Page 61 of Betting on the Boy Next Door
The air of self-disgust clinging to him is so distinct that I’m queasy, worried he’s about to tell me that it all changed because of some terrible tragedy. “Who was right?”
“Both of them. I hope, anyway.”
“Then you turned it around after college?”
He makes a sound, a scoff, maybe. “It would be a better story, wouldn’t it? But no. It escalated my senior year. Drugs got in the mix. I blew off my family constantly unless I wanted something. Sold a couple of watches to get high when my parents got strict with the purse strings.
“And still, when I graduated with my barely average GPA, I had a spot at law school waiting for me. The only thing I contributed to that was an excellent LSAT score. It’s not a test you study for. It’s evaluating logic. Analytical thinking. I took it dead seriously to pour salt in the wound, basically. Like prove Icoulddo it, even while doing everything but actually saying I didn’t want to go to law school.
“But even that score wouldn’t have gotten me in if my dad and Gramps weren’t alumni willing to make a very generous donation to the school’s endowment.”
I hate everything he’s saying. As someone who depended on scholarships and work study to get through school, the attitude Josh is describing toward his privilege is everything I loathe about people who come from wealth.
At least now, as he’s speaking from hindsight, there’s shame in his voice. The guy he’s describing doesn’t sound like the man I’ve been hanging out with.
I keep my tone even as I prompt, “And then you got to law school and realized the error of your ways?”Please let that be the answer.Long silence. Longer silence. “No?”
A sigh. “No. You don’t know how much I wish the answer was yes.”
I mull that for a moment. “Okay. Now I’m in suspense. When and how does the Josh you’re telling me about become the Josh I’m getting to know?”
“You mean when does my grandmother finally turn out to be right?”
“Yeah.”
“I do my first year of law school. I come back and do an internship at our firm because I’m definitely not anyone else’s pick. Whatever. I don’t care. I do the minimum, hang out with friends. Go back for my second year. My professors can’t stand me. My classmates don’t respect me. And I still don’t care. I’m out drinking most nights. Hungover at least half the mornings for class. High as much as I’m not. Unprepared. The more they loathe me, the less I try to hide how much I don’t care about their lectures. And I mean my class lectures and my parents’ lectures when my dad’s buddies keep reporting back to him on what a burnout I am.”
The queasiness gets more intense. I almost don’t want to know what it took to turn him around from that point. Did he hurt somebody . . . permanently? Ruin someone else’s life in order to hit rock bottom? OD? My hands have become tight fists as I wait for the rest of the story.
“The funny thing is, I actually liked law school. Parts of it. Maybe I just really like the law. It’s so foundational to so much we do, and I hadn’t really thought about how much. But I didn’t like that I never got to choose it. And I didn’t like myself for not standing up to my family. So I kept rebelling by underachieving. Andyes, I know how much I was taking for granted.”
There’s so much self-contempt in his tone. I don’t want him to grind himself down if this is all in the past. “I can respect that you recognize that.”
“You’re being more generous than you should.” His tone is cynical, but I sense it’s directed at himself.
“I’m pretty capable of deciding that for myself.”
“Right.” A pause. “Sorry.”
“You’re fine. Continue.” I brace myself, sensing we’re approaching the core of this.
“The semester break comes on and I don’t go home for Christmas. My mom calls and asks. Gramps calls and asks. He says Grams has had a chest cold for a couple of weeks and it would cheer her up to see her only grandson. But I go to freaking Vail with one of my frat brothers to spend the holiday at their chalet. Skiing. Drinking. Harder stuff. Trying to forget I have to go back to a place I hate where everyone hates me.
“I just don’t want to go home and hear from my dad about what an underachiever I’m being. I don’t want to see Gram and Gramps looking disappointed. So I party, skip Christmas, and go back to school. We’re three weeks into the new semester when my mom calls and tells me that Grams has died. Turns out the chest cold was lung cancer. It never occurred to anyone that it could be something that serious, but it’s some super rare kind that nonsmokers can get. She was dead less than four days after the diagnosis.”
I flinch. That’s bad. “That sucks.”
“Yeah. The one person who never gave up on me, and I couldn’t even stop in at Christmas.”
He sounds so sad.
“Josh? I need to get something. I’ll be back in a second.”
“Okay,” he says, but he sounds confused. I would be too if I shared something heavy and he was like, “I gotta go.”
But when I slip inside, I keep going downstairs, out of our back fence, and in through his. When I’m standing at his sliding door thirty seconds later, I text him.Can you come down and open your back door?
There’s no answer, but a few seconds later, a light comes on inside the condo and Josh appears, unlocking the door and stepping back to let me inside. He slides the door shut behind him and leans against it, studying me.
