Loving the Boy My Family Raised

2: 2

I didn't have the appetite for dinner when I got home, so I went straight to my room.

I'd just finished showering when someone knocked. It was Burton.

He set the juice and dinner on the desk and sighed.

"I didn't turn Jenna down back there because she's got a lot of pride. We're classmates. It would've embarrassed her in front of everyone. That's all it was."

I said nothing. He looked a little helpless.

"Still not letting it go? Then I guess I'll have to use this."

He took out a wish card.

"You said as long as I held on to it, I could ask you for one wish. Right?"

I'd given it to him for his birthday this year.

I'd been afraid of picking the wrong gift and upsetting him again, so I wrote that out and gave it to him instead.

Something in me softened. Was Burton going to spend the wish just to get me to stop being angry?

Was he actually going to be the one to give in for once? Because before, I was always the one who apologized first.

The next second, I heard him say, "I want you to take Jenna abroad to study with us."

"Don't worry about the English exam. She just barely passed."

I froze, sure I'd misheard.

"Didn't she already send in her applications?"

Burton pressed his lips together. "I know. But Jenna's scores only get her into a community college here."

"Her mom raised her alone. It wasn't easy. Once Jenna comes back with a degree from overseas, she'll have real prospects, and things will get better for the two of them."

"It's fine if the school she applies to is a little ordinary. That kind of money is nothing to you. What's wrong with helping someone out?"

My eyes went wide in disbelief.

Back when it was about the pendant, Burton had decided I was using money to humiliate him, and he wouldn't speak to me no matter what I did.

Later I happened to see his diary and learned his dream was to study in England.

So I quietly applied to schools for both of us, and because I was afraid of bruising that sensitive pride of his,

I lied and said I was the one who wanted to go, that I didn't want to be alone and wanted him to come with me.

Back then Burton hadn't looked the least bit happy. He'd even made it sound like a favor.

"For the sake of your family taking care of me all these years, I'll go with you."

"But I'll still sit the SATs and put in my college applications, so no one thinks I'm some parasite who couldn't manage on his own and had to lean on you."

And now look what he was doing.

Buying a pendant was mooching off my family and pointless, but blowing my family's money to send Jenna abroad for free had a point?

I let out a bitter laugh.

"That kind of money? Even the most ordinary school runs at least a few hundred thousand a year. If you know how hard things are for her mother, then she should have studied and worked hard all along, instead of playing games every day."

"She did badly because she earned it. Why should I be the one to cover for her?"

Burton's face went cold in an instant, and he sneered.

"So you wrote this thing just to prove to me you're a liar?"

"May, you're a businessman's daughter. The least you could have is basic integrity. Don't throw away the reputation your parents spent years building."

"A family like yours loves doing charity to save face, doesn't it? I'm giving you the chance to do it."

That was Burton for you. He could always find some high-minded reason.

Some way to show that he was the one in the right, and I was always the one in the wrong.

There was no point arguing anymore.

I drew a deep breath and took the wish card. "Fine. I'll help submit her application materials."

Only then did Burton give one of his rare smiles. "You're finally being sensible. I'll send you her information."

His phone rang. He answered it and started toward the door, his voice going gentle.

"Mm, I'm heading out now. I know. The vanilla latte from the corner on South Street, light ice, a third of the sweetness, extra vanilla, and one order of strawberry popping candy on the side. Right?"

"Good, I've got it. Wait for me at the theater, I'll go buy it."

Before he left, his eyes swept over the tray on the desk. "Remember to eat. It's not good to waste food."

The door shut. I picked up the glass of fresh juice, thick with the smell of mango, and couldn't help a bitter smile.

So he'd already forgotten I was allergic to mangoes.

When we were young, Burton had been so gentle and careful with me.

Once I ended up in the hospital from an allergic reaction, and it scared him so badly that the next day he printed out a list of everything I was allergic to and taped it to the fridge.

He told the housekeeper never to use any of it, and whenever we ate out, he'd check everything over and over.

Back then he could have recited my allergies backward in his sleep.

When had it started, his smiles for me growing fewer and fewer, his caring about my life less and less?

I told myself people change as they grow up, that he was buried in schoolwork, that forgetting was normal.

It turned out he'd simply found someone more worth caring about.

When my best friend heard about all this, she was so furious she cursed him out over the phone.

"May, have you lost your mind? There's a limit to being this lovesick!"

I tore the wish card to pieces, flushed it down the toilet along with the mango juice, and smiled.

"I haven't lost my mind."

"After all, what I agreed to was only to help submit her application."

Burton was right.

You shouldn't attach some pointless meaning to a thing.

Especially when the person no longer deserves it.