by Paula Garner
“Anything . . .” I raised my eyebrows a few times to finish the question.
She laughed, bumping me with her shoulder. “You’re bad.”
“Come on,” I said, bumping her back. “Tell me.” I hoped she didn’t turn the question back at me. I’d either have to plead the fifth, lie, or reveal way more than she probably wanted to know.
“Maybe someday,” she said in a way that clearly meant don’t count on it. “Magnolia poem?” She gave me a winning smile.
“Maybe someday.”
Stalemate.
“Anyway, I already have a poem from you,” she said with a sly grin.
I squinted at her. “You do not.”
She laughed, a real laugh. To me, it sounded like music. “I swear! I have it memorized.” She cleared her throat, tossed her hair back, and recited:
Hair of gold, eyes like the sea
To my heart she holds the key
Skin so soft, hair so fine
Someday I will make her mine.
I covered my face. “Oh God. Oh my God, how awful.” Seriously. It gave me physical pain. I hurt. I stood and went over to the wall, banging my forehead on it.
“Do you remember it?”
“Kind of,” I said into the wall. “God. Shoot me.”
“Stop that!” she exclaimed. “It was beautiful! Jeez, Otis, you were twelve! What’d you expect? Shakespeare?”
Her tone was teasing, acknowledging my nickname, but it did nothing to dissipate my horror over the abomination I had penned. I turned around, shaking my head.
She laughed. “Your face is red!”
“I know.” I could feel the burn in my cheeks. I mustered a smile for her.
And then our eyes met and didn’t let go.
She stepped closer, and my pulse instantly sped up. But she just gently laid her head on my shoulder, resting one hand against my chest. I didn’t dare move. I wondered if she could feel my heart pounding under her hand.
“God, I miss you,” she said.
“Missed? Or miss?”
“Miss.”
“But I’m right here,” I said into her hair.
“I miss you anyway.”
MEG AND HER DAD LEFT A SHORT WHILE later. He had made dinner plans for them in the city with work friends, and when Meg waffled about going, I had mixed feelings. I wanted her close, always, but I also felt like I needed a break. I needed time to digest that she had left me on purpose, with intention. And that it was, at least in part, because of me.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing after Mason died; just getting through a day felt like an achievement. It almost felt unfair that I should be responsible for any of it, for my failings and blind spots. But I guess I was. Whether I could have done better or not, I was still responsible, right? I wondered if I should try therapy again. It occurred to me that I mostly got nowhere on my own — I just sort of spun around in the dark. I could maybe use some help. If I was going to do better, I would have to learn how to see things I didn’t want to see. Hear things I didn’t want to hear. Basically, Reality 101.
From my bedroom window, I watched their car pull out of the driveway, wipers clearing the rain that continued to fall. Meg was behind the wheel, and I had never seen a slower backing-up process in all my life. She crept to the end of the driveway and came to a complete stop, right next to the magnolia, before backing into the street. The wrong way. And then pulling back into the driveway and backing out the other way. I had my lights off, so I hoped she couldn’t see me in the window, laughing at her. She pulled away at about three miles per hour, and I thought how Dara would go out of her fucking mind if she were ever Meg’s passenger. She’d probably get out and push.
Later my mom made grilled fish tacos for dinner, with a spicy pineapple salsa. I was sorry Meg missed it — she would have loved it. I sent her a picture of it, and she sent me a return photo of her dinner. Squid ink pasta with crab, chilies, and mint. You’re lucky I have something good or I’d be mad about the tacos.
We exchanged messages intermittently over the next couple of days, never touching on anything of substance. Maybe not knowing how. I didn’t want to set off any land mines, but I also wondered if my silence would lead to her deciding against moving back. I felt like I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. So I did what I knew how to do: worked and swam and ate and slept.
Dara was quieter than usual, too. I called her Tuesday when she wasn’t responding to messages and asked what she’d been doing. Nothing, she said. I asked how her arm was, and she said it was fucked up — that her hand kept opening and closing. Her actual hand, I asked? No. The hand that was gone. Also, that it felt like her phantom arm was getting shorter, like her hand was inching closer to her elbow. How the fuck was I supposed to make sense of that? When I asked her if she’d told her doctors, she laughed.
She didn’t sound bitter, though, it occurred to me after. She sounded kind of happy, oddly enough.
And then Meg texted on Thursday to tell me that Football Guy had arrived, and they’d see us soon in Michigan. Which sounded kind of like a blow-off to me. Fine, Meg, okay. You’re busy now, I get it.
I didn’t even respond.
I tried not to think about what was going on over at that hotel — I had no idea what the sleeping arrangements might be. I hoped her dad was strict that way. If he wasn’t, that meant Football Guy and Meg could potentially have total privacy. Fuck.
I was miserable. Maybe I should have been that valiant guy who accepted defeat with grace and wished the happy couple all the best. But I wasn’t. I was dreading seeing them in Michigan on Saturday. I would have one good day, since we were leaving a day before them.
On Thursday night Dara decided to have some people over, and for once I was all in, glad to have a distraction. Heinz and Shafer picked me up.
It was a ridiculous summer night — the kind where the moon hangs low and yellow, everything smells amazing, the crickets are deafening, and the thick velvet air hovers in that narrow place between warm and cool. The idea that Meg and her idiot boyfriend were together in the midst of so much perfection was too much.
We had to park way down the street. There were a lot more people there than last time — at least thirty in the living room alone, and a mounting pile of empty beers. And Dara was nowhere to be seen. I went downstairs to find her, where some beer-soaked Ping-Pong game I couldn’t even begin to comprehend was in motion, and then upstairs, thinking maybe she was in her room.
From the top of the stairs, I heard music emanating from her room. I approached and knocked softly on the door, then louder. I tried one more time, then gave the knob a turn. “Dara?”
I stopped in my tracks, my brain trying to make sense of the tangle of bodies, of the lip-lock, of Abby’s hand up Dara’s shirt. When Dara glanced up and saw me, she jumped about a mile, sitting up and straightening her shirt.
“Sorry,” I said weakly, backing away. I closed the door again, my heart pounding. I wasn’t halfway back down the stairs before Dara flew out of her room and raced to me, grabbing me by the shirt.
“Don’t be mad. I was going to tell you.” She stared down at me breathlessly from the step above me, my T-shirt bunched in her hand.
I couldn’t find words. My specialty.
“Look.” She ran her hand through her hair. “Meet me in the laundry room. I’ll be there in a minute. Okay?”
She released my shirt, and I did as she directed, entirely on autopilot. I went down to the laundry room, closed the door, and waited, unable to find anything useful to think about. I tried to blink away the image still stuck in my head, but pushing that out sent me to the only other thing on my mind, which was what Meg might be doing with Jeff — and the whole reason I’d come to this fucking party in the first place was to forget about that. The unhelpful part of my mind kept raising questions like, Does Meg go down on him? Is she blowing him right now? Has he ever made her come? And then the rest of my mind tried to shut down and go blank, but too late
— the images were ingrained.
Dara came in a minute later, closing the door behind her. She jumped up onto the dryer, another one-armed feat, and patted the washing machine next to her. I sat on it and we turned to face each other. An economy-size box of fabric softener on the shelf near us filled the air with a chemical version of fresh linen.
“So,” she said.
I nodded. “So.”
“I’m sorry.” She took a breath and closed her eyes. “I wanted to tell you.”
I stared at her, uncomprehending. “Why didn’t you? I mean, how could you not?”
She shrugged and looked away. “I know, I know. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad. I just . . .” I picked at a thread on my shorts. “I thought it was the sort of thing you would tell me about.”
She touched my knee briefly. “I wanted to! But, I don’t know, saying it out loud . . . It felt like too much.”
I looked up at her. “So this wasn’t the first time?”
She hesitated, then shook her head.
“So, when? And how did it happen?”
“Well, I told you we held hands in the hospital. And then we had that talk, about my mom and things. And after that, she was, like, looking at me. And she asked me if I’d ever kissed a girl.”
Holy Moses. “What’d you say?”
“I told her, you know.” She gestured with her hand. “No!”
“And?”
“She was leaning so close — my heart was going crazy. And she said, ‘I kind of want to kiss you.’”
“And?”
“I said okay.”
“Oh my God.” I sat back, stunned. “And you liked it?” I was sure a week ago Dara would have thought that kissing anyone was gross.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“You kissed a girl and you liked it?”
She rolled her eyes. “I so fucking knew that was coming. Anyway. And then she leaned back and said she’d wanted to do that for a long time.”
“Aw.”
The strand of envy that was weaving through me did not take away in the least from my happiness for Dara. If anyone needed some happiness more than I did, it was her.
“And then, Saturday? At my house? After the River Park meet? After you left, Abby sat with me in my room and we were just talking. But I was feeling really gross and I wanted to take a shower . . .”
“Oh my God!” My mind filled with images of naked, soapy girls.
She kicked me. “Stop it. I went in and showered, and when I came out, she asked if she could take a shower, too, because she hadn’t hung around to shower after the meet. So I was lying on my bed, waiting for her to come out . . .”
“And she came out naked and —”
She smacked me in the leg with the back of her hand. “Will you shut up?”
“Sorry, sorry.”
“So she came out — dressed, Mueller. And I asked her if she wanted to watch a movie.”
I stared. “A porno?”
“Oh my God.” She stared at the ceiling. “This is your last warning.”
“Sorry, sorry.” I clasped my hands together and tried to behave.
“So we sat on the couch together in the media room and put in a movie. And we were kind of cold — our hair was still wet from the showers and everything — so I grabbed a blanket. And somehow we started holding hands under the blanket. And she was sort of tracing circles over my hand with her other hand. Which — I can’t even explain how incredible that felt, because how do you explain how someone touching your hand can feel that fucking good?”
She didn’t have to explain it to me. Any time Meg had ever touched me anywhere, I nearly died of the bliss of it.
“And then she asked what my story was. And I said I didn’t know. I mean, how can I be sure I’ll never like a guy?”
“Well, if you’re not attracted to me,” I said, remembering Meg’s theory, “you’ve gotta be gayer than a rainbow.”
Dara snorted. “Anyway . . . More things happened. Last night.”
“Oh? Like?”
“Like, you know.” She wriggled and turned to examine a jug of bleach, spinning it to face her. “Stuff.”
And I thought my communication skills were sad. “Exactly how much stuff?”
She blushed. “A lot.” She grinned at her lap. I had never seen Dara so sparkly; it was a whole new side of her. I wanted to go exploring, to find out if she cared about me and the Olympics anymore, but if she was getting to the lesbian sex, it would have been rude to interrupt.
“Abby stayed over,” she whispered, glancing up at me.
Then the door flew open, and Dara and I both yelped.
“Jesus!” I said, clutching my heart.
“What are you two doing in here?” Abby asked. “Dara, I thought you should know that people are now playing strip poker in the basement.”
“So you want to play, too?” Dara teased. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“That is not what I’m saying,” Abby said, walking over to Dara and touching her leg. The smile they shared made me weak with envy. I might as well have been invisible when they looked at each other. Was that what I’d be witnessing between Meg and Football Guy? Shoot me now.
Abby turned to me. “Where’s Meg?”
“With her boyfriend,” I said.
“He’s in town?”
“Yup. He’s coming on vacation with us.”
“Huh.” Total poker face. She turned back to Dara. “There’s also a chick I’ve never seen before puking in your backyard.”
Dara sighed and jumped off the dryer.
“No!” I cried out. “Wait, don’t go. Just five more minutes. Okay, two! Please?”
“We’ll talk later,” Dara told me.
“What were you guys talking about?” Abby asked, giving us a funny look.
I said “swimming” at the same time Dara said “therapy.” We exchanged glances and then gave Abby cheesy grins.
She squinted at us. “You were telling him about last night, weren’t you?” she said to Dara. “Oh, don’t even bother denying it.”
“Were there any details you wanted to add?” I asked Abby hopefully.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “I am not going to be part of this sick equation. You two are so weird.”
She turned to go and Dara followed her.
“Come on, Mueller,” Dara said.
I followed them out to the living room, grumbling.
Music blared from the speakers, the bass thumping from the gleaming mahogany floorboards. The whole room smelled like beer and chlorine and Axe — and also marijuana, the familiar skunky reek reminding me of my stoner lab partner freshman year. Four or five people gathered on the floor around a wooden tray, bouncing a quarter into a cup. One of them was Heinz, my fucking designated driver. Another was Kiera.
“Otis!” she called out. She patted the floor next to her. “Come play!”
“Give it up, Kiera,” Heinz told her.
I went ahead and sat by Kiera; what else was I going to do? She smiled at me, flipping her thick, dark hair. She was wearing a red tank top and tight jeans. My lizard brain stamped its approval.
Heinz bounced a quarter neatly into the cup and pointed at Kiera with his elbow. “Down it, baby.”
Kiera gulped down the beer, then grinned, the quarter flashing in her front teeth. She took it out and turned to me. “Sure you won’t play?” she asked. “Come on, please?” Her lips glistened. They were on the full side, kind of sexy — not unlike her breasts, which I could see all too well in the tank top. Was it just the proximity to beer making me go stupid? She was pretty, dammit. And sexy. And she smelled sort of exotic and spicy.
With boldness that came from I don’t know where, I asked her what perfume she was wearing.
“Poison,” she said. “You like?” She leaned forward, moving her neck close to my nose, creating an ocean-deep trail of cleavage before me.
The blood rushed from my head, leaving me dizzy. “Uh-huh.”
Heinz said to Kiera, “Hey, your turn. Quit flirting with Shakespeare and play the game.”
“I like flirting with Shakespeare,” she said, aiming the quarter. She tossed it down, and it bounced off Heinz’s forehead and landed about ten feet away.
“I suck,” she pointed out. She turned to me again. The intensity of her gaze made me blush. “Did you know,” she asked in a low voice, “that you have beautiful lips?”
I do?
She stared at my mouth. “They look sooooo soft.”
I swallowed hard. “Well, you know. I am a fan of the mint ChapStick.” I cringed inwardly. Great line, Shakespeare.
Doink. Splat. Another guy pointed his elbow at Kiera. I know I’m generally the uptight sort, but if the guys were ganging up on the girl to get her drunk, I really didn’t think that was cool.
Kiera drained the cup and then bounced another quarter into oblivion.
She leaned over and whispered, “Let’s go for a walk.”
Oh boy. Not a good idea, a voice in my head said. But then another voice — one that came from a slightly more southerly location — piped up. Hey, live a little! Meg’s probably having wild animal sex with her boyfriend this very minute.
The thought cut some sort of cord inside me. I stood and let Kiera guide me away from the group.
I followed her outside and to the backyard. Shit — she was heading for the gazebo, which reminded me of Meg. “Come on,” she called back to me, waving her arms and weaving slightly.
“Did you drive tonight?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I live close.” She stepped into the gazebo and leaned out, giving me a definite come hither look.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to drive.” I sat beside her on the bench, leaving a quickly calculated six inches or so between us, which I hoped was neither too pushy nor too intimate.
“Don’t be such a ret wag. I mean, ret wag. I mean —” She burst into giggles.
“Wet rag,” I supplied. “Thanks.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it,” she said, reaching up and laying her hand on my cheek. “I was just kidding. Oh God, you’re so cute.”
“Kiera? I want you to give me your car keys.”