Principles of Love by Emily Franklin

Author:Emily Franklin [Franklin, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5223-7
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-09-27T21:24:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Waking at five in the morning with Jacob’s head on my shoulder, my arm twisted and cramped on the chair, makes me wince in pain and then gasp with the rush of reality: I never went home. I slept here. With him. Not slept with but next to, and oh my God I need to magically fly into my window (Peter Pan where are you?) and be able to walk down the spiral stairs and into the kitchen where in a couple hours my dad will be making his traditional Sunday morning shape pancakes (letters, weirdly shaped animals, Pollack-esque designs made from dribbling batter from a fork).

“Shit,” I say and nudge Jacob.

“I know,” he says sheepishly, but grinning. It was worth it — I think. I hope.

“We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

I do a thirty-second tidying up when Jacob goes to the bathroom and then we slink out the side door. We lock up, and book it back towards the T. Of course, the T doesn’t start running this early on Sundays, so we’re screwed. Jacob saves the day by calling a taxi with his cell phone and we get the car to stop several blocks away from campus. The light is just shifting from night to morning and soon the smoke will curl from the dorms and my dad will wake up.

Jacob and I stand in the clearing in back of the library and wait for one of us to do something. My heart is racing from the way he’s staring at me — he’s got dark blue eyes rimmed with yellow, and he’s tall, so when he hugs me I feel enveloped and safe.

Unlike I do when I decide to tell my first nose-growing whopper lie to my dad. Sure, I’ve done the “no, I don’t have any homework” line to avoid being sent upstairs during Thursday night tv, but until this moment I haven’t ever crafted an intentionally big lie. I haven’t had to. Even the car thing was more like an oversight, a part of life I left out explaining. But this I can’t get out of, especially after finally winning back regular Dad (as opposed to militant principal Bukowski).

I unlock the front door and sit at the kitchen table, waiting for my dad. First I sit in my jacket, going over my lines. Six-thirty. He’ll be emerging in his robe soon, with his hair sticking up on one side. Seven. I hang up my jacket on one of the brass hooks that poke out from the hall closet. Seven fifteen and I’m changed into sweats and by seven thirty I’m drinking coffee and reading a day-old Boston Globe. Then I reconsider and go out the front door onto the porch and pick up the blue-wrapped Sunday Globe — it gets delivered each week. If my dad came down now, would he know that I didn’t just wake up and trot downstairs having slept soundly in my bed all night?

I’m weighing the pros

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.