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The Musgraves Girls had formed a habit. They would haunt the sidewalks until either Derek or Charles, and sometimes even Anne, would come walking towards the house. Derek, while not a daily visitor, would often show up on Tuesdays and Thursdays, after Charles’ American History class. Together they would go over what the lecture had been about that day until Charles started to understand it. Sometimes this meant additional sessions.
Anne, well aware how tutoring sessions were set up and paid for with her own sessions to run, began to suspect that Derek was making a tidy profit off of Charles or, at the very least, Charles’s father. Even more, she began to think that the two guys had started to become friends of a sort. After an hour or so of going over notes, correcting notes, and making index cards for Charles to study later, the pair of them would wander off to the downstairs ‘basement’ – also known as the room on the lowest level that was connected to the carport – where Charles had a pool table and a gaming system set up.
Sometimes Charles would invite Charlie Hayes to play with them, knowing that Charlie and Etta had an arrangement of some sort between them.
Only the more often Etta and Isa hung onto Derek’s every word, the surlier Charlie became, starting to turn down more and more of Charles’ invitations.
He wasn’t the only one that attempted to find himself away from the Musgraves’ house. Anne would stay and study in the library just to get away from the noise, gossip, and shrill giggles spilling forth from the nineteen to the twenty-one-year-old trio of girls in that house.
Gone from barely tolerating each other, Mary had warmed up to Etta as soon as she recognized the crush that the older Musgraves sister had on the much older Derek.
In the face of a Senior, poor twenty-one-year old Charlie Hayes was momentarily forgotten.
Disgusted by Etta’s lack of faithfulness, even if nothing had happened between her and Derek, Charlie found himself ignoring her more and more often. If Etta couldn’t make up her mind, then he would make it up for her!
Unfortunately, it was one of those days where Anne couldn’t stall at the library. She suspected that Mary had put off going grocery shopping even though the boys were now in daycare – paid for by their Musgraves grandparents – and Anne knew, since she was doing most of the cooking, that the cabinets were nearly bare.
It didn’t help that Etta and Isa now frequently dined at their brother’s house instead of using their meal plans in the Student Unions Dining Services. Especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays if Charles or Mary could convince Derek to stay for dinner.
And he did far more often than Anne liked. Even worse, he’d be sitting across from her without saying much more than, “Pass the potatoes, please.”
Not even a comment on her cooking skills, which had greatly improved since a cooking disaster that happened when she tried to impress him ‘that summer’.
So, on one particularly annoying Thursday, she followed behind them as Derek walked with Henrietta and Louisa – too annoyed with herself to even to refer to the girls by their nicknames even in her mind – with only a ‘tiny’ bit of jealousy. She’d missed her chance and now Derek tended to pretend as if Anne didn’t even exist!
“Oh yeah,” Isa whispered loudly, “Charles liked Anne first; they went to high school together. He liked to think he was a big reason why she transferred here after she left her art school. But then Mary came to visit Anne on campus for lunch one day and the rest is history.”
Glancing around, Anne was relieved to see that nobody else was within of earshot. They all knew the unspoken meaning behind Isa’s comment.
“So, Anne and Charles dated?”
“Goodness no!” Louisa laughed. “I don’t think she’s seen him as anything more than a friend. He helped her through a nasty break-up after her mom died.”
“Really?” Derek asked, trying to keep the curious interest out of his voice.
“Yeah. Some long-distance boyfriend. Apparently, her father interfered and told the guy that Anne never wanted to see him anymore or something like that. Anne was furious, even more so when the guy ignored her trying to reason out.”
“Is that so?” Derek asked, thinking mostly to himself.
They both knew that Isa didn’t have all of the story, she wasn’t even close, but neither of them cared enough to correct her. Let everybody place the blame on Walter Elliot.
“I would never let my father do that to me,” Isa claimed, reaching for his hand in the process.
Derek, lost in his memories, let her.
They weren’t aware that Anne was nearby, observing them. As soon as she saw Isa staking her claim, Anne withdrew even more from the group.
She had some grocery shopping to do.
