“Hey,” I say, the butterflies in my stomach doing a weird dance when he finally meets my eye. “You look . . . dapper.”
He raises one eyebrow. “You sound surprised.”
I can hear my mom coming out from the kitchen, so I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek in case we have an audience. I feel considerably less stupid for the perfume and five outfits when I catch the whiff of cologne on his neck. He must really be getting into character tonight.
“Well, you’ve met my parents,” I say quietly, stepping back.
“Not as your boyfriend.”
My heart beats faster in my chest. Nervousness turns to sadness as I think of what could have been. In another world, this could have been real. Luke and I could have been dating, and his coming over would have been a sign of Mom’s progress and a reason to celebrate.
Luke steps inside and notices my bare feet. “Should I take my shoes off?”
I shake my head.
“You didn’t have to get me flowers,” I say, loud enough for Mom to hear as she approaches us.
“Hate to break it to you, but these are actually for your mom,” Luke says, grinning. His smile gets bigger as Mom stops in the foyer and beams at him.
“Hi, Mrs. Rumfield.”
“Oh, please. How many times do I have to tell you to call me Katherine?”
He hands her the rainbow roses and she draws the bouquet to her nose.
“Feels a little weird,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck. He seems less sure of what to do with himself now that the flowers are in Mom’s hands.
“You’re so respectful. This one is always ‘Mel this’, ‘Mel that,’” Mom says, pointing at me.
My mouth drops open, and Luke winks at me.
“That’s what she asked me to call her even when we were little,” I protest. I know she’s joking, but it feels like too much too soon.
If Mom had been around more during our childhood, maybe Luke would be fine calling her Katherine. The truth is, ever since her weird reaction to my going over to Mel’s the other night, I haven’t been quite sure what to make of anything where my mother is concerned.
Is she annoyed at me for spending so much time with the Cohens all these years? And how can she really blame me for that, when she and Dad were so absent?
“Luke. How are you, son?” Dad asks, meeting us in the dining room. Luke and Dad shake hands, and Dad immediately launches into an assault about school. Is Luke still majoring in biochem, does he want to get into a health profession, will he go to med school like his dad, etc., etc.
“Dad, he doesn’t have to know that yet. He’s only in his second year,” I point out as I signal for Luke to sit in the chair next to mine.
“Yes, and it’s important to think ahead,” Dad says. “Otherwise you end up at the end of a long path and you still have no idea what you want to do.” He is not so subtly referring to my college deferral.
“People don’t have to figure out their whole lives right away, and Luke certainly doesn’t have to,” I say. For some reason I’m suddenly on edge. Maybe it’s getting to me that we’re playing Picture-Perfect Family tonight, acting like my parents were so concerned about my future career or Luke’s future career prior to the arrival of Mom 2.0.
“It’s okay, Jessi,” Luke says, giving me a reassuring smile.
I try to tell from his face whether he really means it, but he gives me nothing. Everything that comes out of his mouth sounds sincere, and since it can’t possibly be, I have no choice but to doubt everything he says.
“I think I eventually want to go to grad school, but I’m actually thinking about switching to an engineering major.”
“Interesting,” Dad says. “That’s another good choice. Lots of job prospects.”
Not that Luke owes me anything, but I wonder how I’ve managed to make it through countless hours by his side this summer without ever hearing about his new plan. That was something we talked about throughout the years, even before we ever dated. Luke always knew he was going to become some kind of scientist. At the start of last summer, when he was tutoring me, he told me he’d decided on biochem. It feels like losing something, no longer being able to follow the progression of his dreams the way I once did.
“I’ve heard so,” Luke says now as we all sit down. “But to be honest, I feel like more and more these days you have to make your own way. It’s not as simple as finding a major with good prospects. You need to be smart, willing to work hard, passionate, and brave enough to take chances, to do unexpected things.”
“Amen to that,” Dad says, nodding vigorously.
“Which is why I think Jessi will be just fine. She has all those things.” My head snaps in Luke’s direction, and he’s already looking at me.
His defense of me almost sounds . . . genuine. He is completely killing it tonight. If I’m being honest, he has been killing it all along, selling our charade far better than I have.
Thank you, I say with my eyes.
He gives the slightest nod in response.
“Hmm,” Dad says, far less enthusiastic about Luke’s second point.
The next hour passes with more school and life talk and a whole lot of questions aimed at Luke, which he answers without flinching. I feel embarrassed and find myself thinking of all the ways I can apologize for my parents when this is over. They are so . . . not Mel. Instead of being easygoing and funny and warm, they are serious and overly earnest, trying to make cases for themselves as Good Parents, like they’re trying to disprove anything contrary that I might have told Luke. And then the questions. My God. You’d think Luke was at an interview or something. But he’s so good at fielding them that I start to wonder how many times he’s met a girl’s parents. He probably met Meredith’s, since he went over to her house so many times, but who else has there been? Court? He said there were hookups in college. I wouldn’t have expected those to involve any parental run-ins, but what do I know?
Luke leans over and whispers to me when my parents get up to grab dessert from the kitchen. “You look miserable.”
“I am. This sucks.”
He looks stricken. “Why? Am I doing something wrong?”
“What? No!” I insist. “It’s . . . them. They’re trying too hard, and . . .”
“They’re great,” Luke tells me, placing his hand on my knee and squeezing. Tingles spread all the way up my thigh, but I try to act normal.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” he says.
At the end of the night, when I walk him to his car, he’s still sticking to his story.
“Listen, you’re their only child. They want to make sure you don’t end up with a deadbeat.”
“They only started caring about that yesterday.”
I’m surprised to hear the words leave my mouth, but before I can backtrack, Luke says, “That’s what’s bothering you, huh?”
“What?”
“Their . . . new interest.”
I shrug. “It’s nice that they care—it really is—I know lots of people have parents who suck, but it’s also . . . new. I feel a bit like I’m in an alternate reality.”
“I get it,” Luke says, surprising me. “I’m glad they’re here now, though. That counts for something.”
“I know,” I say, but I’m still uneasy about the whole night. It felt like all four of us, my parents especially, were acting. Like they were trying so hard to pretend the past never happened, trying to pretend things have always been this way.
Maybe that’s what’s bothering me—that we’ve never actually addressed it, this change. There was no moment when my mom sat me down and said I’m feeling better or I’m sorry or tried to explain about the past eighteen years. It feels like I’m the only one with any real memory of how things used to be.
“Well, thanks for coming and being such a good sport,” I say now.
“If I’d been in Winchester when we . . . before,” he says awkwardly, “I’d have come a lot sooner. I’ve al
ways wanted to know your parents better.”
“Well, now you know them,” I say, trying to be comical.
“Maybe it would have helped solve some of the mystery.”
“What mystery?” I ask, confused.
“You. You were this gorgeous, brilliant girl who just appeared in our lives one day. Out of nowhere.”
I guffaw. “I was never a mystery.”
“To us, you were.”
Luke climbs into his car then and drives away, but I’m still going over his last words.
To us, you were.
Who is us?
Him? Mel? Rowan?
For some reason it feels like he meant Ro and him, and I wonder now if they used to talk about me when I went home at night. What they thought about me.
I always thought I was such an open book, perhaps a little too open. I wonder what Luke could possibly have wanted to know about me that he didn’t.
And why didn’t he just ask when we got together?
Maybe he didn’t have enough time.
Or maybe, as perfect as everything seemed to me at the time, there were still some parts of me that he was afraid to know.
17
NOW
When Willow and Brett ask me to come to the staff party on Friday night, my answer is “absolutely not.” For one thing, it’s at the lake. For another, it’s a party.
“Oh, come on,” Willow pleads. “The one at Bailey’s house only sucked because of Eric, and Eric is a changed man now. You said it yourself.”
“I don’t believe I used those words.”
“Close enough.”
“I hate the lake,” I tell them, glad that Luke isn’t at our lunch table yet. The last thing I want is for him to hear this discussion.
“You don’t have to swim in it,” Brett says.
“It’s still . . . the lake.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Willow says. “Everybody is going. Everyone except you.”
“Luke isn’t,” I say.
“Do you and Luke talk?” Willow asks. “Because he said he would.”
I blink at her, unable to believe my ears. “He said he would? Does he know which lake it is?”
Willow looks to Brett, who looks at me like I’m the dumbest person on the planet.
“On account of how it’s the only lake in Winchester . . . yeah,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Ask him yourself,” Willow says as someone slides into the chair beside me. When I look up at him but don’t say anything, Willow asks, “Luke, did you say you’d go to the party tonight?”
“Yeah, why not?” he says.
Why not?
It’s the place where everything fell apart, that’s why not. But as I stare at him, he shrugs and goes on as if that place holds absolutely no meaning in his life. As he reaches for the ketchup across the table, he whispers to me, “It’s just a place.”
Except it’s not just a place. It’s the place.
Does it mean that little to him?
Did us mean that little to him?
“So, you’re scared of the lake?” Brett asks, still confused.
“I guess,” I say, not willing to go into detail.
“I’ll protect you!” Willow promises, giving me a side hug.
“Be brave,” Brett says. “If you don’t go, you’re giving it power over you. Plus, if you hate it, you can always leave.”
Be brave.
The words catapult me back in time to the night I kissed Luke.
The night I made a commitment to myself to be happy and grateful and well-dressed and brave.
It was the beginning of the end of everything.
But it was also the beginning of everything.
That things turned shitty a few months later didn’t negate the fact that I loved those words, that I wanted to live by them.
“I’ll come for an hour,” I say.
“Yay!” Willow says. “I was thinking of live streaming it. And since you were in the camping video, you can be in this one too!”
I give her a look.
“Or not,” she says.
So just like that, I’m doing it. I’m going back to the place where everything changed.
Luke looks so completely unbothered that I feel a swell of rage at him, and that fuels my determination to go and show him how equally unbothered I am. Because that’s what everything is between us, isn’t it? A game. A farce.
On Friday night, Willow comes over to my house to get ready. She picks out a denim miniskirt for me and a flowy, thin-strapped polka-dotted monstrosity of a top that I never wear. It reminds me of the opened wings of a ladybug.
“Monstrosity?” she repeats, shocked. “Girl. No, this is perfect.”
“It’s so . . . hippie-ish.”
“So? You can be hippie-ish. You can be anything for just one night.”
She goes with a long maxi-dress herself and gives herself gorgeous beach curls. Then she does our makeup. By the time she’s done, I look like a glamorous hippie version of myself and she looks like royalty from some sunny, exotic island. Because we live near each other and we got ready together, I drive us both to the lake. I’m also not planning on drinking, so I can be Willow’s ride back.
As we pull up to the lake, there are more cars than I’d expected.
“I thought it was just for staff,” I say.
“Maybe it snowballed,” Willow says easily.
We park in a line of cars under some big leafy trees and make our way to the “beach” part of the lake. The music is relatively quiet, so we won’t get a police visit, but people are laughing and talking and clearly having a good time. They are also decidedly not people from work, but I try not to dwell on that.
Besides, it’s not the people who are the problem. It’s the place. The memories it brings.
Before I can fall into a spiral, someone grabs my arm and I whirl around to find Luke, but I barely have time to say anything before his mouth is on mine. The kiss is wet and sloppy, and I step back from him.
“Are you drunk?” I say, with just a trace of hysteria in my voice.
“It’s Friday!” Brett says, appearing out of nowhere, too, and putting his arms around Willow and then me. “Let the man relax a little.”
So Brett is obviously also drunk.
I shrug him off and turn back to Luke, eyeing the can of beer in his hand. “How much have you had?”
Luke pushes his hand through his hair. “Didn’t count,” he says.
I drop my voice a little lower. “Did you drive here?”
“It’s Friday. Let my man relax a little,” Luke parrots.
First, what he said doesn’t even make sense. Second, what the hell?
I look around, wanting to grab someone, to explain to them, but there’s only one person in the world I would have grabbed if I ever found Luke drinking. And he’s not here.
I try to get Willow’s attention, but her camera is on and she’s holding it toward her and Brett.
I want to grab them by the shirts and explain. You don’t understand. Luke doesn’t drink.
He hates the taste of beer. He doesn’t like the way it makes him feel, the way it makes him lose control.
So what the hell happened before I got here?
I realize for the first time that apart from my crippling anxiety, I was kind of looking forward to tonight. Luke and I have had a string of good days, days where it didn’t feel like we were hiding folds of hate under love. And now I feel all that shattering right before my eyes.
Brett is inviting Luke into the camera shot. I duck away from the three of them before I’m captured on film with people underage drinking. Not that I have any scholarships to worry about losing.
“Rumfield,” someone says, giving me a nod as he walks past. Eric.
I grab his elbow. I’m that desperate.
He looks taken aback. “Whoa,” he says.
I quickly let go. “Sorry. It’s just . . . how long have you guys all been here? I though
t it started at eight.”
“A bunch of people went from work to Blueberry Diner for dinner; then they came here and started drinking, I guess,” Eric says with a shrug.
“Luke?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, following my gaze to where Luke and Brett are mugging for Willow’s camera. “Kinda looks like it.”
“He doesn’t drink,” I say now, trying not to sound like a concerned wifey or something. “I mean, usually.”
“Yeah, I believe you,” Eric says. “It’s fine. He’s just having a good time, but let’s keep an eye on him, okay?”
The let’s almost makes me cry.
It means I’m not alone in this, that I’m not crazy or overreacting. That I’m not reliving the worst night of my life.
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
“Want something to drink?” Eric asks. “I know where there’s some unspiked punch.”
“Where?” I ask.
“In my backpack. I brought my own, like a freaking kindergartener,” he says, and I laugh. “I try not to overdo the booze thing too often anymore. Not this summer, anyway.”
I remember the night when he humiliated me at Bailey’s party. He wasn’t drunk then? I don’t know whether that makes it better or worse.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure Luke is still with Brett and Willow. At least Willow isn’t drunk . . . yet. To my surprise, Luke is looking over here. When his attention drifts back to Willow again, I hurry to catch up with Eric.
“So what kind of punch?” I ask.
“It’s made from the tears of infants and the sweat of old men.”
I make a face.
“That was a joke. Meant to imply that I know you think I’m an asshole.”
I give a reluctant laugh.
Eric stops under a tree and pulls out a backpack. He holds out a nearly full Gatorade bottle to me.
“This is your punch?”
“What, you thought I was at home mixing lemonade and shit?”
When I still don’t take the bottle, he sighs. “I didn’t poison it, Jessi. I’ll prove it.”
He opens the bottle and pours it into his mouth without letting it touch his lips.
Some Other Now Page 23