by K A Goodsell
“Something must have happened earlier,” I tell Elgort, closing my door.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Elgort said as we rounded the car. We both watched as Tag and the man exchanged words. “Let’s leave them be.”
We walked down to the edge of the dock, and I listened to the gentle sound of the light waves lapping up against the edges of the pillars. The area was quiet and the wind coming up off the water was chilly, signaling the cold front projected to move through the region.
Once seated, Elgort pulled out two to-go containers and handed me one.
“What’s this?” I asked as he handed me a fork and napkin.
“Only one way to find out.” He smiled at me. “Open it.”
I smiled back, cracking open the food container to reveal the sweet aroma of rhubarb pie from the shop down the road. My favorite fall treat. Well, let’s be real—my favorite treat year-round.
“You got me pie?”
“Huh?” He looked up as he fixed the corners of the blanket, as usual. He thought it made the blanket move less. The science behind it wasn’t there, but I always let him do it anyway, just like the night at the dock. “Oh, I thought you’d like it.”
“That was sweet of you.”
It’s Friday night and I’m eating a personal pie, I thought. Who needs love? I have a shitload of sugar and rhubarb, what a night.
I dug the fork into the tip and took a bite. Still warm.
“Did you pick this up before you came over?” I wiped the corner of my mouth with the napkin. “Like did you run there and then run to my house since your car’s in the shop?”
“No biggie.” He shrugged, taking a bite of his cherry pie, his favorite.
I coughed. “No, that’s amazing.” I coughed again, this time on purpose when I realized I was acting way too excited over pie. I nearly whispered, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said around another bite.
I took a large bite and felt the gooeyness drop from the side of my mouth and onto the wood slats of the dock. “Oh, no!”
He handed me a napkin, and I wiped the side of my mouth, then leaned down to wipe the goo off the dock. Some bird would surely have loved it, but I didn’t want to forget it was there and sit it in later. When I leaned over, something hard knocked against the pillars below, and I jumped. Elgort caught me by the hips as I twisted back up into a sitting position.
His laugh lingered for a second longer than appropriate, then it flittered out realizing he was the only one laughing. It was almost like he was waiting for others to laugh with him—if he held it long enough, someone probably would come along for the ride.
“These waves are getting kind of big,” he said, his laugh fading. “Maybe we shouldn’t be sitting out here.”
The interminably long silence between us continued for a moment more with only the sound of crickets chirping.
He spoke first. “They know, don’t they?”
“Who and what?”
“Your parents. They know that we kissed the other night.”
“I mean my dad was there, so…”
He nodded, pursing his lips. “Yeah, it was bound to happen. Your mom was giving me the ‘I’m really sorry this happened to you, and I still think you’re an awesome young man, but my husband would never let my daughter date’ eyes when I saw her at the morgue.”
I smiled. “Yeah, few boys see that face. You’re special.”
The silence returned.
After a moment, Elgort broke the barrier again. “Screw this, can we please talk about what happened?”
Relief rushed over me. “Please.” I took a moment to gather my thoughts, to string them into something that made any kind of sense.
Come on, Paislee. Let’s not lose a friend here. And a friend was what I wanted him to be, I was certain, because now wasn’t a good time.
He shifted on the dock, trying to find a position that wasn’t uncomfortable. What was it with boys and how they can’t sit crisscross? Finally, he compromised.
“I didn’t realize you were that good at bowling.”
We looked at each other, and I couldn’t stop the smile that broke across my cheeks.
“Be real, you totally used me because you wanted to kiss me,” I joked.
Elgort smiled back at me, trying exceptionally hard to not make it any more awkward than it already was.
“Maybe.” He stared at his socks, picking at one of the larger holes. “I’ve just been having a nice time with you—” He paused for a moment to listen. I was sure he could hear my heartbeat at this rate. “—and stuff.”
Solid landing.
His voice trailed off, quieter with every word. Then he stopped picking at his socks, which now had a gaping hole, and glanced up at me without shifting his head.
“Those were intimate moments.” He sounded so grown up suddenly. “It just kind of threw me for a loop. Like over at Six Flags or something.”
And he’s back.
I nodded, folding my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. They were covered in goosebumps. I was dumb to wear a pair of capris tonight. The exposed parts of my legs were freezing.
“I’m sorry.” Hearing him saying it threw him for a loop hurt more than anything. That was the opposite of what I wanted to hear.
“I’m being really open with you right now, so please hear me out,” I whispered.
He nodded slowly and leaned forward, pulling again at the hole in his sock.
“What happened that night, I keep replaying in my mind—”
“So do I.”
“I don’t think we mean in the same way,” I told him sternly.
He shook his head and got up onto his knees, still at the side of the blanket. “I think we do, though.”
What he didn’t know—only Sarah did—was that I cared about him deeply, but there was no way I was in the right place right then, especially with getting ready to write all my college applications. We only had one more year together. What if we didn’t go to the same college, which I knew we wouldn’t? We’d have a year of bliss, get attached to each other, and then have to break up, and it would hurt even more. This way, I could keep a friend. A best friend. I am just friends with Elgort. Just friends.
“Just friends?”
I must have said that last bit out loud, as it furrowed Elgort’s eyebrows, and it pursed his lips.
“What I mean is that I think we would be better friends. I don’t want to break up our circle.”
He leaned back again, sitting with his legs out in front of him. The dock shook slightly under the weight of his frame, over six feet tall and muscular from playing football and baseball for Pine Grove High School. “The other night, you were telling me you’ve had a crush on me since we were in elementary school. Was I wrong to believe that?”
I scooted toward him on the dock, now glad I cleaned up the goo from the pie.
“Look at me,” I told him. “I care about you. But I think we should just focus on school and stay friends for a while. It’ll probably be best for our friends, too, to know we’re just friends. I haven’t even told Raimy about what happened that night.”
It stung, saying that to Elgort.
“I said a lot of things that night, but I meant them,” Elgort continued as he picked at the opposite sock now. “I really meant that I care about you, but I agree. It maybe wasn’t the soundest decision I’ve ever made.”
The awkward silence between us was there again. Except instead of the peepers in the background, it was Tag yelling behind us. A moment later, Tag got back into his deputy car, and the white pickup truck pulled out of the parking lot.
“I’m sorry, but I’m glad we talked about it.” I put my hand out for him to take. Instead, he wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into his chest for a hug. He smelled great. We stood up, and I leaned into him further.
“Paislee,” Elgort said, still holding tightly onto me as we looked at each other, not breaking our eye contact. It wa
s hard to see all of his facial features in the darkness, but I noticed how close we were to each other. It probably wouldn’t happen again.
I stood up on my tippy toes in my Converse, making sure that our lips collided. His were warm and squishy. It was nice to stand there for a moment instead of the millisecond at the bowling alley, where everything just smelled like feet and dried nacho cheese.
He pulled his hands up from my back and held onto my face throughout the kiss.
We broke apart, and I caught my breath and backed away slowly, trying to know of where the dock ended. “I’m sorry.”
I backed up and turned around to walk toward the Beetle. At times like these, I wished I had a remote starter so I could hop in and go. When I got to the Beetle, I almost expected him to run after me or at least call out, like it happens in romance movies or teen dramas. But it didn’t happen. Elgort stood at the dock, watching me leave. He didn’t chase after me to convince me not to go, didn’t shout that he loved me or anything. He just stood there.
This was not what I had expected. But it was easier this way.
I shut my door and waited a moment before starting the car to see if he’d walk over. He didn’t. Instead, he turned around, hands on top of his head, and looked out over the water.
I started the Beetle, and for the first time in a long time, it sounded loud. It was quiet by the lake, and I felt like it was breaking the awkward silence of the moment. It allowed me to sigh when I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like my chest was heaving the air sucked out, like there was no cabin pressure around me.
As I backed out of the parking lot, I watched as he continued to look toward the lake, and in my review mirror, I finally noticed he turned toward me.
The darkness engulfed me as he drifted out of view when I turned onto the dirt path. Just like that, he was gone from my love life—but hopefully not gone forever from my entire life.
The air was crisp against my ankles as I trudged through the fall leaves toward our mailbox. I always forward every year to the kaleidoscope of color. Despite the cool, fresh air I felt so at home in, I was on edge with anticipation for a letter I had been expecting to arrive any day now. Multiple days ago, but I’d let a day or two slide.
I exhaled, seeing my breath create its first steam of the year before opening the box, crossing my fingers in my brain it was full to the brim.
The gaping void of an empty mailbox rarely makes me feel so miserable. But on a dreary fall day like this, I couldn’t help but feel exasperated.
It wasn’t necessarily the fact that there wasn’t any snail mail, no postcards, and (fortunately for my parents) no bills residing in the ever-less-popular choice of word transportation. It was more because I couldn’t get the idea out of my thick skull that possibly, just possibly, I would receive the letter of recommendation that Mayor Mark Maynard promised me I’d receive three weeks ago.
But nope. Metal emptiness stared back at me.
Closing the mailbox released a peculiar, unexpected relief. I wasn’t sure I was mentally prepared to receive the recommendation letter, as that would mean the next step would be to apply to colleges—all of which were located in towns away from my family and friends, away from everything I’d been familiar with all my life. On the flip side, I hoped this recommendation letter would knock the socks off the admissions office at Yale University and allow me to study archaeology there. It was a match made in forensics heaven, since the school was only about an hour away from home. It would make my mother happy (important) and would come with more than enough bells and whistles of classes, curriculum, and internships (also important). Was it a reach school? Entirely, but I hoped it’d be the one I called my second home.
Maybe it would be. The mayor had told me his letter would be the best one I’d receive, but I don’t count my chickens before they hatch. This was, the same mayor who spelled our town’s name as “Pine Groove” last week in the reelection flyers his campaign placed in every mailbox in town — 3,453 mailboxes to be precise. We were a small town but a thousand can seem infinite when you have to go knocking on each door apologizing for the mistake.
The mailbox lid fell open, and I struggled to slam the door closed to no avail due to the rustiness of its hinges. I almost felt remorseful for my barbaric assault on the oversized tin can. I lightly patted the metal, and sure enough, it closed.
“Sorry,” I told the mailbox. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
I paused, staring at the mailbox’s crooked door. It looked miserable.
I shook my head, realizing I had waited a nanosecond for the inanimate object to acknowledge my apology. I must be going insane.
Then again, this was coming from the girl who had Saturday morning dates with Sarah Sturges.
I strolled up my driveway back toward my house and looked toward the cemetery. “I’ll be back out to visit after breakfast.” Immediately, I rolled my eyes. I loved breakfast, my favorite meal of the day, but I dreaded Stack Saturdays.
My family was a dysfunctional group of functioning human beings in a kitchen too tight for our bunch, but we grinned and bore it because that’s what families do.
Stack Saturday was a mandatory weekend event. Until we got married and moved out, they expected us to attend. There were ways to get out of having pancakes with the family, but my mother had made us each sign an agreement outlining those exceptions—nope, not weird at all:
They may excuse you from Stack Saturday if one or more of the following applies:
1. You’re with your grandparents for the weekend. (Rare, as one set lived in Germany and the others lived in Canada)
2. You’re sick. (If you came within a foot of the kitchen when you were sick, my mother would kill you.)
3. You’re dead. (Also uncommon)
Since we are not dead today, we are having Stack Saturday.
Every morning, I played a game of “Wrong or Right Side” with my father. It was a tradition where we chose a mug that best reflected our mood. We had started this ritual a few years before, when he noticed that I grabbed certain mugs depending on my mood. It worked out well for us because if it was a bad morning, he knew not to ask me a thousand questions and just nodded at me. This morning was a bad morning based on the mailbox issue just minutes ago.
I reached into the glass door cupboard, meant for wine glasses but cluttered instead with the family’s collection of whimsical mugs, and grabbed my vintage Northern Exposure mug. It was black like my soul on bad mornings, and I felt like the main character of the television show, Joel Fleischman: overly moody, grumpy about life’s curveballs, and rational in the face of the magical-realist happenings in the lives of others.
On mornings when I was happier, I reached for the other Northern Exposure mug. It was yellow, and on those mornings, I related more to the secondary character, Maggie O’Connell, a strong-willed, independent feminist with a soft side. I channeled Maggie on days when I wanted to take on the world. I just hoped I’d have better luck with boyfriends than she did. They all seemed to end up dying horrible deaths.
I turned around, revealing my chosen color to my father, who was sitting at the dining room table in the room's corner. He tucked his newspaper corner underneath his finger to peek at the mug. With one look, he nodded toward me and put the newspaper back up to continue reading.
My mother greeted me as she entered the room with fresh flowers. “Any luck?” she asked, a hopeful smile on her face.
I shook my head. “No.”
She stopped fluffing the flowers into a vase. “I’ll talk with Mark today.”
It can be a beautiful thing to have parents who are popular and even somewhat powerful within the town. It can also be a burden in disguise because everyone knows your business. That happens anyway in a small town, but I was also on display as part of the weird family that dealt with death—though since we were the only family that did, everyone had to play nice. The reason: everyone dies, and someone has to take care.
We were kind of like t
he Santas of death: Be nice, or else no presents—or in our case, no discounts on funerals.
I sighed, making my way into the dining room to pick out my tea. One of the unspoken perks of my mother owning the town’s only funeral home was that we got sent free tea and coffee samples from companies all the time in hopes we’d serve their products regularly at wakes and funerals.
We’d always been partial to a local brand, but that didn’t stop us from testing the waters of other products. Literally.
Although our kitchen and dining room were relatively small, my parents had found room for a tea and coffee station, where each of us prepared our morning “energy” dose—even my younger sister, Mitzy, who drank decaffeinated tea.
This morning I picked up a packet of English breakfast. I liked the fancy, high-class ring to it. It was still simple and plain enough for my early morning stomach to bear and went with most breakfast foods, unlike blueberry or chai tea. I didn’t understand how some people could drink those alongside eggs and salty ham. But to each their own, I guessed, as my brother dumped three spoonfuls of honey into his vanilla chai.
“Does it even taste like tea anymore?” I pointed to the mug that now had a visible layer of floating substance in the middle.
He ignored me as he put down the honey container. The poor bear-shaped bottle made a sucking noise as it gulped air, drained of its innards.
“It adds to the quality.” He picked up the mug with one hand and with the other scratched his nose, flicking me the middle finger.
“Good morning to you, too.” I lifted my hand and showed him the back, all fingers pointed upwards. “Here’s a whole bouquet.”
He nodded in approval of my lame comeback before making his way over to my mother, who was stirring up pancake mix.
I joined them at the island in the kitchen, sucking in the heat from the hot water I’d just poured into my mug.
As we scooted around one another with hot plates and armfuls of napkins because Mitzy is a messy eater, I caught my mother smiling at Nat, who had taken over flipping pancakes on the griddle. Even though my father, the town coroner, spent his days surrounded by detectives, he hadn’t caught on to Nat’s role as undercover chef.