“Shit, Moran,” Micah murmured—quiet enough so that only Colby could hear him, a curly, slightly pervy smile spreading across his face. “You forget to tell your girlfriend your other girlfriend was coming?”
“Neither one of them is my girlfriend,” Colby said, which was technically true, though he couldn’t help but feel a little bit queasy as Jo got out of the driver’s seat, her yellow hair up in a knot at the top of her head. It occurred to him that, in his effort to convince himself that nothing currently going on in his life was a big deal, he might have accidentally been kind of an asshole.
“Hey, Colby,” Joanna called, reaching back to take a six-pack of hard lemonade from her friend Maureen in the passenger seat. It seemed like a lot longer ago than just last night that they’d gone to Highland Burger Bar, which didn’t keep him from wishing a sinkhole would open in the middle of this parking lot and swallow him. “How’s your mom feeling?”
“What’s wrong with your mom?” Meg asked, frowning a little. Colby shook his head.
“Um,” he said, smiling across the parking lot at Joanna in a way he hoped was friendly but not friendly enough to get himself in trouble. Maureen didn’t bother to hide her stink-eye. “She’s better.”
Joanna nodded, glancing curiously at Meg. “Hi,” she said, holding her hand out. “I’m Joanna.”
“Meg,” Meg said, and they shook.
“How do you guys know each other?” Joanna asked, passing the lemonades off to Micah.
Colby didn’t know why the truth felt weirdly embarrassing to him. “We met dressed as furries at Comic-Con,” he deadpanned before Meg could answer, which made Jordan laugh his honking donkey laugh. Meg, Colby couldn’t help but notice, didn’t smile.
A couple of other cars pulled into the lot just then, thankfully; Jordan and Jo’s cousin Brady with the painful-looking acne and a couple of the girls Micah worked with at Dollar General, the sound level rising until it felt more like an actual party. Maureen dropped her phone into an empty plastic cup to make a speaker, Jay-Z echoing out into the darkness. Somebody else brought a thirty-rack of Bud Light. Meg sat on the bumper of the Prius with her ankles crossed and chatted with some girl Jo knew from the hair salon, both of them animated. Jordan finally got his joint lit while Micah held court in front of the empty fountain.
“You doing okay?” Colby asked Meg, catching her arm as she dug in the back seat of the Prius for her water bottle. She wasn’t drinking, he’d noticed, though to be fair neither was he. He wasn’t exactly dying to add a DUI to his rap sheet, on top of which he had a sneaking suspicion beer actually made his nightmares worse. He’d had another one two nights earlier, blunt and terrifying, his dad screaming his name from inside one of Rick’s stupid model homes. It occurred to Colby to wish his subconscious had a little more finesse.
“I’m fine,” Meg said now, offering him the bland kind of bullshit smile he imagined she usually reserved for her friend Emily. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said, suddenly not sure about her tone. It was weird to have facial expressions to match it with all of a sudden, the delicate arch of her eyebrows and the purse of her heart-shaped mouth. “Why?”
Meg shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, picking idly at one of the stickers on her water bottle—the whole thing was covered with them, Yes We Can and HATE with a red line drawn through it and This Machine Kills Fascists, like maybe she was worried the T-shirt wasn’t working hard enough to announce her personal brand. “Just wondering.” Then, with a raise of her eyebrows so quick he wasn’t even sure if she’d really done it: “Joanna seems nice.”
Colby almost choked on his tongue. “Uh, yeah,” he said, wanting to explain but not knowing how to, wishing briefly for the safety of a telephone line. “Yeah, I mean—”
“Yo, Colby!” Micah called, waving his Bud Light in their general direction. “How many men does it take to open a beer can?”
Oh God, here they went. “How many,” Colby asked dutifully, though in truth he wasn’t altogether mad about the interruption.
“None,” Micah reported. “It should be open when she brings it.”
Jordan guffawed. Colby rolled his eyes. “Hilarious,” Joanna said, shaking her head indulgently.
Only Meg didn’t react. Instead, she got very still for a moment, considering Micah like a prey animal from across the parking lot. “Why is that funny?” she asked, her voice perfectly even. All at once, it occurred to Colby that possibly he’d been wrong about being the only person she was willing to fight with.
Micah looked startled for a moment, like he didn’t understand the question. Jordan was still chuckling to himself, though that might have been the weed. “Relax,” Micah said. “It was a joke.”
“Sure, but why is it funny?”
Micah shook his head. “You know why it’s funny.”
“I don’t, actually.” Meg was looking at him with her head cocked just slightly to the side. “I don’t understand the conceit of the joke, so I’m asking you to explain it to me.”
Colby grimaced. She clearly did understand the conceit of the joke, whatever that meant, but he got what she was doing. It was kind of an epic troll. He might have admired it, except for the part where it was making everything super fucking uncomfortable. Micah could be a boner sometimes, sure, but there was no point in ruining the night every time he said some jackass thing.
“All right, Hillary Clinton,” Micah said. “Didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”
“Uh-oh,” Colby said. That was all he needed right now, for the two of them to get into some fucking debate about Benghazi or something and then they’d really be off to the races. God, he’d known bringing Meg around his friends was a bad idea from the very beginning, but still it was weird to see it play out, like watching a car wreck in slow motion when he was also somehow the one behind the wheel. “Let’s not bring politics into this.”
Meg ignored him. “Is that supposed to insult me?” she asked Micah, her voice a click higher than normal. “Calling me that? Like, in your mind, is that something that should make me feel embarrassed or shut me up?”
“It’s not supposed to do anything,” Micah said, shrugging violently. She was rattling him, Colby could tell. He thought of the first night he’d ever talked to Meg on the phone, that feeling of the ground shifting unexpectedly under his feet. He felt sorry for Micah, a little, thought mostly he just felt annoyed. “I’m just saying, you’re kind of a snowfl—”
“Don’t even say it,” Meg interrupted. “Seriously, buddy, I’m going to just go ahead and save you from yourself right—”
“Moran,” Micah said, “control your woman, will you?”
Oh, shit.
“I’m not his woman,” Meg said immediately, her sharp gaze cutting in Colby’s direction for the briefest of seconds. Joanna, who until now had been mostly engaged in a side conversation with her frizzy-haired friend Kylah, whipped around to look at them both. “And he doesn’t think you’re funny, either.”
“He doesn’t?” Micah asked. “’Cause you know him so well, right?”
“I know him better than you do, clearly.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Colby said weakly—trying, and mostly failing, to make a joke of this whole thing. “Don’t get me involved.”
“Dude, you brought her here,” Micah pointed out.
“I brought myself, actually,” Meg told him. “And—”
“Hey, Mike,” Joanna jumped in, kicking Micah lightly in the ankle and flapping her hand so he’d help her up off the yellow curb. “Speaking of beers, I need another. Come on, I’ll open one for you and everything.” And then somehow without even making a show of it she was leading him off across the parking lot like the Mother Teresa of awkward situations, though not before Micah muttered a few choice words under his breath.
Once they were gone, Meg blew a breath out, scooping her hair off her neck like she’d just run an invigorating relay race and now required a cool beverage an
d someone to congratulate her on her stamina and perseverance. “Well, that was charming,” she said with a shake of her head. “Is he always like that?”
For a moment, Colby just stood there dumbly like a cow you could see from the highway, like flies were going into his mouth. “Is he always like that?” he echoed. “Seriously?”
“Wait a second.” Meg’s eyes flashed. “You’re mad at me right now?”
“Of course I’m mad at you.”
“You are?” Meg looked sincerely baffled. “Why?”
“I—because,” Colby said, momentarily losing his ability to string a coherent thought together. “Because! You can’t just . . . come in here in your ridiculous T-shirt and start shitting all over my friends.”
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “First of all,” she countered immediately, “it’s not shitting all over your friends to point out when a joke is sexist. And second of all, what’s wrong with my T-shirt?”
Colby blew a breath out. “It’s not about your T-shirt.”
“Isn’t it?” Meg asked. “Because you’re, like, the third person to be an asshole to me about it since I got here, so I’m starting to wonder.” She rolled her eyes. “Literally all I did was ask him to explain why he thought his joke was funny, Colby. It’s not my fault he couldn’t do it. And it’s not like I told him he was an idiot to his face.”
“You kind of did, actually.”
“I absolutely did not, which I actually thought showed pretty admirable restraint on my part, since—”
“Can you stop?” Colby broke in. “You sound like such a freaking snob right now. You don’t even know this kid. You’re basing your entire low opinion of him on one harmless joke he didn’t even mean—”
Meg’s mouth dropped open. “You think a joke like that is harmless? Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t think it’s as big a deal as you’re making it out to be, that’s for sure.”
“Oh my God,” Meg said, throwing her hands up and looking around as if she was searching for a studio audience, some like-minded chorus she could look at while she pointed at him, like, Can you believe this guy? “Oh my actual God. Okay.”
“Can you calm down?” Colby asked, shaking his head a little. “There’s no point in—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! What’s next, you calling me a hysterical woman?”
“Nobody’s calling you hysterical!” Colby said, though he was definitely thinking it. “I’m just saying, the point is, you’ve been here for all of six hours. This is where I live.”
“Yeah, no kidding!” Meg said. “Which is why it’s actually your job to educate these guys, not mine, but you obviously weren’t about to step up, so—”
“Educate these guys?” Colby gaped at her. “Can you even hear yourself right now?”
“You know what I mean!”
“I know you think you’re better than me and my friends.”
“I know jokes about women are backward and unfunny, actually.”
“Backward,” Colby repeated, shaking his head a little. “That’s cute.”
“Oh my God.” Meg’s lips twisted meanly. “Which one of us is too sensitive here, exactly?”
“It was a joke, Meg! What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is the wage gap, Colby. The big deal is that ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 companies have male CEOs. The big deal is one in three women experiencing sexual violence at some point in their lives—”
“Jesus Christ.” Colby dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Micah isn’t a sex predator.”
“I’m not saying Micah is a sex predator! I’m saying that jokes about how a woman’s main utility is bringing your friend a beer contribute to a culture where stuff like that happens, so why is it such a problem for you to be like, Dude, just tell a different joke? Here, I’ll give you some. A man walks into a bar. Ouch! What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsssh. Two muffins are in an oven. One of them says, ‘Is it hot in here to you?’ And the other one says—”
“Enough!” He thought it was possible she would have kept going indefinitely, that they’d be standing here all night while she went through her entire repertoire of ridiculous dad jokes. He would have laughed if he weren’t so furious. And that was the problem with Meg to begin with, Colby thought suddenly: he could never manage to feel just one thing about her at a time. “You made your point, okay?”
“Oh, I know I did,” Meg said flatly. “You just don’t think it matters.”
“That’s not even—” Colby broke off. “I just don’t see how it’s worth it to ruin a perfectly good party having theoretical arguments, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”
“Nothing about this is theoretical to me!”
Colby scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said, “I can see that.”
“What does that even mean?” Meg demanded. “Like, where exactly is the line for you for what’s worth giving a crap about? Do you laugh when he tells quote-unquote harmless jokes about gay people? Black people? Jewish p—”
“I didn’t even laugh at this one, Meg!”
“I don’t care! You didn’t tell him to shut up—you’re mad at me for telling him to shut up—and that’s the same thing. Worse, maybe.”
Colby shook his head again, mutely furious. God, where did she get off? Parachuting into his life out of nowhere with The Rich Girl’s Social Justice Handbook in one hand and The Field Guide to the Midwestern Hillbilly in the other? She might as well have been wearing a pith helmet. Colby knew exactly what she saw when she looked around this place—the same clueless, small-minded people she’d been expecting to get on the phone the first night she’d called his landline. She had no idea that Jordan had been at the top of their class the first three years of high school—he definitely knew what a fucking allegory was, no matter what he’d said for the sake of giving her a hard time earlier—or that Joanna had started her own side business doing fancy calligraphy on the internet. Meg didn’t know that after Colby’s dad’s funeral, Micah had shown up at his house and they’d played Warcraft for seven straight hours without either of them ever saying a word. Part of him wanted to tell her those things, and part of him felt like he didn’t owe her any explanation at all.
“This is ridiculous,” he said finally. It was getting colder now, a chilly wind rattling the overgrown trees that ringed the parking lot. All at once, Colby wanted to go home. “Obviously, we’re not going to agree here, so—”
“How can you not agree with me on this, though?” Meg interrupted, almost pleading. “Like, how can this not be important to you? You’re so smart about so many things. I don’t—”
“So anyone who disagrees with you is automatically a dumbass?”
“I mean, in general, of course not!”
“But about this.”
Meg didn’t answer for a moment, which was obviously an answer in itself. “This was a bad idea,” she finally said. She looked around for the invisible audience again, hugging herself a little; Colby could see the goose bumps that had sprung up on her pale, bare arms. “God, what am I even doing here?” she asked, more quietly this time. “I’m just—I’m eight hours from my house, and nobody even—” She broke off. “This was a bad idea.”
Her voice cracked on the last syllable; she didn’t cry, though it looked like possibly she was thinking about it. For a second, Colby almost took a step closer, but that was stupid. She’d said it herself, hadn’t she? This had been a bad idea. “Yeah,” he agreed, jamming his hands into his pockets to keep from doing something idiotic like reaching for her. Never only just one feeling at a time. “Maybe you should go, then.”
Just for a moment, Meg looked at him like he was the most disappointing person she’d ever encountered in her eighteen years on this planet. Then she shrugged. “Yup,” she said. “Maybe I should.”
Eighteen
Meg
It was too late to start the drive home at this point, so Meg pulled up a map on her phone and drove to the
closest hotel that was part of a chain she recognized. The parking lot was the quietest place she’d ever been in her life. “Hi,” she said to the clerk inside the empty lobby, clearing her throat and trying to sound as adult as humanly possible. “I’d like a room for tonight?” She hesitated. “Um. And can I pay with cash?”
The clerk gave her a weird look, but in the end all she did was ask for Meg’s ID, then hand her a key and direct her to a room on the third floor. Meg glanced over her shoulder as she speed-walked down the hallway, her backpack slung over both shoulders like she was about to hike the PCT.
God, why hadn’t she told anyone where she was?
Well, she knew why, but—
Ugh.
She couldn’t call her mother. She didn’t want to talk to Emily. The person she really wanted to talk to, infuriatingly, was Colby himself—but her Colby, not the sharp-jawed stranger from tonight, with his hard, hopeless-sounding laugh. It occurred to Meg that even after meeting him in real life—especially after meeting him in real life—she had no idea which one of them was actually real.
It didn’t matter, she told herself, methodically flicking on every single light in the hotel room. It was done now. He was the kind of person who’d be fine tomorrow, who would probably never think about her again.
So. That was that, she guessed.
The room was small and smelled vaguely of cigarettes, though she was pretty sure smoking wasn’t allowed in here. Meg bounced idly on the side of the bed. She was actually proud of the way she’d handled herself with stupid Micah, even if it had pissed Colby off: she’d said exactly what she’d wanted to say in the moment she wanted to say it, and she hadn’t gotten flustered or clammed up because she was afraid to cause a scene. Honestly, she wished she could be that direct with Emily or her mom.
That’s because I’m not impressive enough for you to actually care what I think, she heard Colby say, his voice in her head low and just a little bit hurt.
No, she told herself firmly, ignoring the uneasy part of her that worried maybe he had a point. It was just that some things were too important to let go.
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