Girlfriend Material

by Melissa Kantor

  But then he slid his hands up my back and hugged me close to him, and instead of feeling great, I felt like I was going to start bawling.

  Apparently this good-time girl wasn’t having such a good time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away. “I can’t do this.”

  Adam had his hands in my hair, so our heads were still really close together. “Can’t do what?” he whispered.

  I didn’t say anything for a second, just put my hands on his wrists and pulled them out of my hair. “This,” I said. “I want us to stop … hanging out.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then he said it again. “Oh.” He took a step back from me. “Did I do something?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I just … think … I mean, I don’t think …”

  He didn’t wait for me to finish my sentence. “Why?” he asked.

  What was I supposed to say? Because I’m not as cool as you think I am. Because I really, really like you and I can’t spend one more second pretending not to care that even if you like me too, you also like somebody else. Because I just had some really bad news about my family and I don’t want to kiss somebody if I can’t tell him about it.

  Did the sad fact that I couldn’t manage to act like Lady Brett Ashley mean I had to be her polar opposite: Lady Kate Loser?

  “No reason,” I said. I hoped my voice didn’t betray the fact that I was about ten seconds away from crying.

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, and I took a couple of quiet deep breaths. If this went on much longer, I was definitely going to lose it. Finally he looked up at the sky and gave a little laugh. “Not having fun anymore, hunh?”

  “Right,” I said, nearly choking on the word.

  “Well, I can’t argue with that,” he said.

  Please, argue with it.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said. I followed him back the way we’d come. The walk to the house felt much shorter than the walk to the pond had. Neither of us spoke this time either, though it was a very different silence from our earlier one.

  The trees thinned and then we were walking up Tina and Henry’s driveway. An outdoor light was on next to the main house, and the lamp I’d been reading with cast a glow through the glass doors of the guesthouse.

  “Here you are, safe and sound,” he said. Despite the lights and the moon, it was too dark to see his face clearly.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I—” What was I going to say, I had fun tonight?

  Um, not.

  But he was already walking purposefully toward his car, about as upset about our “breakup” as he would have been by a badly cooked lobster. “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night,” I said. I’d been going for breezy, but my throat was a little too tight for that.

  I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING to the sound of the shower running. I felt about as low as I had all summer. I thought about my parents. I thought about Adam. I missed him already. Less than twelve hours had passed since I’d told him things with us were over, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the day without seeing him. Not to mention how, if and when I did see him, I wasn’t going to see him. We’d just say Hello or What’s up and go our separate ways. Maybe I hadn’t been his girlfriend before last night, but at least I’d been his … something. Being Adam’s nothing felt way worse than being his something had.

  My mom came out of the bathroom in her robe, her hair wrapped in a towel.

  “Morning,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “I guess,” I said. “Did you have a good night?”

  She shrugged. “I guess,” she said. Then she looked at me a little more closely. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head, not trusting myself to talk. My mom came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “Is this about me and your dad?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” I said. “And Adam.” I told her about breaking up with him last night. If you could even call it a breakup, what with our never having been officially going out.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. She just sat there for a minute stroking my hair. Then she said, “You know what I think? I think you really like this boy. And I think you shouldn’t worry so much about what’s going on with that other girl. He obviously likes you a lot. Why don’t you tell him how you feel? Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

  “I highly doubt it,” I said. It’s all fine and good to talk about, like, expressing your feelings when you’re married to someone and you’re in your forties. It’s a little different when you’re a teenager and you’re not even a couple with the other person.

  “What do you have to lose?”

  Oh, I don’t know. My dignity. The perfect illusion I have managed to create that I’m this incredibly cool, awesome girl.

  Instead of explaining to my mom all the reasons I could never tell Adam how I really felt, I just said, “I think I’m going to go for a run.”

  “Okay,” she said. But when I was leaving the house, she added, “Don’t try to be somebody you’re not, Katie. Give Adam a chance to know the real you.”

  “Maybe,” I said, even though I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of my doing that. If Adam liked me at all it was because I was cool and fun. He wasn’t going to like me more if I revealed to him that I was needy and sad.

  I ran down the driveway and made a right. Faster. Faster. As I passed the turnoff for the pond, I could practically feel Adam’s lips on mine, his hands on my face. I shook my head hard to clear my mind of the image, but each time I got rid of it, another one would take its place. Adam smiling at me on the tennis court. Adam’s foot entwined with mine under the table at The Clam Shack. Adam. Adam. Adam.

  I missed him so much—it was like he was a drug I was addicted to or something. The more I thought about never kissing him again, the sadder I got. The trees shimmered in the bright sun, reminding me of the moonlight from last night. I looked up and nearly fell into a big pothole in the sandy road. I dropped my eyes from the sky. I needed to watch where I was going.

  A few yards in front of me the road divided, and I realized I had no idea where I was. Perfect. I wanted to be lost. Maybe I’d get so turned around that I’d never find my way home, just wander aimlessly in the woods of Cape Cod for the rest of my life. Of course, the proliferation of houses in the vicinity made that fairly unlikely. Nailed to the enormous tree next to me were half a dozen little plaques with names and arrows pointing up the narrow road to my right, and I was sure someone at the Jones, Miller, or Zuprinsky households would be happy to offer me sanctuary and a free phone call. If not, I could always turn to the Graham family. Or I could ask the Carpenters.

  Carpenter.

  My heart pounded in my chest, only it wasn’t from the run. This could not be a coincidence. My mom had just told me to tell Adam my true feelings, to give him a chance, and here I was literally at a fork in the road with an actual sign right in front of me. A sign directing me to Adam’s house. A house I could probably never in a million years have found if I’d set out in search of it.

  I stood there, paralyzed.

  The same poet who wrote the thing about the woods being lovely, dark and deep also had a poem that went, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” (I guess he spent a lot of time in the woods). In the end, he said, he was glad to have taken the road less traveled. Okay, clearly only a small percentage of the people who traveled this road were headed to Adam’s family’s house, but even in my confused state I knew you couldn’t interpret a poem that literally.

  I started to jog slowly in place. Thinking about poetry made me think about Natasha and how she thought I was this confident ace tennis player with guys all over me. Wouldn’t a girl like that just go for it? Just tell Adam the truth? I like you, Adam. I really, really like you. I don’t just want to be the girl you hooked up with. I want to be the girl you go out with.

  No. This was insane. I’d made my decision. I couldn’t spend the summer trying to make Ad
am fall in love with me, wondering every second what he was thinking: if he was finding me as funny or charming or pretty as his real girlfriend. Given the circumstances, how could I possibly tell him how I felt?

  And given that, the only way to be with him was to pretend I didn’t mind fooling around with a guy I really liked who didn’t really like me back. The only logical solution had been to end it, and so I’d ended it.

  I turned to the right and started running.

  And then, before I’d gone a hundred yards, I turned back.

  The problem is, liking someone is a lot of things.

  But logical isn’t one of them.

  The road to Adam’s house wound up and around a slight hill—one of the only ones I’d climbed since arriving on Cape Cod. I passed a couple of driveways or possibly small roads but didn’t see the name Carpenter again. Now that I’d decided to go to Adam’s, the thought of not being able to get there made me crazy. I was afraid if I didn’t find his house soon, I might have to stand there in the middle of the woods screaming, Adam! 225

  Adam! like Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.

  Had I passed it? What with my being more or less out of my mind with agitation and anxiety, it wouldn’t have been hard to miss something, even something as big as a house. Just as I was wondering if I should retrace my steps to the bottom of the hill and head up it again, the trees thinned, and I realized that at some point what had been a road had become a driveway, and I was now, almost definitely, running on Adam’s property.

  The driveway came to an abrupt end practically at the front door of a beautiful modern cylindrical house, taller than it was wide. There were decks poking off at unexpected intervals, and across a clearing there was what must have been a guesthouse, since it was a smaller version of the same structure.

  In my decision to find Adam, I’d only taken things as far as my arrival. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I ring the bell? What if his mom answered? For some reason I pictured Mrs. Carpenter loving Molly, which made it hard to see myself casually asking her if Adam was home. I know what you’re planning! Stay away from my son, you shameless hussy!

  I must have been standing in front of the house for a full five minutes when I realized I could hear someone talking on the phone. I cupped my hand behind my ear and listened. It sounded like the person was outside, and I followed the voice around to the side of the house. There were steps up to a deck, and I climbed them, hoping Adam’s family wasn’t the type to prosecute trespassers.

  I peered around the side of the house, and there he was sitting in an Adirondack chair with his back to me and his feet up on the rail of the deck. My heart began to pound even harder than it had been, which I would have said was impossible. On his feet was a pair of sneakers I hadn’t seen him in before, but I recognized his sweater as the one he’d lent me at the Fourth of July bonfire.

  “No, seriously?” he said into the phone. Then he laughed. I loved his laugh. I’d fight some stupid girl named Molly to the death for that laugh.

  As I stood there listening to and loving Adam’s laugh, I realized I was also eavesdropping. But I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Should I call his name so he’d turn and see me? Then again, it might be kind of freaky to turn around and find someone standing on your deck. Or maybe that was only freaky if you were a girl, since you had to worry that the person who’d climbed onto the deck to be with you was none other than the friendly neighborhood peeping Tom.

  I decided to go back around to the front of the house and ring the bell; better safe than sorry. I took a step back in the direction I’d come.

  “All right, man, we’ll talk later.”

  There was a creak that could only mean he was standing up. I took another step. Should I run? But how weird was that? Wait, is that you racing off my back deck, Kate? While I realize sometimes the best defense is a good offense, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the best entrance is an exit.

  “Yeah, yeah, definitely,” he said. “Okay, bye.” One more step and I’d be out of his line of vision. I put my right foot onto the top stair and— “Hello?” I was so keyed up, I was pretty sure my body was giving off an audible hum. I took a deep breath and tried to turn around, but it was like I was frozen to the spot. No way was I going to be able to say this to his face.

  But I couldn’t just stand there not looking at him and not talking.

  “Listen,” I said finally, “I’m not going to turn around because I just want to say this really fast without looking at you, okay?”

  “Are you—”

  I could practically hear the smile in his voice, which was enough to completely derail me. I just liked him so much. “Don’t interrupt me, okay? I only want to say one thing and then I’ll go if you want me to.” I took a deep breath and focused on a small piece of wood sticking out of the banister. I dug under it with my thumb. “The thing is, I really like you. I liked you the entire time, only I was trying to be … I don’t know, cool about the whole Molly thing.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “No!” I said. “Look, if I don’t say this now, I’m never going to say it. And I really want to say it because the answer to your question—I mean, it’s a pretty old question, so you probably don’t even remember asking it, but the answer is that yes, I did think this could be some big serious thing , even if it couldn’t go beyond the summer, and … well …” Now that I’d started, telling Adam how I felt wasn’t scary, it was wonderful. Nothing that felt this wonderful could be bad. “So that’s why I broke up with you last night. I know it sounds completely perverse, but I broke up with you because I like you so much. I wanted to be the kind of girl who’s too cool to admit that, but I guess I’m not. I don’t know what kind of girl I am, but I’m not her.” It was as if a ten-thousand-pound weight had just fallen from my shoulders; I’d never felt so light. “Okay. You can talk now.”

  There was a pause, and then he said, “Are you … I think you’re looking for Adam?”

  I spun around.

  The person standing in front of me was most definitely not Adam. He was wearing Adam’s sweater. And he had hair like Adam’s. And he was more or less as tall as Adam was. But that’s where the resemblance ended. The guy standing in front of me had a full beard and glasses. I mean, maybe if he shaved the beard and got a pair of contacts he would look more like Adam, but he still wouldn’t be Adam.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “I’m David,” he said. “I’m Adam’s brother.”

  “Oh my God,” I said again.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I tried to—”

  “Oh my God,” I said for the third time.

  “Adam left for New Hampshire early this morning,” he said. Then, as if it made a difference to me, as if the humiliation factor of my current situation hinged on Adam’s departure time, he added, “He got up at six.”

  New Hampshire? New Hampshire?! New Hampshire was where Sarah and Jenna had said Molly was for the summer. In other words, last night, while I’d been lying on my bed, brokenhearted, Adam had been plotting his reunion with his girlfriend. While I’d been confessing my love for Adam to his brother, he’d been confessing his love for Molly to Molly.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “I’m really sorry,” said David. He didn’t have Adam’s face, but he had a nice face, and I could tell he honestly felt bad about the part he’d played in my romantic self-immolation. Which somehow only made what I’d just done feel even worse.

  I shot off the deck and down the driveway as fast as if I were being chased. Maybe if I’d been less embarrassed I could have cried or screamed, but as it was, all I could do was say Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God over and over in my head, like a chant. It drowned out the music blasting on my iPod, my feet pounding against the sandy road, even my heart hammering against my ribs. I came to the bottom of the hill and shot past the sign for Adam’s house. Had I actually thought it was a sign and not a sign?


  I pictured David calling Adam, the two of them talking about what I’d said and pitying me for having said it. Then I thought about how fast Molly would want to reconcile with Adam now that there was another girl after him. It was like I’d done the one thing guaranteed to get Adam back together with his girlfriend.

  Talk about signs. I needed one for my forehead:

  Total idiot.

  EVEN IF I HADN’T JUST ENDURED the most humiliating experience of my life, I still wouldn’t have been prepared for what I walked in on when I got home. Because what I saw when I opened the door to the guesthouse was my mother packing her suitcase.

  “Are we going somewhere?” If only. If only my mom had decided she wanted us to keep moving around the country, like Lolita and Humbert Humbert.

  My mom gestured for me to sit on the couch. Even though I was pretty sweaty and gross, she sat down next to me and put her arm around me. “I just booked myself a flight to Salt Lake out of Logan for early tomorrow morning, so I’m going to spend the night in Boston. I talked to your dad, and I think he and I need to have some face time if we’re going to figure out what comes next.”

  “Oh,” I said. It was like I’d been gone for forty-five days, not forty-five minutes. “So this is it.”

  “This is something,” said my mom. “I’m not sure what, exactly. But yes, your dad and I have some decisions to make.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Am I … should I be packing too?”

  My mom leaned against the back of the couch. “I reserved you a seat,” she said. “But I didn’t book it. The truth is, I’d like a little time alone with your dad. But I also don’t think it’s fair to make you stay here if I’m going back. So the decision is yours. I’d like to leave for Boston after lunch.”

  “Wow,” I said again. How tempting was it to just start packing, to say good-bye to the disaster that was Adam and Natasha and basically every single aspect of my summer east of the Mississippi?

  But my mom and dad needed time alone together. She’d just said that. Was I really going to risk my parents’ marriage so I didn’t have to deal with the spectacular wreckage I’d managed to make of almost all the relationships I’d formed here?