by Unknown
He turned away from me. “I’m sorry. I didn't... I didn't mean that.”
“How many times do I have to fucking tell you?” I said, and jumped to my feet.
I stepped over to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of merlot from the top cabinet. I uncorked it, poured it into two wine glasses, and returned to the couch, all in a matter of about twenty seconds. I handed Lukas his glass.
“I’m so tired of you thinking I’m this goddamned prude. I can have fun, okay? I just don’t like getting stupid plastered drunk.” I clinked my glass with his and took a sip. It was a little bitter, but not bad.
He took more of a gulp than a sip. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll tell you what…” I wasn't sure if I would have said this if I hadn't just bumped into Evan, and was in such a daring and confident mood. “You and me, WeHo, next weekend. What do you say?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’ll be fun. I'll try to get out of my Saturday shift a little early.”
He tugged on my arm, all excited, like a little kid. “That would be so awesome! Oh my God, I can't wait.”
“Me neither. I’m gonna find you a guy if it’s the last thing I do.”
He drank a little more of the wine, then set the glass against his chest. “Yeah, good luck with that.” He focused his eyes on me for a moment. Narrowed them.
“What?” I said.
“Something’s going on with you.”
“What? No there's not.” I put the glass down on the table.
“Did something happen tonight? Did you get laid or something?”
I was grateful I wasn’t in mid-swallow; I would have snorted the wine back out my nose. “Uhh, no. Nothing close. But…”
“But?”
“You could say I had an unexpected customer at work tonight. Guess who sat down at one of my tables.”
He looked at me, blankly. “Who?”
“Evan.”
“Evan? I thought he was in New York.”
“I did, too. He got back on Thursday.” I stayed silent, waited for Lukas to ask me more about the encounter. When he didn’t, I added, “And you want to hear the weirdest thing of all? He asked me out for coffee.”
His mouth opened wide enough for me to see his enlarged tonsils. He pushed the blanket down to the floor, and scooted toward me. “What, like a date?”
“No, no. Just as friends.”
His whole face seemed to shrink, as he sorted through his thoughts. “Do you want it to be a date?”
I glanced at the TV screen. Meryl was screaming at someone. “Maybe. I mean... I'm not really sure.”
Lukas looked down at my feet, and said, quietly, “His girlfriend just died, Sydney. It's only been a few weeks...”
“You think I don’t know that?”
He rubbed his thumb against his chin, and pursed his lips. “It just doesn’t… I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like the best idea.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen. He looked like he just needed someone to talk to, that’s all.”
“Oh, trust me. I’m not worried about him.”
I grabbed the remote control and turned the sound back up. “You know what? Let’s focus on Meryl.”
He smiled, and got comfy. “Sounds good to me.”
Chapter 18
I arrived at the Coffee Bean in Marina Del Rey thirty minutes early, mostly to allow for parking. The coffeehouse was in a small strip mall that looked out over the Pacific Ocean, and sometimes when it was busy you had to park as many as three blocks up. I got lucky, though, and found a spot right in front.
The barista rolled her eyes when I told her I needed a minute to decide on my order. I didn’t want to get something too sweet, or something too watered down.
“Could I have an iced tall white chocolate latte, with soy milk?” I finally asked.
“Make that two!” a voice said from behind. Evan stepped past me and plopped a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “And I’ll have some whipped cream on mine. How about you, Syd?”
He smiled at me, waited for a response. I was so taken aback I didn’t say a word.
“I think that’s a yes,” Evan said. “Two with whipped cream, please.”
He collected his change and dropped it in the tip jar.
“Evan. Hey.”
“Hey to you. You’re early.”
“I was gonna say the same thing.” I handed him my five-dollar bill. “Here, you don’t have to pay for my drink—”
“No, no.” He pushed the bill back against my chest. “I'm happy to.”
“Really? Well, thanks.”
We took the last available booth that looked out on the ocean. Outside it was foggier than usual, with about forty boats on the water rocking back and forth. But it was still better than the typical view from an L.A. coffeehouse—millions of cars inching their way down a cluttered highway.
“Were you scared of the parking situation, too?” he asked, with a laugh.
“Ahh, that’s why you’re early. We think alike.”
“Yeah. I remember when I came here one day and every spot was taken. I had to park so far away I ended up walking past another Coffee Bean just to get to this one!”
We both laughed, as the barista shouted our names from the counter. Evan jumped up and brought back the drinks.
“Thanks for meeting me here, by the way,” I said, “and not that Starbucks at the Promenade. That would have been too weird.”
“No, I totally get it. If I had known the significance, I wouldn’t have even mentioned it on the phone.”
I brought my elbows down to the table. Evan had already taken two sips of his coffee drink, but I hadn’t touched mine. “Yeah, the Promenade used to be one of my favorite places around here. They've got the movie theater, the restaurants. But now when I go... it just makes me sad. You know. Because...”
Evan nodded. “That’s the last place you saw Melanie. How’d she seem that day?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… was she happy? Was she upset about anything?”
“No, actually she seemed really good. She was super relaxed. Friendlier than usual. We had that fight the night before, and I feel so lucky I bumped into her one more time. It would’ve killed me...” I stopped, cleared my throat. “I mean, it would have disappointed me to know the last time she heard my voice was when I was screaming at her.”
The color drained from Evan’s face. He pursed his lips, looked down at the table. “Yeah, well, not all of us could be so lucky.”
I stared at him. “Really? What happened?”
He pulled down on his collar, and said, “Is it kind of stuffy in here, or is it just me?”
It wasn’t. I was thinking the same thing. “It's not just you.”
“You want to take a walk?”
We went out the side exit and headed toward the sandy beach a block down. Evan guided me toward the water, but stopped far enough away so that he couldn’t push me in. We started walking along the beach.
“So what'd you mean back there?” I asked. I finally took a sip of my coffee drink. A little sweet, but not bad.
“Back there when?”
“You said, not all of us could be so lucky. Did something happen between you and Melanie? Before she died?”
He put his hands behind his head. “I haven't told very many people this, but... I yelled at her. The last time I saw her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It was bad. I feel sick about the whole thing, but that, more than anything, keeps me up at night.”
I stepped closer to him. “You can’t blame yourself, Evan. You didn’t know what was gonna happen.”
He kept his focus on the ocean tide, and only glanced at me when I was the one doing the talking. “I’d never yelled at her before, in all those months of dating. I do it the fucking night she dies.” He picked up a rock and didn’t so much skip it into the water, as launch it as far out as possible.
“The same night?” I crossed my arms. “Wait, so
you did go to the party.”
“Yeah. For about five minutes.”
“After we…”
“Yes.”
I stopped. Tapped my foot against the sand.
He turned around. “What? What’s the matter?”
“I just... I didn't know you were there, that’s all. Did you see it up close? How much she was drinking?” A huge wave crashed against the sand to the right of me, but I stayed concentrated on Evan. “Wait a second. If you were there, why didn’t you try to stop her?”
Evan tipped his head to the left. Opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. “I, uhh…” he finally said. “The thing is…” He bit down on his bottom lip.
Then Evan did something I had never seen him do before: he started to cry, right in front of me.
“Evan?” I put my arm around his back. “Oh, Evan. Are you all right?”
He wiped a tear from his cheek. “I’m sorry.”
“Don't be. Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what happened.” I pulled him to the sand, and scooted back, just enough so that the water wouldn’t touch us.
Evan set his drink down, and rested his arms over his bent knees. “She was already drunk. Already pretty gone, when I showed up. I felt bad about what I did, with you. I wanted to make things right with her.”
I nodded. I didn’t really know what to say to that.
“But I get there, and she’s surrounded by all these girls, and boys, mostly strangers. She’s got a mixed drink in one hand, an empty shot glass in the other. She was sweating, slurring her words, bouncing around the room like she was a fucking two-year-old.”
“But why? Why did she want to get that drunk?” I searched my brain. “It’s almost as if…”
“…she knew about us,” he said, finishing my sentence.
“But Evan, there was no us.”
“She knew, though. She had to. She wasn’t stupid.”
“Knew what?” I waited for his response, in agonizing silence.
“That I had a crush on you.”
I rested my hands against the sand, and tried not to show any sign of joy in his moment of melancholy. I waited for him to follow up with something. Maybe ask me how I felt about him. What was I going to say? That I had wanted him ever since the moment I laid eyes on him? That I wanted him before the funeral, and after?
“She was so good to me, and she needed me that night,” he said. “Whatever pain she was feeling, I should’ve been there for her. So what do I do?” He grabbed another rock from the ground and tossed it into the water. “I pulled her outside, and I screamed at her. Told her she was being an idiot.” He put his head down, between his knees. “And that was it. She stormed back inside, and I went home. It's so stupid. If I could have looked past my anger to see that she was sick, like really sick, I could have taken her out of there, and gotten her to a hospital. If I could have been selfless for one fucking second...”
I scooted closer to him, reached for his hand—but didn't take it. “I know. It’s the worst part about all this. The thinking of what you could have done differently.”
He brought his head back up, looked out at the ocean. “You’re right. I miss her, so much, but it’s the knowing I could have saved her that just eats away at me.”
Evan jumped up, brushed the sand off his ass. I got on my knees, and looked up at him. The bright, shining sun hid his face.
“You all done with your drink?” he asked.
“Uhh, yeah.” He picked up both our cups and dropped them in the nearby trash can.
When he walked back over, he helped me to my feet. “I’m sorry I’m dumping all this on you,” he said. “I didn’t plan to, I promise.”
“No, don’t apologize. Have you been able to talk about this? Like, with your family?”
He shook his head.
“Yeah, see. You can’t hold all this in. You’re in pain. We both are.” I reached my hand out to him, again. I don’t know what the intention was. Hold his hand? Feel his chest?
He finally set his hand on mine, and pulled me close. My whole body tensed up. I wanted to kiss him, but not today, not now. So when he hugged me and put his head on my shoulder, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you, Syd,” he said. “You’ve always been a good friend.”
“Yes,” I said. “A good friend.”
We spent two more hours walking along the beach. We brought up Melanie once in awhile but mostly used the time to goof around and talk about food, family, movies—try to give each other a needed break from the heartache. I was still reeling from Melanie’s death, but it was probably five percent of the anguish Evan was feeling. I did my best to cheer him up. At the end of our walk, I finally got him to smile.
“You’re kidding! The whole night?”
“He loves Meryl Streep,” I said, as we approached the front of the Coffee Bean. “After I went to bed, he started Sophie’s Choice! Who watches Sophie’s Choice at 1 AM on a Saturday night?”
“To each his own, I guess. You know what movie she's in that I love? It's called Defending Your Life, my mom showed it to me when I was little. Have you ever seen it?”
“No, I haven't even heard of that one.”
“It's about this guy who dies, and he goes to this Heaven-like place where his life is examined, and he falls in love. It's about taking chances.”
I shot him a tender smile. “Really? I’d like to see it.”
“I have the DVD. Maybe I can show it to you sometime.”
Going over to Evan’s and watching a movie about death? It didn’t seem the smartest idea, but I would have said yes to a Transformers sequel if it meant spending more time with him.
I approached my car. I hated that it was so close to the coffeehouse. “So you like going to movies?” I asked.
“Love it.”
“Really? All those mornings before sociology, you never talked about them.”
He shrugged. “You never asked me about them. I love movies. If you wanted to go see one sometime—”
“Friday, maybe? There's this new Sandra Bullock movie that looks kind of interesting.”
He chuckled, and looked down at the ground.
“What's wrong?” I asked. “You don't like Sandra Bullock?”
“Syd, I want to get this out in the open, so we’re both on the same page. All right?”
I leaned against my car. Those words were never a good sign. “Okay...”
“I’m not looking for a girlfriend right now. I’m not looking to date yet. What I really need right now... is a friend. Is that okay?”
I grinned, and didn’t hesitate. “Of course. It's what I want, too.” And I did. As much as I liked Evan, driving to his house at that moment and getting all hot and sweaty, as incredible as I know it would be, wouldn’t have felt right. We both needed each other, and I didn’t want to do or say anything that would push him away.
“Good, I’m glad.” He hugged me again, then went to open the door for me. He pulled on the handle.
“Oh,” I said. “Hold on, it's locked.” I took out my keys and pressed the unlock button.
He opened the door. The perfect gentleman.
“Thanks again for the coffee,” I said. “This was fun.”
“Yes, it was. Talk to you soon?”
“Sounds good.”
He leaned down, I thought to hug me again. Instead, he kissed me on the cheek. “I'll see ya,” he said, and walked across the parking lot, to his 4Runner.
I just stood there, at a loss for words. I almost forgot to breathe.
When I finally said, “Bye,” seemingly a thousand minutes later, he was already pulling out onto the street.
I sat in my car and turned on the ignition. I switched on the radio. Marvin Gaye's “How Sweet It Is” was playing.
I backed up, and made a right on Marina Pointe Drive. I rolled down the windows. Blasted the music. “Oh, how sweet it is…” I said.
I sang the song out loud, even though I knew Evan Taylor didn’t
love me. Even though I knew nothing was ever going to happen between us.
Or so I thought.
Chapter 19
Evan called me later that night, and we talked for another hour. I learned more about him in that one day than I did all of sophomore year. I loved that he was finally opening up to me, despite the tragic circumstances.
We had coffee again on Tuesday morning, then dinner on Friday, at a hole-in-the-wall Salvadorian restaurant called El Paisano’s, where Evan introduced me to the wonders of the papusa. We saw the newest Sandra Bullock drama—at the Arclight Hollywood, not the Promenade—and kicked back at Yogurtland until it closed. And during the car ride, and during the movie, and during the frozen yogurt, the whole time, I kept waiting for him to make a move, despite what he told me in the Coffee Bean parking lot. His hand grazed my leg a few times, and he gave me another kiss on the cheek when he dropped me off. But nothing. He truly did just want to be friends.
“It’s for the best,” Lukas said, stepping out into the hallway from his bedroom.
“It’s not for the best, it’s confusing, don’t you under—” I didn’t finish the sentence. I looked him over from head to toe and laughed. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“What?” He looked down, like nothing was wrong.
“Dude. You’re not wearing that.”
I knew Lukas wanted to get laid, but he didn’t have to try this hard. He wore a light pink tank top that barely covered his chest, over the tightest of jeans that did its best to accentuate his dinky rear end. The jeans were also rolled all the way up to his knees, which made him look like he wanted to wade his way through not a sea of cute twinks, but a flooded basement.
“What? I think I look cute!” He ran over to the nearest mirror. Took off his glasses and inspected his face. “Except for this zit I can’t pop for the life of me.” He pushed the tips of his thumb and index finger over the pimple.
“Eww,” I said, looking away. “Don’t be gross.”
“Sorry. Not all of us can be born with perfect skin, Sydney.”
I didn’t have a comeback for that. He was right; I was no Melanie in the looks department, but I had been blessed with very little acne my whole life, aside from a terrible week in the tenth grade when my face turned into Connect the Dots.