Welcome to Corbet's Inlet, North Carolina, where the teenagers act like adults and the adults act like teenagers. It's Griffin Connolly's favorite place in the world. And while she may not be good at making decisions when it comes to her own life, s...
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There was no yelling or dramatic outbursts. No storming out of rooms or slammed doors. Howard and Melissa Connolly weren't exactly shining examples of parental compassion, but they at least sat and listened while Griffin tearfully tried to explain herself.
She started out with the anxiety she'd been having since March, then got into the emails with Bill Hammond and her trip to Winston-Salem. She tried to be subtle about how complimentary Mr. Hammond had been, not wanting to come off overeager to impress her parents, but she ended up milking it a little bit, anyway. The only thing she didn't mention was what Hammond had said about her highlight tapes.
She almost did, though, but vetoed it at the last minute, worried it might be counterproductive to her argument.
Melissa was a little frantic at first. Probably from to the initial shock of seeing her daughter so upset over something she'd thought was a done deal. She'd rushed over to Griffin, her hands fluttering uselessly as she tried to get Griffin to stop crying. "Honey," she'd kept saying. "You don't really mean that, do you?"
But now, the more Griffin talked, the more her mother resolved to sitting awkwardly with her hands folded in her lap. Griffin saw the subtle S.O.S. looks her mom kept shooting at her husband.
Speaking of Howard.
His fingers were laced and resting on his knee, and he was sitting so still it was hard to tell if he was breathing. The only movement Griffin noticed in the past ten minutes was the line between his eyebrows gradually becoming more noticeable.
"So, yeah," she said, sniffing pathetically. Months of secret emails and mildly debilitating anxiety had boiled down to a fifteen minute monologue in the living room. Griffin couldn't bring herself to look either of her parents in the eye yet. She knew exactly what was going to be there: soul-crushing disappointment. So she stared at her dad's socks instead—at the Washington and Lee Coat of Arms stitched above his ankle.
"OK, just so I'm understanding here," her father began, and Griffin braced herself for the inevitable. "You've felt this way about playing tennis in college since March...or about Washington and Lee?"
"Both?" she said, unsure of which approach was better in the long run.
"Why didn't you say something sooner? Before you let it get this far?" her dad asked.
Griffin's stomach twisted uncomfortably. "I don't know."
"That's not a good enough answer, Griffin."
"I knew," she sniffed again, feeling fresh tears welling up, "I knew you guys wouldn't take it well."
Howard wasn't buying it. "Hogwash," he said. "If you were really this committed to finding another school to attend, you would have stepped up and said something. This is just cold feet, Griffin."
"It's not cold feet," Griffin whined, then caught herself and repeated it with more conviction. She couldn't let her dad oversimplify this, regardless the sudden, tiny stab of fear that he might be right...
