Page 148 of The Build-a-Boyfriend Project

Eli winces. “Please don’t call yourself ‘Mommy.’”

“That’s not the point here,” Rue tells him. “I thought I raised you better than to do what you did.”

“You did! I mean . . . I just . . .” Eli covers his face with his hands. “I was confused, and I felt desperate. Michael promised me that writer position and I just . . .”

“Honey, if you were that desperate, I could’ve talked to my friends on the board at the press, looked around to see if I could find you any work. Or you could come to them yourself—we have positions open, and there are apprenticeships in the foundry and bindery that we need to fill.” She picks up her glass of red wine. “Turns out not a lot of people these days know how to operate printing presses built in the 1890s.”

“Thanks, Mom, I appreciate it. But I don’t want you to be the only reason I get a job. Besides, I’m not interested in commuting to Berkeley every single day.”

“Self-made,” John adds as he walks in at the tail end of the conversation. “I like it.”

“All the more reason to move to this side of the bridge!” Rue adds, but Eli ignores her.

“More like I could never live with myself if I was so pathetic that one of my parents had to step in to get me what I want.” Eli sighs. “I’ve got a job, anyway, and I’m working on essays. Fangoria’s considering some of my horror writing.”

“Honey, are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

“Mom, please!” Eli doesn’t want her to think he’s angry with her, but the exhaustion has been setting in the last few days. After what seems like a mountain of rejections for both his applications and his essays and articles, Eli can’t help but start to wonder if there’s something wrong with him.

Something that he’d never noticed, something that other people noticed and they’d just never taken the opportunity to tell him before. Eli’s always tried to avoid being up his own ass about his writing, but at the very least he knows he has some eye for what he does. He wouldn’t have survived the journalism program in school if he didn’t.

Maybe he doesn’t have what people are looking for.

Just like Michael said.

“I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to overstep.” Rue slides her hand closer to Eli’s.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just . . . exhausted.”

“I know.” She reaches up, brushing his hair behind his ears. “Maybe a haircut would help?” she says with a smile, trying to break the tension. And Eli allows himself to smile for the first time in what feels like days.

“Maybe, yeah . . .” Perhaps it’s a time for some changes.

Changes that Eli can make for himself.

* * *

It’s in that post-Thanksgiving haze—after dinner has been eaten at three in the afternoon, and everyone’s so full they fall asleep in whatever couch or recliner they land in—that Eli finds himself in the guest bedroom of his mother’s house.

It’s hardly used for what it was redecorated for, serving as more of an office for Rue and John with their desks and computers. There are boxes too, stacked in the corner near the large window that looks out onto the gorgeous back garden.

His mother’s asked him a few times to come by and go through some of the boxes that Eli knows are his. And with everyone else in the house either asleep or sorting through the leftovers, Eli figures now’s as good a time as any.

He cracks open the first box with his name written in black Sharpie on the top, pulling out piles and piles of the school newspapers that he’d saved. He can see the years pass before him, starting off when he was the page designer, printing out articles in various sizes and plotting where they’d go, making sure they fit and the margins looked good. There’s the issue where he had to draw the weekly comic strip—a complete rip-off of a Garfield that he read somewhere—because the artist had a kidney infection.

He spies the first issue where he was made the secondary editor under Louise Davidson, effectively taking over the duties of an actual editor because she’d chosen to be part of nearly every club at school to boost her extracurriculars for college applications.

They’d made the story of his promotion front-page news.

Underneath the papers are some old clothes he should probably donate.

And in another box, there are his LEGO sets, the City sets because he thought those were the most fun, even though his father constantly tried to get him into the other “more interesting” characters.

“Look! These guys are pirates!” his dad had once said in the toy store.

Eli had just pointed to a bus set, complete with a little stop for the minifigures. “That one.”

His father sighed with a smile on his face, and he bought Eli the LEGO bus. There are a few books, mostly ones he had to read for school. Worn copies of Romeo and Juliet, Giovanni’s Room, The Crucible, The Lord of the Rings. There’s a copy of a John Green book checked out from the school library that he never returned, and he tries to not feel guilty about that. Maybe he can mail it back without much consequence?