Windfall

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “I’m fine. It feels good to be outside.”

  “I know,” he says, looking out over the park. “I moved here from California, so I still haven’t really gotten used to the Chicago winters.”

  California, I think, closing my eyes. Even after all this time, when I hear the word, my first thought is still: Home.

  “Me too,” I say quietly, and he looks at me in surprise.

  “You’re from California?”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to make the words sound effortless, “I lived in San Francisco till I was nine.”

  He laughs. “That’s so crazy. I’m from San Jose.”

  “That’s close to Stanford, right? I really want to go there next year.”

  His face brightens. “That’s awesome. It’s such a good school. Definitely on my list too. They have a great history program.”

  “Yeah?” I say, thinking how nice it is to talk to him about this, when it’s so hard to have the same conversation with Leo and Teddy.

  “I actually had a job at the library there last summer,” he says, “which I know isn’t quite the same as going there, but I really loved it. Have you ever been?”

  “Just once,” I say, remembering that long ago day when my parents and I explored it together, my mother as wide-eyed as an incoming freshman. “My mom got into a graduate program there when I was little, so we went to see the campus.”

  “Did she like it?”

  “The campus? Yeah. It’s beautiful.”

  “No, the program.”

  I hesitate. This is the part where I’m supposed to tell him my sad story. Where the look in his eyes will change into something more sympathetic, something closer to pity. And I don’t want that to happen. Because I like the way he’s looking at me now. For once, I don’t feel like lugging my tragic history into the conversation. So I don’t.

  “She didn’t end up going,” I tell him, simple as that.

  “Well, hopefully you will,” he says with a smile. “When do you hear?”

  “Tomorrow, actually.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Yes,” I admit. “I’ve wanted this for so long. To go back. To go home. Not that I don’t love it here, because I do. But I miss the way things used to be. When I moved here, it was sort of…abrupt. So it sometimes feels like I left a piece of myself back on the West Coast. And if I was to move back out there…”

  “You’d feel whole again,” he says. He doesn’t press for more of my feelings on the subject, like Leo would. And he doesn’t try to crack a joke so that I’ll smile, like Teddy always does. He just sits there, considering this, then nods. “I think I get that. When you move, it’s like your life gets split in two. So you never really feel at home in either place.”

  I smile. “Exactly.”

  “Plus,” he says, “I really miss the tacos out there.”

  “Totally,” I say with a laugh. “They were so much better.”

  We sit there swapping stories until it’s time to make the next choice: bowling, a movie, or an arcade. I pick the arcade, and we spend the next hour playing Skee-Ball and fishing for cheap stuffed animals with a useless metal claw.

  At one point Sawyer nearly gets one; he snags a plush penguin by the very tip of its floppy wing. As he’s trying to reel it in I jump up and down and hit him on the arm a few times, excited all out of proportion to the prize, and in a fit of enthusiasm the words come flying out of my mouth before I can stop them: “C’mon, Teddy!”

  It’s automatic, nothing more than a habit, like accidentally calling your teacher Mom. But still I freeze, and so does Sawyer, his hand bobbling on the machine so that the penguin falls out of the claw and back into the soft pile of his stuffed friends.

  Our eyes meet briefly, then we both look away again.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

  He shakes his head, though I can see his blue eyes are full of hurt. “I know.”

  “I’m just so used to yelling at him,” I say with a smile, but Sawyer’s face is still serious. “Should we try again?”

  “Maybe something different,” he says, scanning the room distractedly. I follow him over to a wall of video games, neither of us speaking, and we spend the next twenty minutes steering Pac-Man and his wife through their pixelated maze. And because it’s easier than talking about it, and because it’s preferable to figuring out what it meant, I find myself being overly flirty with him, as if that might be enough to erase the sound of Teddy’s name. It feels a bit desperate, even to me, but it seems to work, because after a while the awkwardness starts to melt away, and by the time we walk back outside into the chilly March night, things feel normal between us again.

  When we finally turn onto my street, Sawyer stops short of our house, pausing a few doors down.

  “I’m just over there,” I say, pointing at the brownstone.

  “I remember,” he says with a smile. “But I figured your parents might still be keeping an eye out the window, so…”

  It’s been so long since anyone made that mistake, and the way it sounds coming from Sawyer—so normal, so obvious, because of course the pair of adults I live with should be my parents—I can’t bring myself to correct him. “You saw that, huh?”

  “Hard to miss.”

  “So what now?”

  “Well,” he says. “Now you get three more choices.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  He reaches out and puts a hand on my waist. I’m surprised to find this sends a shiver through me. “Option one,” he says. “I walk you to the door and say good night.”

  I inch closer to him. “What’s option two?”

  “Well,” he says, looking bashful. “Option two is…I kiss you now.”

  “Interesting,” I say, putting a hand on his chest. “And option three?”

  “You kiss—” he begins, but before he has a chance to finish I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips against his, and just like that he’s kissing me back. When we step away again, he smiles at me with such tenderness that I feel a little shaky.

  “Good choice,” he says.

  It isn’t until afterward, as I walk back toward the house, that the fluttering in the pit of my stomach gives way to something more hollow. When I’m sure Sawyer is out of sight, I pause for a second, pulling in long breaths of cool air, feeling oddly panicky. I know it isn’t because the kiss wasn’t great (it was), and it isn’t because Sawyer’s not wonderful (he is).

  It’s because—quite simply—he’s not Teddy.

  And suddenly I’m furious with myself. Because what in the world am I doing? What am I waiting for? It’s like Aunt Sofia said: this is supposed to be fun. So why am I so miserable?

  And right then I hate Teddy for it too. Because Sawyer is here, and he’s not. Because Sawyer looks at me in a way that I know Teddy never will. Because Sawyer wants me, and Teddy doesn’t. Because he planned a whole night in triplicate and picked me up at my front door, and Teddy—who ditched me to go off to Mexico with his friends, who is probably living the high life on some white-sand beach, sunburned and happy and utterly delighted with himself—would never do any of those things.

  My head is spinning as I hurry up the walkway toward the front door, suddenly freezing and anxious to be inside, my eyes on the loose stones of the path, so I’m nearly on top of him before I realize someone is sitting on the porch steps.

  I stop short, my heart flying up into my throat, and for a moment I think I must be seeing things.

  Because there on the front stoop—impossibly, miraculously—is Teddy.

  It’s after midnight, and the first thing I think—however illogical—is that this must be an April Fools’ joke. I’m about to say as much, but then Teddy lifts his head, and his face is so unexpectedly solemn that I drop onto the steps beside him without a word.

  This is the first time we’ve seen each other since our fight, and it’s almost physically painful, being this close to him. The silence between us—usually so comfortable—is now pric
kly and tentative, and it just about breaks my heart.

  I’m sitting only a few inches away from him. But it feels like miles.

  “So what happened to Mexico?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything.

  He shrugs. “It’s still there.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I say, attempting a smile, but his face remains impassive. There’s a stillness to him right now that’s disconcerting. Teddy is normally all motion and restless energy; there’s this fast-burning spark inside him that always seems to be just barely contained, like at any minute he might combust. Like at any minute there might be fireworks. But not now. “What about everyone else?”

  “They’re still there too.”

  I wait for more, and when it doesn’t come I ask, “So why aren’t you?”

  “Because,” he says, finally looking at me, “my dad’s back.”

  I close my eyes for a second, trying not to telegraph my concern at this news. But there can only be one reason Charlie McAvoy is here, and I know Teddy well enough to know he won’t want to believe it.

  “My mom called last night to tell me.”

  I nod, still absorbing this. “Is she okay?”

  “I think so. I mean, it’s not like they haven’t been in touch at all. But I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her to open the door and see him there, just totally out of the blue.” He lets out a breath. “He’s coming by again tomorrow morning.”

  “To see you?”

  He nods. “Is it weird that I’m sort of nervous?”

  “Not at all,” I say, wishing there wasn’t so much space between us. “Did she say why he’s here?”

  “He’s in town on business. For some meetings, I guess.”

  “So you don’t think he’s here—”

  “No,” he says before I have a chance to finish. But we both know what I was about to say: because of the money. “He told my mom he didn’t even know about it.”

  “Teddy,” I say softly, but he shakes his head.

  “He told her he has a real job now,” he says, his tone brisk. “A good job. He hasn’t gambled in almost a year, and he’s been going to meetings every week.”

  He already sounds so defensive that there’s nothing to do but drop it. “Okay,” I say, wanting to believe that. But it just feels like too much of coincidence, too big a leap of faith. “It’s good you came home.”

  Teddy nods, though I can tell he’s holding something back; then I notice his backpack slumped against a flowerpot, half-hidden in the shadows.

  “But you haven’t actually been home yet.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “I got into a cab at the airport, and when he asked where I was going I gave him your address. It was just automatic. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about you so much.”

  My heart lurches, and it takes everything in me to fight back a surge of hope. I used to think the hardest thing was him not knowing that I loved him. But now, after he dismissed that kiss, I understand there’s something far worse: him not caring. So I do my best to tuck it away again, that feeling of possibility I’ve been carrying around with me for so long. I fold it once, then twice, then again, trying to make it small enough to forget about entirely.

  “I feel awful about everything I said that day,” Teddy says, shifting to face me. “It was terrible. All of it. And I’m so sorry. I really hate fighting with you.”

  I nod, but what I’m thinking is that I wish I could’ve fallen for someone else. Anyone else. It seems wildly unfair that this had to happen with my best friend, because I still need him for that, and it would be so much easier if these other feelings of mine weren’t quite so tangled up in it.

  “Me too,” I say after a moment, and he looks relieved.

  “That was a really bad one.”

  I nod. “The worst.”

  “Let’s never do that again.”

  “Deal,” I say, and he leans into me, resting a shoulder against mine so that we’re tipped toward each other like two sides of a triangle. Beneath us, the stone steps are cold, and the small patch of grass in front of the brownstone ripples in the breeze. In the distance, I can hear the screech and pop of a bus, and there’s a siren somewhere not too far away. But here on this block, everything is blue-dark and eerily quiet.

  “How long have you been out here?” I ask, and he shrugs.

  “I don’t know. A couple hours, maybe. I knocked earlier, and Sofia told me you were out.”

  I stare at him. “Why didn’t you just wait inside?”

  “I wasn’t planning to stay,” he says. “But I can’t seem to leave.”

  Without thinking about it, I reach over and take his hand. It isn’t until he curls his fingers around mine that I realize what I’ve done. But by then we’re knit together again the way we used to be, and the sting of it—of wanting him, of missing him—is replaced by a powerful sense of relief.

  There’s still an us. It might not look the way I hoped it would, but there’s something familiar about it, something comforting.

  It’s not everything I want, but maybe it’s enough.

  Maybe it has to be.

  “I know this is such a little-kid thing to say, but I don’t really want to be home when my mom isn’t there,” he says. “Because what if he comes back and things are weird? Or what if he doesn’t? What if he just leaves again? It’s been so long that I’m scared to see him, but I’m also scared not to. Does that make any sense?”

  I nod, dropping his hand and picking up the other one, rubbing his frozen knuckles. He inches closer to me and we sit there like that for a long time, not talking. I wish Leo was here, because he’d know exactly what to say. This is the thought that’s running through my head as he walks up, almost as if I’ve conjured him out of thin air, as if this is a brand-new superpower of mine, as if the world has suddenly become a place where you only have to wish for things to make them so.

  I’m the first to spot him turning up the path, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and for the second time tonight I’m completely dumbstruck. He looks serious, maybe even a little upset, and my pulse quickens with worry—because he’s supposed to be in Michigan; he’s supposed to be with Max—but then he sees us too, and his face rearranges itself, and he lets out a strange bark of a laugh.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, shooting to my feet as he drops his bag with a thump. But his gaze shifts to Teddy, who looks up at him with a frown.

  “What happened to Michigan?” he asks, and Leo shrugs.

  “It’s still there. What happened to Mexico?”

  “Still there too,” Teddy says with a smile.

  I stand there looking from one to the other, then shake my head.

  “You two,” I say, and I’m about to continue, to say something more, but I’m so happy to see them, to have all three of us together again—in spite of whatever circumstances there must be—that I simply leave it at that.

  In the morning, there’s an email from Stanford admissions.

  I’m still bleary-eyed from lack of sleep—we stayed up talking until nearly four—and I squint at my phone, letting my thumb hover over the message. But I don’t click on it. Instead I roll out of bed and stumble out into the hallway, but it’s not until I’m standing outside Leo’s room that I realize this might not be the best idea.

  If it’s good news, it might just make him feel worse about everything. Though if it’s bad news, we’ll both have an excuse to lie on the couch all day and eat ice cream in our pajamas.

  Last night, after we’d come inside and made popcorn, which Teddy burned, then made a second batch, which Leo knocked over, then finally a third, which we managed to carry into the living room without incident, Leo broke the news.

  “It’s over,” he said, but I’d known it even before then, since the moment he’d emerged from the darkness like some sort of melancholy ghost. Now, though, it was suddenly a fact, and the way he said it—the words se
t down like they were something heavy, like a suitcase he’d been carrying for far too long—broke my heart.

  Teddy, who had clearly been too distracted to guess at this, immediately froze, his hand still shoved into the metal bowl of popcorn. Slowly, carefully, he extracted it, then shifted to face Leo.

  “You and Max?” he asked in astonishment.

  Leo nodded.

  “But…why?”

  “I don’t…,” he began, then paused, his eyes swimming. “I don’t think I want to talk about it right now.”

  Teddy and I exchanged a look.

  “That’s fine,” I said quickly. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  And so we let it go. For the next few hours, we watched movies and ate popcorn and made Teddy tell us all about his big television debut and the hundreds of messages he’d gotten since it aired, including three marriage proposals. “I only considered one of them,” he joked, ducking as I threw a pillow at him. I told him about how Uncle Jake and I had started the boat, and he swore we’d finish it together now that he was back, and Leo promised to buy us floaties in case things went terribly wrong.

  We didn’t talk about Max. Or Teddy’s dad. Or even Sawyer.

  For a few hours we just ignored all the rest of it.

  But now it’s morning; now it’s tomorrow. Teddy is probably still asleep downstairs, and Leo is just a knock away, and what was so easy to avoid last night no longer seems to make sense in the light of day.

  I glance down at the phone in my hand once more, then I knock. On the other side of the door, there’s a grunt. “Leo?”

  “Go away.”

  I pretend not to hear him. “Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  “Great,” I say as I fling open the door. The first thing I see is his green duffel bag, which is lying in the middle of the messy floor, and I feel a pang of sadness when I remember watching him carefully pack it only a few days ago.

  “What?” he asks, poking his head out from under the covers, and it’s hard not to laugh at his rumpled hair and grumpy expression. I sit down on the edge of the bed.

  “I wanted to see if you were up.”