Page 16 of Mostly My Boss
“You have a face,” he said.
“I’m one hundred percent certain that I do.”
“No, I mean, it’s like that face you make when you’re shutting down. Like when Dara asked you where you’re from the other day.”
Dara had been among the three other girls and one guy we’d had coffee with a few days ago. We’d gotten a large table at this cool coffee place that wasn’t a chain. Everyone had ordered something crazy. I’d stuck with black coffee, which was so plain as to be almost cool. Like I was totally above things that actually tasted good.
“I said Iowa.”
“Yeah, then you shut it down. Hard. Okay, so I told you my story, now you tell me yours. What’s the deal?”
“You told me your story?”
“Hello? Exclusive Manhattan pediatrician. Prescribing his son drugs to keep him calm and focused. That screams Upper East Side, only child with wealthy parents—the overly controlling father and the smothering mother. What else is there to tell?”
I wasn’t sure I exactly understood what the Upper East Side meant. “Like, how far is that in relation to theFriendsapartment? I used to watch the reruns all the time.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“I’m not. Iowa. Farm. Three brothers. Dead father. Stressed-out mother. Freakishly smart daughter. Big grant and an even bigger loan. What else is there to tell?” I fired back, stabbing my fork into the romaine lettuce with shaved Parmesan.
Any Parmesan cheese I’d ever had before came out of a green plastic bottle.
“I didn’t…I couldn’t have guessed.”
I shrugged. He was talking about my dad. “Nope. It was a couple of years ago. My mom’s been…lost ever since.”
“Don’t think you can out-sad me. I’m fairly certain if my mother could be here wiping my face with a napkin, she would be.”
I laughed because it helped cover up the grief. I missed my dad. Like crazy, every single day. But I also missed who my mom was before my dad died.
“Well, I imagine it’s only because you’re so loveable.”
“My point is, we can’t let our families be an excuse for not pushing forward with our plans for the future. I mean, everyone thinks they have a sob story. That’s just the way it is.”
I glanced around at the well-groomed, well-dressed, properly mannered people in the room. “Uh, I don’t think campus is crawling with sob stories.”
“No, it’s true. Watch.” Ethan turned away from me and looked at someone who happened to be passing our table with a tray of food in his hands. The guy was tall, black, good-looking, wearing jeans and an untucked button-down shirt that was the perfect length for his torso. A guy Ethan could learn from.
“Hey, excuse me, could you settle a bet?”
They guy stopped but didn’t say anything.
“Your family is messed up, right?”
I shook my head in disbelief. He seriously just asked that of a total stranger.
“Why, because I’m black?” the stranger asked defensively. “Because I’m black I don’t have a father and my mother is a crack whore and I’m only here because of Affirmative Action and scholarships for the poor?”
Watching Ethan’s eyes grow three times their normal size was hysterical. But of course, racial profiling was no joke. I bit my tongue and did not help him at all.
“Nnnoo…nooo, that’s not it at all. You were just…my point is everyone’s family is fucked up…to them. Not because you’re black…because you’re a…person.”
He sat next to me and dropped his tray on the table. “My father is a US Attorney. My mother is the representative from the 6thdistrict in North Carolina. I have a sister who is in med school—Yale, so of course, we don’t talk about her. Is that what you meant?”
Ethan still hadn’t recovered.
“I’m Julia. That’s Ethan…I don’t think he’s a racist,” I said as an introduction.
