Girlfriend Material

by Melissa Kantor

  “Not exactly,” I confessed.

  “I rest my case.”

  I’d definitely run out of suggestions for her. “Do you want to play a little more?” I asked.

  Natasha looked at the clock. “There’s only ten minutes left,” she said. “Do you mind if we call it a day?”

  Considering how far away from the court my mind was, I didn’t feel like I should insist on our staying till the end of the hour. “Sure,” I said.

  “Let’s have another lesson tomorrow,” she said, reaching into her pocket and taking out a twenty dollar bill.

  I laughed and pushed it back toward her. “Keep it,” I said. “And we have to play tomorrow.”

  “Scout’s honor—we’ll play. I’m just really into this book I’m reading right now. But I’ll be done by tomorrow.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “The Stranger,” she said. “It’s about this French guy living in Algeria who thinks life is totally pointless.”

  “Well,” I said, slipping my racket into the case. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “See you tomorrow,” said Natasha.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  I biked back to the house thinking maybe I’d find my mom there and be able to apologize, but she wasn’t home. I wondered if Adam was back from his trip yet. I didn’t want to wonder about him. I called Sarah at work.

  “Do you want to have lunch or something?” I asked.

  “That would be so fun,” she said. “But I have to finish proofreading a pamphlet that’s going to the printers this afternoon. But do you want to go swimming later? Like at three? I should be done by then.”

  “Sure,” I said, wondering what I’d do until three. “Maybe I’ll go to the library.” I was formulating the thought even as I spoke it.

  “Perfect,” she said. “I’ll call you when I’m done and we’ll go swimming.”

  As I pushed open the heavy glass library door, I forced myself not to think about the time I’d run into Adam here. Libraries were, like, my place. I felt at home in a library. Novels, writers, readers. These were my people. Who needed boys when you had books? I’d even brought my notebook and pen, thinking I’d do some work on my story.

  I sat down at an empty table by the windows. There was a video lying there that someone had taken off the shelf and forgotten to put back. It was called Gorillas in the Mist, and it was about Dian Fossey, an American woman who apparently had lived in Rwanda studying gorillas for years. That didn’t sound like such a bad life to me, being alone on a mountain with a bunch of apes. Let’s face it—if a gorilla says I can’t stop kissing you, your problems go way deeper than his possibly having a girlfriend you don’t know about. I opened my notebook and reread what I’d written so far, trying to imagine what direction Ms. Baker would tell me to take it in. But instead of Ms. Baker, I kept thinking about Adam. Where was he now? Was he thinking about me? I forced myself to focus on my story. Details, Kate. Concrete details. I gave the boy a baby sister he didn’t like. I gave him a best friend who’d wanted to come on the trip but had gotten sick at the last minute. I’d just given him a nail-biting habit when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and there was Adam, and as soon as I saw him, I knew I’d only been writing with half my brain.

  The other half had just been waiting for him.

  HE HAD ON THE SAME OXFORD SHIRT he’d been wearing the first time I ran into him in the library. I remembered how I’d wondered if I should take him seriously when he asked me out for a pop.

  If only I hadn’t taken him seriously about anything. “Hi,” he said. “Hi,” I said. I tried to pretend it was two weeks ago and nothing had ever happened between us and he was just some random guy friend of Sarah’s, but it didn’t work. My throat still felt dry and my heart was still racing.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

  What could possibly be tackier than a tête-à-tête with somebody else’s boyfriend? “I’m kind of busy right now,” I said. I gestured at the notebook in front of me.

  “Sarah told me,” he said. “And she told me you were here.” His voice was tight.

  “I see,” I said. I had no idea where those two words came from—I never say I see. But I liked how British it sounded.

  “Can I just talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

  Here’s what I was not about to do: let Adam know this was a big deal. Which is why I said, “It’s no big deal.”

  “Can I just talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

  “It’s no big deal,” I said again. Would I ever be able to utter a sentence other than It’s no big deal? “Really,” I added, louder than I’d meant to.

  Barbara the librarian looked over to where we were sitting and frowned. Then she put her finger to her lips.

  Adam knelt down in front of me, and it struck me as ironic that he was in the position normally associated with a marriage proposal.

  But of course marriage wasn’t what Adam proposed. “Two minutes,” he said, his voice a notch above a whisper. “Just give me two minutes.” Then he added, “Please.”

  Of course I followed him outside to the little gazebo on the library lawn. Neither of us spoke as we walked. When we got to the gazebo, I sat down on one of the wrought-iron benches, and Adam stood leaning against the railing.

  “What did Sarah and Jenna tell you?” asked Adam finally.

  Since I already knew I wasn’t going to emerge from this conversation with a boyfriend, it seemed to me the only thing I could hope to take from it was my dignity. “Just that, you know, you have a girlfriend,” I said, impressed that I could utter the word without choking on it. “I hadn’t known,” I added, just to state the obvious.

  “Right,” said Adam. “So you’re thinking I’m your basic asshole, right?”

  I almost smiled at how accurate his assessment was. “Well,” I said, “I’m not exactly fond of you right about now.” Fond of you? It was like I was channeling Lady Brett Ashley without even trying. I folded my hands in my lap and crossed my ankles as if I were wearing a gray flannel pencil skirt and not jeans with a hole in one knee.

  If Adam thought there was something weird about how I was talking, he didn’t say so. “Look, just for the record, I’m not a total jerk, okay?” He ran his fingers through his hair, then rubbed his chin. “Molly and I are on a break this summer.”

  “On a break?” I repeated stupidly.

  “Seeing other people,” he explained. “We were having some problems, and she wanted to …” I finished the sentence in my head and she wanted to break up with me, but I’m so madly in love with her that I convinced her we should take a break, not break up. When I tuned back in, Adam was still talking. “ … Look, you don’t really want to hear this whole saga. But the point is, I wasn’t, you know, cheating on her or anything.”

  The problem was this whole conversation was an out-of-body experience. I was watching myself talk to Adam, but I wasn’t actually participating. “I see,” I said.

  “Do you?” he asked, coming over and sitting next to me. “Because I really like hanging out with you, and I got the feeling you liked hanging out with me too.”

  Hanging out. Was that what we were doing?

  “Sure,” was all I could come up with. He was so cute. Why was he so cute? His hair was damp, like maybe he’d showered right before coming over to find me.

  To find me. He’d come to find me. He must like me.

  Yeah, for now.

  “I mean, I guess I should have told you. I’m really sorry I didn’t. But I didn’t think you were the type to want a boyfriend or, you know, some big serious relationship.” Was it my imagination, or did he say big serious relationship as if it were a repugnant political party I might be affiliated with. I didn’t think you were the type to be drawn to Nazism.

  What did he mean? What type of girl didn’t want a boyfriend?

  Let’s see … um, probably a girl who’d announced that her role model was Lady Brett Ashley.
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  I mean, wasn’t the whole point of being an independent jaunty woman that you didn’t care about commitment or whether some random guy was your boyfriend? Hadn’t I always planned to have dozens of meaningless affairs as I traveled the globe pursuing my writing career?

  Well, here was Adam—ready, willing, and able to be the first in a long series of guys who meant nothing to me in the long run. I wasn’t a victim, I was a good-time girl.

  So what, exactly, was the problem? “I think … I mean, I don’t need to be serious,” I said. “Really?” he asked. He took my hand. “I mean, were you, you know, imagining this going beyond the summer?”

  What did he honestly think I was going to say, given what I knew? Yes, Adam, I fell in love with you the moment you quoted Hemingway to me. Ever since that night, I have dreamed of flying to New York the weekend of your senior prom, getting dressed with Jenna and Sarah and, draped head to toe in black peu de soi, descending the sweeping staircase of Sarah’s exquisite town house to you, clad in a newly purchased tuxedo, standing on the bottom step and extending a single white rose in my direction.

  “God, no!” I said. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to influence your decision. The ball’s in your court.”

  It was? How could the ball be in my court if he was the one with a girlfriend?

  But he didn’t have a girlfriend; he had a girl he was on a break with.

  Still, clearly he wasn’t in the market for a girlfriend.

  But it wasn’t like I was in the market for a boyfriend.

  Was I?

  What I was, right at this particular moment, was a little scared I might be losing my mind.

  Adam reached over and slipped his arm under my legs, then swung my legs over his. He put his arms around my waist. “Okay, I’m influencing your decision,” he said.

  In spite of myself, I laughed. It felt so good to be sitting this close to him. I took a deep breath, smelling his shampoo and the clean sunshiny scent that must have been whatever laundry detergent his mom used.

  I put my hands on his face and pulled him to me and we kissed. Kissing him was perfect. Who cared that he might be kissing some other girl come September?

  Come September, I’d be halfway across the country.

  We came up for air, noses bumping.

  “You know what’s funny?” I whispered.

  “What?” he whispered back, kissing the corner of my mouth.

  “Since you’ve been gone, I’ve managed to tell off both of my parents.”

  “Oh,” he said, kissing me. Then he said, “Wait, why is that funny?”

  I kissed him, tasting something sweet, like he’d recently eaten a lifesaver. Then I laughed. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Oh.” He laughed too, then kissed me again.

  It wasn’t until we’d made a plan to meet up at Jenna’s for a dinner the two of them were cooking and he’d dropped me off at home that I realized why it was funny that I’d told off both of my parents.

  It was funny because the person I’d planned to tell off was Adam.

  JENNA AND ADAM HAD BARBECUED an unbelievable meal— everyone’s plate was piled high with tuna steaks, corn on the cob, and these amazing tomatoes and onions they’d grilled. We were sitting on Jenna’s enormous back porch, which was surrounded by woods that might have been creepy if there hadn’t been so many of us together and if there weren’t the reassuring presence of Jenna’s house behind us.

  Adam had his arm draped casually over the back of my chair, and every once in a while he’d move his hand and touch my shoulder or run his fingers through my hair. I figured he must have told everyone about his and Molly’s “break,” because no one stood up and pointed a finger at him, shouting, Get thee to hell, adulterer! like some Old Testament prophet.

  “This is delicious,” I said to Jenna, gesturing with my fork at the grilled tomato I was eating.

  “Thanks,” she said. “But Adam made them.”

  “Oh, Adam, you’re such a Renaissance man,” said Lawrence.

  “So true,” said Adam.

  My mom’s always talking about single men she meets in terms of whether or not they’re a “catch.” Not for her (despite the accusations I’d recently hurled in her direction); just in general. Like, last fall this doctor moved out to Salt Lake City, and he and my dad started playing tennis together, and my mom invited him to my parents’ New Year’s Eve party and then spent weeks—literally weeks!—trying to decide which of the single women she knew might appeal to him.

  When I pointed out that women don’t usually go in for arranged marriages, what with our living in the twenty-first-century United States, my mom just said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Kate. He’s a catch.” She meant because he was single and a doctor and, I don’t know, not a convicted sex offender.

  Even though when she’d said it I’d just rolled my eyes and left her to her matchmaking, I found myself coming back to our conversation all through dinner at Jenna’s. I thought of it when Jenna said Adam had grilled the vegetables and again when it was time to clear the table and Adam stood at the sink rinsing dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. And I thought of it right before we went home, when the lights went out and he went downstairs with a flashlight and found the panel with the circuit breakers and did whatever needed to be done to get the lights to go back on.

  What I thought was, Adam’s a catch. And then I thought, Too bad somebody’s already caught him.

  On the way to my lesson with Natasha the next morning, I stopped by the pro shop to get a basket of balls. I wasn’t exactly feeling chipper so much as I was feeling like a tree trunk that has been fed through a chipper, and when I saw Natasha sitting by the bench reading The Fountainhead and not wearing tennis whites, it didn’t do much to improve my mood.

  “Hey,” I called out as I got near the bench.

  It took her a long second to look up at me, and when she did, I could tell from the expression on her face that she was still deep in her book.

  “Hi, Kate,” she said.

  I gestured at what she was wearing. “What gives? Where are your whites?”

  Natasha gave me a conspiratorial smile. “Let’s not play and say we did.”

  I was irritated, but I managed to keep my voice calm. “I’m not going to do that, Natasha. If you don’t want to play tennis anymore, you need to tell your parents. I’m not going to take their money and not give you lessons.”

  I didn’t realize Natasha hadn’t been scowling until she scowled at me. “Lighten up, Kate. God.” I decided to ignore the implication that I was uptight.

  “Do you have some whites you can change into, or should we just cancel?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Natasha, “let me just reach into my pocket and grab out my white shorts.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Okay then,” I said. “We’ll do it another time.”

  I turned to walk away, but I only got a few feet before Natasha yelled out, “What is your problem, Kate?”

  “I don’t have a problem, Natasha,” I said, turning around. “You’re the one with the problem. You’re the one who’s so pissed off at the world that you can’t even respect my time enough to put on a pair of stupid white shorts and a white T-shirt.”

  “Ooooh, now I hurt your feelings? I didn’t respect you enough?”

  I was so mad I could have punched something, but I managed to keep my voice calm. “Natasha, I don’t know what your problem is. If you don’t want to take tennis with me, tell your parents to get you a new teacher. If you don’t want to play tennis at all, tell your parents and deal with the consequences. Tell them you just want to read and write poetry. But don’t waste my time and your dad’s money.”

  Natasha stood up. “You know, not everyone is some star tennis player with guys all over her, okay, Kate? Not everyone can just do whatever she wants and say whatever she wants and still get whatever she wants.” Her face was bright red, and I could tell she was trying hard not to cry.

  I
t took me a second to realize the star tennis player with guys all over her that Natasha was talking about was me. In spite of how mad I was, I couldn’t help laughing. “Are you serious, Natasha? Do you really think that’s who I am?”

  “You know something, Kate, just forget it, okay? I thought you were cool, but you’re so clearly not. So just … forget it.” She was crying now and struggling to shove her book and bottle of water into her bag.

  I felt really bad. “Natasha, wait.” I took a step toward her, but when I put my hand on her shoulder, she shook me off.

  “Look, just leave me alone, okay?” She got the book into the bag and jerked the strap onto her shoulder. “Natasha, I want to talk to you,” I said. “Well, sucks for you,” she said. And she stormed up the hill, leaving me standing there with a basket of balls and no one to hit them to.

  I plopped down on the bench, totally defeated. The wood was hot, and the skin of my thighs burned for a minute when I sat down. How had things with Natasha gotten so out of control so fast?

  Just then someone called my name, and I turned around. Adam and Lawrence were on the top of the steps that led down to the courts. They waved, then talked for a minute before Lawrence turned and headed into the pro shop. Adam jumped lightly down the steps and headed toward me. I remembered how happy I’d been to see him the last time we’d run into each other at the courts.

  “I always think of tennis as a two-person game,” he said, arriving at my side. “But I guess that’s antiquated.”

  “I guess so,” I said. After my fight with Natasha, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to exchange witty banter.

  “Where’s your student?” he asked.

  If only I were a really good liar and could say, Oh, I’m not teaching a lesson. I’m meeting James.

  Who’s James? Adam would ask, his voice tightening.

  He’s the other guy I’m dating. We love to play tennis together. You don’t mind, do you, Adam? Adam, my God, calm down! Adam, why are you crying?

  Despite how bummed out I was about fighting with Natasha, I made myself smile up at him. Let’s face it—no one wants to “hang out” with an angry, cranky girl, right? “Where my student is is a very long and not very interesting story,” I said. “Suffice it to say she’s gone.”