by Emma Lord
The words feel like they burn on the way down. “Well, not so much anymore, I guess, huh?”
“No. The way you step up for this family—not just with this silly Twitter thing,” he says off my look, “but every day. You’re here. You show up. Without being asked.” He runs a hand through his hair, staring at Grandma Belly’s door. “Even I wasn’t half as dedicated to this place growing up, and your grandma can speak to that. You’ve always been above and beyond. More than we could have ever asked for from a kid. And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel less than for it.”
The words settle in between us, my dad gruff but earnest, me near paralyzed. I have this sudden feeling of wanting to grab the words from the air, put them somewhere permanent in me, like they can anchor me in a way nothing else has. I want to remember this feeling—the strange, happy crush of it in my lungs, the pride, the relief, even the mingling guilt.
“And for what it’s worth—your mom had an eerily similar talk with Ethan earlier today.”
I find this hard to believe. So much so that I almost snort. “She did?”
“He was all bent out of shape. Seemed to think you were the—how’d you put it?—golden twin. That we trusted you over him, with everything to do with the shop and Twitter and everything else.” My dad’s voice is wry, but also a little bittersweet. “If that helps you … put things into perspective at all. I think maybe you both need to understand that you’re good at different things, and stop beating yourselves up about what you think you’re not good at.”
I cringe, unsure if it’s for my sake or for Ethan’s. It’s always been like this—even at my most embarrassed, I’m never quite sure what part of it ends in me and begins in him. Even knowing that, I didn’t think it extended this far.
But maybe it makes sense, even if I don’t want it to. The way Ethan was so touchy about the Twitter page. That weird, unresolved fight we had outside of the community center after Pepper hacked the account. I was so wrapped up in how I thought of Ethan that it never once occurred to me what he thinks of himself.
We’ll talk about it, someday, maybe. For now I know what will happen: my dad will tell my mom about this conversation the way they tell each other everything, and she’ll tell Ethan, and the two of us will quietly know what we know and feel how we feel until it either goes away or doesn’t. But right now, having this long overdue conversation with my dad, is the first time I’ve ever been confident that someday it will.
“He’s sorry about that tweet he sent. And he called Pepper this morning to say so. He was just upset about the timing of it with what happened to your grandma, and … I think he was trying to be helpful. More like you.”
This time I really do snort. My dad nudges my shoulder with his.
“Truth is, you’re both pieces of work.” He pauses, a wince starting to take shape on his face. “But since we’re on the topic of that … Twitter thing.”
Oh, man.
“I don’t know what is or isn’t going on between you and Pepper, but since it is or isn’t happening, I feel like I owe you a bit of an explanation. And from the looks of things, Pepper’s mom might owe her one too.”
I nod. “You guys know each other.”
“Yeah, well. That, and … we dated, briefly.”
My eyes widen to the approximate diameter of those useless dollar coins the MTA card machines are always spitting out. “Oh.”
My dad raises his hands up in defense of himself. “A long, long time ago. Like, long.”
I try to picture my dad and Pepper’s mom in this “long, long” time ago, but my imagination refuses to de-age them. My dad is just my dad, the way he is right now, and Pepper’s mom is—well, terrifying. But also such an unknown quantity to me, it’s hard to imagine anything about her at all.
“How long is long?”
He has to think for a moment. We both raise our hands to scratch the backs of our necks, and I hide a smile at my shoes and stop myself just in time.
“It was—well, it was just before I met your mother.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Did you dump Pepper’s mom for our mom?”
My dad stares at the coffee table.
“It didn’t—happen—exactly like that.”
Which is to say, from the rueful look he is not doing a very good job of suppressing, that’s exactly how it happened.
“Dad.”
“She was just here for the summer before heading back to Nashville. It was never meant to be anything serious. Not that—okay, that’s enough, that’s all you’re getting from me on it,” says my dad, pointing a finger at me. “No smirking.”
It’s so rare I ever get to hear about my parents’ pre–Jack and Ethan days that I can’t help myself. “You scoundrel.”
My dad shakes his head. “I fell in love with your mom within a minute of meeting her. Nothing in the world was gonna stop it.”
Then all at once he gets misty-eyed the way he does sometimes when he talks about Mom. This time, I don’t feel the usual rush of secondhand embarrassment. This, maybe, is the real anchor, the one that’s always been there—knowing I have parents who love each other so much it was never a matter of if, but always a matter of when.
“But you pissed off—Ronnie, was it?”
My dad presses his lips into an exasperated line. “Yeah. I got a few angry phone calls. She, uh—she was working at the deli that summer. Trying to learn the ropes because she wanted to open her own place. That’s how we met. We hadn’t quite called it off when she went back to school in Nashville, so things were a little … tangled in that regard.”
My dad’s eyes aren’t fully with me when he says it, so I know there must be more to the story than that—but whatever it is, he doesn’t offer it up.
“So rather than working it out, you just waited until your kids were old enough to duke it out on Twitter instead?” I ask.
“Hardly,” says my dad. “That’s why I didn’t want you on it at all. That whole Grandma’s Special stunt at Big League Burger had Ronnie written all over it, and if I’d had my way, we would have just ignored it altogether.”
I feel a pang of remorse. “Well.”
My dad nudges his shoulder into mine. “But then it got half the city buying our sandwiches. I’m not going to lie—we were in a tight spot a few months ago. All this Twitter insanity … it’s made a huge difference to our bottom line.”
For a moment I almost pretend this is a surprise to me, but we both know I’m way too invested in the deli and its goings-on not to know we were in the red. I nod quietly, and my dad cuts his gaze to his lap, obviously not expecting it. I can feel the slight puncture to his pride so immediately that it feels like my own.
“So all this was thanks to your spurned college ex, huh?” I ask, to take some weight off of the silence.
“No. All this was thanks to my very clever son, who is nothing if not loyal to this family. And would probably make an excellent social media manager one day, if he wanted to be.”
I open my mouth, but it’s suddenly drier than it was after trying to eat the stale rye loaves my mom used to make our lunch sandwiches from when we were kids. But I can’t chicken out now. It’s my opening. I know it’s not now or never, but it’s now or some other less appropriate moment when I don’t have my dad’s full attention.
“I know this whole Weazel thing kind of blew up in my face, but—I think that’s what I want to do. Develop apps, I mean.”
My dad considers this. “I really didn’t have any idea you were even into that,” he says, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees.
I pick at a loose seam on my jeans. Years and years of work—of teaching myself to code, of stumbling through online tutorials, of watching the weird things I’ve envisioned come to life on screens—and now that the moment has come to justify all of it, to explain how much it means to me, I’m at a complete and utter loss for how to do it.
“I’m—it’s something I think … I could be good at,” I say.
> The words aren’t right, maybe, but the understanding must be. My dad breathes out a sigh that is just as much in resignation as it is pride.
“I believe you, if those screenshots your vice principal sent me are any indication.” There’s a subtle edge in his voice to let me know I’m nowhere near off the hook for that, but it doesn’t do anything to dampen my relief. “I just wish you’d told us.”
It’s somehow easier and harder to say than anything I have in my whole life, coming out of me too quickly for me to overthink it: “I didn’t want to let you down.”
He puts a hand on my knee. “Of course I’m disappointed you don’t want to stick around here. But only because I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone half as good as you to run this place,” he says. “I’d be much more disappointed if you didn’t go out in the world and do something you loved because you wanted to make me happy.”
I clench and unclench my fingers. “I don’t want to—get away, or anything. I want to be here.” I don’t understand just how much I mean it until I’m saying it. There are all kinds of lives I’ve envisioned for myself beyond the corner office of the deli, but none of them have ever been too far from home—from this city that raised me, from the block that knows me better than I know myself. “I just … want it to be on my terms.”
My dad nods, and it’s an unfamiliar kind of nod. There’s a respect in it beyond the respect of father-and-son; it feels for the first time like he’s looking at me as more than that. As someone who is less of a kid and more of a peer.
“Does this mean the Twitter war is over?”
My dad and I both snap our heads up to Grandma Belly, who is leaning against the very much open door of her bedroom and peering at us critically through the thick lenses of her glasses. We both open our mouths at the same time—me to ask how the heck she knows about the Twitter war I thought I’d gone to great lengths to hide from her, and my dad clearly to ask why she’s up when she should be resting—but she raises her hand to silence us both.
“I’m fine,” she says to my dad. Then she turns to me. “And as for you—I’m old, not dead. I’ve been following this saga since the beginning. Have you and that Patricia girl made out yet or what?”
I somehow manage to choke on oxygen. I lean over to my dad mid-cough, expecting him to say something to stop her, but he’s gone redder than I am and already leapt to his feet.
“Let’s, uh, get you back into bed, Mom.”
“That girl is a hoot and a half. You two got me through an entire two months of waiting for new episodes on my favorite soaps,” says Grandma Belly, with a wink. “You tell her she’s welcome to let that sassy mom of hers copy my recipes any day of the week.”
I wait until she’s safely in her room with her back turned to bury my smirk into the palms of my hands.
Jack
“So.”
“So,” I echo.
We’re walking down the street, just me and Pepper, both of us armed with aluminum foil–wrapped grilled cheeses, plastic cups full of lemonade, and a giant Kitchen Sink Macaroon to split. It was easy enough to be around her for the two or so minutes when my mom was setting us up with the food, insisting on Pepper taking a lunch break, but now that we’re alone, every single one of the wits I used to have has left me.
“I’m sorry,” we both blurt at the same time. We pause, momentarily stricken, and then laugh—hers breathy, and mine an accidental cackle, loud enough people move an extra step out of our way when they pass.
“What are you sorry about?” I demand. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I—I don’t even know, really. I feel like I kind of did. I’m—sorry for thinking you were Landon, first of all.” She takes a long sip of her lemonade, her face scrunching like she’s trying to wash the taste of that thought out of her mouth. “And sorry for—well—thinking the worst of you, a few times, when I didn’t have the full story.”
I wish my hands weren’t occupied with holding my food, so I could shove them into my jacket pockets.
“Well, I’m sorry for real stuff. For lying to you about the Weazel thing, mostly.” I gnaw on my lower lip. “The thing is—I was actually going to tell you that night. I took that picture because I was going to be a smart aleck about it. Send you the picture over the app as Wolf, so then you’d put two and two together and realize it was me.”
The implication, of course, is unspoken—that she’d have the space to put two and two together and pretend she didn’t realize it was me, if she didn’t want it to be. I see I haven’t done anything to fool her because her eyes immediately soften.
“Anyway,” I say, before she can address it, “that obviously backfired when you, uh, threw up instead.”
Pepper snorts. “Yeah. Safe to say, I’m off hot dogs for the foreseeable next hundred years.”
“And then—I was going to tell you when you were here. When we were kissing. And instead, I just kind of shoved my foot in my mouth and wrecked the whole thing.”
Pepper spots a place for us to sit in Washington Square Park, on a bench with a view of the little gated area that makes up the dog park. She sits, watching me studiously as I take the place next to her, with the kind of care I’m still not used to even after all these weeks of being on the other end of it.
“I wouldn’t say wrecked,” she says.
“Yeah. But you’re a meme now. And suspended.”
I don’t know why I’m pointing all of this out to her, except I have to—suddenly it all has to be on the table, every stupid thing we’ve said and done, every mistake we’ve made. She’s still here, and she’s still staring back at me, but I can’t trust it yet.
“True.” Pepper thins her lips, her eyes not meeting mine for a second. Before I can start spiraling into the panic I’ve been keeping at bay, she turns back to me and says, “But weirdly, this is one of the best days I’ve had in a long time.”
I laugh self-consciously, but only because I can tell she means it. There is something more personal in that, maybe, than any kind of insecurity we’ve told each other, than even the kiss we botched. Even if it was just for a few hours, Pepper knows the landscape of the inside of my world.
It’s not enough to erase everything that’s happened, but maybe it’s a step.
“And your mom…”
Pepper blows out a breath. “I don’t know. But I’ll deal with it when I get home.”
“My dad—he said he and your mom used to know each other.”
Pepper doesn’t seem nearly as fazed by this as I was. “Yeah … I thought as much.” Off my look, she shrugs and says, “I may have made some less-than-polite remarks on my way out the door this morning.”
I wince. “Hard same.”
“Whatever it is though—it’s their problem, not ours.”
I’m relieved to hear her say this, mostly because I don’t want to have to tell her what went on between them myself. I feel like it’s the kind of thing she should actually hear about from her mom, and not through a game of telephone from me.
Still, it doesn’t make this any less complicated. It feels like this whole thing has been a giant heap of Monster Cake from start to finish—good, but messier than either of us could have ever anticipated.
“Could we just—start over?” I ask. “No Twitter, or Weazel, or parents, or … screens in the way.”
Pepper smiles this easy, patient smile. The kind that a few months ago I never would have been able to picture on her. There’s something so grounded and assured in it that I know it’s not just her—it’s rooted in something between us. Something steady and quiet, a kind of understanding that maybe has been there all along, buried deep under the tweets and the jabs and the occasional staredown in the hallway.
“I’m all for leaving that behind. But I don’t want to start over,” says Pepper quietly.
She leans in, then, and pauses just in front of me. I’m so wrapped up in what’s about to happen, I don’t realize for a moment that she’s waiting for me, for permissi
on to do this thing that seems so natural, so inevitable, that even in the beats before it happens I can’t imagine it not happening.
I bridge the distance between us, and then we’re kissing again—and this time it’s slow, and small, and simple, but fills me with the kind of full-body warmth nothing else ever has.
We pull apart, smiling like idiots, and just stare at each other for a few seconds. Then some hipster on the bench next to ours who doesn’t know how to mind his own beeswax pointedly clears his throat.
“We should probably, uh. Eat these before they get cold,” I say, just barely managing not to stammer.
“Right.” Pepper unwraps hers, face still red, her fingers fumbling. She pauses just before she lifts it to her mouth. “So is this the Grandma’s Special?”
The grin that bursts on my face almost cracks from the cold air. “Wow. My mom really does like you.”
Pepper is poised with it in front of her mouth and raises an eyebrow at me. “Do you trust me?”
“Not a bit. Take a bite.”
She does, and I prop my head on my palm and lean in close enough she has to muffle a laugh as she chews.
“Well?” I demand. “Finally willing to concede that our grilled cheese is vastly superior?”
She looks like she’s about to give a begrudging nod, but then her eyes go wide. “The secret ingredient.” She peels apart the grilled cheese, staring at it and then up at me, her face so incredulous. “It’s sweet bell peppers?”
It isn’t the first time I’ve wondered how Pepper would react if she knew. But somewhere along the line that imagining shifted from a nightmare to this moment now, with a full Pepper grin so infectious, I can’t help but match it with one of my own.
“Shhh,” I say, grabbing a half of her grilled cheese and taking a bite. “It’s a secret.”