by Amelia Wilde
I catch Reggie at the last of the tables, a big plastic tub in her hands loaded down with plates and glasses. She tries to ignore me, but I dangle the six-pack in front of her. There’s no way she doesn’t want a beer after a night like this. No way in hell.
“Come on,” I coax her. “It doesn’t have to be a date. Just a beer. I know you want a beer.”
“You don’t know anything,” she says, but I think I see the tiniest flicker of a smile on her face. “And I’m at work.”
“You’re almost done.” I raise the six-pack in the air again like it’s the Holy Grail. “It’s my treat. I already bought.”
Now I do see a smile, but it’s gone in another instant. “You owe me a hell of a lot more than a beer.”
After all of this, I still don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. But now’s my chance. It might be my only chance. I’m going to take it. “Okay. You can give me an itemized list once you have a beer with me. I’ll wait for you. Right here.”
6
Regina
And just like that, he sits his ass down and waits.
I feel like my head has been put on backwards. I spent a long time after the incident hating Adam, but after a while, I gave up on even expending that much energy on him. My feelings weren’t even mixed. They were just… not there. I did not care one bit about Adam. I was almost aggressively apathetic about the very idea of him. My whole body is numb with shock. Couple that with the caffeine and exhaustion, and this whole strange night feels like something out of a dream.
Because where else but a dream would Adam be in the same room as me, smiling his same smile, with that same warm glint in his eyes?
“You need some help, Reg?” he calls. “You’re moving kind of slow over there.”
I look down at my shuffling feet and realize I’ve slowed almost to a stop. Am I staring at him? I feel like he might have caught me staring at him just now, but I refuse to let him get back under my skin. “I don’t care,” I mutter to myself, ignoring the way his gaze makes my skin sizzle. He’s just...sitting there. Like he’s got all the time in the world to watch me finish my job, that stupid six-pack in his hands.
I'm completely shot. Tri-training be damned, I really could use a beer to settle down. At the end of a closing shift at Indigo, I could usually count on the owners spotting us a few drinks to calm the post-service crazies. But here at the country club, I didn’t have that sort of in.
And free beer definitely tastes the best.
I unscrew the last salt shaker and fill it to the brim before screwing the lid back on again. And then I stop, shaker still in hand, and turn to Adam.
“One beer?” I ask. No. I’m not asking. That’s all I can have. It’ll mess with my training to drink more than that. “One beer,” I repeat, more firmly.
He slides up into a standing position. As he lopes towards me with that bemused grin on his face, I realize I am holding my breath and forcibly blow it out. “What’s the matter, Reg?” he wonders. “Afraid to cut loose around me?”
A fresh wave of irritation washes over me before I have a chance to tamp it down, and I find myself talking before I can stop myself. “I’m afraid that the alcohol will loosen my tongue too much.”
“Oh yeah?” He leans down and his fingers don’t brush my arm so much as electrify the space between our skin. “What are you afraid to say?”
I clamp my lips shut and shake my head. I should leave, right now. I should walk, no run, away from him. I can run pretty fast now; I’m down to a seven-minute mile. He’d only see my back as I disappeared from view, and wouldn’t that be fucking poetic? What goes around comes around, Adam…
But I’m not running. I’m walking. Next to him as we step out into the July night. The heat is still rising in waves off the pavement, but the air is softer now, a cool breeze wafting off the lake, carrying with it the scent of rain. Out of habit, I turn my head north, following the ribbon of darkness towards the vanishing point. To the northeast, a flash of far-off lightning illuminates a massive cloud, but the thunder never reaches us, and above us the sky is clear and the stars are everywhere.
“Here,” Adam says, gesturing with his open bottle. “How about that big rock over there?”
“Sure,” I shrug. “I don’t care.”
I don’t care. About any of this. I don’t care that he brushes his fingers down my upper arm, lightly guiding me towards the hulking boulder that the country club had shipped in for photo ops. It’s placed precisely so that wedding parties can be photographed casually draping themselves across it with the curve of the lake providing the breathtaking backdrop, and I would hate how artificial it was, just like this artificial date with Adam, if I cared at all. But I don’t care.
“This is pretty,” Adam declares once we’re seated.
I bite my tongue and say nothing, but I reach for the beer, clenching it in my fist like a drowning woman clinging to a life preserver.
“You always see this view,” he goes on, trampling over my studied silence. “In the brochures and stuff? The touristy crap?” He sighs and lifts his beer to his lips, and I find myself watching the vulnerable way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, and I can’t tear my eyes from it. “I guess I got so used to seeing it that I forget to appreciate it.”
“It’s dark,” I point out. “You really can’t see much of anything, much less appreciate it.”
He chuckles and turns to look me full in the eye. “I can see you,” he says, and the way he says it, so soft like that, but also sort of surprised, makes me grab my beer bottle and slam back the rest of it as fast as I can.
He laughs, a full, hearty, carefree sound. “Damn, Reg. You’re making me regret I never got to go drinking with you.”
My lip twitches and then curls into a snarl. “No, you never did, did you,” I agree.
But he’s not hearing the warning tone in my voice. He’s still looking at me like I’m his long-lost best friend. Which I suppose I fucking am.
But it’s not my fault he lost me.
For a second there is something there. Something old and precious, and I don’t want it to be there, so I snap my gaze away from his and grab another beer, twisting the cap savagely. He’s still watching me as I suck back half the bottle, so I have to blink very fast against the bubbles before they bring tears to my eyes.
“I missed you,” he says.
“Hmm,” I respond. Not questioning, not encouraging, and I am proud of how neutral I sound. I don’t care.
“We were…” he pauses, searches for the word. “Close.”
Even though I’m sucking down the beer, my throat is suddenly dry. I clear it and look away, pretending to study the indistinct shape of the low mountains around us. There is this feeling in my chest of something loosening, something I’ve been holding on to for so long that my grip has cramped and frozen into position. Letting go unleashes fresh waves of pain through my body, pain I’ve been avoiding for nine years now, and with that pain comes the anger I’ve been trying my hardest not to feel.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see him shifting, eyes flickering across me like he’s trying to read a book in light that’s too low, the words indistinct. And then there’s another one of those slipping sensations in my chest, as my grip loosens a little bit more, and suddenly the anger is red hot and right there on the surface.
“Fuck,” I whisper on a slow, hissing exhale, then slam back the rest of my beer, feeling the bubbles percolating angrily in my stomach.
Adam shifts again, the wool of his suitcoat brushing against my arm. He leans back, resting his hand on the boulder behind me. “We were, weren’t we, Reggie?” he asks, almost plaintively. “We were very close, right?”
7
Adam
This isn’t my first beer of the night, or even my second, though I had the other two long enough ago now that they’ve settled into a background buzz.
Or maybe it’s just being near Reggie like this that’s making me feel drunk.
Reggie stares out over the lake, not looking at me. “How can you know if you’re really close with someone?” There’s a sharp edge to her voice.
I’m trying my best, but I just don’t know what the fuck she’s hinting at. “I don’t know. I mean, kissing you in that chapel was probably a good way to tell.” I mean it casually, because it was all such a damn intoxicating dare back then, and she went through with it as much as I did.
She just gasps, whipping her head around toward me. “I can’t believe you would—” But then the beer gets the better of her and she burps, the sound echoing in the night. It’s a hell of a belch and Reggie slaps her hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide.
I can’t stop from laughing. It’s the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen all day at this reunion, and it’s classic Reggie. This is the kind of thing she would have taken serious pride in when we were kids. Not so anymore.
She’s frozen like that for a few long moments, and then something cracks open between us, breaking like a wine glass falling to the floor. Reggie dissolves into laughter, too. It’s not every day that a charged conversation like this gets interrupted by an earth-shattering belch.
“Jesus, Reg, don’t look so mortified.”
She draws herself up primly. “I’m not mortified.” Even then, she can’t stop her body from shaking with laughter. “It took me by surprise, is all.”
“What, you don’t normally throw back beers like that?”
She shakes her head, and maybe I imagine it, but she scoots a little closer to me on the rock. Another flash of lightning heats up the sky and we both watch it, counting down to the boom of far-off thunder. “I’m busy, Adam. I don’t have time to get drunk with...people.”
“With your oldest and best friend?”
Reggie still has a half-smile on her face when she looks at me again, but it looks so sad that it makes my chest ache. “My oldest and best friend? That guy left town a long time ago.” She shakes it off. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you had things to do. Like attend college.”
I nudge her with my elbow. “You can’t be mad at me for going to college.”
“I can be pissed as hell that you never even called.”
“That is a falsehood, Reggie. I came home for your graduation.”
Reggie rolls her eyes so outrageously that I’m actually shocked that her eyeballs don’t fall out onto the ground. “Please. You didn’t come home for my graduation. You came home to chase girls and go to parties with your friend Gordon.” Her mouth turns downward into a scowl. Why? Is she still that embarrassed about that kiss? The memory comes back to me in a flood that definitely has a tent-like effect on my pants.
“It’s Gideon.”
“Whatever.” She waves her hand dismissively. “After that, you never called, never emailed...nothing.” The beer must be wreaking havoc with her filter, because she snaps her lips shut. “Whatever,” she repeats. “None of that matters now.”
“Hey.”
She turns her eyes back to my face. They’re liquid pools of darkness in the dim light, and I want to fall right into them. I want to lean forward—a few inches is all it would take—and kiss the beauty mark underneath her right eye.
“I know you don’t care—” I gesture grandly with the beer in my hand. “But I’m sorry for being such a forgetful prick. I should have called. Or at least emailed you.”
Reggie shrugs, one shoulder rising up by her ear and falling back down again. It’s impossible not to see her like she was back in high school, shrugging like that. Do you want to come by my place tonight for the sociology paper? Shrug. And even earlier, when she was just ten. Do you want me to fix your bike? Shrug. She can say she doesn’t care all she wants, but the gesture is so familiar that I can’t help reading it like she’s an open book.
“Apology not accepted, Adam Lane,” she says, the corner of her mouth curving up in a smile that she tries and fails to hide.
“Zeller,” I correct her.
She looks at me with widened eyes. "What?"
“My mom's maiden name, remember?” I remind her.
“You don't go by Lane any more?”
I look her in the eye. “Do you blame me?”
For a second her eyes go soft and sympathetic. I nudge her again, this time letting the contact linger just a moment longer, because damn, she’s close. And damn, I’ve missed her. My chest is filled with some strange ache just sitting with her on this enormous boulder. “Come on, Reg. I’m sorry about leaving. What does a man have to do to be forgiven these days?”
She cuts a glance at me and leans in. Her hip is just grazing mine now. “I’m honestly shocked that you thought a six-pack of beer would be enough to get back in my good graces. You don’t know me at all, do you?”
“I know a lot about you,” I say, and grab my second beer, letting the first bottle fall to the grass with a whisper of a thud. “I know you always pretended to hate pink.”
“I do hate that color,” Reggie says, chin in the air.
“I know your favorite coffee mugs of all time were the ones my mom bought in the city. The ones with pink on the inside.”
Reggie laughs. “I forgot about those mugs.”
“I didn’t.”
She takes another drink of beer. “Anyone can remember things from back in the day,” she says, keeping her voice carefully neutral. “But a lot has happened since then.”
“Tell me about it.”
Reggie looks at me out of the corner of her eye, like she’s trying to tell if I’m joking.
“I’m serious.” I down the rest of the beer, the buzz getting stronger by the second, and open it with a crack. “What happened? Tell me, Reggie. Tell me everything.”
That makes her laugh. “Fine.”
We sit on the boulder, watching the thunderstorm roll across the lake, and Reggie gives me a rundown of what she’s been doing since high school. Working at Indigo, the new fancy restaurant in town. Doing extra shifts up here at the country club. Going to college, saving up a credit at a time.
Somewhere between the second beer and the end of the third, everything turns hazy, and I’m caught up in all the details of her. That beauty mark. Her white teeth flashing in the dark when she laughs. We’re not talking about current life bullshit anymore, we’re talking about all the shit we used to do as kids, with endless time and a partner in crime.
“You saved my life,” Reggie laughs, almost doubled over. “That tree was rotted through. I could have fallen and died.” She’s making fun of me, because Reggie would never have let a little thing like a rotted tree be the end of her.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I tell her.
“Oh, yeah? What are you thinking about right now?” She straightens up with a little wobble.
“You.” My heart is thudding, aching, with all the time we haven’t spent together since then, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Why, when I feel like a live wire next to her, even three beers in, in the middle of the night.
“What about me? I’m not that interesting.”
“Just that—” I can’t help myself. I reach out and curve my hand around her face, my thumb brushing against that beauty mark. Reggie leans into it, and damn it if she’s not still trying to pretend it isn’t happening.
“Just what?” she whispers.
That’s when I lean in and kiss her.
8
Regina
I see him bending toward me and freeze.
But when his lips brush mine, I’m melting.
My heart rises to my throat and then splashes down to my stomach. I’m hot, and then I’m freezing, and something inside of me hurts, but it’s the pain I feel when I’m done swimming a mile at a fast crawl. A good pain. A necessary
pain, the kind of addicting endorphin rush that has you chasing it over and over again.
Maybe that’s why I’m letting his warm mouth cover mine. Maybe that’s why I’m shifting on the rock, turning my body so that it’s flush with his and letting his arms crush me to his broad, hard chest. Maybe that’s why, when his tongue seeks mine, I part my lips and let just the tiniest slip out, just to taste him again.
I’ve only tasted him once before, but the memory must have seared itself into my tongue, because I know it. His lips, his tongue, his mouth—he tastes exactly the same, and in a flash, nine long years disappear and I am back in the third floor chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows School for Girls.
Under the baleful eye of Jesus on the crucifix hanging over us, half-lit by eerie yellow spotlights in the gloom, I lift the little statue of the Virgin Mary from her small pedestal off to the side of the altar. As I do, Adam’s hand brushes up the small of my back, a small, encouraging touch that urges me on, and I fold up the hem of my T-shirt, making a little hammock for the icon, who stares up at me with impassively blank eyes. Adam murmurs something, but the muffled silence of the chapel swallows it up, or maybe it’s just that my heart is beating so loudly in my ears that it drowns out what he’s saying. Whatever his question, he seems to have found his answer, because his hand is moving higher to cup the back of my neck, holding me for a moment, and I blink up at him, hardly daring to breathe.
The religious quiet has fallen over us like a spell, and right then I believe in the power of magic and prayer because Adam’s lips are on mine, and it’s somehow even better than the dreams I’ve had about this moment. In the half-dark of the chapel, I cannot see anything, I can only feel the way Adam’s body presses against mine, the soft way his lips part. First he is quiet and seeking, but as my heart beats faster, his breathing matches the tempo, and suddenly the chaste peck is escalating and our bodies entwine. It’s my first kiss, the first real one, and it could not be more perfect to have it here on this altar. All the feelings I’ve tried so hard to deny can be freed, and I can allow myself to love him the way I know I’ve loved him all along because he is kissing me, and he loves me like I love…