by Ruthie Knox
She stepped back as though he’d struck her. Her whole face crumpled with the sting of what he’d implied.
“Don’t look so crushed,” he said. “You’re the best distraction I’ve found in weeks.”
She walked away. Head high, shoulders back, boots clipping along on the concrete, she receded with every step, and he thought when she got to the corner that she was actually going to choose a new direction and leave him.
For a second, he couldn’t get enough air. Spots danced in the edges of his vision, and he started after her, because he couldn’t let her go. Not like this. He would sprint after her, apologize, beg if he had to, but he wouldn’t let her leave.
She stopped in front of a bodega. Crossing her arms, she stared at the window display as though she might be able to decode her next move in the colorful ads for junk food and cheap cell phone plans.
Ben stayed where he was, shoving his hands in his pockets so he could ignore the way they were shaking.
He berated himself. Get over it. Get on with it.
The trouble was, he didn’t know how.
His phone buzzed. For a few seconds he ignored it, and then he remembered it might be for May and fumbled it from his sweatshirt pocket.
Missed call. The number had a Wisconsin area code.
Jittery, sick to his stomach, he approached her and held up the phone. “That was for you.”
She lifted her hand.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he couldn’t, so he stared at the passing traffic and left her alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sound that came from the bench beside her was horrible. Like jazzed-up elevator music, unfamiliar and blaring in the otherwise quiet park.
Allie jumped. Her hand shot out to clasp the phone but missed, and it ended up in the flat patch of dirt beneath her feet—the oblong where no grass ever grew, and the soil wasn’t soil at all but that soft, fine, pulverized dirt that would work its way into the cracks of the casing, and she’d never get it out.
She snatched it up, unsure why strange music had possessed her phone—had Matt changed it?—but so pleased it was ringing, she didn’t care. The wavy, excited ribbons of blue snaking around the IM notice matched her mood.
Allie stabbed at the screen until the message came up.
XChfSardo: It’s May!
XChfSardo: R U there?
Finally.
Allie had come into town for the express purpose of communicating with her sister. She’d resolved to sit on the fucking bench in the fucking park all afternoon if she had to, because she couldn’t handle the uncertainty anymore. Where was her May, and why wasn’t she here? Why had she stabbed Dan, then dumped him—and did she know Dan refused to accept the finality of the dumping? That he’d chased May to the nether regions of Michigan to win her back?
She typed a hasty “I’m here!”
The cursor blinked, and the words XChfSardo is typing came up. Then, the bloop of a message arriving:
XChfSardo: I’ve got a few minutes. What’s up?
What was up was that Allie had a hundred questions to ask her sister, a thousand things to say, and a clawing feeling of panic that kept rising into her throat at the weirdest moments, like when Matt took off his shirt in their room last night before he went to take a shower. He did it with his back turned to her, and she thought, I do that, too. They always undressed with their backs turned.
That wasn’t right, was it? That wasn’t how about-to-be-marrieds were supposed to be. Allie was fairly sure they were supposed to be knocking over gallon jugs of milk to fuck on kitchen tables, not falling asleep side by side, as asexual as a species that reproduced by budding.
What was up was that at this very moment, Dan and Matt were down on the dock, plopping fishing poles in the lake and drinking epic amounts of beer, while Dad carried on with his winterization chores and Mom sprinkled garlic salt on steaks in the kitchen.
After breakfast, Allie had broached the subject of May, and Mom had said, I’m sure your sister will be here soon, and when she sees him, they’ll work it out. As if May were simply suffering from a brief episode of senselessness.
What was up was that the future had completely lost its shape. Everything was strange and backwards, and Allie needed May. Not text messages, but May’s voice, if May’s presence wasn’t an option.
Allielooya: Call me?
The phone chimed right away with May’s reply.
XChfSardo: Can’t.
And then, a moment later, her explanation:
XChfSardo: Not alone. Wd b weird. Can text, tho.
Fighting back disappointment, Allie tried to pare her questions to the bare minimum.
Allielooya: Still in NY? Who R U with?
XChfSardo: Yes. Ben.
Allielooya: Who’s Ben?
XChfSardo: Guy I met at a Packers bar.
Allie plopped back onto the bench, because it was either that or hurl the phone into the pond in front of her, and if she did that, she’d be even worse off than she was now.
May had met a man at a Packers bar.
When Allie tried to wrap her head around it, her brain kind of shied away, like a skittish horse.
Allielooya: Who r u and what have u done w my sister?
XChfSardo: LOL
XChfSardo: Will explain when I c u.
Allielooya: When r u coming home?
XChfSardo: Tues.
The cursor blinked. XChfSardo is typing. Allie stared at it, willing May to fill the void between them with an explanation and a promise. I am the same sister I’ve always been. I haven’t abandoned you. I’d never do that.
But May would never attack Dan with a fork, disappear, or shack up with a strange man, either. She would never drop out of contact for a few days. She would never be this inconsiderate, because Allie was the inconsiderate one. They had their roles. It was rude of May to step outside them, rude and just … just wrong.
With a chime, May’s message popped up.
XChfSardo: I know this must seem strange. I tried 2 come home but my purse got stolen
XChfSardo: & I cdnt get on the plane w/o ID
XChfSardo: & I met this guy Ben who offered 2 let me sleep on his couch.
XChfSardo: He’s been showing me around NYC.
The cursor blinked. Allie read the messages three times, but it was all gaps. Her purse got stolen? I met this guy—but how? And where did the Packers bar fit—was it at the airport? Was he older, younger? Was he hot? Was May having a fling with some New York guy while Dan moped and drank and fished with Matt?
Another chime.
XChfSardo: & no, I’m not sleeping w/ him.
At least her sister knew her well enough to anticipate that question.
Allielooya: & ur not going to, right?
XChfSardo: No comment.
It wouldn’t be a strange statement from someone else, but for May to do anything but deny the possibility was totally out of character.
After considering for a moment, Allie tapped her reply.
Allielooya: Is he with u now?
XChfSardo: Yes.
Allielooya: Send me a pic.
XChfSardo: No. He’s in a bad mood.
Allielooya: Take 1 when he’s not looking.
A minute passed, and then a slightly fuzzy picture appeared of a guy in profile. He had hard features and a mean mouth, hair so short it was practically buzzed.
This was Ben?
He looked like the sort Allie had always gone for before Matt—hot in a stern, mysterious sort of way. The type of guy who’d chew May up and spit her back out.
Her sister was staying with him?
Oh man.
Allielooya: I can send you $$.
XChfSardo: It’s fine. He’s loaning me what I need.
Allielooya: Are you ok tho?
The pause that followed was longer than Allie felt comfortable with. Especially when May simply replied,
XChfSardo: Yes.
That hadn’t been a t
yping delay. Was she talking to him? Thinking about whether she was okay or not?
She’d said Ben was in a bad mood, and Allie could just imagine May placating him. She was sweet like that, always trying to smooth over trouble, to keep people from fighting. May didn’t do well with excess emotion of any kind—too much anger, too much sadness, even too much excitement or elation, and she’d try to find a way to bring the level down.
They were so different. Allie was the small one, but otherwise she was all excess—an explosion of hair and language and big, dramatic feelings—while May was so much bigger but quieter in every way that counted. Her earth-toned clothes and her empathetic, emotion-dampening ways.
And yet here Allie was, about to get married to the kind, quiet boy next door, while May was in New York, possibly instigating a fling with a stern-featured, ticked-off man right after making national news for attacking Dan in front of an audience.
Allielooya: We’ve swapped lives.
XChfSardo: ?
XChfSardo: Did u stab Matty w a fork?
Allielooya: Never mind. Tell me again U R ok.
XChfSardo: I’m great.
Allielooya: U can’t bullshit me.
XChfSardo: Not. Past few days have been crazy.
Allielooya: What kind of crazy?
XChfSardo: Every kind. Difficult & confusing sometimes.
Allielooya: U hate difficult & confusing.
XChfSardo: I know. But it’s ok. Fun, too.
Allielooya: Does not compute.
XChfSardo: I know! Don’t worry. I’m having Life Experiences.
Allie snorted. Their mother was big on “life experiences,” at least in the abstract.
Allielooya: Life xperiences r scary. U need training wheels.
XChfSardo: Nope. Dived in deep end. It’s ok—I can swim!
Allielooya: But the sharks! The eels! Sharp coral! Aaaaaa!
XChfSardo: U sound like Mom.
Allielooya: Somebody has to. If not u …
XChfSardo: Ha. Very funny.
Allielooya: Seriously, ur safe w him?
XChfSardo: Definitely. Don’t worry.
XChfSardo: Has Dan called? Strange radio silence.
Allie’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She typed Dan is here, then stared at the words.
If May knew, she’d feel guilty. Maybe she’d feel like she had to rush home even sooner, like Dan was a problem she had to solve. But she’d broken up with him. She wasn’t responsible for him anymore.
What would May think if she knew that Dan had been hanging around the cabin, still welcome in the family after she’d kicked him out of her life? Wouldn’t that seem disloyal?
The cursor blinked.
Allie deleted the sentence and typed,
Don’t worry about Dan. Is Ben a good kisser?
It was a hunch. Not quite serious, not quite a joke—the question they’d asked each other about every guy they’d been interested in during college and ever since. They asked it of strangers they ogled at concerts, of first dates and third dates.
It meant, Have you kissed him?
It meant, How serious is this?
After a moment, May’s answer came through with a chime.
Un-fucking-believable.
It was Allie’s word—the highest praise she had to offer on the kissing scale she had developed in college.
A loaded response, because Allie had always maintained that if a guy was an un-fucking-believable kisser, she had no choice but to sleep with him. Un-fucking-believable kissers didn’t come along often enough to waste.
Again, her fingers hovered over the keyboard. But she took a deep breath and typed anyway, because she knew if she’d been in May’s position, May would have done it for her.
Allielooya: Ur path is clear, grasshopper.
XChfSardo: o_0
XChfSardo: I should go.
XChfSardo: XOXOXOXOXOXO
Allie was smiling faintly as she switched off her phone.
Back at the cabin, everyone was waiting for May to come to her senses, but Allie was starting to hope she wouldn’t. At least, not right away.
May had never cut loose, never done bad things just to feel the rush, never chased after inappropriate men or woken up in an unfamiliar bedroom with a hangover and a weird rash.
Was it wrong to want her to have some of that?
Was it wrong to want her to cut loose while also hoping, rather desperately, that she’d come home and get back together with Dan and tell Allie what to do and fix this mess?
Probably. Allie was wrong most of the time. And she felt so stuck, with the wedding coming up, that she pretty much had to be living vicariously through May.
But May deserved her fun after what Dan had done. She could put things back together later, after she’d bonked the hottie with the jaw of steel and the nice forearms. Allie would return to the cabin and tell everyone May wasn’t coming. Send Dan on home. Make up something to tell Mom that would give May this little bit of breathing room she needed.
In the dark screen of the phone, she could see her own reflection. She stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes. “Go crazy,” she told her absent sister. “It’s your turn to be the fuckup.”
And anyway, if Allie’s panic had its way—if she actually managed to choke back her cowardice and do something to put an end to her clamoring doubts about the wedding that was only six days away—she would steal back her title as Family’s Number-One Fuckup soon enough.
* * *
May handed the phone back.
“Where are we going now?” she asked.
He didn’t look away from the street. “Wherever you want.”
Not fair. She didn’t know the city, and she didn’t want anything except to fix what they’d managed, once more, to mess up.
All her life, she’d been a fixer. A good girl who smoothed over playground disputes between the six-year-old prima donnas and who carried notes from Allie to the boy she liked on the other end of the playground. May didn’t like to fight. It made her feel awful—made her stomach churn and her mouth sour while her heart beat too fast and she felt weak and terrible. She’d rather back off than clash, figuring it was easier to compromise, to drop the point, to take the blame—anything to keep from having to feel like that.
She was a coward, and she’d always been okay with it.
But something had clarified for her. Allie had helped her see there was no black line drawn through her life, no way of making herself over into a new person at a moment’s notice. There were only the choices she made, each of them separate and individual. The choice to leave Dan’s apartment. The choice to stay with Ben. The choice to push him when he didn’t want to be pushed.
This was a choice she got to make, too: how to behave in the wake of their argument. She could choose to back off, or she could choose to step up. How she felt about it mattered far less than being honest with herself about what she wanted and what she was willing to do to get it.
She wanted to know what had happened to Ben.
She’d poked him somewhere that hurt, and despite his offer to answer her questions, he’d curled around the pain and snapped at her like a wounded thing.
She didn’t like that, but she did recognize it as the prerogative of someone who didn’t spend his whole life trying to please others. He got to act angry when he was frightened, instead of pasting on a smile and pretending not to feel anything. She envied him that freedom, even though she’d been the one who got bit.
And sure, it stung. He’d sunk his teeth in deep with that comment about strays, puncturing her ability to pretend that what had been developing between them was anything more than quick, convenient lust between two people who had nothing better to do for a few days than screw around.
The feeling she’d had a few times now—that something more was going on here, something deeper and more elemental—couldn’t hold up in the light of that reality. It was fantasy-world nonsense. Ben liked her company, provided she didn�
��t get too pushy. He would be game for a brief affair if she made herself available. That was all.
Part of her hated that truth so much, she wanted to run from it. Hide in an anonymous hotel room. Because Ben wasn’t easy, and he refused to behave in a way that the movie reel in her head could work with. He wouldn’t offer her a candlelit seduction or a montage-worthy tour of the city.
Instead, he gave her strange gifts. Rather than roses, he bought her cheap, flashy earrings. He tossed out permission to be who she wanted and wear what she liked. He offered encouragement to bare herself to him, and he responded with cynical anger when she tried to get him to reciprocate.
Such was life. And the thing was, with Ben, she really did want to live rather than pretend. To choose the uneven edges and uncomfortable moments that came with inhabiting the real world over the bland ease of fantasy.
She didn’t want to act as though nothing had happened.
She didn’t want to give up on him.
“I want to play darts with you,” she said.
But what she really wanted was to start over. Ben and May at Pulvermacher’s—except this time she wouldn’t pretend not to be attracted to him. She wouldn’t cower, frightened by his intensity and overwhelmed by her situation.
She would match him, drink for drink, dart for dart, growl for growl.
“I suck at darts.”
“So we’ll play pinball.”
His face set in hard lines. His eyes were shuttered. “Pulvermacher’s?”
She nodded.
“Are you hoping to find somebody else to show you around the city?”
“Why would I do that?” she asked sweetly. “You’re the best distraction I’ve found in weeks.”
That won her a cynical smile. She waited for his refusal, but after a long pause he said, “You’re on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Pinball was a much better activity than darts.