Afterward, when Rachel’s hair had dried, Dagne dropped her at her car with one last lecture about seizing opportunity when it presented itself. Sure, Dagne could say that. She was tall and willowy and strawberry blond. Bitch. As Dagne drove off, Rachel glanced at the coffeehouse and wondered if he was still in there. Maybe having coffee with some other unsuspecting cow. Whatever. She’d had her brush with gorgeous and shrugged it off, got in her car, and drove to the organic grocery store.
She returned to her house under the cloak of dusk so the Valicielos couldn’t see her. As she turned into her drive, she saw Myron’s faded red Geo Metro parked next to the house.
Great.
As she struggled through the kitchen door with two huge grocery bags, Myron waved at her from his seat at the breakfast bar, where he was having a sandwich. He was the kind of guy who did his food shopping in his friends’ refrigerators.
“Hey,” he said as Rachel fumbled the grocery bags onto the countertop.
“Hey,” she said, and, getting the bags down, pushed the hair from her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Eating a sandwich,” he said, holding up a disgustingly stuffed triple-decker salami (salami she had bought expressly because Myron said he loved it and wished she had some). “Where you been?”
“The gym.”
“The gym?” He laughed as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “So hey, Pete Lancaster is doing a poetry reading tonight,” he continued once he was through laughing. “You wanna go?”
“I can’t. I have my weaving class tonight.” She moved to put the milk away and noticed the brownie pan. An empty brownie pan, in which there previously had been four good-sized brownies left. “Dammit, Myron, you ate my brownies!”
Myron paused in his chewing and looked at the empty pan, surprised, then shrugged. “You didn’t leave a note or anything,” he said, flipped the long tail of his hair over his shoulder, and took another enormous bite of salami sandwich. “So what’d you get at the store?” he asked shamelessly.
“Food.” She peevishly shoved her hand into the paper bag and began to withdraw the contents and put them away.
“Got any sodas?”
“In there,” she said, gesturing toward the pantry, the same place she had kept the sodas for the two years she’d known Myron. She watched him get up off the stool, hitch up baggy corduroy slacks over his bony butt, and recalled Dad shouting at her about worthless Myron. Well, the joke was on Dad, hardy har har, because her love life was on the shelf.
Rachel’s family believed Myron Tidwell was her boyfriend. But Myron was not her boyfriend and he hadn’t been in a very long time. Rachel had just never had the guts to tell her parents that it was over with Myron because there’d be a whole big thing about her never having boyfriends and all that.
She and Myron had been an item for two whole semesters, a personal best for her. He taught early colonial history. Rachel had taken his class and at the time, she’d thought he was so cool—he had long, thick hair he wore in a ponytail, and crewneck sweaters, and was casually laid back when he talked.
One afternoon, Myron asked her to stay after class to talk about her test results, and that had been the beginning of a teacher-student relationship that had evolved into a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. But the whole thing had sort of died on the vine when it became clear that their interests in life and relationships were not the same.
As in, he was not that interested.
Unfortunately, that happened after Rachel had waited the requisite amount of time to make sure she actually had a boyfriend and then had proclaimed it proudly to her family. And as they clearly had never expected her to have a boyfriend (in fact, they’d been just a little too surprised by it) . . . Well, long story short, she and Myron had remained friends and she just never mentioned otherwise, preferring to go with the old what they don’t know won’t hurt them theory. It was easy to do—she was in Rhode Island and they were way down there in Texas—
“So your dad called while you were out,” Myron said, bent over deep into the pantry, looking for a cream soda.
That startled Rachel out of her thoughts fast enough. “Did you talk to him?”
“Hell no, just let the answering machine take it. He asked about your dissertation. Sounded like he had an attitude. Is he still giving you grief about it?”
“Among other things.”
“Rachel, don’t let him get to you. Here’s the thing,” Myron said, emerging at last with the cream soda, “your dad has only a high school education. He doesn’t understand the concept of higher learning and how difficult or important a dissertation can be.” He walked to the cabinet and fished out a glass, then reached for the fridge door for ice. “I mean, it’s like my situation.”
Everything wound its way around to being like Myron’s situation if he talked long enough.