We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  Even in my all-black wedding-planner outfit, I feel overdressed for the beach. Still, I am determined to use this night to prove that Tarek and I can be friends again. He was the best part of my summers, and for so long, I was devastated he might not be part of this one. Now that he’s here, it’s not just that I need an ally at work, a buffer between my parents and me—it’s that I want a friend, whether it’s the friendship we used to have or something entirely new.

  It takes a few attempts to get the fire going as we position ourselves on blankets around the pit. Harun pours champagne into a plastic cup and takes a swig. “I’m always surprised when there’s alcohol left,” he says, passing it to Stella. “I feel like they usually underestimate how hammered their guests want to get.”

  “They didn’t even splurge on the good stuff?” Stella peers at the label. “I don’t know if you can legally call this champagne.”

  “Hopefully that just means we’ll get wasted faster,” Bryce says.

  “I’ve seen worse,” I volunteer. “We had an open bar a few years ago that the couple stocked with only Manischewitz and Two Buck Chuck. There was almost a riot.”

  “See, I bet you have the best wedding stories,” Elisa says. “While the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me was getting vomited on by a bride.”

  Since she’s driving, Elisa declines, and when it’s my turn, I pour only a small amount into my cup before passing it to Tarek, whose eyes meet mine over the lip of the bottle. Now that we’re not pressed against each other in the back seat of a car, I can see his shirt says SHARON VAN ETTEN, a musician I like too. Maybe I’ll ask him about her later, since Tarek and I are friends again and that is a friendly kind of question.

  “Anyone up for Never Have I Ever?” Stella says. “Harun and Elisa have been here the longest—well, aside from Tarek, who was basically born into this. But I only started working here a few weeks ago.”

  “Team bonding!” Elisa says. “I’m game.”

  “As long as we don’t corrupt my baby cousin,” Harun says.

  “You’re only two years older than me.”

  “Two and a half.”

  We start by holding up ten fingers, taking a sip and putting one down each time we’ve done something. I should have known that with college kids, a game like this was bound to turn sexual immediately. The first round is innocent: declarations about school, work, awkward moments from childhood. “Never have I ever… hard-core embarrassed myself in public,” Elisa says.

  Tarek takes a long drink without missing a beat. “Worth it, though.”

  “You and your grand gestures,” Elisa says with a shake of her head, and I search her words for subtext. There’s no way she’d be so cavalier about this if she turned him down at the marina. At least, I don’t think so.

  “I maintain that the only embarrassing one was the flash mob,” Tarek says proudly. “Because we all know I can’t dance. Everything else, I was running on pure adrenaline.”

  “They’re so sweet,” Stella says. “The most a guy’s ever done for me was ask me to prom by writing it out on a pepperoni pizza. And he got hungry on the way over, so technically he asked me to POM.”

  “Sure, it’s sweet, but if he doesn’t get at least a hundred likes within an hour, he deletes the post,” Harun says.

  “I absolutely do not.” Tarek folds his arms across his chest. “One hundred and fifty.”

  Everyone laughs at this, and when I try to, it sounds more like a croak.

  When it’s Stella’s turn, she gives the rest of us a wicked grin and says, “Never have I ever had sex in the shower.”

  It feels like a tremendous relief that Tarek doesn’t take a sip.

  Harun’s turn. “Never have I ever… jerked off while stuck in traffic. But I’ve definitely thought about it.”

  Elisa raises her faux-Croix-filled cup high and takes a sip. “I was stuck on I-5 between Tacoma and Olympia, and no one was moving.” She shrugs. “I was bored.”

  Bryce takes a sip too, and Stella’s mouth drops open. “Bryce Terpstra, you did not,” she says. “Where did you even put it when you were done?”

  Elisa holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

  My face grows warm, a side effect of the champagne combined with talking about something I’m not uncomfortable doing—though I’ve never done it in a car—but not entirely comfortable talking about. I can’t decide if I want to be able to say I’ve done any of these things or if I’m content telling the truth. And what either of those impulses says about me.

  It’s not that I’m worried about them judging me—it’s that Tarek is sitting next to me, and the idea of him knowing something this intimate feels contrary to the friendship I’m trying to resurrect. We’re not there yet, and this isn’t where I want to start.

  As if he can sense my uncertainty, he taps my leg with his cup, drawing my gaze to him. “You okay?” he asks in a low voice. With a thumb, he scratches at his forearm, wrinkling the fabric of his catering shirt.

  The firelight hangs on to the angles of his face. The curve of his brow. The cut of his jaw. Everyone must realize how lovely their friends look in the light of a firepit on a beach at midnight. It’s one of the hallmarks of friendship, I’m pretty sure.

  “Yep. Great.” And then it’s my turn. “Never have I ever… cheated on a test.” Everyone groans at that, and I tell myself I don’t mind.

  “She’s in high school.” Elisa reaches across Tarek to pat my knee. “She hasn’t been inducted into R-rated Never Have I Ever.”

  I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be offensive, but along with the knee pat, it feels ten times more patronizing than anyone who’s marveled at how young I am to be playing the harp. My parents have treated me like an adult since I was twelve. To them, I am a colleague. An employee. I’ve always felt mature for my age, relished the compliments when my parents’ friends doled them out. At least, they always felt like compliments.

  Now I’m wondering if maybe they weren’t.

  “Never have I ever… had sex in public,” Bryce says, and Tarek lifts his cup to his mouth, gives this sheepish smile, and takes a sip.

  The champagne in my stomach stages a revolt.

  Elisa tips her cup to him. “Lucky girl.”

  “In my defense, it was late at night on her apartment rooftop after prom, and almost no one had access to it,” he says. “And it was over very, very quickly.”

  Bryce shoves his arm. “Really selling yourself, buddy.”

  Okay. Breathe. Tarek has had sex. So have I. Clearly we are not the kids we once were. Tarek has had sex on an apartment rooftop and maybe other places too. He had this whole mystery year in college too—who knows what else happened.

  After prom. That means it had to have been with Alejandra Agustín, the girl who had gourmet snacks waiting for her in every class period. They were together for a few months, about as long as most of his relationships. He posted photos with her at least every week, and they never looked real: the two of them on a playground, a silhouette of their linked hands, Tarek kissing Alejandra’s cheek while she closed her eyes. And the parade of likes below each one. Part of me must have separated the gestures and the performative photos from real physical intimacy, even the kind that’s over “very, very quickly.”

  Jesus, this game is dangerous.

  “Never have I ever had sex in public” turns into “sex with anyone else here,” which no one drinks to. Harun throws his hands up and says, “Just wanted to know!” This discredits my heaps-of-orgasms theory, but I guess they could be lying. Next is “sex in a car,” which sparks a debate about whether it’s the same thing as “sex in public” and gives me an opportunity to take my first sip in two rounds.

  Stella claps my shoulder, like she’s proud of me, and when Tarek’s eyes meet mine for a brief moment, I look away fast, as anxiety and regret war for control of my brain. I have to fight the urge to qualify my statement. It wasn’t hot. It wasn’t sexy. We were in the parking lot of a Denn
y’s that closed a couple years ago, and if there’s anything less sexy than a Denny’s, it’s an abandoned Denny’s. And what happened in the back seat was not a Grand Slam.

  I felt wanted for only a few minutes before it felt almost compulsory, this thing to get over with so both of us could check something off a list. So both of us could take a sip during Never Have I Ever.

  “This shit is strong,” Harun says, and wow he is right. “We should call it. Who has the most fingers left?”

  “Gotta be Quinn,” Bryce says. On a related note, he becomes my least favorite of the group. “She drank, what, three times?”

  “Four,” I say in a small voice, wagging my remaining six fingers, and I am declared the winner.

  Turns out, it’s not the kind of game you feel awesome about winning.

  * * *

  Lady Edith meows from my bed as I tiptoe into my room and gently shut the door behind me.

  “I know, I know, it’s late,” I whisper, kicking off my shoes and sliding onto the bed next to her, reaching out a hand to scratch her head. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but you didn’t have to wait up for me.”

  Her purr lifts some of the weight from my shoulders as I swap my slacks and blouse for a T-shirt and pajama shorts and rub a makeup remover wipe over my face. I smell like a campfire, but I’m too exhausted to shower right now. As I slide between my sheets, I realize I’m not quite ready for sleep. All my cells are on alert, like I’m back at the beach and waiting for the next question. My mind trips over what I learned about Tarek, what he learned about me, and then I’m entirely too charged to fall asleep.

  So I pick up my phone and do something reckless.

  I call him.

  “Hello?” Tarek says when he picks up after three rings, voice thick with sleep. “Quinn? Is everything okay?”

  Shit shit shit. Why the fuck did I call him? “Yeah, all good,” I chirp back, too high-pitched to my own ears.

  “It’s”—a pause—“after two a.m.”

  “Sorry.” I wince, even though he can’t see me. Edith gives me her most judgmental look. “I—um. Couldn’t sleep.”

  “I could read you one of my Philosophy 101 textbooks.”

  “Please,” I say, but then I hear the soft creak of bedsprings, like he’s about to do that exact thing. “Wait—I was kidding.”

  “Oh.”

  “That was, um. Fun tonight,” I say. “Fun” isn’t the right word. Dancing at the wedding, that was fun. But what happened on the beach…

  “Was it?” he asks. Maybe he feels just as unsettled about it as I do.

  “I don’t know. I felt a little… young. Like I was crashing some big-kid party.”

  “You weren’t,” he insists. “I assure you, you don’t suddenly become an adult as soon as you eat in a dorm cafeteria or get your first pair of shower shoes.”

  “My parents have treated me like an adult for years,” I say. “And I guess I got it in my head that I had all this maturity. But… I clearly don’t.”

  It just slips out. I wasn’t planning on talking about it, least of all to him. I thought he’d tell me good night and hang up, leaving me in the dark with my uncertainties and swirly thoughts. This conversation is a nice surprise.

  “There are probably a thousand ways to be mature other than those game questions.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m just not in the habit of talking about any of that. My parents’ sex talk was basically ‘This is a condom, always use one, any questions?’ ”

  “Ah.” More rustling on his end of the line, and I wonder if he’s sitting up in bed now. “Did I ever tell you what my parents’ sex talk was like?”

  “You did not.”

  “I need to preface this by saying that when I was little, I really wanted a brother or sister. I was ten, and my parents sat me down at the kitchen table and gave what I’m sure was a very comprehensive, age-appropriate speech, then encouraged me to ask any questions I had. I told them I completely understood, but that it would be super helpful to have a visual aid. So”—he breaks off, muffling a laugh—“I politely informed them that they could go make me a sibling, I could watch, and then I’d know exactly how it was done.”

  “Well, sure. You were just trying to be thorough.”

  “They proceeded to tell all their friends about it for the next five years of my life. They still bring it up at parties sometimes.”

  Now we’re both laughing. We’ve never talked like this, and the mere fact that we’re talking again is something I’m still processing.

  “Why are we talking about this?” I say. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “Maybe because we’re friends.” He singsongs the last word, breaking it into two pieces. “Wait. I don’t want you to get in trouble for waking anyone up.”

  “I won’t. I’m up in the tower.”

  “The tower,” he says thoughtfully. “Right, how could I forget? The first time I met you, you said, ‘I’m Quinn and I live in a castle.’ ”

  “I can’t imagine introducing myself any other way.”

  “I always wanted to see it,” he says, and I might be imagining it, willing it into existence, but the weight of his suggestion hangs between us for several long moments.

  “Well, let me give you the grand tour.” Before I can overthink it, I’m finger-combing my hair and switching the call over to video, and after a few more seconds, there he is, a little fuzzy in the dim lamplight. His hair is sleep mussed, his T-shirt rumpled, and he’s wearing glasses I’ve never seen before, a pair of simple black frames. I didn’t even know he wore contacts. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in a T-shirt in a very long time. There’s this sense of coziness, like I could slip through the phone and fall asleep right there in his bed.

  “All right,” he says, a smile curving his lips. It’s a really good smile. “I’m ready. Are those llamas on your shorts?”

  “Or alpacas. I’ve never been sure.” I turn the phone on my cat, who’s glaring at us from the foot of my bed. “This is Lady Edith Clawley, my cat daughter. She hates everyone but me.” Then I tilt it toward my closet. “This is where I keep all my very boring dresses to wear while playing the harp.” I rise from the bed and gesture to the other side of the closet with a flourish. “And these are my more exciting ones for the rest of the time.”

  Then I show him my desk, where Maxine Otto’s business card is sticking out from beneath my mouse pad. Emerald City Harps. I’ll recycle it tomorrow, I decide. Once I look her up and know for certain what Emerald City Harps actually does.

  “What’s that red box?” he asks.

  “Oh.” I pick it up, shifting it so he can see the label. “Microwavable chocolate mug cakes. I’m addicted. I have to keep them up here or everyone else will steal them.”

  His disdain is palpable even over the phone. “You know, that kind of thing isn’t hard to make from scratch. It would probably taste a hell of a lot better too.”

  “But I like processed sugars!” I turn over the box and scan the ingredients list. “I like hydrogenated palm kernel oil!”

  He just shakes his head, and there is something so endearing about his dessert snobbery.

  I show him the painting of Edith that Julia made for me in her freshman-year art class, the one with Edith’s head on the body of an eighteenth-century French aristocrat. The shelf filled with books I want to read but haven’t had the time for. The floorboard that squeaks when you put any amount of weight on it. I think about showing him the strip of photos of us in my nightstand drawer but ultimately decide not to. I don’t want him to think I hung on to them for any reason other than nostalgia.

  Lastly, I turn the phone back to my bed. “And here’s where I make ill-advised phone calls in the middle of the night.”

  When he laughs, it’s this low, dangerous scrape of a sound. This whole thing suddenly feels wildly intimate, Tarek in his bed as I climb back into mine, his eyes heavy-lidded and his voice crackling in my ear.

  “I like yo
ur castle,” he says, and I don’t bother fighting a smile.

  Part of me wants to ask him for a tour too, but I’m not sure what that reciprocity would suggest. “It’s late,” I say, catching sight of the time. “Well, later. I have to be up early for a consultation with my parents.”

  “The wedding business never sleeps.”

  “Even if I must. Night, Tarek. And, um—thank you. For talking.” I don’t know why I feel compelled to thank him. Maybe because I woke him up, and I want him to know how much I appreciate this, how committed I am to our rekindled friendship.

  “Thank you for the tour. Good night, Quinn,” he says, and when we hang up, my face warm and my heart pounding, I feel even more electric than before.

  10

  It’s still a little long,” Victoria says as she steps out of the dressing room, holding the hem of her gown. “I’d prefer not to fall flat on my face in front of thousands of viewers. The internet doesn’t need any more GIFs of me.”

  The saleswoman charges forward with pins and measuring tape while I endure the quiet shame of having used one of those GIFs.

  At first I was anxious to meet Victoria. On TV, she was Victoria H. because there had been two Victorias the previous season, when the lead picked Victoria B. over her. Her long dark hair was straightened and shiny, her skin flawless, her clothes and makeup designed to bring out the blue in her eyes. In real life, she wears her hair curly, prefers glasses to contacts, and uses only a little mascara. I thought she’d be pristine, airbrushed. But what struck me the most was that she just looked… like a regular person.

  I reach for a glass of complimentary champagne as Mom lifts her eyebrows at me in an expression that says, Maybe you get away with this at home, but are you really going to pull this in public? This is not the version of my mother who played along with the Perfect Match cliché game.

  Grumbling, I set it back down and sink into the plush cream couch. I’m wearing my most professional and least comfortable business-casual attire: itchy gray pencil skirt, sheer blue blouse, fitted black blazer. This pencil skirt was clearly not made for someone with hips. When I walk, I have to take very small steps. Fantasizing about the perfect yellow sundress in my closet is the only thing getting me through this.