You Say It First

by Katie Cotugno

  “Sure thing,” Colby said. “I’ve got work in the morning, too.” He cleared his throat. “I work at Home Depot, PS,” he said. “In the warehouse.”

  “Oh!” Meg said, then snapped her jaws shut before she said anything accidentally offensive. The idea of spending your days moving refrigerators and table saws and, like, paint cans from place to place was enormously bleak to her, and she knew it made her an unforgiveable snob. “See?” she said instead. “Was that so hard?”

  “No,” Colby said after a moment. “I guess not.”

  Meg wanted to ask if he liked it; she wanted to ask what he did there, and what kinds of people he worked with. She wanted to know if he wanted to do something else or if he was happy, and she wanted to hear him laugh one more time, but she knew she was only postponing the inevitable. “Have a good night, Colby,” she said quietly. “It was really nice talking to you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was really nice talking to you, too.”

  Meg swallowed down a weird surge of panic just then: a feeling like an escape hatch closing in a movie, of being left behind in a dangerous place. Wait, she thought, and take me with you.

  “Good night” was all she said.

  Once she’d hung up, she turned off the lamp and stared at the moonlight making patterns on the ceiling. She didn’t fall asleep for a long time.

  Eight

  Colby

  Colby stopped at Bixby’s for coffee the following morning, plunking a dollar in the tip jar and smiling at the barista without letting himself think about why. He was exhausted—it had been damn near impossible to drag his ass out of bed and into the shower this morning—but it felt like a good kind of tired, like when he used to work with his dad on job sites in the summer and came home at the end of the day filthy and sore.

  “You hit the lotto or something?” Moira asked when he got to work, coming up behind him with her backpack slung over one shoulder as he punched his employee code into the time clock. Moira was his shift supervisor, a tall skinny black woman in her thirties with long braids down her back.

  “Huh?” Colby asked, blinking distractedly. He entered his number wrong, had to clear it out and start over.

  Moira grinned. “You did, didn’t you?”

  “What?” Colby shook his head, laughing a little bewilderedly. “No.”

  “I don’t know, Colby,” Moira said, shaking her head and nudging him aside to get to the time clock. “I think it’s the first time since I met you that I’ve seen you in here without a scowl on your face that could take the bark off a tree.”

  “That’s not—” Colby felt himself blush, though he wasn’t sure if it was because apparently he had a reputation for frowning all the time at work or because she’d noticed he wasn’t doing it on this particular morning. “I didn’t.”

  “Sure. Sure. Just try not to forget us little people when you’re collecting all your money.” Moira winked. “Shift assignments in ten, Smiles.”

  It was a busy morning, thankfully: a shipment of washing machines to unload that meant a full reorg of appliances, plus a long pick list of items to send to the online distribution facility outside Columbus. Colby was real careful to keep his head down. So fine, he’d had a good time talking to Meg from WeCount on the phone last night. Whatever. He was literally never going to hear from her again, so there was no point in getting worked up about it one way or the other.

  When he got into the break room for his thirty, Moira and Jerry were staring at a notice on the bulletin board next to the bank of lockers, where people put up shift-switch requests and ads for roommates and the mandatory OSHA posters about unsafe working conditions. “What’s up?” Colby asked, opening his locker and pulling out his lunch.

  “They’re cutting overtime,” Jerry reported.

  “Wait.” Colby frowned, coming over to look at the flier. “All overtime?”

  Moira nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

  “I love how they didn’t even talk to us about it,” Jerry said with a rueful smirk, his bald white head gleaming in the overhead lights. “Just stuck it up there for us to find.”

  “They did it on purpose,” Moira cracked. “They all know you can’t read.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” Jerry said, and the whole thing devolved into a pileup of good-natured insults, but Colby was hardly listening. Well, he guessed, so much for moving out by the beginning of the summer. At this rate, he’d probably be living with his mom until he was forty-five.

  He ate the ham-and-cheese sandwich he’d packed that morning and got himself a Dr Pepper from the vending machine. Then he got up and went back to work.

  Nine

  Meg

  Seniors could leave campus during their lunch periods, so Meg met up with Emily in the parking lot and they went to the hipster salad place near school. By the time they got there and waited in line, they usually only had ten minutes to shovel their salads into their mouths, but they went anyway because Emily couldn’t get enough of the lime-cilantro dressing and it didn’t seem like something worth arguing about, even though Meg was always a tiny bit stressed about getting back before the bell.

  “Did you see that new bookstore in Montco is doing Friday open-mic nights?” she asked now. “You want to go this week maybe?”

  Emily glanced up from whoever she was texting, raised an eyebrow. “Why?” she asked. “You hoping to find an audience for your political slam poetry?”

  “Rude.” Meg pelted her with a cherry tomato, laughing. “I don’t write political slam poetry.”

  “Sure, sure.” Emily shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, setting her phone down and shivering a little inside her Patagonia. It was warm enough to eat outside on the patio, but barely. “I have to help my mom with something.”

  “Mysterious,” Meg teased.

  “It’s not,” Emily said—a little sharply, which was weird. “It was just a computer thing for one of her classes.”

  “Oh.” Meg nodded. “Okay.” Emily’s mom was getting her master’s in social work at Temple, driving into the city two nights a week for seminars and working on research projects at the kitchen table. Meg had asked her own mom if she’d ever thought about going back to school—Mrs. Hurd really liked it, and she’d made all these other middle-aged lady friends and some younger ones besides—but Meg’s mom had said she hadn’t even liked college the first time, and that had been the end of that. “That’s cool.”

  She poked at her kale Caesar for a moment, pushing the Parmesan crisps to the side for very last and knowing that the only person actually acting strange here was her. It felt like she’d betrayed Emily somehow by telling Colby about Cornell, even though she knew that was silly. She was going to tell Emily about Cornell. She was going to go to Cornell.

  She just needed a little bit of time to get her head in the game first.

  “So, okay,” she blurted before she could talk herself out of it, sitting back in her wobbly metal patio chair—wanting to offer Emily something, even if it wasn’t the thing she knew Em was waiting to hear. “Do you remember the other night when I texted you about that guy who hung up on me at work?”

  “Huh?” Emily glanced at her phone one more time before turning it facedown on the table. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “He called me back.”

  “He did what?” Emily’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh my God, how did he get your number? That’s so creepy.”

  “No, no,” Meg said, holding her hands up and shaking her head quickly. “I mean, I gave him my number.”

  “What?” Emily repeated. “Why?”

  “Because I felt so bad? I don’t know.” Meg felt her cheeks getting warm. “It just kind of came out. But what I’m trying to tell you is we wound up talking for, like, a million hours.”

  “Seriously?” Emily raised her eyebrows. “About what?”

  Meg shrugged. “All kinds of stuff. I don’t know.” Suddenly, she felt embarrassed about it, like telling the story out loud had broken some kind of
spell. “Our jobs. Vacations. What we watch on TV.”

  “What does he watch on TV?”

  “That’s not the point!” Meg blew a breath out. “It was just, like, this super long, intense phone conversation, that’s all. I’ve definitely never talked that way to a stranger before.” She thought about it for a moment, the back of her neck getting dumbly warm as she remembered the sound of his laugh. “I guess it felt like I could talk to him that way because he was a stranger, you know? Like: judgment-free zone, or something.”

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Emily snapped the lid back on her empty salad bowl. “It’s just . . . I don’t know, man. I mean, I love you, obviously. But that’s, like . . . kind of super sketchy, no?”

  Meg blinked. “Thanks a lot,” she said, holding her hand out for Emily’s container and getting up to toss them both in the bin. She knew it was silly to feel protective of a person she’d had two conversations with—to feel protective of the person she’d been on the phone—but she couldn’t help it. She wished she hadn’t said anything to begin with.

  “I’m sorry!” Emily said, rattling the ice in her straw-free cup of raspberry lemonade. “I’m not trying to yuck your yum, I just—who even is this guy? He could be, like, fifty-five.”

  “He’s not fifty-five! He’s exactly our age.”

  “How do you know?”

  I Googled him did not sound like an answer that was going to win any points with Emily, so Meg just shrugged again. “I just know.” Ugh, this had been a mistake. Best friend or not, there had been plenty of things she hadn’t told Emily about over the years—the time she’d gotten her period in line for iced tea at the Short Hills Mall and bled right through her white shorts; that she’d made out with a girl named Riley the summer she’d been a camp counselor in the Poconos and could see herself doing it again if she met the right person; her parents’ divorce until two weeks after her dad moved out and Emily was coming for a sleepover and she couldn’t hide it anymore. Sometimes it just felt safer that way. Their sameness was comforting, yes—their sameness had always been comforting—but the flip side of that was that sometimes their friendship felt a little bit like the persuasive essays they’d written last fall in AP Lit Comp, where Meg had purposely left out any evidence that didn’t support her argument for fear of the whole thing collapsing entirely.

  “Look, you’re right,” she said finally, digging her car keys out of her backpack. “It was totally random. And it’s not like it’s going to happen again. I just thought it was a funny story, that’s all.”

  “Wait,” Emily said, “are you mad, though?”

  “No,” Meg promised, and she wasn’t. It was more like she felt kind of empty. She felt dumb. It had been weird, that phone call with Colby. But it had also made her happier than anything else had in a really long time.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said again as they headed out into the parking lot. It was starting to drizzle, a raw trickle slipping into the neck of Meg’s denim jacket. “I didn’t mean to rain on your parade. You know, your slightly-sketchy-phone-call parade—”

  “All right, thank you.” Meg laughed. “You’ve made your point.” She bumped Emily’s shoulder when she said it in a way she knew would smooth things over, make it into a joke instead of a fight; even as she did it it felt like another betrayal, though this time she wasn’t sure of who. “Come on,” she said, getting into the car and glancing at the clock on the dashboard. “We’re gonna be late.”

  Ten

  Colby

  Colby’s mom texted to tell him they were out of dog food and milk in order of importance, so he stopped by the Giant Eagle on his way home from work. Colby loved the supermarket, weirdly: the chilly, brightly lit order of it, the dumb ’90s Muzak tinkling overhead. His dad used to let him hitch a ride on the back of the cart.

  He got the stuff his mom wanted, plus some extra treats for Tris. He was standing in the snack aisle debating garlic Cheez-Its versus Extra Toasty when Keith Olsen appeared beside a cardboard display of Tostitos. “Hey!” he called, sounding genuinely excited by the sight of Colby standing there in his dirty warehouse clothes among the Wheat Thins and barbecue chips. “Colby, dude. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Uh, really?” Colby asked, trying not to sound too outwardly suspicious. You know where I live and work, he didn’t say. “You have?”

  “I mean, not in a professional capacity,” Keith clarified, motioning down at his tan sheriff’s uniform. A silver wedding ring glinted on his left hand. He was married to a girl who’d broken up with Matt back in high school, which Colby knew drove Matt crazy and therefore kind of appreciated. “Well, kind of in a professional capacity, I guess. But you’re not in trouble. I just wanted to see how you were doing, after the other night.”

  For one demented second, Colby thought Keith was talking about the phone call with Meg from WeCount. Then he blinked and realized he meant the water tower thing. “Oh,” he said. “I’m fine, thanks.” In fact, he felt a little guilty over how easily he’d gotten off for the whole thing—he knew his dad would have had him make it up somehow, picking up trash or donating to a charity or something—but that sure as shit wasn’t the kind of thing he was going to say out loud.

  Keith nodded eagerly, either oblivious to Colby’s tone or completely undeterred by it. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” Then, motioning at Colby’s dirt-streaked polo shirt: “You just come from work?”

  “Yup,” Colby said in a way he hoped didn’t invite any further questions, tossing the Extra Toasties into his cart.

  Keith kept nodding. “You like it over there?” he asked.

  “It’s fine,” Colby said. God, what the fuck did Keith care if he liked it or not? It was like just because he had a badge and a gun he’d decided he was Colby’s honorary guidance counselor. “It’s a job.”

  “Yeah, no, I get that.” Keith smiled. “You ever think about doing something with a little more room to grow, though? I mean, you’re a smart guy. Your uncle would hire you in a second, I bet.”

  Anger crested inside Colby like a flash flood, sudden and dangerous. “Did my brother ask you to talk to me?” he demanded. “Because I don’t actually see how it’s any of your business who I work for.”

  “Dude, easy.” Keith held up the hand that wasn’t gripping his grocery basket, his jamboree-leader smile falling a little bit. “I haven’t seen your brother in months. I’m just asking, that’s all.” He shook his head. “You know Doug Robard?” he asked.

  Colby frowned. He did know Doug Robard, actually; he’d worked as a lead carpenter for his dad and Uncle Rick when Colby was a kid, though he’d gone out on his own and did super complicated, finicky residential shit now. How he made money like that in a place like Alma was beyond Colby, but judging by how many trucks the guy had now, he certainly seemed to. “What about him?”

  “He’s a friend of mine—”

  “Oh yeah?” Colby asked, wiggling his eyebrows pointedly.

  “Fuck you, Colby.” Keith scowled. “It’s not like that. He’s got more work than he can handle, and he mentioned he was looking for help. Seems like the kind of thing you’d be good at.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Dude,” Keith said, “I remember how you used to help your dad out on jobs all the time when you were younger. And I know how your brother can be, and I get if you don’t want to work with him, but something tells me that hauling two-by-fours around at a big-box store isn’t exactly the kind of gig that’s gonna light your fire forever.”

  “Oh no?” Colby smirked, even as some small, traitorous voice at the back of his head wondered if Keith might have a point. He wasn’t embarrassed about what he did—he’d announced it to Meg from WeCount, hadn’t he, basically daring her to say something snotty and prove his point—but the truth was he hadn’t wanted to tell her, exactly, and eighteen hours later he still wasn’t sure what that had been about. “What do you think would light my fire, exactly?”

  Keith rolled
his eyes. “Just check the guy out on Instagram, okay? If you think what he’s doing is cool, shoot me a text and I’ll put you in touch.”

  Colby hesitated. On one hand, he didn’t know what Keith’s game was here, butting into his business and blowing smoke up his ass. On the other, he couldn’t act like some dumb, gullible part of him wasn’t the tiniest bit intrigued. “Sure,” he said finally, more to get out of here than because he had any intention of actually doing it. He had a job, even if it wasn’t a super exciting one. There was no point in tying himself in knots trying to get something better that probably wouldn’t even work out. “I’ll take a look.”

  Still, once he’d loaded the groceries into the car and gotten into the driver’s seat he found himself pulling his phone out of his pocket, curious in spite of himself. He didn’t have Instagram, but Doug’s account came up with a minimum of Googling. He did do nice work, Colby had to admit that, restoring historic houses all over the county—so that yuppies could buy them, Colby guessed, though he didn’t know how many yuppies there were in Ross County. It was super advanced carpentry, huge built-in bookcases with dovetailed corners and antique staircases with complicated trim, the kind of stuff his dad would have totally loved.

  He had scrolled almost six months back without entirely meaning to when his phone buzzed in his hand with a text from a number that wasn’t in his contacts list—Meg, he realized with a jolt.

  Are you also falling asleep standing up? she wanted to know.

  Colby smiled; he couldn’t help it. Sitting down. But pretty much.

  What are you up to?

  Just headed home from work. Then, before he hit send, he added: Got accosted in the grocery store though.

  Accosted! The grimace emoji here, its tiny teeth bared. By who?

  Friend of my brother’s, he said, leaving out the part about the water tower. He wants me to apply for some job. At the very last minute, he pasted in the link to Doug’s Instagram page.