Completely opposite to her expectations, her apple syrup was delicious.
Not only that, it had an amazing texture: smooth and rich on her tongue and a zillion times better than store-bought. With a sense that the magic would disappear if she didn’t hurry, she ladled her creation over the boys’ pancakes.
“Eat,” she urged, setting the portions in front of them.
Possibly she was acting crazy. The boys looked at her, then the food, then picked up their forks and started shoveling.
Pete was the first to pause. “Mmm,” he said, a sound she wasn’t certain she’d heard him make before. The noise wasn’t simply pleased; it was shocked. She’d made him pay attention to what he was eating.
“Mmm,” Charlie agreed, nodding emphatically. “This is better than Mom’s, Becca!”
They were seven, so those were all the compliments she was getting . . . unless you counted them literally licking their plates clean.
Delighted by their reactions, she almost forgot to eat herself. When she did, she found her brain ticking through adjustments to make the dish better. She wasn’t even trying, and her mind just did it. She hadn’t known it would. It seemed important. Actually, it seemed epic. Rebecca was okay at lots of things. This suggested there might be something she maybe was great at.
I could learn to really do this, she thought.
“Five minutes till the bus,” Charlie broke in to say.
Charlie lived in fear of missing his ride to school. Sympathetic to the worry—because if anyone needed safe routines it was them—Rebecca handed him a damp washcloth. While he mopped the stickiness from his face, she herded her brothers out of the kitchen and down the entrance hall. On the way, she checked Charlie’s precious non-ripped backpack.
“Everything is here,” she assured him. Apprehension that he’d forget something was a recent tick of his. “All your books and all your supplies.”
More relaxed than his sibling, Pete slung his matching sack over his shoulder. His boniness made her gladder that she’d fed him. When his clear gray eyes met hers, they seemed eerily grown up.
“We’ll remember,” he said before she could start her spiel. “Dad is working in Cincinnati. He called us all last night.”
“Right.” She bent to kiss his head. She kissed Charlie’s too, holding both of them a little longer than usual.
“Bus!” Charlie said in a panic.
“All right,” she surrendered, letting go to open the door for them. “You two have fun today.”
They galloped down the steps without looking back, exactly like they used to with their mom. Those boys, her mother would sigh. They’d run straight off a cliff if it looked fun enough. Back then, Rebecca’s brothers had seemed like pests. Today she understood her mother’s concern. Pete and Charlie needed someone to be their safety net. Like it or not, she was it.
I will do better, she told herself.
From then on, whatever it took, she’d be a real parent.
CHAPTER THREE
The Night They Met
THE last four years had been the best of Zane’s life. Finally free of their fathers, he and Trey had gotten into Harvard. Zane’s way was paved by a football scholarship, Trey’s by a special economics prize. Trey might have been more surprised than anyone that he’d won it. His essay on the correlation between macro and micro markets had been submitted by one of his teachers at Franklin High. Though Zane wasn’t stupid, when he’d tried to read the doorstopper of a paper, he’d understood one word in two. The experience taught him an important lesson about his friend.
Trey Hayworth’s smarts were easier for him to downplay than his sexuality.
Zane didn’t hesitate to say yes when Trey tentatively suggested they room together off campus. Not only was this convenient for their continuing sexual hookups, but if Zane got lost in his classes, he had a built-in tutor. The arrangement turned out better than either predicted. For four years they worked and played with equal fervor, each one giving the other whatever hand he needed.
No longer a social outcast, in the university’s broader atmosphere Trey blossomed into the king of the eccentrics. His gentleness attracted people . . . and his big brain. He brought his coterie of geeks and Goths to cheer Zane on the gridiron, in return for which Zane made sure every one of them was welcome at jock-thrown parties. Zane discovered his own knack for economics by starting a lucrative bookmaking enterprise. Obviously, he couldn’t make book on Harvard football, but what his scholarship didn’t cover, his sideline did. Even professors placed bets with him, his reputation for always paying off a matter of pride with him.
As far as it was possible for two individuals to rule a place like Harvard, Zane and Trey did. They were a familiar sight strolling Harvard Yard’s leafy paths, generally shoulder to shoulder. They both liked clothes, though not the same styles of them. Zane favored Tom Ford suits while Trey was more Abercrombie and Fitch. Because Trey was Zane’s odds maker, once their extracurricular work took off, they could afford to shop. They didn’t pretend to be privileged; they just naturally looked it. They learned about living well by doing it—living free, they called it. From the best place to eat scallops to the best place to ski, they were interested. If they didn’t know, they researched. Before they’d been on campus a month, people mistook them for grad students.
Neither ever went home on breaks, and both were aware they weren’t missed.
Rumors cropped up now and then about the true nature of their friendship, something they chose not to comment on. Girls they enjoyed aplenty, though none of them lasted. By mutual if undiscussed agreement, the only men they slept with were each other. That source of gossip cut off, too many females heaved too many sighs over torrid trysts for anyone to conclude precisely what they were.
That was the way Zane liked it. What he felt for Trey, what he did with Trey, was his business. Well, his business and Trey’s. Somehow they’d never got around to spelling out the rules exactly.
He assured himself that was his preference too.
At the moment, contrarily, he wished their association were more defined. Graduation was a week away, their classes finished, their futures twinkling brightly in front of them. Trey had accepted a position at a prestigious economics think tank in DC. Zane had played decently for the Harvard Crimson, but not at a level to turn pro. He was moving to Seattle, having been headhunted by an alum to help start a chain of fitness clubs. The work would be exciting, the responsibility more than most of his peers could boast. Nonetheless, from the moment he’d said yes to the CEO, depression had gripped him.