A Guy Like Him

by Amanda Gambill

  ★☽★★☽

  “She’s breaking tradition,” Krista said, annoyed, as I stared at my closet, hating all my clothes.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, holding up a sweater set, wondering why I even owned this. I tossed it on the ground, the hanger clattering against the others in the pile I’d created.

  “Kyle’s mom is trying to break tradition,” Krista huffed, looking up from the wedding magazine she was flipping through on my bed.

  Her latest obsession was bridesmaid dresses, something I was trying to avoid, knowing she’d want all my attention on the task.

  “She wants to go ahead and buy her dress for the wedding, but Mom hasn’t chosen hers yet. The mother of the groom is supposed to wait until the mother of the bride decides.”

  I pulled out an argyle sweater vest and shook my head at it.

  “Why does it matter, Krista? Let them get their own dresses whenever they want. Who cares if they go out of order?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I like tradition.” She made a face at my skeptical one. “You wouldn’t understand, Skylar. Once you’re in the real world, you’ll realize you can’t anticipate every single minute of your day. And you’ll come to appreciate when things stay the same.”

  I nodded, not sure how to respond, thinking maybe I did understand more than she realized. I felt like my schedule changed at the last second all the time, Dean and I taking advantage of spare time to hook up between my demanding course load, SGA, and volunteer obligations and his work schedule, increased painting work load, and dad stuff. Even during my Spring Break, two weeks ago, it had been a challenge to see each other, the night we had spent together almost a distant memory.

  “What do you think about this?” I asked, holding up a black and white plaid pencil skirt.

  “I like it.”

  I tossed it on the pile on my floor.

  “I’ll go dress shopping with Mom this weekend,” I offered even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, knowing it would make Krista happy.

  She smiled. “You’re the best. Anyway, so tonight, just to remind you, Kyle and I have—”

  “Cake tasting. And then he’s dropping you off at the airport right after,” I finished for her, knowing her schedule as well as I knew my own even if she didn’t know mine anymore.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked as I shoved my pageant dresses out of the way, digging deeper in my closet. She sat her magazine to the side and stood over my pile of rejected clothes. “And more importantly, what are you doing with all of these clothes?”

  I was looking for something cool to wear tonight, but I didn’t want to tell her that. Instead, I answered her other question.

  “I don’t want them anymore,” I said simply.

  She gaped at me, and I shrugged.

  “That’s ridiculous, Skylar,” she said, picking up a purple sweater set from the floor. “All of these clothes are nice and look good on you. You’re going to regret donating them. What about when you graduate and work at my firm? We have a dress code, you know.”

  “Maybe I can buy blazers and suits then,” I said, picking up the plaid skirt I’d tossed, wondering if maybe I was making a mistake.

  “That’s so irrational,” Krista said, picking up a crisp white sweater with a cream lace collar from my pile.

  She looked at it and then back at me, and I wondered if this was the moment she would realize that I’d been changing, that I wasn’t the exact carbon copy of her.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said, and I felt myself deflate, knowing she had lost her focus on me. “Don’t forget to look at the bridesmaid dress options I emailed you. I won’t be here to remind you.”

  I nodded. She was leaving for a work retreat, and I was still bitter that I’d had to completely rearrange my upcoming schedule — losing any chances I’d had to see Dean during the week — so we could make the dress appointments she’d set for the week.

  “Okay, I have to get ready for Kyle. What are you up to this weekend?” she asked, her hand already on my bedroom door.

  “Not much,” I said as she turned to look at me one last time, her eyes on the pile of clothes between us. “Have fun with cake tasting. Remember I like chocolate the best,” I said, giving her an air kiss as she made a face and laughed, walking away.

  A sense of sadness washed over me as I stood alone. I picked up the white sweater and plaid skirt she’d folded neatly on my bed, thinking of all the times we’d spent together. How we used to tell each other everything. How we both used to look at each other and instantly know what the other was thinking. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  I felt that same sense of uncertainty later that night as I stared at the red door, not sure exactly what to do, unwilling to get out of my car until I figured it out. There wasn’t a handle on the door, so I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to get in. I could just bail, I thought. I’d never really committed to coming to this. I looked at my phone in my lap, figuring I could just text Dean and make up some excuse for bailing. He probably didn’t really care.

  My phone buzzed, interrupting my self-conscious thoughts. It was Krista, saying she was boarding her flight and would text when she landed. I smiled, glad some things hadn’t changed. Love you, lil sis! she texted, knowing that no matter how far she roamed, how much distance was between us, I still cared to know where she was.

  I thought about telling her what I was about to do, where I was, that I was sitting in front of a place downtown that sounded like a bar but not exactly when Dean had described it a few days ago, about to go inside to wish the guy I’d been sleeping with for six months a happy birthday. But I knew the only way I was going to get out of my car was if this remained a secret, that it stayed just mine, existing in my own world. So instead, I texted her safe travels, that I loved her, too, don’t forget to text me when she landed.

  I took a deep breath and opened my car door, following a couple I knew had to be Dean’s friends, the guy tattooed and bejeweled, the girl artsy and cool with fiery red hair.

  “Hi,” I said as we all approached the red door. “Are you two friends with Dean?”

  “Hi, yeah, I’m Nikki, this is Roe,” the girl said with a bright smile, pointing to the guy who knocked on the door in some elaborate, secret knock kind of way. I recognized him as the other barista whose shifts overlapped with Dean. “This place is so cool. It’s like a speakeasy. Have you ever been here before?”

  I shook my head, feeling very out of my element, having never even heard of something like this. I was used to nice restaurants with white tablecloths and servers in suits for my birthday celebrations. Inside, this place was nothing like that. The only light source seemed to be various melting candles, a cross between club and ambient music played, the random small seating areas had mismatched chairs, and everyone looked like they could have been a hipster patron or a server or both.

  I hadn’t pressed Dean for many details about his birthday, not wanting to seem too invested when he’d texted me about it, but I immediately regretted I hadn’t asked more questions, like how to order when there was no cocktail menu or who I was supposed to be in his world.

  Because as I stood there in a plaid skirt, white lace sweater, and pearl earrings, I felt so out of place among the cool, artsy people surrounding me. I met a part-time woodworker who doubled as a daycare worker, a server that moonlighted as a musician, a watercolor artist who was a receptionist on weekdays, a full-time mixologist, a hair stylist who ran an Instagram account selling handmade jewelry, and even Roe, the barista, worked part-time at the coffee shop as he apprenticed as a tattoo artist.

  Dean and I hadn’t discussed that my showing up was almost breaking Rule 7 — no telling our friends that we were sleeping together — so instead, I introduced myself as Skylar, choosing to identify as just an accounting major, sticking to what I knew best.

  I could hear Krista’s voice in my head, judging their nontraditional outfits. I could hear my mom’s horrified tone at so many t
attoos in one room, skeptical of everyone’s social status. I could also hear my dad’s words, asking why don’t any of these people have real jobs, what are they doing with their life, what was their plan.

  But as much as I wanted to judge them and go home to my perfect life, everyone was instantly friendly to me in my basic clothes and way too cool to dislike. And most importantly, every single person I met gushed over Dean, talking about how funny, caring, nice, and talented he was. It was clear he had the magical ability to make every person he met feel special when he was around, but somehow leaving them in awe of him when he was gone.

  I nodded when the hairdresser, Zara, gushed about his artistic talent. “I know, his paintings are awesome. His landscapes are so realistic,” I agreed, looking around the room, wondering just exactly where Dean was. He had told me people were gathering around 8:30, and it was almost 9. I smiled, knowing if he showed up by 9, he’d consider himself early.

  “Oh, yeah, totally, his commissioned artwork is incredible, but I heard the stuff he’s working on now is even cooler than that,” she said, sipping her cocktail. I still hadn’t figured out how to get a drink.

  The woodworker, Jax, nodded. “Yeah, even though we won’t see it until it’s finished,” he said with a laugh. “He’s so secretive with his pieces. He doesn’t show anyone until they’re finished and perfect. When is he having another gallery show? Didn’t he, like, sell out his last one?”

  Zara nodded enthusiastically as I added more items to my list of questions to ask Dean, having never felt so curious about him before, realizing the more I found out, the more I wanted to know.

  I asked them questions about their own art, getting a crash course on jewelry and wood. I was so interested in what they had to say that I’d missed Dean finally arriving until he walked right up to us.

  “Dean, my man, you need a drink,” Jax said, slapping him on the back. “Happy birthday, dude.”

  “Wow,” Dean said, not even hearing Jax, looking me up and down, smiling, his rich brown eyes sparkling. “I didn’t think you’d show, Skye.”

  I smiled, my heart beating fast and hard in my chest. He looked good, somehow even more attractive than when I’d seen him last, in a blue and white zebra print button-up, nearly halfway unbuttoned, of course, the sleeves rolled at the elbows, blue linen harem pants, blue leather loafers, several corded necklaces, silver barbell earrings on his cartilage and eyebrow, his moon and star studs.

  “Remind me how you two know each other again,” Zara said slowly as we stood in front of each other, our eyes saying more than our mouths ever would.

  “Um,” I said, tearing my gaze from Dean’s to look at her, my mind going blank. “He’s my barista.”

  Dean laughed. “Yeah, she’s a regular.”

  “A total coffee shop slut,” I said, and we both laughed.

  “You don’t have a drink,” he said, nodding to my empty hands. “As your barista, I feel like I should fix that.”

  “We’ll give you two a minute,” Zara said, glancing at Jax with raised eyebrows. “Looks like you need to talk about coffee or something.”

  As they walked away, Dean and I stepped toward each other. I wanted to ask him what we needed to say if people asked how we knew each other, if he knew he was 37 minutes late to his own birthday, what Zara meant by his gallery art, and a million other things I’d learned about him that I wanted more information on. But as I looked at him, blushing instantly, I realized what I wanted more than those things was to kiss him, to hold his hand, for him to put his arm around me right here in the middle of this strange place.

  “Happy birthday, Dean,” I settled on saying, grateful for the weird lighting so he wouldn’t see my flushed face. “And, uh, I don’t have a drink because I couldn’t find a cocktail menu or wine list.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, this place doesn’t have a menu. You tell the bartender flavors you like, and they make a drink inspired by those.”

  “Oh, that’s…”

  “Too artsy?” he teased.

  I shook my head, smiling. “No, that sounds cool.”

  After I’d gotten a drink — refusing to let him pay even though he said it wasn’t a Rule 3 situation, a date, if it was his birthday and we were surrounded by all his friends — and he got a soda water, we fell into conversation with a group of his friends. I listened to them talk about their various art projects and ask Dean about his own, feeling like I hadn’t paid attention to something this closely since I first fell in love with accounting.

  “So, Skylar, what’s your medium?” Roe asked.

  “My medium? Oh, um, I’m not an artist. Like, at all,” I said with a laugh, reminding myself that no matter how cool I thought this place was, I didn’t fit in, this was one of the many reasons Rule 7 existed. “I’m not like you all.”

  Dean shook his head. “No way, that’s not true. She’s an awesome photographer. But Skye’s medium is numbers. She sees the world broken down by numbers in a beautiful way,” he said, looking at me as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t realize this about myself. “It’s like she makes sense of all of life’s chaos in a matter of seconds.”

  I shook my head, disagreeing, and he rolled his eyes.

  “It’s true. She can probably tell you the exact square footage of this place, how many candles are in here, how much time to the second until midnight, and solve any math problem you throw at her. We see colors and shapes, she sees numbers.”

  He smiled at me, and then, without a word, put his arm around my shoulders. My heart started banging in my chest, and I felt myself lose my breath for exactly 1.3 seconds.

  Roe nodded, not noticing how everything in this place had changed in an instant. “Right on. That’s awesome. So what’s four hundred twenty-three times twelve?”

  Nikki slapped his arm. “Don’t test her, dude, that’s rude,” she said, laughing at him.

  “Uh, it’s five thousand seventy-six,” I said, holding my breath, knowing if I was asked another question, I would get it wrong because my brain had ceased function as this overwhelming sensation — nervousness, giddiness, desire — washed over me.

  Roe punched it in his phone calculator and cheered when he confirmed I was right, clinking his glass against mine. The conversation shifted, and I had a hard time listening, wanting so badly to move, to get away from this feeling, but unable to. I was leaning against Dean just as much as he was touching me, and at any moment one of us could have pulled away, called Rule 4, but instead, as the night went on and more conversations happened, we grew closer and closer.

  I didn’t pull away until my phone buzzed in my pocket. Without a word, he moved his arm off of me, taking my empty glass to the bar. I looked at my phone. Krista had landed, safely tucked in her hotel room, and as I stood there, glancing at Dean over my shoulder, I realized I was in a completely different world.

  ★☽★★☽

  He had broken Rule 4 and, by doing so in front of his friends, also broken Rule 7 by default. So I broke one of my own personal rules and asked if he wanted to come over to my place.

  “Your place?” he repeated, not even trying to hide his shock at my suggestion. “You mean after six months, I finally get to see where you live?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It just makes logistical sense. I live closer to this place,” I said, gesturing to the speakeasy.

  “So what you really mean is, before you got here, you mapped your place and my place from here to check?” he said with a grin.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, refusing to answer if he was right. “Just forget it.”

  He laughed and tugged on my arms, making me uncross them. “I was just teasing. Yes, I want to come back to your place,” he said, stepping closer, putting his hands on my hips. “I absolutely want that,” he said, kissing my cheek, neither of us caring all his friends could see.

  Exactly 28 minutes later, he was standing in my living room, looking around, taking in every detail.

  “Wow,” he said, nodding. “Thi
s is exactly what I imagined.”

  I laughed. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he said, picking up a framed photo of Krista and me from when we were kids off our bookcase. “Well, I didn’t envision whatever that is,” he said, nodding toward the wedding poster boards littered with sticky notes above the couch. “But other than that, yeah, when I think about you here, this is pretty much what I see. Is this your family?” he asked, picking up a photo of my family at the lake house.

  “Yep,” I said, sitting on the couch. “That’s my perfect family at our perfect lake house.”

  He sat the frame down and looked at the books on the shelf, his back to me. “I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to have that.”

  “A lake house?” I asked, partially wondering how we’d ended up here, sitting and talking on the couch instead of tangled in my bed.

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, a family. But I guess I would have liked a lake house, too. Probably less stress with that.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, much more manageable, and you can leave it whenever you’re tired of it.”

  I paused and took a breath, wondering if he was going to call Rule 1 with my next question, but risking it anyway, “Dean, can I ask, what happened to your mom?”

  He looked at me, slightly caught off guard by my question.

  “Oh,” he said, twisting one of his rings, thinking about this. “Well, she left,” he said after a moment.

  “Left?”

  “Yeah, like, decided she didn’t want to do the whole wife and family thing anymore,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe she went to a lake house. Who knows.”

  “I’m sorry, Dean,” I said, making a face.

  “Don’t be. I don’t have any memories of her anyway. It was twenty, nope, wait,” he said with a smile, “twenty-one years ago. Gotta make sure I get my math right around you, genius.”

  I laughed and stood, reaching for his hand. “I want to show you something,” I said, pulling on his hand, knowing he would follow, his curiosity too strong to ever say no to an idea.