Good Luck with That

by Kristan Higgins

  Marley covered her eyes.

  “I do,” she said, proving that she wasn’t a real human. She tipped her head against Rafe’s shoulder, her claim effortlessly clear.

  My mouth twitched, still in its approximation of a smile.

  Just then, Camden the firefighter walked past. “Hey, guys,” he said innocently, pausing, as we were all frozen in our awkward tableau.

  “Camden!” Marley barked, unfreezing. “Give me a piggyback ride!”

  She leaped on his back like . . . like Spiderman or something.

  And he crumpled beneath her, his chin planting in the grass.

  “Marley! You okay?” Mason offered his hand.

  “Jeez, Marley, give me some warning next time,” Camden said.

  She rolled off him and took Mason’s hand, letting him pull her to her feet. “I’m sorry, old pal! Guess I thought you were stronger.” She looked at me and rolled her eyes, grinning.

  I had the best friend in the universe.

  Dante, Louis and another firefighter came over. “Marley, try me next time,” the other guy said. “Built outta iron, made in the USA.” He pounded his chest with his fist. “Nothing brings me to my knees, you know what I’m sayin’? Not like Camden here.”

  “Yeah, Camden,” Dante said. “Don’t be such a pussy next time.”

  “Marley, you want a piggyback ride, you talk to me,” Louis said.

  The commotion served its purpose. Rafe said, “It was good to see you,” and he and Heather melted back into the crowd.

  Marley came over to me. “Mission accomplished,” she said. “Also, that totally counts as a piggyback ride, you hear that, Emerson?” She brushed grass off her butt. “I have to admit, it felt kind of good to crush him like a bug.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I owe you. A lot.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Running . . . well, it’s torture. But torture did at least prevent me from thinking too much about Rafe, as I was busy fighting for my life. Mason and I were equally slow (or he was taking pity on me, unlike Marley, who dashed away at the speed of light). We quickly found ourselves at the back of the pack, being passed by people on crutches, nonagenarians, amputees, and one woman who, judging on the size of her belly, was pregnant with eleven babies.

  The first half mile went okay. My lungs sounded awfully loud, though. “Am I . . . dying?” I asked my nephew between wheezing breaths. “Or am I . . . already . . . dead?”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s horrible.” He, too, was breathing hard, but he smiled, and my heart lifted.

  “I—” (gasp) “—love—” (gasp) “—you.”

  “Are those your final words?” He might be slow, but he at least could talk.

  “I have . . . to stop,” I managed.

  We did, and I bent over, gasping. My vision grayed. Fainting sounded like so much fun right now.

  “Okay, that’s good enough,” Mason said. “We can do this. It’s flat, at least. Besides, you don’t want Rafe to see you like this, do you?”

  “How sharper . . . than the serpent’s . . . tooth . . . is the . . . perceptive . . . teenager.” He did have a point. I tried to look a little less ICU, a little more Nike. Was agonizing knee pain just a normal part of running? I bet Heather didn’t have knee pain.

  We started running again. Horrid. It was horrid.

  I glanced at Mason, wiping the sweat out of my eyes. Should’ve worn a baseball cap. God! How many steps in a mile? I’d ask Mason, but I needed to conserve oxygen.

  “Hey, we’re at the one-mile mark,” Mason said. “Doing good, G!”

  Two miles to go? I hoped I wouldn’t soil myself, but I couldn’t make any promises. I trudged/plodded along—pludged—and tried not to hyperventilate. Glanced at my watch. Regretted it.

  My face felt like it was on fire—had I sweated off my sunscreen? Probably.

  Good God. By the time we hit mile two, there was a sharp pain in my chest, another in my shoulder, and my shins were squealing in pain. We stopped again so I could catch my breath. I liked to think that Mason also needed the break, though he looked great (to my sweat-hazed eyes, anyway).

  Off we went again. It was only the idea that Heather the Tall and Slender was nearby, watching and smirking, that kept me staggering in a what I hoped was a forwardly direction. Truth was, it felt like I was running backward. Through tar. With anvils chained to my legs.

  “You doing anything tonight? Maybe we can go to a movie,” Mason said.

  “I . . . have . . . a date.” Yes. I’d all but forgotten it, but Evan Kennedy and I were going out for dinner.

  If Rafe had moved on, so had I. A little, anyway.

  “Really? Cool. Maybe Grandpa would want to see something, then.”

  Pludge. Pludge. Pludge. God, this was endless. Another glance at my watch said twenty-seven minutes had passed. Most people had finished the race and were milling about, offering encouragement, if not defibrillation and a sweet tank of oxygen, which was what I really wanted. Then again, I was clearly burning calories. I tried to smile, looking for red T-shirts in the crowd. Or horns.

  “Go, Georgia! Go, Mason! Go, Georgia! Go, Mason!”

  It was Dad, Cherish, the girls, and Marley, who, annoyingly, seemed to have finished already and looked dewy and radiant. If I’d had the energy, I would’ve waved back, but I simply did not. The end must’ve been near, and if that meant my death, at least I wouldn’t be running.

  “I’m gonna sprint the rest of the way, okay?” Mason asked.

  “Yes! Go! Good . . . for you!”

  In a shocking burst of energy, he took off, inciting his tinier aunts to scream with excitement.

  My legs felt rubbery. Was I about to fall? I also had to pee and/or vomit. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t done yet. This was taking forever. I mean, technically, I was still “running,” but I didn’t seem to be moving at all. Not measurably, at any rate.

  Then suddenly, Rafael, no longer with horns, his hair sweaty and spiked, materialized next to me. Or I was hallucinating. Hopefully, it was the latter.

  “Georgia,” he said, so crap, he was real. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Doing . . . great,” I said. Please go away.

  “You’re sure? Would you like to walk?”

  “I’d like to . . . be put in a . . . medically . . . induced . . . coma.”

  He laughed, and if I hadn’t been in such intense pain, I might have laughed, too.

  “Well, I cannot help you with that, but can I get you some water?”

  “Almost done now,” I said. The finish line was a mere (ha!) fifty yards away, the bunting and banner announcing the home stretch.

  “Mason looked very strong crossing the finish line,” Rafael said. “He has grown so much.”

  “Yes.” I was concentrating on not wetting myself, not having my legs give out, not asking Rafe to carry me or inject me with a strong tranquilizer.

  And then there was Mason. “Go, G!” he bellowed, and his face was so dear and sweet that I couldn’t help but smile at him, and yes, somehow I sprinted—or at least, ran marginally faster—across the finish line.

  With my ex-husband.

  “You did it!” Mason said. “You looked great!” He gave me a sweaty hug, handed me a water bottle and beamed. “Wasn’t she great, Uncle Rafe?”

  “She was. Well done, Georgia.” There was a smile in those wonderful, kind brown eyes.

  “Thank you . . . gentlemen,” I managed, then took the bottle of water, bent over and poured it over my neck.

  “I must go. It was good to see you both,” said Rafe.

  “You too,” I said, straightening up. A wave of dizziness made me wobble, and for a second his hand was on my arm, steadying me.

  Everything else fell away—the sound of the crowd, Mason, the heat, even my ex
haustion—and there was only him, the man who loved me once, who had married me.

  I had thrown away so much.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “Perfect. Yes. Thank you.”

  He smiled a little, tugging my heart, then went off, and I watched as he was absorbed by the crowd.

  * * *

  • • •

  Two hours and four Motrin later, I had taken a shower at my father’s apartment, in the bathroom attached to my room, which Cherish stocked with lovely-smelling soaps and shampoos and every bathroom item a female might need in a lifetime.

  My heels were bloody and blistered from the run, my neck was sunburned. My shins, big toes, knees, calves, Achilles tendons, thighs and ass throbbed with pain. I pulled on a bathrobe and texted Marley to see how she was doing.

  Great, she replied instantly. How are you? Sore?

  My God, yes, I answered. Is this normal?

  It is if you’re a lazy-ass preschool teacher. Come to the gym with me once in a while and you won’t suffer so much!

  You were really great, tackling Camden like that, I wrote.

  YOU were really great, coming along so I didn’t feel like such a loser. I’m going to the movies with my mom. Gotta run. Also, Admiral sends his love and asks why you don’t give him bacon, like Aunt Marley does. xox

  Going to the movies with her mom, huh? There was something I just couldn’t imagine. I tried to remember if my mother and I had ever done that, and came up empty.

  As Mason had hoped, Dad had been free for a movie (of course; he took any chance he could get to be with Mason, since my brother was . . . well, himself). My nephew had texted Hunter, saying simply We’re going to catch a movie, not defining who “we” were. I had recommended the wording, knowing my brother would never have said yes if he knew Mason would be with Dad.

  I was trying to get my arms over my head to pull on the dress I’d brought—my arms were stiff, and my neck was seizing like a bad engine—when a knock came on the door of the guest room. “One sec,” I said, but Cherish came in anyway.

  “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked as I pulled the dress into place.

  “Yes.” It was a classic dress, I thought—black, loose fitting, three-quarter sleeves. I had cute shoes, which, now that I thought of it, would turn my bloody heels into ground beef.

  Cherish made a face. “Hold on,” she said, leaving the room. She returned a minute later with three dresses.

  “We are not the same size, Cherish,” I said.

  “Try them on, sweetheart.”

  I didn’t really want her to see me, but . . . well, shit. She wasn’t going to be mean. I pulled my dress over my head and stepped into one of hers.

  It did fit. Maybe not the way it did on her, but it zipped up and everything.

  It was a yellow and red floral-print dress, sleeveless, stopping just above my knees. I looked . . . young. Cherish tousled my hair a little bit, floofing it up in back. “There,” she said. “You’re so beautiful, Georgia. I have some cute wedge sandals that will go perfect with this. Girls! Mommy’s gonna do Georgia’s makeup! You want to watch?”

  And so once again, I was beautified. The little girls oohed and aahed, and put on blush and eye makeup themselves, something I’d never been allowed to do, even for fun, when I was little. “It doesn’t help,” my mother had said, when at about age ten, I’d tried to copy a classmate’s use of eye shadow.

  “Ta-da!” Cherish said, misting my face with something. “Take a look!”

  I did. There she was again, that same woman I’d been the night Evan Kennedy hadn’t remembered me.

  She was nice-looking. She looked . . . intelligent. She had pretty eyes, and even though her neck was the color of a boiled lobster, she looked like someone I’d like to know.

  “Thank you, Cherish,” I said.

  “You’re welcome, angel. You want me to call a car service for you?”

  “No, no. I’ll walk there. It’s just a couple blocks, but thanks, anyway.”

  “Bye, Georgia! Bye!” the girls said. Milan had gotten into the red lipstick and looked like a baby vampire, but I kissed her carefully anyway, then Paris, then turned to my stepmother.

  “Thanks again. I’ll bring the dress back next—”

  “Keep it,” she said, waving her hand. “It looks better on you, anyway. Have fun, sweetie. Text me tomorrow and let me know how it goes. If you want to sleep over, just let yourself in.”

  I wouldn’t sleep over; I wanted to sleep in my own bed, cuddle my dog and rest my weary bones.

  Or, I supposed, I could go home with Evan Kennedy. It wasn’t unusual for dates to end in sex; I might’ve been the queen of celibacy since my divorce, but I did go on the Internet and listen to podcasts. I knew how things were done.

  I couldn’t imagine sex with Evan, though. Then again, maybe the woman in the flowered dress could.

  It hurt to walk. As I hobbled down Tenth Avenue, hoping the walk would loosen me up, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I’d exercised, given Mason a happy day and, biggest of all, had seen Rafael for the second time. It had hurt—a lot—to see him with Heather, but I’d survived it. I couldn’t fault him for finding someone else. He deserved everything in life. Especially love. It was my own heart that had proven to be unbreachable.

  A man was selling scarves at the corner of Eighteenth and Ninth. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said. I looked to my side to see her. There was no one there.

  He was talking to me.

  “Hi,” I breathed. “How are you?”

  “Better now,” he said, smiling broadly.

  Holy crap. Yes, yes, feminism, but a random man (or woman) had never ever said anything like that to me. Ever. Not once.

  Ah. I had arrived at the restaurant. It was a quiet, upscale place with white tablecloths and a single orchid blossom on each table. Evan was waiting, and he smiled when he saw me. “Hey, Georgia,” he said.

  “Hi. Good to see you.”

  I was nervous, I realized. Not just because I was dating the second man in my entire life, but because I really wanted to get the Yale thing over with. My plan was (still) to pretend I didn’t remember him, either. Then we could chuckle over small world, yada yada.

  And yet, I didn’t want him to remember me as I’d been at Yale, me ever on the fringe, him ever at the center. But I had to, because we had gone to school together, and it was going to come up sooner or later.

  “So,” I said. “Tell me about yourself , Evan. Where did you go to school?” Cut right to the chase.

  “Ah, that stuff’s kind of meaningless, don’t you think? People throwing around their educational pedigrees like it means anything in the real world.”

  “Good point.” Foiled for now. “Okay. Well. Are you one of those Kennedys?” I asked.

  “No comment.” He grinned. “Want to order a bottle of wine?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you like?”

  “Just about everything.”

  He studied the wine list like it was a map to the Lost World as my brain generated helpful suggestions of how to kill the elephant in my half of the room.

  Georgia: Hey, I think I went to law school with an Evan Kennedy. You’re not . . . wait a sec! You are!

  Georgia: I’m a preschool teacher now, but I was a lawyer for a year and a half.

  Evan: Really? I’m a lawyer, too! / I also used to be a lawyer!

  Georgia: No! What a coincidence! Where’d you go to law school?

  It would be so easy.

  But the words didn’t come. My old self loomed like a specter, that quiet, fat, sometimes sad girl always hoping and dreading she’d be noticed.

  Evan, on the other hand, was completely oblivious as he looked and looked at the wine list. “How about the Henri Boillot Meursault?” he finally said. “It’
s a French Burgundy.” He paused. “A white wine. Chardonnay.”

  Ah, mansplaining.

  “What year?” I asked. “The 2015 was great.” Thank you, photographic memory and a father who loved wine.

  His eyebrows went up, a little surprised that I passed. “They have a Domaine Roulot, too. Good enough?”

  “2012?”

  He glanced back down. “Yes.”

  “Even better, then.”

  The waiter came over, and Evan ordered.

  Let him figure it out. Let Evan be the one to smack his forehead, to bring up law school. Let him feel like he was forgettable enough that I hadn’t put two and two together. I’d just be the woman in the flowered dress who knew her French Burgundies, damn it.

  “Tell me about your work, Evan.”

  “I would, but I like you, so I don’t want to bore you to death. I study numbers and healthcare regulations and advise an investment firm on different companies. God, I put myself to sleep just saying that. I mean, I like it, but it’s pretty boring to a normal person. Teaching, now, that must be so much fun.”

  “It is. The school is really progressive, and as you said, four is a fun age.”

  “Want to see a picture of my niece?”

  “Of course I do.”

  I found myself relaxing. The wine, the candles, the nice-looking woman in the flowered dress sitting across from one of Those Kennedys. We talked about politics, living in New York, the Yankees, how he got to meet Derek Jeter at a fund-raiser.

  Yale didn’t come up. He didn’t ask me what I did before teaching, and I didn’t volunteer it. I just sat, my muscles turning into petrified wood, sipping wine and making pleasant conversation.

  This would’ve made Emerson happy, I thought.

  When the check came, I was moderately buzzed. The pasta I’d ordered didn’t bother my stomach, but then again, the woman in the flowered dress hadn’t eaten much of it.

  Evan paid the check. “Want to get a drink somewhere else?” he asked.

  “Actually, I’m a little tired,” I said. “I did that fun run today, and it reminded me that I’m horribly out of shape and really have to get a gym membership.”