by Brent, Cora
Shane leans over and rummages in the ice cooler until he comes up with a beer. I raise an eyebrow while he twists open the bottle. Alcohol has never been his primary weakness but it is a gateway to other bad decisions. He takes only a few sips and sets it down on the table, obviously content to nurse the bottle for a while. I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt. Looking out for Shane is an old habit.
Lana remains perched on Shane’s lap and now she’s cutting her steak up into dainty little pieces, none of which she eats. She notices my stare.
“Recovering vegetarian,” she explains with a grimace. “Sometimes I’m still squeamish.”
“Yeah, me too,” Shane says and stabs his fork into a juicy cut of ribeye. He tears off a bite with his teeth. “Totally fucking squeamish.”
Lana elbows him with a smirk. He winks at her. I have to admit they’re cute together.
A buzzer sounds and Lana jumps in her chair, looking this way and that. She locates her phone on a nearby chair and hops over to seize it.
“It’s just Care,” she announces and taps out a text with impressive speed. “She’s almost home.”
I decide that’s my cue to finish my beer and steak. Shane has never said much about Lana’s roommate other than she’s a college girl from Texas. But when it comes to being social, I don’t have a lot of stamina. Especially after all these hints that there might be expectations involved.
“Listen, buddy,” I say as I crumple up my napkin and drop it on my empty plate. “I appreciate the meal but I’m tired as hell. You mind if I knock off early and get settled in?”
Shane nods and raises his hand in a wave. “Yeah, man, I totally get it. Leave the dishes. I’ll take care of them.”
“Whatever you say.”
A small frown crosses Lana’s pretty face when I rise from the table but then she brightens and flips her hair over her shoulder. “I guess we’ll have plenty of time to initiate you into the Hutton party scene.”
I nod even though I’m not a fan of any party scene. Lana flashes one more smile and then moves away from the table to the edge of the rectangular pool that runs nearly the length of the small yard.
Shane calls “Hold on, Phoenix,” before I take another step toward the patio door.
When I turn he sidles up to me and shoots a glance at his girlfriend. She extends a shapely leg and dips a toe into the water.
The look on my best friend’s face is a little sheepish. “I know I’ve said it already but I owe you big time for giving up your summer to come out here.”
I nudge his shoulder. “You don’t owe me nothing.”
That’s the truth as far as I’m concerned. There’s no need to keep score. We found ourselves trapped in a crappy system at the same time and learned to rely on each other for survival. I know Shane would take a bullet for me. He’s far more of a brother to me than my own brother, wherever the hell he is.
A cold finger touches the base of my sweaty neck at the thought of Rafe. I haven’t seen him in years. Chances are high we’ll never see each other again. That ought to bother me more than it does.
Shane delivers another grateful look and I watch him join Lana by the pool. Shane deserves a fairy tale ending in life. If there’s any way I can help him get it then I will.
The sliding glass doors are pushed open and a girl steps outside. She’s enthralled with something on her phone and squints into the early evening sunlight. Her hair is parted in the middle and straight; a light honey color, falling just past her shoulders. She wears glasses, black-rimmed frames cut in a trendy cat’s eye shape that she probably selected to look quirkier than she really is. If she smiles there might be a gap between her two front teeth unless she’d caved to suggestions to correct it with braces.
The last time I saw her the gap had been there.
I’m only standing about six feet away from her but she is distracted, fussing with her phone while trying to keep a bulging red backpack from sliding off her shoulder. She spots Lana and Shane and takes a few steps in their direction, still taking no notice of the stranger on her patio who has stopped breathing.
“Hey girl,” Lana calls. She’s balancing on the edge of the pool, holding onto Shane’s arm as she swings her foot out and kicks up a splash of water. “You’re just in time to meet Jay Phoenix. Jay, this is my roommate, Caris.”
Caris turns to look at me but I move my face to the side. Let her think I’m shy. An asshole. Whatever.
Fuck.
“Hi, Jay.” She lets the heavy backpack slide to the ground with a slight thud. “And it’s Caris Marano if we’re adding last names.”
I already know that. I know her last name and I knew she loves butter pecan ice cream. I know she can find every constellation in a clear night sky and that she wants to be a veterinarian.
Lana shrieks with laughter because Shane has swept her into his arms and now threatens to jump into the pool with her.
“My hair’s going to get wrecked,” she giggles.
Caris watches the poolside struggle and tucks a strand of hair behind one ear, an old habit that stabs at cold places in my heart. She hasn’t really given me her full attention yet. I’m not eager for that to change. God has a really fucked up sense of humor.
Caris Marano.
What are the odds?
Better left uncalculated.
I might assume that some sick hand of fate has delivered us to this backyard nine years after we last laid eyes on each other and I don’t believe in such mystical shit.
I believe in fury and grief and bitterness. I know them all well. And once I knew her too.
I steel myself for a direct look into the grey eyes that are now surveying me but there is no surprise there, no recognition, just a polite level of curiosity as she takes me in. She’s waiting for me to say something.
“Nice to meet you.”
My words sound sharp.
She notices and is puzzled, cocking her head to the side and then looking back at the pool as a gigantic splash signals that Shane has made good on his threat and jumped into the water, girlfriend and all.
I should forgive her for failing to know me. She hasn’t changed significantly but I have. A skinny thirteen year old boy who could hardly throw a punch even to defend himself has been replaced by a scruffy grown man who has long since learned to draw blood when he has to. I don’t look the same. I don’t sound the same. Even my name isn’t the same.
So yes, I should forgive this girl for looking my way and seeing nothing but some unshaven ogre with an attitude.
I should.
Yet I couldn’t.
Because of that one sweet, painful, fucked up summer. The summer I met her. The last summer I was still Jonathan Hempstead.
It’s not reasonable to hope that a light bulb will never go off in her head when we’ll be living in the same house for the next three months. She was never stupid. But for tonight I’m going to be keeping my distance.
Shane and Lana don’t notice that anything is up. They’re messing around in the pool and I am grateful for all the commotion because it keeps Caris from staring at me for more than a few seconds.
“Come on you guys!” Lana, now soaking wet, is perched on Shane’s shoulders and she waves at us. “Jump in. Chicken fight!”
Caris never closed the patio door. I pretend like the invitation hasn’t made its way to my ears and walk right into the house without looking at anyone.
That must have caught everyone’s notice because Shane feels like he has to explain on my behalf.
“He gets quiet like that sometimes.”
Ruby’s orange living room looks even more orange than it did earlier. I don’t stick around in there and so I don’t hear if Caris has an answer to Shane’s comment. I head straight to my room, although later on I start to wonder if she stared after me in confusion after I ran inside.
Or if she’d forgotten me the second I was out of sight.
I hope for the latter.
Caris
“The day was off to an inauspicious start.”
That line has been running like a marquee through my brain ever since realizing I’d slept through my morning alarm and had only fifteen minutes to cover my body in semi-clean garments, run a comb through the hair that still reeked of the greasy diner food I’d been serving until midnight, and pretend I’m an Olympic sprinter as I dodge the slow moving student obstacles on a race to the exam room.
I reach the finish line three seconds before the door to the testing room closes and try to stop panting like a dog because (ahem, spoiler alert!) I am actually NOT an Olympic sprinter and this kind of exercise first thing in the morning is not my idea of a good time. Then I catch my breath, look at the exam and realize that before I passed out in the wee morning hours following an unproductive last minute cram session, I really should have paid more attention to the Whiskey Rebellion. I bite my lip to keep the curses from flying out and cross my legs while my bladder howls for relief.
The class was chosen to fill space as an easy elective and should have been a cakewalk this semester; an introductory American History class in the middle of grueling upper division accounting coursework. I would have preferred The Sociology of Star Wars but it was full. With only two semesters left after this one I was eager to get an easy requirement out of the way. I might have misjudged.
After that disaster of a test I take a desperately needed trip to the rest room, become disgusted by my limp-haired, waxy reflection and try to calculate how much damage I’ve just done to my GPA.
The math is depressing.
“The day was off to an inauspicious start.”
I need to hang around campus for a meeting with my Computerized Accounting group to finalize our project but there’s a two hour gap, which I decide to partially fill by dozing off in a fuzzy blue tapestry chair in the Student Union. When I wake up there’s some guy with a carefully groomed goatee and a fishing hat sitting on the floor at my feet and rummaging through my backpack.
“Dude.” I snatch my bag out of his hands. “What the hell?”
He seems hurt. “I need a pen.”
“You need a pen?”
“Yup.”
“I don’t have a pen.”
“Oh. Do you have some gum?”
My head throbs. He seems so earnest. It occurs to me that I might be the subject in someone’s psychology project. That happened to a friend of mine. She was minding her own business and eating waffle fries out on the quad when a pair of distraught girls approached and asked her to help them search for a lost ferret. Though the request was odd, my friend disliked the thought of misplaced ferrets and crying girls so she helped. For three hours she combed the campus and asked everyone in sight if they’d noticed a confused ferret running around. No one had. Because no such ferret existed. After pressuring her to abandon her waffle fries and waste her afternoon, she was proudly informed that she’d been an unwitting participant in an academic experiment. Something about strangers helping strangers. She was thanked for her contribution and presented with a coupon for a free scone at the Student Union coffee stand.
“Fuck you,” she said and stalked off to buy more waffle fries.
I’d like to say I would have done the same thing but I probably would not have had the nerve.
My goateed beggar is still staring at me so I break the news that I don’t have any gum and then excuse myself to go buy a churro for lunch. I’m holding a handful of warm sugary perfection when a thick elbow jostles me from behind and knocks it out of my hand. It lands on a patch of dirtily discolored tile.
“Sorry,” grumbles the hulking brute who abused me and then he disappears into the crowd.
I snatch the churro up and consider whether the five second rule applies to the grimy floors of the Student Union. I decide it does. And that was definitely less than five seconds. I take a bite. Then I notice that I’m being watched with disgust by a nearby suntanned blonde wearing a one piece outfit the color of a yellow highlighter.
“Don’t judge me,” I say and take a bigger bite.
She rolls her eyes and scrolls through her phone.
I exit the double glass doors to the quad and prepare to relax on a grassy patch. Balancing the uneaten churro portion on one knee, I withdraw my phone to see what kind of earth shattering developments have occurred in the ninety minutes since I last looked at my phone.
Alden has texted a pic of himself, shirtless and sweaty and pressing weights at the gym. He’s added a caption.
Muscle God.
A snort of laughter bubbles out of me but I stare at the image for a few long seconds. Alden is easy on the eyes, always has been. We started out in veterinary medicine together before he switched to political science while I changed to accounting. We’ve been hanging out off and on for a while and I could only guess that his motivation for this cheesy skin shot is to persuade me to reconsider having sex with him. Sometimes I want to and more than once we’ve come damn close.
Alden is all right. Most of the time. But I already know I’ll never fall for him. Aside from Alden, my relationship experience is limited to three short term boyfriends, two of whom were silly high school romances. I would describe my virginity as a technicality. I’ve done just about everything else and I know how to get off while also getting the guy off. The first time I ever admitted my status to my roommate, Lana, I explained it like this:
I’m afraid I’ll enjoy actual sex much less than I enjoy thinking about sex.
And I enjoy thinking about sex a lot.
It is one of my favorite past times. Becoming disillusioned with my many and sundry sexual fantasies would be a major bummer.
Lana, however, was outraged.
She’d placed her hands on her perfect hips and informed me that my perspective was nothing short of ridiculous. After all, if I didn’t like the way sex worked out with one guy then I could just try another one. Lana feels this way because Lana is gorgeous and filled with sensual confidence.
But me?
I’m bespectacled, small breasted and the frequent recipient of jail bait accusations. But really, I suppose I could be considered cute in an unblemished, girl next door kind of way. Not all of us could make mouths water just by strutting down the sidewalk. Nobody is likely to gag with disgust at the sight of me. That’s better than nothing.
Alden’s sweaty smirk is still taunting me from the phone and I’m tossing around the idea of texting back a filthy response. After today my school responsibilities are pretty much finished and a long hot summer of scribbling burger orders and balancing chicken wing baskets stretches ahead. Some entertainment might be nice. And Alden is entertaining. As long as our conversations don’t run too deep or go on for too long. Then he begins sounding like a complete jackass and I get annoyed.
I notice that besides Alden’s text I’ve missed a voicemail alert. My stomach clenches when I see the caller is my father. He’s never gotten the hang of texting and still leaves long winded messages that sound like he’s dictating a business letter. He’s following up on my call from yesterday. My mother’s panic attacks have returned. She hates taking the meds that always leave her feeling depleted and empty headed but there are consequences when she stops taking them. Two days ago a neighbor had to escort her home from the grocery store after she started hyperventilating in the produce section.
My father’s voicemail is cheerful. He says Mom is doing much better today. He says there’s absolutely no need for me to rush home to Dallas during finals week. They are both looking forward to my planned visit for my birthday next month. I listen to his message a second time and try to decode the meaning behind the bland sentences.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever resents the role he’s played for nearly thirty years as Suzanne’s caretaker. If he has such feelings he never allows them to show. He is endlessly patient. He is eternally devoted. He’s much better at being a husband than I am at being a daughter.
The thing is, I really do adore my mother. I always have. It just hurts to be around her too much. It hurts to see when she spirals downward and grieves for the lost more than she allows herself to enjoy the living.
My mother answers her cell phone on the second ring. She’s in the middle of an at home luncheon with the dog rescue group she volunteers for and I’m glad to hear she’s not just sitting around, sadly awaiting my father’s return from work. She asks about my exams and if I’m enjoying the homemade canned peaches she mailed to me three months earlier. The questions sound forced, as if they have been invented for the benefit of her luncheon guests. I’m not sure she listens to the answers because she advises me to study hard this weekend even though I’ve just told her that I finished my last exam this morning. It’s not an ideal moment to inquire about her mental health and I’m never good at choosing my words on that topic anyway. The call ends quickly and afterwards I sit there in the grass, picking at the remains of my churro and wishing I had a better gift for knowing the right thing to say.
I’m no longer in the mood to have sexy thoughts about Alden and yet I don’t want to insult him by ignoring his text. I finally answer with a lame smiley face because I can’t think of a better response. Then I lie back in the grass with my arm over my eyes. The sun is right overhead and the hottest season is close enough to touch. The prickly sensation of grass on my skin and the particular scent of summer conjures carefree emotions; of childhood, of lazy serenity, of simple happiness.
I have no clear idea of how many minutes pass as I sprawl on the quad with formless images floating behind my eyelids but the buzzing of my phone probably saves me from a bad case of sunburn. It’s Lana. She wants to confirm that I’m not working tonight and will be around for the grand arrival of Shane’s best friend.
Shane is Lana’s new boyfriend and he’s also technically our landlord. The death of his godmother, Ruby, left him with an inheritance that includes a local bakery and the house where Lana and I rent rooms. We were shocked and saddened when we learned that the quiet elderly woman who rented half her home to us and generously supplied us with the delectable leftovers from her bakery was dying. Shane proved to be an even bigger surprise. Ruby had never mentioned a godson. He arrived a week after her death and assured us he had no problem honoring the continuation of our lease. We were relieved. It would have been tough to find another place in Hutton that was this cheap, this close to campus, and even boasted private backyard pool access. Shane and Lana hit it off right away and their hot and heavy love affair was giving me a lot of alone time in our side of the house. Shane’s best friend Jay will be crashing here for the summer and from what I understand, he’s coming at least in part to help Shane rescue Ruby’s Bakery from financial collapse.