Page 36 of Considering Us

“You bet, Sugar. So, Kyle, which presidents do you like teaching about the most?”

I suppressed a laugh, knowing Kyle loved nothing more than to go on and on with presidential stories. My dad would be well-entertained.

I couldn’t stop smiling on my walk to the dining hall, thinking of Kyle telling my dad the story of Andrew Jackson getting a bullet from an old duel removed at the White House. Then I remembered that I had just left Heath earlier that morning, warm and happy in his bed.“I like you a lot, Devon Paige,”he had said. What am I doing?My introspection was cut short when I saw a TV crew outside of the administration building and Tam speaking into a microphone while production staff filmed her.

I watched and waited until she broke away and came over to see me. “I was going to text you as soon as I was done recording this piece,” she said, giving me a big hug. I had missed the Tam hugs. “This place is so gorgeous, even in November. Some of the leaves are hanging on. Such a great backdrop, I’ve gotta say.”

“How on earth did you hear about last night?” The campus already looked better than it had just a few hours earlier, but there were still remnants of toilet paper in the trees that would likely be there for months.

“We got an anonymous tip, so we followed up with Andrea. I feel so badly for her. She’s been through a lot this fall.”

“You can say that again,” I concurred. “I don’t know what she’s told you, but I think this is going to be complicated.”

Tam nodded. “She didn’t give me details, but she did say there are aspects of it that are making it tough for her to deal with. Plus, I would imagine the Connelly aspect isn’t helping. He’s gotta be pissed. Hey, you don’t think Adrienne Preston is involved, do you? Because that definitely gets messy.”

I shook my head. “I was worried at first about that possibility, but no, I highly doubt it at this point. She’s helping with the library cleanup right now for community service hours, and if she was in trouble, I don’t think she’d be doing anything like that. And get this—she’s cleaning withmy mom.”

Tam gasped. “They’re here? Dev, what’s going on? I thought you weren’t really seeing them much these days. After you spoke with her amidst all the Bentley fallout…”

I groaned. “And she inquired yet again as to why I hadn’t just gone to law school after college instead of doing all thisfancycooking. Yeah, I’ve been staying clear of Camille. But Andrea offered fifty dollars an hour for cleanup help, and I know they always need the money. And let’s face it, the grosser the situation, the more my mom wants in. She gets some sort of perverse pleasure out of cleaning the nastiest things. So, giddyup. You get to clean some high school senior’s Jägermeister-filled puke from the corner of the Collections room of the Rockwood library.”

Tam laughed, holding her nose. “And your dad? Can he do much to help?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “He’s helping Kyle reshelve books. It’s very cute, actually.”

Tam’s eyes widened. “Kyle’s around? I can finally meet him?”

“Yeah, you can,” I replied, looking around to make sure no one else was in earshot. “But it’s gotten much muddier.” I told her about the karaoke episode from the night before and how I tried to look for him afterward. “And when I couldn’t find him, I texted Heath. Remember how I told you that things hadn’t progressed much with him?” She nodded. “Well, now they have. And I left him this morning to come back to this mess. And now Kyle is looking adorable and telling my dad historical stories, and I can’t stop thinking about how maybe that’s where I should be.”

“Why shouldn’t you be?”

I sat on a bench, and Tam sat next to me. “Everything with Kyle is hard. He’s complicated. We’re complicated. Everything with Heath is easy.”

“Sometimes the hard things are the right things,” Tam said.

I shook my head. “I don’t know; he didn’t even want to talk to me for the last couple of weeks. He was literally hiding from me. And it got to the point where it became too challenging. So, I went with the easy thing. The fun thing. Am I reading too much into all of this?”

“Maybe,” Tam acknowledged. “But I think you need a few more opinions, not just mine.”

“Yours matters the most.”

“Of course it does,” Tam laughed. “But I think you know what you need to do.”

I thought about the two people who were working in the library, my own flesh and blood, who I had such an unusual relationship with. “Not that. Not them. I’ve never brought a guy home, not once in my entire life. My prom date picked me up at a friend’s house, for God’s sake. Why do I care what they think about Heath?”

“You’ve already commented on your dad interacting with Kyle, and a huge smile came over your whole silly face. I think it would be very revealing to get their take. And then David.”

“You think David Anders should weigh in on Heath? Why? We need the Celtics’ perspective?”

“I think he knows you better than you realize.”

Maybe that was true. “I don’t want to hurt Heath. He’s a good guy.”

“You might not hurt him. But right now, you have no idea what you want.”

“Do you know what you want? With Professor Plum?’

“Yeah, I do. He’s the one. Hopefully, he’ll get off his ass and get me a ring. I want to have little plum babies, and I’m not getting any younger.”

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