Alex, Approximately

by Jenn Bennett

  • • •

  In North by Northwest, Cary Grant plays an advertising executive who’s mistaken for a CIA agent named Kaplan. The thing is, Kaplan doesn’t really exist. So throughout the film, Cary Grant is constantly being forced to pretend he’s someone he’s not—a fake of a fake. Nothing is what it seems, which is what makes the story so fun to watch. Alex and I have discussed the film’s merits online, but it’s strange to think about those conversations now. I definitely wish I could be seeing it under happier circumstances.

  By the time Sunday night rolls around, I’m strangely calm. Maybe it’s because this has been a long time coming, me meeting Alex. Or maybe it’s because I don’t feel the same way about him as I once did, now that Porter’s in my life. I think back to the beginning of the summer, when I was so worried and nervous about everything Alex could or could not be—tall or short, bald or hairy, shy or chatty—and none of those things matter anymore.

  He is who is.

  I am who I am.

  Exactly who those people are couldn’t really be identified in an online profile or captured correctly in all our written communication, no matter how honest we tried to be. We were only showing one side of ourselves, a side that was carefully trimmed and curated. He didn’t see all my hang-ups and screwy problems, or how long it takes me to pluck my eyebrows every night. He doesn’t know I tried to pick up a gay whale-tour host because I thought it might be him. Or that I can’t tell the difference between a male and a female cat . . . Or about all the dirty GIFs I’ve laughed at with Grace, or the number of churros I can put away in one sitting before it starts to get embarrassing for the churro cart vendor, because he knows I’m really not buying them for “a friend.” (Five.)

  God only knows what I haven’t seen of him.

  So, you know, whatever. If he’s nice, great. If not, no big deal. In my head, I’m holding my head high and wearing a Grace-inspired T-shirt that says I’M JUST HERE FOR THE CLOSURE in big, bedazzled letters.

  I arrive at the beach a little more than half an hour before the film starts. They’re showing it, ironically enough, near one of the first places I remember when I came into town: the surfers’ crosswalk. Only, the whole area is transformed tonight, with one of those huge rotating double spotlights that’s pointed toward the sky, announcing to the world, Hey, movie over here! They’ve also lit up the palm trees along Gold Avenue and hung film festival banners in the parking lot across the street, which is jammed with cars. I manage to squeeze Baby into a space alongside another scooter before following a line of people who are swinging picnic baskets and coolers, heading toward the giant white screen set up in the sand.

  Alex was right all those months ago when he first told me about this: It looks really fun. The sun’s setting over the water. Families and couples are chilling on blankets, and closer to the road, a row of tents and food trucks are selling burgers and fish tacos and film festival merchandise. I head for those, looking for flagpoles. All the palms are lit up, so I figure a flagpole must be spotlighted too, right? But when I’ve walked the entire row of vendors, I can’t find it. No flags near the movie screen either. It’s a pretty big screen, so I check around back, just to make sure. Nope. Nada.

  This is weird. I mean, Alex lives here, so he knows the place. He wouldn’t just tell me to meet him somewhere so specific if it wasn’t there. I check my film messages to make sure there isn’t anything new from him, and when I don’t see anything I head back the way I came, all the way back down to the end of the concession row to the back of the seating area. That’s when I spot it.

  The flagpole is all the way up a set of steps, on a wide natural stone platform—a lookout over the ocean, where the surfer’s crosswalk ends.

  Right in front of the memorial statue of Pennywise Roth.

  I sigh, and then snort at myself, because really, no matter what I do, I can’t escape him. And if Alex is the nice guy I’m hoping he is, we can both have a laugh about it later.

  Weaving around blankets, I make my way to the lookout and climb the stone steps. I’m getting a little nervous now. Not much, but this is surreal. The lookout is fairly spacious. It’s banded in a wood railing with some built-in benches around the ocean side, where one older couple is gazing out at the sunset. Not him, for sure. I gaze up at the Pennywise statue. I’ve seen the photo of this online, of course, and driven past it, but it’s weird to see it up close in person. Someone’s put a Hawaiian lei around his neck; I wonder if it was Mrs. Roth.

  Someone’s sitting on a bench behind the statue. I blow out a long breath, straighten my shoulders, and lumber around ol’ Pennywise. Time to face the music.

  “Hello, Mink.”

  My brain sees who’s in front of me, hears the words, but doesn’t believe. It recalculates and recalculates, over and over, but I’m still stuck. And then it all comes rolling back to me, out of order.

  The video store.

  Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  Him caring about the Maltese falcon being stolen.

  Roman Holiday.

  White cat at the surf shop.

  Churro cart.

  Is it wrong to hate someone who used to be your best friend?

  Cheating girlfriend.

  The Big Lebowski.

  Watching movies at work.

  My coworker, the human blunt.

  The Philadelphia Story.

  Mr. Roth . . . Xander Roth.

  Alexander.

  Alex.

  My knees buckle. I’m falling. Porter leaps up from the bench and grabs me around the waist before I hit the ground. I kick at the stone below my feet, like I’m swimming in place, trying to get traction. Trying to get control of my legs. I finally manage it. When I do, I go a little crazy. It’s that stupid coconut scent of his. I shove him away from me, beat him—hard—landing blows on his arms until he lets me go in order to shield his face. And then I just fall to pieces.

  I sob.

  And sob.

  I curl up into a ball on the bench and sob some more.

  I don’t even know why I’m crying so hard. I just feel so stupid. And shocked. And overwhelmed. Sort of betrayed, too, but that’s ridiculous, because how could that be? Then I stop crying and gasp a little, because I realize that’s exactly how Porter must have felt when he found out.

  He sits down on the bench and lifts my head onto his lap, sighing heavily. “Where are you at in the screwed-up-ness of it all? Because there are all kinds of layers.”

  “We basically cheated on each other with each other,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “That’s pretty messed up. When I told my mom, she said we pulled a reverse ‘Piña Colada,’ which is some cheesy 1970s song about this couple who write personal ads looking for hookups, and end up meeting each other.”

  “Oh, God,” I groan. “You told your mom?”

  “Hey, this is some crazy shit. I had to tell someone,” he argues. “But look at it this way. We ended up liking the real us better than the online us. That’s something, right?”

  “I guess.”

  I think about it some more. Ugh. My dad knew. He was trying to tell me with all that talk about blinders and horses. Another wave of YOU ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST IDIOT hits me, and this time, I let the wave wash over me, not fighting it. The older couple that was hanging around on the lookout has left—guess a bawling teenage girl was ruining their peaceful sunset view—so we have the area to ourselves for the moment, and for that, I’m grateful. Below the lookout, hundreds of people throng the beach, but it’s far enough away that I don’t mind.

  “You didn’t know until game night at my house, right?” I ask.

  “No.”

  That makes me feel somewhat better, I suppose. At least we were both stupid about this until he heard my nickname. Oh, God. He watched The Philadelphia Story with me on purpose. He knew then, and he didn’t tell me. My humiliation cannot be measured. “Why?” I ask in a small voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wa
s bewildered. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe you’d been living out here the entire time. Couldn’t believe you . . . were her—Mink. At first, I thought you’d been screwing with me, but the more I thought about it, I knew that didn’t fit. I just freaked for a while. And then . . . I guess I wanted to hold on to it. And I wanted you to discover it on your own. I thought you would. If I dropped enough hints, I thought you would, Bailey—I swear. But then I started thinking about why you didn’t tell me—Alex—you moved out here, and how it felt as though you’d been lying to me . . . and I wanted you to come clean.”

  “Quid pro quo.” I close my eyes, fully aware of the irony now.

  “I didn’t mean for things to go sideways,” he insists. “When you got fired . . . Grace told me what happened in the Hotbox. For the record, she also made some threats to my manhood that gave me a few nightmares.”

  I groan. “I don’t blame you for what I did in the Hotbox. I was upset at the time, but I’ve moved past it.”

  “I just want you to know that what Scott and Kenny were saying that day . . . I didn’t think it was funny. I’m not even sure why I laughed. I think it was just a nervous reaction. I felt awful afterward. I tried to text you and tell you, but you weren’t speaking to me. And then Davy happened . . .”

  I sigh shakily, completely overwhelmed. “God, what a mess.”

  After a second, he says, “You know, what I haven’t been able to figure out is why you lied about where you lived before you moved out here.”

  “I didn’t. My mom and her husband moved from New Jersey to DC a few months before. I just never told Alex. You. Alex You. Ugh. That’s not a random screenname, is it?”

  “Alex is my middle name.”

  “Alexander. Like your father?”

  “Yeah. It was my grandfather’s, too.” He pushes a curled lock of hair behind my ear. “You do realize this whole mishegas could have been avoided if Mink You would have just told me from the beginning that you were moving out here . . . right?”

  I use his hand to cover my face. And then I uncover it and sit up, facing him, wiping away tears. “You know what? Maybe not. Let’s say I’d arranged to meet up with Alex You at the Pancake Shack when I first moved here, and that I hadn’t gotten that job at the Cave. Would we have hit it off? I don’t know. You don’t know that either. Maybe it was just the situation we were in at the Cave.”

  Porter shakes his head and winds his fingers through mine. “Nope. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. Two people who lived in two different places and found each other, not once but twice? You could stick one of us in Haiti and the other in a rocket headed to the moon and we’d still eventually be doing this right now.”

  I sniffle. “You really think so?”

  “You know how I said you were tricky like the fog, and that I was afraid of you running back to your mom at the end of the summer? I’m not afraid anymore.”

  “You’re not?”

  He looks toward the ocean, dark purple with the last rays of light. “My mom says we’re all connected—people and plants and animals. We all know one another on the inside. It’s what’s on the outside that distracts. Our clothes, our words, our actions. Shark attacks. Gunshots. We spend our lives trying to find other people. Sometimes we get confused and turned around by the distractions.” He smiles at me. “But we didn’t.”

  I smile back, eyes shining with happy tears. “No, we didn’t.”

  “I love you, Bailey ‘Mink’ Rydell.”

  I choke out a single sobbed laugh. “I love you too, Porter ‘Alex’ Roth.”

  We reach for each other and meet in the middle, half kissing, half murmuring how much we’ve missed each other. It’s sloppy and wonderful, and I’ve never been hugged so tightly. I kiss him all over his neck beneath his wild curls, and he cups my head in both hands and kisses me all over my face, then wipes away my cried-out makeup drips with the edge of his T-shirt.

  Applause and cheers startle both of us. I’d nearly forgotten all about the movie. Porter pulls me up with him, and we lean over the railing together to peer into the dark. Flickering light fills the beach, and the old MGM logo appears with the roaring lion. The music starts. The opening titles dart over the screen. CARY GRANT. EVA MARIE SAINT. Chills zip up and down my back.

  And then I realize: I get to share all of this with Porter. All of me. All of us.

  I glance up at him, and he’s emotional too.

  “Hi,” he says, forehead pressed to mine.

  “Hi.”

  “Should we head down to the beach?” he asks, slinging an arm over my shoulder.

  “I seem to remember hating the beach at some point or another.”

  “That’s because you’d never been to a real one. East Coast beaches are trash beaches.”

  I laugh, my heart singing with joy. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Show me a real beach, why don’t you, surfer boy. Let’s go watch a movie.”

  “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

  —Meg Ryan, You’ve Got Mail (1998)

  28

  * * *

  I blow out two quick breaths and stash my purse in the borrowed locker. Behind me, through a narrow passageway onto the main floor, I can see the crowds in the stands and the bright lights of the auditorium. Almost time to start. I twist my head to either side and crack my neck before checking my phone one more time.

  Some people thrive in the spotlight; others prefer to work behind the scenes. You can’t make a movie with nothing but actors. You need writers and makeup artists, costume designers and talent agents. All of them are equally important.

  I’m not a spotlight kind of girl, and I’ve made my peace with that.

  These days, I’ve pretty much given up my Artful Dodger leanings. Mostly. I relapsed a little when school started a couple of months ago in the fall. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to run for senior class president like Grace. It does mean that ever since our girl talk on the beach after I let her down, I’ve tried to make good on being a dependable friend, so I helped her with all her campaigning. She won, but that was no surprise. Everyone loves Grace. I just love her a little more.

  After school, I work at Video Ray-Gun, which is much less pressure than the Hotbox—not to mention less sweaty. Plus, I get first pick of the used DVDs that come through. And since Porter’s shifts at the Cave are only on the weekends now that school’s in session, I get to see him on my work breaks, because the surf shop is only a five-minute walk down the boardwalk from the video store. Win-win.

  And I have to see him whenever I get the chance, because next week, he’s flying out to Hawaii with his mom. They’re meeting up with Mr. Roth to watch Lana compete in Oahu for some special surfing competition. And to talk to someone in the World League about Porter surfing in a qualifying event in January in Southern California. He’s already registered, and he’s been practicing every chance he gets. There’s crazy buzz online in the surfing community that the Roth siblings could be the next big thing; a reporter from Australia called the surf shop last week and interviewed his dad for a magazine.

  It’s all exciting, and I’m thrilled to pieces that Porter finally wants to surf. He was born to do it. At the same time, I’m glad he’s not giving up on the idea of going to college. He says he can do both. I don’t think he realized that before, but I can understand why. His family’s been through a lot. It’s hard to think about next week when you’re not sure if you’ll even make it through today.

  But I don’t worry about him now. And I don’t worry about him going pro like Lana, and whether he’ll be traveling all over the world for a week here and there, Australia and France, South Africa and Hawaii. Maybe sometimes I’ll get to fly out with him. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. Because he’s right. Surfing the Pipeline or rocket to the moon, we’ll find each other.

  “Five minutes,” my captain calls out to the team.

  Several of the girls around me rush to finish last-minute adjust
ments to their makeup and pull up their black tights, kneepads, and shiny gold shorts. One girl is running late and just getting her skates on. If the team captain, LuAnn Wong, finds out, she’ll have to sit out the first period. LuAnn doesn’t take any crap.

  I joined the local Roller Derby team, the Coronado Cavegirls, two months ago. We’re part of a regional Rollergirls league, so we compete against three other teams in the area, including one from Monterey. That works out well for me, because I also volunteer every other Saturday at the Pacific Grove Natural History Museum. It’s mainly cataloging shells in the stockroom, and I don’t get paid or anything, but I love it.

  At first, I was a little scared to join the derby. It seemed too “spotlight” for me, and most of the girls are a couple of years older. One skater is even in her late thirties. But Grace encouraged me, the uniforms were totally cool, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. When I’m out there skating, it’s not about me, it’s about the team. We work together as a group. I’m a jammer, which means I get to wear the helmet with the star on it, and my goal is to skate past the opposing team’s blockers as fast as I can. My Artful Dodger skills are put to better use on the derby track than in my daily life.

  Plus, it helps me blow off steam. When I was working the Hotbox, I overheated, figuratively and literally. Skating gives me an outlet for my frustrations. I don’t have to jump punk kids who steal falcons from museums, throw tickets at customers, or wrestle shotguns away from junkies. I can knock around girls bigger than me and it’s not only legal, it’s encouraged.

  I peek out through the passage and scan the stands for familiar faces, spotting them almost immediately. My dad is sitting with Wanda; they never miss my Roller Derby bouts. In front of them are Grace and Taran—who returned from India at the end of the summer, thankfully, so I didn’t have to fly over there and kick his ass—and Patrick with his boyfriend, and then Mrs. Roth and Porter. He’s wearing his HOT STUFF devil jacket, which makes me smile. (Note to self: Tear that jacket off later in the back of his van.)