Bringing along backup was a good idea. The Doyle side outnumbered the King side, and Jackson was acting-gasp-the slightest bit friendly. Like he'd gotten caught up in this "big night out" as much as she had.
Curling up even closer to Marcus, getting all snuggly under his arm, Fi looked up at him. Always fair, Marcus looked healthy nonetheless, with a little flush in his cheeks, a crisp look in his eyes. For possibly the eleventh time that night, she said, "You look so good."
He kissed her forehead. "I feel good."
"Dude, you have crazy allergies," Trent said. "There's this girl on the lacrosse team who's allergic to everything, but she still comes to school."
"It's different," Fi said, shooting him a shut up glare.
"I tried her gluten-free potato snack sticks once," Trent continued. "Tasted like salted cardboard."
Fi wanted no allergy-intolerance, sensitivity, whatever-talk tonight. "So why the sudden freedom?" she asked, nuzzling more deeply into her cute, cute boyfriend.
"Maybe they just wanted us out of the house," Marcus said, laughing.
Jackson made a gagging noise and put his mug on the table. "Ugh. Gross." Gwen's eyes darted between his mug and him. "Not the coffee," he said. "My parents' sex life."
Marcus did a spit take into his green tea.
"I walked in on my parents when I was ten," Trent said. "Dad said they were wrestling. It scarred me for life."
"I can top it," Gwen said. "Hippie neighbors, in their sixties. Two a.m. naked time in the backyard hot tub every Tuesday."
"Please. Mine's worse," Trent said.
"There are four of them."
And so it went, each person telling a story that had the slightest thing in common with the other's and on and on and on so that no one really knew how they ended up on Marcus's story about the guy who went to Europe with four hundred dollars and still managed to backpack six whole months.
"Another thing for the bucket list," he said, nudging Fi and Jackson at the same time.
Jackson shook his head, his eyes focused on the ceiling.
Fi was about to smack him when Gwen said, "I want to do junior year abroad in Italy. Florence. See Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Michelangelo's David. Paint there."
Ryan pivoted, brows drawn. "Since when?"
"All my life," she said. "I've told you that."
"Uh, no."
"Uh, yes. It's on the spreadsheet."
"What spreadsheet?" Trent asked.
"All the schools we're applying to." Gwen ticked off her fingers with each item she listed. "We've got columns for art programs, athletic division, scholarship potential, ranking of the business school. Stuff like that."
Ryan's girlfriend must be the only spreadsheet-making painter in existence. Weren't the creative types supposed to be clueless and flighty, always losing their phones and forgetting to put gas in their car?
"It's sorted by distance," Gwen said. "Since we're probably not going to the same place." She nudged Ryan with a small smile. "Not many business-painting-lacrosse schools."
"How does Italy affect the distance tabulations?" Ryan asked her.
"It's probably a wash against all the pre- and postseason training," she said, with a look. "Not to mention the travel games."
"O-kay," Fi said. No public displays of issues tonight. "Who wants something?"
"My break's over, anyway," Gwen said. "I'll get the refills. You two stay here," she added, smiling warmly at Fi and Marcus.
Fi curled back into Marcus. "Looks like my family's not the only one that's crazy," he whispered.
"They really excel at it, though," she said. "Like, maybe the top ten."
He laughed and kissed her on the head.
"Ugh, stop kissing my sister," Ryan grumbled.
Grabbing Marcus's jaw, Fiona brought her boyfriend's face to hers for an inappropriately long and public kiss-that she never got to finish. Jackson groaned, "Good Lord," while Ryan and Trent threw pillows at them.
They pulled away from each other, and Marcus shifted down, propping his feet on the table. He winked at his brother. Fi stuck her tongue out at hers.
"That was a disturbing display of germ-swapping," Trent said.
"You use your sleeve as a Kleenex," Fi said, but regretted it immediately, as Jackson started eyeing Trent's shirt suspiciously.
"So, Jackson," she said, quickly changing the subject. "Have you heard from Northwestern?"
She knew the answer. Marcus told her he'd gotten the letter a few weeks ago.
"I have," he said, like a normal person might. "But I'm deferring a year."
"Why?"
Jackson took a long sip of coffee. "It's just not a great time."
"I thought we talked about this," Marcus said, looking straight ahead, not at his brother.
"I heard your opinion," Jackson said. "I just have a different one."
"It's as good a time as any, Jackson," Marcus answered.
"So then later will work, too."
Fi had been thrilled when Marcus said Jackson was going off to school. Even so, she understood Jackson's position. Or what she guessed was his position, since he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her about it.
He didn't want to leave Marcus.
Neither did she.
"You can do that?" she asked. "They don't mind?"
Jackson studied her with an expression she couldn't read. "I don't know if they mind. But yes, you can do that."
Marcus nudged her. "You can also transfer in-either in the second semester or sophomore year."
"You can only transfer in if they accept you," she said.
"Yes, but they can't accept you when you never apply."
Fi curled in on herself when Marcus said that last bit, making a point of not looking at Ryan or Trent.
"What?" both yelled at the same time.
"You never applied?" Ryan barked.
"Freaking unbelievable," Trent said.
"I'm sorry," said Marcus. "I thought they knew."
"They do now," she muttered against his chest.
For the next five minutes, Trent and Ryan alternated the rant. Was she crazy? She'd wanted to play for Northwestern since she was fourteen! She took the SATs three times to get the right score. What was all the rehab for? What was all the work for? That coach wanted her, which was a stroke of luck right there. Girls from Virginia and Maryland and New England got those spots, not girls from Memphis. Did she have any idea what kind of opportunity that was? It was the best program in the country!
"Okay, y'all," Marcus finally said. "I think she got the point."
"You could have interrupted them earlier," she said.
Trent stormed off dramatically. Ryan shook his head in disappointment and followed. "I'm going to get some food," Jackson said, and left as well.
"You okay?" Marcus asked.
She shook her head, not able to talk past the golf-ball-sized lump in her throat. Crying in Otherlands-with Trent and her obnoxious brother and his obnoxious brother all nearby-was unacceptable.
"I'm sorry," he said again.
She wanted to yell at him, but that would ruin their one night out. "You shouldn't have said anything," she said.
"They're not wrong," he said. "I saw that email. The coach wants you."
"It's too late now. The team's set."
"Maybe not. Maybe whoever else she had in mind for your spot said no. Or got a better offer. You could at least check."
"Are you trying to get rid of me?" Good Lord, now she really was going to cry.
"You sound like Jackson," he said. "And I'll tell you the same thing I've told him. I feel horrible that you're changing your life for me."
"Maybe I'm the girl with the better offer."
"It's not a one-or-the-other, babe." He pointed to the table where they first met. "The first time I saw you, you had an awful pink cast over a horrid compound break, and you still couldn't shut up about lacrosse. And Northwestern. You said it was your dream, Fi. How can you not go after it?"
"Because my dream changed."
It wasn't like choosing between the two things she loved more than anything had been easy. The night she'd finally tossed all her NU brochures into the trash, she'd clutched Panda for dear life, like she was a little kid. She'd never cried so hard.
"But you can have both," he said.
She'd spent eight months trying to figure out how to do just that. It was impossible. "It's too late. I missed the deadline, and I already said yes to Milton."