talk to Amber.

“Could I kiss you good night?” His hands moved to my shoulders, which were melting. Every bone in my body felt like rubber. It was a miracle I was still standing.

“Okay.” Had any guy ever come out and asked me for a kiss?

His fingers slid to the back of my neck, lifting my hair and sending tiny shivers to my toes. I closed my eyes and felt him move in. His lips brushed mine, and he kissed me. It was a good-night kiss, not a slobbery down payment promising he'd be back for more. Just a lovely, gentle kiss.

“Night, Bailey,” he whispered. We separated into two distinct people again.

“Uh-huh.”

I watched him drive away. My front door opened, and Mom stood there with an empty bowl of popcorn. “So? How was it? ”

I gave Mom the abbreviated version while I raided the fridge. I found a half-eaten frozen cheesecake and took it, and a fork, to my room so I could eat and talk to Amber at the same time. She was up, waiting for the call. I gave a frame-by-frame description of the night.

“But you hate foreign films,” Amber said when we got to that part.

“Well, yeah. Kind of.” Amber's silence could be so annoying. “But I want to learn to like them. Eric isn't obsessed, not like Mitch. Eric's considerate. He would have been fine seeing a different movie.”

“Then what? ” she asked, after another silence.

“Then he took me to the coolest café in Riverbend.” I took the last bite of frozen cheesecake and let it melt in my mouth.

“So? ” Amber pressed. “You ate. He drove you home.”

“
And
got out and walked all the way to my car door and opened it for me.”

“Way to go, Eric,” Amber commented. “And . . . ? ”

“And he told me he had a great time.” I knew what she was after, and I was going to make her work for it.

“Bailey, did he kiss you good night or what?” she demanded.

“He kissed me good night . . . and no
what.”

Again Amber went silent. Then she said, “Perfect.”

We hung up, and I thought about what Amber had said.
Perfect.
The date
had
been perfect. Eric Strang was perfect. Now all I had to do was make him my boyfriend and get him to ask me to the prom.

Eric and I went out every weekend. We saw movies and football games and had dinners in real restaurants. I was starting to think Mom was right about falling in love with a rich man. There was nothing hard about it.

“Does my face look flushed? ” Eric asked when he picked me up to go to a party at his friend's house.

I examined his handsome face by the car's dome light. “I don't think so.” This wasn't the first time he'd asked me something like this. I'd asked Roni about it because I was afraid her brother might have some horrible disease he wasn't telling me about. I could have asked Eric, but I didn't want to pry.

Roni had laughed and said her brother thought he had every ailment he read about on the Internet, and this semester he was taking AP microbiology and studying all kinds of rare diseases. It had been a huge relief to know Eric was healthy.

Now, as I held his face in my hands and gazed into those dreamy but worried eyes, I wanted to help him stop worrying. “Want to know what Mom says about good health? ” I asked cautiously.

Eric shrugged and started the car.

I kept my tone light. “Mom says good health is like buying an appliance at a garage sale. You do the best you can to make sure it's in good shape and then leave the rest to God.”

“To God?” Eric asked, but it wasn't a real question. And I was already wishing I hadn't taken things in such a touchy direction.

“Funny how talking about God makes you nervous. Not
you,
” I added quickly. “People in general, I mean.” I had to stop talking.

Eric grinned over at me. “Perfect time for music, wouldn't you say? ”

“Great idea,” I agreed, relieved to see him smile again.

He found a soft-rock station on his satellite radio, and we listened to soothing music until we pulled up behind a line of cars in a long driveway. I started to get out.

“Not so fast,” Eric said, his hand on my arm. He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, then let his fingers rest there, sending shivers all the way through me, down to my toes. He leaned in and kissed me, his lips soft but strong. And every anxious thought I'd had drifted far, far away.

Somewhere along the way, Eric Strang had become my boyfriend, and everybody knew it. His friends had become my friends. They didn't have names like Steffie and Buffy and Bunny either. Eric's friends were a lot like him—rich, polite, and nice.

As we walked toward the house, which was almost as big as Eric's, Eric held my hand, and I knew that every girl at the party would have traded her date for mine.

Fat chance.

 

A week before Thanksgiving break, Eric came over to help me fill out my Mizzou college application. We sat at the kitchen table, with Adam and Eve curled up under it. “I wish you hadn't waited so long to send in your application,” Eric said, thumbing through the course catalog.

“Exactly,” Mom chimed in. She was doing laundry, going back and forth from the laundry room and appearing at just the wrong times. “I kept telling her she needed to get that thing done. I just hope we're not too late to at least try for a scholarship.”

Eric knew we didn't have money, but Mom didn't need to rub it in. There were still things Eric and I didn't talk about. The subjects simply didn't come up. Like my job. Eric knew I worked in retail, but that was about it. I wasn't sure a gas jockey fit the image of Eric Strang's girlfriend.

“You need to put down a major,” Eric said, pencil poised.

“Um . . . interior design? ” I joked.

He smiled, but didn't laugh.

“I don't know. I can't decide.” Actually, I'd decided to be undecided. That way I could take different classes and see what I liked.

“But you must have a central interest, right? ” asked Eric the Focused Boyfriend.

Mom set down the laundry basket of clothes. I could see my underwear in there. “Yeah. What's your central interest, Bailey? ”

Great. Now they were ganging up on me. “Well, I like my creative writing class.”

Eric frowned. “And you're a good writer. But you can't make a living writing stories.”

“I love dogs. I'm good with dogs.” I reached down and stroked Adam and Eve. They'd come to a truce with Eric. They left him alone, and he left them alone.

“I guess you'll just have to major in dogs,” said Mom the Smart Aleck. “And if that doesn't work out, you can write about it.”

“Don't you have dirty clothes to pick on? ” I asked.

Mom took the hint and left us alone.

Eric smiled after her, but in a nice way, not like Went had. “I like your mom.”

“Me too. Most of the time.”

He put down his pen. “Bailey, it's time you met
my
parents.”

Amber thought it was weird that I hadn't met Eric's parents, but I hadn't thought much about it. I liked things the way they were. What if his parents hated me?

“Why don't you come with me to my grandmother's for Thanksgiving dinner? ”

“Really? ”

“You could meet everybody in one fell swoop. My family and my dad's brother's family from Lee's Summit meet at Grandma's every year on Thanksgiving. She lives in Overland Park, Kansas, so it's a couple hours' drive. You should come with us. Wouldn't that be great? What do you say? ”

“Are you sure? She won't mind? ” I couldn't believe it. Thanksgiving with my boyfriend? In Overland Park, which was about the richest city in the Midwest.

“They're going to love you, Bailey.” He hugged me, and I closed my eyes and almost believed him.

I waited until Eric left before I told Mom that Eric wanted me to go home with him for Thanksgiving. I was pretty sure she wouldn't be psyched about the idea. I was right.

“I guess you can go, if you really want to,” she said, refolding a purple towel so she didn't have to look at me.