Page 37 of Summer of the Boy

Chapter Nine

Three days after he gave me the best night of my life, we have a couple packets and pamphlets from the college spread out over the dining room table. Both our laptops open, so we can look up classes for Rid to register for, for the fall semester. I registered for mine at the end of last semester. He’s trying hard to suppress the panic because him leaving, it’s becoming real. And as much as he wants to be independent, in his almost twenty years of life, he’s never spent a whole night away from his mom. She never allowed it.

For the past hour we’ve been quasi-bickering about the classes heshould takeas compared to the ones hewants to take, which are the hardest classesto take. My thought, it might be best for him to ease into his college experience. Being in a real classroom is way different from a homeschool classroom. What the professors expect of you, or how hard they are to learn from can make or break your freshman year. His thought, he’s just as capable as me. Like I don’t know that.

Before finding classes, we’d been in touch with the student disabilities center at the college. He’ll be allowed to sit in front in all his classes and have an iPad with an external microphone to take his notes for him because as part of his autism, Rid can’t really handle touching pens or pencils. All his work he’ll submit via internet or have someone else write for him on group projects or whatever.

I know mess makes him agitated, so having these pamphlets spread over the table coupled with the stress of telling his mom he’s leaving for school, well, he’s antsier than normal. I’m choosing to think of it as cute because I know he can’t help himself. Part of me wants to make everything better for him, tell his mom for him, clean up the mess for him. But John the therapist says dealing with what makes him uncomfortable helps him to socialize better.

We hear his mother’s car pull into the driveway and I scramble to shove the pamphlets into my backpack while Rid finishes up and logs off the school’s website.

“Clear your history,” I remind him. Because she’s the type of woman to check and he’s not ready for the confrontation yet. He does, then switches to an online job listing site for our area. He logs on right as his mother walks in carrying two shopping bags, one in each hand.

“Do you need any help, Ms. McAllister?”

“Sure.Rid,” she says pointedly. “There are more bags in the trunk.”

“Can I help?” I ask, almost affronted. I’m trying here. How many times can a guy extend a damn olive branch?

“Ridley has it,” she assures me.

After he rises from his chair, shooting his mother a disgusted look, and heads into the garage, I can’t hold my tongue any longer. “You, you just refuse to like me,” I mutter while packing up my computer.

“You have purple hair and piercings. Why of all the people you could choose, do you choose my son? The two of you couldn’t be more different.”

“It’s just hair. I think the piercings are cool. He thinks the piercings are cool, because we’re not as different as you might think. Rid’s a fantastic guy, loads of fun to hang with, so why wouldn’t I want to? It pisses me off that more people don’t.”

“That’s another thing, I don’t appreciate how you talk around him. He doesn’t need to hear words like that.”

I stare at her, I’ll admit, dumfounded. Because, what? “You mean piss?”

“That would be one he’s using now.”

“He hears worse than that at work.”

“Yes, well… you spend the most time with him.”

“So you’re saying I’m a bad influence?”

“You said it.”

“No,” I correct her. “I voiced it. You couldn’t be any clearer if you’d screamed it in my face. Open your eyes for once and look at the strides he’s made this summer. I’m not as bad an influence as you think. John doesn’t think I’m bad for Rid.”

“John’s not his parent.”

“Mom.” Ridley must have been listening. We both turn not having realized he had come back in with the shopping bags. She flinches when he calls her name a second time, “Mom,” he says again, more forcefully, gritted through heavily clenched teeth. “You will not talk to him like that.”

Wow.

Wow.

Without thinking, I go with my first instinct, to reach out to him, to hold him and comfort him. Let him know I have his back. Last minute I realize my mistake and stop abruptly. Apparently not good enough for Ridley anymore, he looks at me, shakes his head once and grabs at my wrist pulling me the rest of the way over to him, wrapping an arm around my waist. Not how one holds a friend. Even as blind as she tries to stay, she can’t deny his gesture. Though even if she were stubborn enough to try, what he does next well…

The bags he’d been carrying dropped on the floor by his feet. The hand not around my waist, he hangs at his side, but not opening or closing. The man has never made such a dominant, confidant statement to his mother in front of me before. And judging by way her eyes go round and her mouth gapes open, he’s just never made it period.

Looking her directly in the eyes, he lays it out for her. “I’m in love with him. We’re together, a couple. You won’t disrespect him like that again.”

I shouldn’t have found it hot. I should have found it scary, mortifying or a plethora of other emotions because he just dropped the L bomb. The BF bomb. To hismother. But turned on is the only thing besides an overwhelming sense of love that I feel. Because seeing Rid take charge, god, it’s hot.

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