by Paula Garner
“I could go back and get her,” Jay said, glancing at my parents. “Would only take ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Well, I think she wants to stay with the cat,” I said. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. But what had me so excited now wasn’t just the idea of seeing Meg, but the possibility of being alone with her.
“Well,” Jay said, “at least let me drive you over.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I kind of feel like a bike ride anyway.”
That was a fantastic stretch, since I only grudgingly rode a bike, and only when there were no other choices — and I rarely failed to complain about it.
“But then you’ll be coming home in the dark,” my mom protested. “On the highway!” She shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
“Laura, he’s not a five-year-old,” my dad said mildly. He put a hand on her back. “He knows what he’s doing, and his bike has reflectors.”
There was an awkward moment of silence while my mom processed the idea, her forehead doing its trademark origami. “I haven’t even cooked the burgers yet,” she finally said. “We just sat down for drinks!”
My dad got up and turned the grill on. “I’ll cook off two burgers now, and we’ll do the rest later. No problem. Easy peasy.”
It took everything I had not to tackle-hug him.
After a half an hour, which felt more like nine days, I had a picnic of oozy foil-wrapped cheeseburgers, Meg’s potato salad, and pie. I packed it all in my backpack, where Herbert the skunk was already tucked away. I bid a cheerful farewell, managing not to roll my eyes as my mother fired off her laundry list of reminders and safety warnings. “Text me as soon as you get there,” she finished, hugging me as if I were going off to war. My dad appeared and put a glass of wine in her hand, raising his eyebrows at me to acknowledge that she was kind of a case.
And then I was on my way.
It actually was a perfect evening for a bike ride. A warm breeze carried the smell of spring blossoms, and puffy white clouds scattered all over the bright blue sky.
But by the time I’d pedaled through the neighborhood and reached the highway for the longer stretch of the journey, fears began to nudge out my optimism. I thought about Football Guy, and how he probably had a nice car and loads of confidence, and suddenly I felt like a stupid little kid, pedaling along on my bike. On top of that, I was starting to sweat; after spending half the day in the shower, it seemed a gross injustice that I should end up biking to see Meg.
Cars zoomed by my left shoulder as I pedaled the last mile or so to the hotel. Of course the final leg of the ride had to be uphill, just in case I wasn’t sweating enough already. When I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I didn’t know where her room was. I stopped my bike by the main entrance, texted my mom as instructed to let her know I’d arrived alive and intact, and then texted Meg to figure out where she was. But of course, Meg being Meg, she wasn’t sure where she was, either, and it took a few minutes of virtual Marco Polo to get me to her door.
When I found it, I leaned my bike against the wall and ran a hand through my hair. I wanted to sniff my pits, just to check, but what if she was watching me from a window? So I rapped on the door, my heart in my throat.
The door opened a tiny crack. I heard her take a breath and blow it out. And then she swung the door open.
Neurons ping-ponged in my brain, trying to piece together the visual puzzle of all the ways the girl standing in the doorway was and wasn’t familiar. She was Meg but not Meg. Other than the obvious metamorphosis of her figure, I couldn’t quite put my finger on how she was different. But I had the sense of her having changed more than I’d imagined, and suddenly I felt like I didn’t know anything anymore.
I was conscious of the fullness of her breasts in her sort-of-clingy pink T-shirt, of the smallness of her waist, of how much shorter than me she was, but that was all in the periphery. I couldn’t let go of her eyes, that fantastic aqua-sea color, the familiarity and strangeness and all the shared and unshared secrets contained in them.
“Otis.” It was a whisper, an exhale, barely there.
I stared at her, not knowing whether or not to hug her. Was she the same, or was she new? Did we know each other, or not? Was a hug the right thing? The only thing more bizarre in my mind than not hugging her was the thought of how she’d feel in my arms in the bodies we were in now.
“Come on in,” she said, stepping back.
I stepped inside and set my backpack on a table by the door. The smell of the room conjured an era when cigarette smoke was as popular as air and dark green stripes were the decorating rage. The TV — a modern touch, flat-screened and on a swivel base — was muted on a cooking show.
“My God,” Meg said slowly as her eyes swept over me. “Is that really you?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. All I could think was how beautiful she was, and I certainly wasn’t going to say that.
“You’re so tall! I’ve never looked up at you before!” She had a look of wide-eyed wonder on her face that was giving my imagination all sorts of probably erroneous ideas. “God, you must be so strong! Sorry,” she added hastily, flapping her hands. “I’m just — taking you in.”
There was a lot of in-taking going on. Her fragrance had infiltrated my senses, a welcome interruption from the seeped-in secondhand smoke. Like everything else, it was familiar but different. Her damp hair hung in long waves. Had she just showered? A thought not to linger on . . .
“Jasper’s hiding in the bedroom,” she said, and there was that shy smile — the one that rendered me hopelessly and irrevocably hers the day she first showed up in my life. That was the same.
“Who’s Jasper?” I asked a moment before I remembered it was the cat.
“He speaks!” Meg exclaimed, making me realize those were the first words I’d uttered. “It’s like the first time we met,” she said with a teasing smile. “I remember I was starting to think you were mute.”
I blushed. “Mute” was a fairly apt descriptor for me the day she moved in. It was May, of course — the magnolia was so dramatic it managed to lure Meg over. I had never seen anything like the girl who stepped out of that green Volvo that morning. She was sunshine and sweetness, but also mystery and magnetism. My mom and Mason and I had been sitting on the front porch watching the movers, and next thing I knew, my mom was making introductions. Looking at Meg was like staring into the sun, so I averted my eyes and tried not to die. My mother’s exasperation with my state of incapacity was palpable. Mason, who was one and a half, talked to her more than I did.
As luck would have it, I couldn’t think of a reply now, either, so I just smiled. The moment stretched out awkwardly, and then Meg held out her arms a little, palms upturned, a question: Hug?
Relief flooded through me, but as she reached out to hug me, I froze. I didn’t mean to, but I was suddenly wary about how badly I’d wanted to hold her, and for so long, and I didn’t want to overdo it. Instead, I underdid it, and it ended up being a stiff, back-patty hug. The last thing I wanted.
She stepped back and swept her hair over her shoulders. “I can’t get over how big you are!”
“I guess I was pretty scrawny the last time you saw me,” I said, crossing my arms nervously and hoping my biceps looked good. I could still smell her from the brief contact. God, I wished I could have a do-over on the hug.
“Well.” She smiled as if to soften the truth of it. “Comparatively. I mean, I saw a picture, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but —”
“What picture?”
“It was you with your girlfriend at a swim meet.”
I shook my head, confused.
She looked around, spotting her phone on the coffee table. She went over and picked it up. “Here,” she said, after scrolling around a little. She handed the phone to me.
It was a picture from the local paper of Dara and me after I’d won the hundred breast at conference in February. Dara and I are standing by the blocks in our fast suits, arm i
n arm. Interestingly, she was on my right side, so her stump was behind my back. It was an arresting photo because I could visualize her with two arms. And because she looked so happy. We both did.
“How did you find this?” I asked.
She gestured with her hand, looking a little embarrassed. “Just basic stalking one-oh-one. Nothing creepy.”
The idea of her looking for stuff about me online kind of thrilled me. “Well,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets, “she’s not my girlfriend.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“It’s a swim thing. Dara coaches me. Sort of.”
“She’s a coach?” She tilted her head at me. “She looks really young.”
“No. She’s on the team — she’s a senior. She just coaches me.” I sighed, knowing Dara made no sense. “It’s a long story.”
“She’s pretty.”
I shrugged.
It was quiet for a moment, and I hastened to fill the awkward gap. “So, you still hungry? The burgers are probably getting cold.”
“Actually, would you mind if we just sat awhile?” She fingered a rubber band around her left wrist. “I don’t think I can eat right now.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard those words from you before,” I said, following her to the couch. She laughed, and her laugh was the same, exactly the same, which was both warming and nerve-racking. I joined her on the sofa, leaving about three feet between us. She took a breath and blew it out, eyes cast down.
“You okay?” I asked.
She gave me a tentative smile. “Not really.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, wishing I could put my arms around her or touch her somehow, but there I sat, like a goddamned stranger.
She lifted her shoulders a little, watching me. “I can’t believe I’m looking through those eyes again.”
“Through?”
She nodded. “Yeah, because they’re clear. Most brown eyes aren’t clear. Yours are light, like honey. Your dad’s are dark brown and . . .” She trailed off.
Mason’s eyes were also dark brown. I wondered if that’s what she was thinking.
“Are you thirsty?” She jumped up. “You want a Coke or something?”
She moved toward the kitchen area, barefoot. She still had that impossibly light way of walking, like she had her own field of gravity and it was less than everybody else’s. She pulled open the refrigerator. “Oh! Empty. Perfect.” She turned around, frowning. “There’s probably a vending machine somewhere.”
“Water’s fine.”
She filled a couple of glasses with ice and water and came back over, the ice cubes clinking like little bells. Were her hands shaking? She handed me a glass, then sat on the sofa, one leg folded beneath her, just the way she used to sit. Her ice continued to rattle in the glass.
“God,” she said, glancing at me, “I’m shaking like beef.”
I squinted at her. “Like beef?”
She widened her eyes at me. “Don’t you remember shaking beef? From that Vietnamese restaurant in the city? We loved it!”
I smiled as I remembered. “Right. The shaking beef. God, that was good.”
“We used to say that! ‘Shaking like beef.’ Remember?”
Before I could respond, her cell phone rang.
Meg jumped and grabbed her phone from the coffee table. “Oh!” She glanced at me apologetically. “I have to take this — I’m sorry! I’ll just be a few minutes.”
I threw my hands up in the air. I shouldn’t have expressed my frustration, but I had a feeling I knew who was calling, and I wasn’t thrilled with my place in the pecking order.
“Be right back,” she said, disappearing into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.
I stared at the TV and tried to be distracted by the epic cleavage on the TV chef. She tucked a massive forkful of pasta into her mouth and rolled her eyes back in her head as she chewed. I thought about having sex with that chef right on her kitchen counter. But it was an empty thought, free of desire and barely amusing — not enough to stop me from obsessing about the conversation Meg was having with Football Guy while I sat there with my stupid cold cheeseburgers in my backpack and my stupid bike outside the door.
I wished I hadn’t come. Some idiot part of me had managed to create a fantasy that the moment our eyes connected, it would all come rushing back, we’d still be us, and everything that had happened in the intervening years would just evaporate as we fell into each other’s arms. Instead, we were strange and awkward, and I was sitting there alone in front of the TV while she talked in the other room to the guy she loved. I wanted to get up and go home, to never have come at all. To go to bed and wake up in a world where I’d let her go the day she left, where I wasn’t caught in this mind-numbingly stupid pain loop.
Dara was right. Love was for chumps.
Something furry appeared in my lap. “Hello,” I said. “You must be Jasper.” He was long-haired, with patches of gray and white and black. He rubbed his head against my chest. I gave his back a stroke, which started him purring.
Cats are okay, but dogs. Dogs. I had never had one because of my dad’s allergies, but I sure had loved Meg’s dog.
When Cassie got hit by a car, I had picked her up and carried her — all forty pounds of her, which was nearly half my weight when I was eleven — to the animal hospital on Maple Avenue, nearly five blocks away. It was a fall day, after school, and none of our parents were home. I shook and sweated under the weight of the dog and the fear that she might be dying in my arms. Her warm blood soaked into my shirt, and her little whimpers had faded to silence. When we got there, they rushed Cassie to the back. Meg and I sat in the waiting room, holding hands and shaking. When the vet came out, he told us, “Ten more minutes and she wouldn’t have made it.”
But she did make it. She needed surgery and she had a bad limp for the rest of her days, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was such a good girl. When my dad told me he’d seen on Facebook that she’d died, I went to my room and bawled like a baby. Not being able to connect with Meg just about killed me. I knew well enough by then that if I emailed her, she wouldn’t respond. So I mailed her a sympathy card. She didn’t respond to that, either.
When Meg walked back into the living room, she stopped short. “That little traitor! That stupid fleabag has refused to come out for me since we got here.” She sat down close to me and petted him.
“Maybe he prefers men,” I suggested.
“He hates Jeff. My boyfriend,” she added, somewhat awkwardly.
“Oh!” I said, more cheerfully than I meant to. “Well, so much for that theory!” I scratched my new buddy under the chin, and he practically swooned.
Meg tipped her head, watching me pet Jasper. “God, your hands are huge.”
I looked at them. They weren’t huge, but they were big enough. “Good for swimming,” I said. I chanced a look at her and noticed that her lashes were damp. “Hey. Are you okay?”
She nodded but didn’t look up. She just continued to pet her two-timing cat. “I just need to sleep, I think. I haven’t slept well in days.”
“You want to go to bed?” I asked, confused.
She looked at me, eyes widening.
“No!” I cried, startling Jasper, who leaped off my lap. “I didn’t mean —”
A slow smile — understanding, sort of teasing. She knew what I meant. She knew me.
I let my breath out. “Anyway. How ’bout those burgers? You have a microwave?”
She watched me for a moment, biting her lip, thinking God knows what. Then she stood up.
We heated the burgers and dished up the potato salad. “What’s this?” she asked, gesturing at the foil packet of pie I’d set on the counter.
“Guess.”
“Oh God.” She touched her fingertips to her collarbone. “Is it rhubarb pie?”
“Bingo.”
She reached for it, smiling.
“Hey, that’s dessert,” I objected as she started unwrappi
ng the packet.
“Let’s have dessert first,” she said, putting a plate under the foil and heading back to the living area.
“But we just warmed up the . . .” I sighed.
Meg.
I followed her back to the sofa and sat down next to her.
“You’re lucky I ever even tried rhubarb pie,” she told me.
“Why?”
“When we first moved in and you and your mom brought one over, I asked you what rhubarb was. You said it was a plant in your yard that was, and I’m quoting here, ‘really sour, with poisonous leaves.’”
I laughed. That did sound like me. What a dork. “Well, obviously I talked you into trying it,” I said, taking the fork she handed me.
“I don’t know how.” She smiled. “‘Welcome to the neighborhood! Here’s a sour, poisonous pie!’”
It felt so good to laugh with her. When she took a bite of pie, she moaned and her eyes rolled back, just like the TV chef with the cleavage. Why were women so sexy with eating? Jesus! What if I never developed bedroom skills that could compete with food? What if I actually got to have sex with Meg one day and she just lay back, bored, daydreaming about pulled pork sandwiches and chocolate éclairs?
“Would you believe I haven’t had rhubarb pie since I lived here?” She licked the back of her fork.
“Doesn’t California have rhubarb?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Has to be your mom’s.”
As I braced the plate to take a forkful, my fingers brushed against hers. “I always think of you when we have rhubarb pie,” I said.
Her eyes searched my face, like she couldn’t tell if I was serious. “Really?” Her voice was soft, tentative.
“Yeah. Really.”
She smiled, but she looked kind of sad. “There are things that always make me think of you, too.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like, um . . . I always think of you when I get lost at my high school.”
“Aw.” I put my hand to my heart. “So every day?”
She elbowed me, and a sharp jab in the ribs had never felt so wonderful.
I thought maybe she’d keep talking, but instead she unmuted the TV, and we watched a cooking competition while we ate the rest of the food.