Every Other Weekend

by Abigail Johnson

  Jolene:

  You think?

  Adam:

  Oh yeah.

  Jolene:

  G2G but have fun Xboxing.

  Adam:

  I’ll see you tomorrow.

  Jolene:

  Technically you’ll see me today.

  Adam:

  Even better. Night, Jolene.

  Jolene:

  Night, Adam.

  EIGHTH WEEKEND

  January 1–3

  Jolene

  When he knocked, I called for Adam to come in.

  “You should check who’s at the door before you invite them in. I could have been a serial killer.”

  “A serial killer who knocks? That’s behavior we should encourage, don’t you think?”

  Adam joined me on my couch, and I made room for him by drawing my knees up. “I’m pretty sure being polite isn’t going to offset all the stabbing. Anyway, why aren’t you dressed?” He tugged the pant leg of the teal-green pj’s I was still wearing.

  “Because I feel lousy, and real clothes aren’t as depressing as I want to communicate right now.”

  “Your pj’s have little grinning sharks all over them.”

  I pulled my leg out of reach. “Irrelevant.”

  “This is the happiest thing you could have worn.”

  “Well, I don’t feel good.”

  “You look good. What’s wrong with you, and can I catch it?”

  “Thanks. Cramps. And no.”

  Adam’s gaze swept over me, assessing. “I’m guessing you don’t want to go out.”

  “Do you want a medal for that?”

  “No, but maybe don’t bite my head off for making an observation. Can I ask another question?”

  “Depends on how inane it is.”

  “I have another favor.”

  I groaned and flopped back against the cushion. “No pictures right now. I feel like a cat box.”

  “It does involve pictures, but not for another couple weeks.”

  “I don’t have the brainpower to figure out what you want, so out with it.”

  Adam frowned. “I might be having second thoughts. How long will you be ‘out of commission’?” He added air quotes.

  I smiled without meaning to. “I’m not going to be great company today. Maybe you should come back tomorrow.”

  “Nah. My dad already roped Jeremy into helping him retile all the bathrooms on the first floor. And anyway, I still prefer you in a bad mood to just about anyone else.”

  All the blood rushed to my head and pounded behind my eyes. He said it so casually, like the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. How could he throw away compliments like that? He wasn’t even throwing it away, he was saying it without having to think about it, like it was a given.

  Nobody preferred me. Ever.

  I was two seconds away from crying, which was ridiculous.

  “Besides, it’s your fault that I’m in this position, so it’s only fair that you be the one to get me out of it.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said, the cryptic wording distracting me from my impending tears.

  “You know Erica and I broke up.”

  “Who?”

  Adam half smiled at my feigned ignorance. “What you don’t know is that we broke up right before winter formal.”

  “Uh-oh.” If I wasn’t feeling so uncomfortable, I might have had some other feelings at the direction his words were heading.

  “Only if you turn me down.”

  “Are you asking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask me for real. Like in a complete sentence.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Jolene, will you go to winter formal with me?”

  For a tiny split second, the cramping knives in my belly turned to feathers tickling up through me. “When is it? The actual date?” If it fell on a Dad weekend, I’d probably need a court order.

  “January 22.”

  Not a Dad weekend.

  “Are you going to wear a suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will I get to meet your mom?”

  “If she drives us.”

  “She thinks we’re a couple though, doesn’t she?”

  Adam flushed red and cleared his throat. “Um, she sort of knows about the whole fake-picture thing.”

  “Honestly, I’m surprised you made it this long before telling her. You’re kind of a mama’s boy, Adam.”

  “It just came up. She still likes seeing the pictures of us even if we’re just...whatever.”

  “Just whatever?” I batted my eyelashes at him. “This is officially the most romantic way a boy’s ever asked me to a dance.”

  His flush began to recede. “I was trying to say that my mom’s not going to expect me to maul you in front of her if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “So we’re clear, I’m going to pass on the mauling entirely even when she’s not watching.”

  Adam started to smile. “That sounds like a yes...”

  “Because it is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go with you.”

  Adam grinned full out, sending warmth humming through me.

  “You look surprised.”

  “I figured you’d say no.”

  “Adam, how many times do I have to tell you, I’m only a little embarrassed to be seen in public with you. Plus the dance is going to be at night, so...”

  “Be sure to say stuff like that to my mom. She’ll think you’re more of an angel than she already does.”

  “That’s a new one for me.”

  “To be clear, angel is the word she uses because she hasn’t met you.”

  “And what word would you use?”

  “Jolene.”

  “Hmm.” The way he said my name, all slow and confident, made me shiver in such a delicious way.

  “So back to the dance. Maybe a little mauling?”

  “That’s a firm no.”

  “Wait till you see my suit,” he said, stretching and folding his arms behind his head. “We’ll see who wants a little mauling then.”

  “Wait till you see my dress,” I said. “They put sharks on anything these days.”

  ADAM

  The suit I owned was too small, like the-pants-were-halfway-up-my-calves too small.

  I slid into the hallway to show Mom on Sunday night. “That’s not gonna work,” she said. “You’ll freeze to death.”

  I extended my arms stiffly at my sides. The fabric was so tight that when I tried to bend my elbow, the seams started to pop. “Yeah, that’s the problem with this suit. It’s not warm enough.”

  “I didn’t think you’d grown this much. Jeremy can still wear his suit from your cousin Becky’s wedding.”

  “Jeremy could still wear his footed pajamas if he didn’t care about zipping them up.”

  Mom looked up at me from where she’d been checking the hem of my pants. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that about your brother. He’s sensitive about his height. Please try.”

  Mom had this way of making me feel like I’d just gotten caught burning our photo albums or something when she used that tone. It was so laden with hurt and disappointment that I probably would have hugged Jeremy in front of her if he’d been around instead of at a last-minute play rehearsal at somebody’s house. I was supposed to be making her feel better, not worse. I mumbled an apology and a request to go remove the ridiculously ill-fitting suit.

  “Wait. Wait.” Mom popped into my room and came back carrying my phone. “Tell me how to take a photo so we can send it to Jolene.”

  I looked down at myself. I’d somehow gotten the pants up, but the jacket wouldn’t close and the overall impression was that of the Hulk mid-transformation. “Ah, no?” I said
. “I will not be doing that. That’s a horrible idea.”

  “She’ll love it.”

  She would, just not in the way I wanted. “You only know Jolene from cute pictures. Real-life Jolene would never stop laughing if she saw this.”

  “Whoops!” Mom said as my phone made the sound that indicated a photo had been taken.

  She let me take the phone from her and I quickly deleted the photo, noticing as I did that Mom’s smile dimmed.

  “If your dad had sent me a picture like this when we were young, I would have thought it was adorable.”

  I stopped trying to tug the constricting jacket off my shoulders with the limited range of motion it allowed. Every time she brought up Dad like nothing had changed, it was like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. Normally, I mentally swatted it away as an easily ignored annoyance, but I couldn’t dismiss the somewhat dreamy look that slipped onto her face at the mention of Dad.

  We were standing in the upstairs hallway, the doors to all the bedrooms surrounding us—mine, Jeremy’s, hers and Dad’s. Greg’s. Our family used to sleep on the same floor, in the same house. Now we didn’t eat in the same city, much less at the same table. I was the one who didn’t get why, and I got it even less when she mentioned Dad with such easy longing. Dad did it sometimes, too—more than someone who had amicably split from his wife should. If they couldn’t stand each other or fought or were even indifferent, I’d understand. I wouldn’t agree or accept it, but I’d understand why they were living apart.

  What they were doing didn’t make sense.

  “I don’t get how you can talk about Dad like that, miss him, but still want him gone.” I didn’t talk to her the way I would have Dad. I wasn’t struggling not to yell or lose my temper. I could never talk to her that way.

  “Oh, Adam.”

  “No. Mom. I’m trying to understand. Jolene... Her parents are going to throw parties when the other dies. She never has to wonder why they aren’t still married—she wonders how they ever got together in the first place. I know why you and Dad got married. I’ve known it every day of my life. What I don’t know is how you can want to be apart when you still love him...when he still loves you...?”

  “This is hard for me.”

  I almost asked her if she thought she was the only one it was hard for. “Then why are you doing this?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “Because we make each other sad.” She swallowed. “After Greg... It nearly destroyed us, I know you know that.” She stood and took my hand in both of hers. “We made it day by day, hour by hour. Sometimes minute by minute. It was all we could do.”

  I did remember. Waking up at night to the sounds of Mom crying and, worse, Dad crying with her. Holidays where one or both of them would leave the room and not come back for hours sometimes. The way she was squeezing my hand as she spoke.

  “We decided that maybe we would be less sad apart. I love him too much to make him hurt if he doesn’t have to. He loves me the same.”

  “And is it working? Are you less sad now, or are you just sad and alone?”

  Neither of us had expected me to say that. It wasn’t cruel and hadn’t been spoken harshly, but my own sadness had bled through, and I could tell that she felt it.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes both.”

  NINTH WEEKEND

  January 15–17

  Jolene

  “You should have sent the picture! Did you really delete it?”

  “Hell yes, I deleted it. I don’t need you mocking me until the end of time.”

  “Adam, that’s sweet that you think we’ll be friends that long.”

  “You don’t?”

  The Saturday matinee crowd at AMC was growing increasingly intolerant of our talking over the previews. A couple a few rows ahead hissed for us to lower our voices. “Well, how do you figure?” I whispered. “Are we both going to go to the same college? Live in the same state? No. You’ll go to an Ivy League school, marry Erica 2.0, and live in Virginia, coach your son’s hockey team and jog along the Potomac River with your golden retriever on the weekends. Whereas I am going to go to UCLA to pursue film studies, become the next Sofia Coppola, and then die tragically in my apartment alone before the age of fifty.” I gathered a fistful of popcorn from the bag Adam held and started munching. “See? Radically different life trajectories.” I went for another handful, but Adam pulled the bag away.

  “First of all, I’m a cat guy, so no golden retriever for me. And second, if you become a famous director, I’m coming to every one of your premieres. Third, you’re not going to die tragically young or alone, even if that means I have to travel the world to find a doctor who’ll keep you alive long past what ethical medicine deems morally acceptable.”

  I threw popcorn at him. “Okay, I changed my mind. Now you stay single forever, and I occasionally get you pity casting auditions, which you ruin by showing up drunk and without pants.”

  Adam’s laughter drew more glares from the couple in front of us. “So no middle road? I can’t end up divorced with a dead-end job that keeps me in pants if nothing else?”

  “No,” I said. “You’d never get divorced. And I can’t imagine any Erica leaving you.” That was a big statement for me to make—big and true. No one would willingly let go of Adam unless they thought he’d already let go of them. It was more than a little scary to realize I was including myself in that category.

  The film’s opening credits started playing.

  “You want to know how I see our future?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Watch the movie and I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

  I almost called him on his cop-out. I hadn’t gotten two hours to come up with a future, but I let it go because the movie was finally starting. It turned out to be a mediocre sci-fi flick that didn’t keep my attention from wandering back to Adam every few minutes, wondering what he was thinking up for us and if it was half as bleak as the scarred landscape on screen.

  When the movie ended and we trailed out, Adam requested an Uber for us and then he started telling our story.

  “I end up at Brown and you go to UCLA. You cry at the airport when I drop you off. After you get your hysterics under control, I chuck you under the chin and send you away. We video chat every weekend for the next four years. I fly to you for spring break, and you come to me for Thanksgiving. During the first summer, we backpack across Europe, and we get jobs with a traveling circus the next. Our third summer we spend apart, because you get an internship working with J. J. Abrams.”

  I couldn’t help but interject with a cough and the name “Suzanne Silver,” followed by another cough.

  Adam smiled. “Fine, you get an internship with Suzanne Silver. Better?”

  “No offense to J. J. Abrams, but yes.”

  Adam shook his head and kept going. “After graduation, I drive across the country for the premiere of your first movie, and I get there in time to catch the leading man kissing you.”

  “Plot twist!”

  “My life feels meaningless for a while, and I bounce between jobs because, as it turns out, majoring in philosophy was as big of a waste as my dad warned. I’m complaining about this to you one night via video chat, because you’re on location shooting your first big studio film.”

  “Okay, can I just say that your future for me rocks?”

  “You can. I’m complaining, and you end up telling me that I’m miserable enough to write a book. And the idea sticks. I write it, it connects with the world, and suddenly movie people are knocking at my door, begging and pleading for the film rights. I refuse, because, by then, I’m too pretentious to consider selling my art. We still talk, but we’re both busy—you’re too busy, in fact, to read my book.”

  “Future me is starting to suck.”

  “You eventually read it after the financing on your latest movie falls through. You
recognize its unmatched brilliance and want to make the film. I’ve never been able to say no to you, so I agree. Three years later, we stand onstage together with matching Oscars, you for directing and me for adapted screenplay. It’s a great night with many more great nights after it.”

  “Wow,” I said, my voice thick and a tremble starts to work its way up my body. Not because of the professional success he saw in our future, but because he saw us together. Not just for a year or throughout college, but always.

  Adam shrugs. “I guess both futures are possible, but I like mine better.”

  “What about Erica 2.0?”

  “Who needs an Erica when I’ve got you?”

  The tremble shook my hands until I clasped them tight to hide it. Inside, I couldn’t stop the way my heart forgot how to beat or my lungs how to hold air. I forgot everything but the simple, unconscious honesty in Adam’s face. My version of the future seemed much more plausible, but I decided to pretend, at least for a little while, that his could be true. That we stayed in each other’s lives forever. “You could be a storyteller,” I told him softly. “You came up with all that in two hours?”

  “Maybe I’ve been thinking about it—the college stuff anyway.”

  I didn’t respond. Knowing he thought about things like that, that he made plans that included me...that he could pluck people out of their lives and graft them into his and make them better, stronger... Sometimes I couldn’t believe people like Adam existed. Other times, I thought it was unfair that he could be like that when I couldn’t.

  ADAM

  Jolene was quiet on the way back to the apartment. Not angry quiet or even sad quiet, just...quiet.

  “We’ve seen worse movies,” I told her after a particularly long stretch of silence.

  “What?” she said, not glancing up. My fingers itched to reach out to her, glide along her hand. I’d gone too far with our futures, planning out our entire lives. I knew that was a stupid thing to do when we weren’t even sixteen, but Jolene made me want to try for stupid, probably impossible things. She made my heart sink just from knowing hers was heavy.

  “That thing we just spent two hours watching. Don’t you want to pick it apart?”