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You Say It First

Page 17

by Katie Cotugno


  “Yes,” Meg said immediately, but then she laughed, so he wasn’t entirely sure if she was serious or not and wasn’t sure how to ask her without sounding like a weenie.

  “You’ve got time, right?” he said instead. “To get a dress, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Meg said, sounding resigned. “The wedding’s not till Memorial Day weekend. And the dress is the least of my problems, honestly.” She was quiet then, like she was weighing something. “You could come, you know.”

  Colby opened his mouth so fast his scabby lip split all over again, the iron tang of blood in his mouth. He reached up and wiped it away with the back of his hand. “To your dad’s wedding?” he asked. “Like, as your date?”

  She blew a breath out on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, Colby, like, as my date.”

  “I—oh.” Colby thought about that for a moment. It was a truly terrible idea for all kinds of reasons, obviously: First of all, he had no idea where he was going to get gas money to drive to Philly. Second of all, his left eye was currently a charming shade of plum. He tried to imagine it: her fancy house and her fancy friends and her dad’s fancy wedding. It would probably be a fucking disaster. The smart thing to do would be to stay far, far away.

  “Yeah,” he said, almost before he had decided. “I’ll come be your date.”

  Meg smiled; he could hear it. It sounded like someone handing you a chocolate chip cookie, or coming inside after being out in the snow. “Really?”

  “I mean, yeah.” Colby squeezed his good eye shut, already wondering what he’d just gotten himself into. Already wondering if there was a way to bail out. “If you want me to be.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t.”

  “Okay,” he said—reaching out and running his palm along the silky ridge of Tris’s backbone, reassuring. Memorial Day weekend was the anniversary, was the other thing. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse. He glanced down at his still-scabby knuckles, not the first time like a drumbeat at the back of his head. “Well, then. It’s a date.”

  They talked a little while longer, about her Maxine Waters project and a news story he’d seen about a skunk running around a Cleveland suburb with a yogurt cup stuck on its head and the Senate race she was forever trying to get him to be interested in. Annie Hernandez was behind in the polls, which seemed unsurprising to Colby, though Meg was relentlessly optimistic about her chances. “I looked on her website about maybe doing an internship,” she confessed, sounding shyer than he thought of her as being. “Tonight when I was at work.”

  That got Colby’s attention. “What, like, for the fall?” he asked, propping himself up on elbow. “Like, instead of Cornell?”

  “I mean, no, I’m totally going to Cornell,” she said quickly. “I guess I just . . . I don’t know. I was curious.” She cleared her throat. “Hey, speaking of job stuff: Have you called that guy Doug back yet?”

  “Nah,” he said, yawning a little; it was getting colder, and he had to be at work at seven a.m. “Not yet.”

  “You probably need to get back to him, right? If you’re going to do it?”

  Colby frowned. This wasn’t the first time she’d asked, actually—always like the thought had just occurred to her, her tone always just a little too casual. He almost wished he hadn’t told her about it in the first place. “Who says I’m going to do it?” he asked.

  Meg paused at that, infinitesimally. “I mean, you did, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t, actually.”

  “I—okay,” she said, her voice hardening. “Whatever. You don’t have to get defensive about it. I’m just asking.”

  “Are you, though?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I mean, I’m just saying.” Colby sat up in the grass and pulled his knees up, rocking forward a little and raking his free hand through his hair. “Do you want me to get this job for me, or do you want me to get this job because you don’t want me to come visit and have to tell your friends you’re messing around with a guy who works at Home Depot?”

  Another pause, this one just long enough for Colby to realize that was more or less 100 percent the wrong way to put it. Sure enough: “Is that what we’re doing?” Meg asked—her consonants getting crisp like they always did when her hackles were raised, like she wanted to remind him just how educated she actually was. “Messing around?”

  Colby exhaled. “Don’t do that,” he said, sliding a hand down over his face.

  “Do what?”

  “Try to make this conversation about something other than what it’s about. I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant, Colby. I’m just trying to clarify the terms, that’s all.”

  “Meg,” Colby said, though it came out more like he was sighing at her. “Come on.”

  “You come on,” Meg snapped. “Is that what you think of me, seriously? That’s how shallow I seem to you?”

  “It’s not about being shallow,” he tried. “I’m just saying that kind of stuff matters to—”

  “You’re making me sound like this huge monster who’s obsessed with appearances.”

  “You are obsessed with appearances!”

  “Wow.” Her voice was flat. “Okay. Screw you, Colby.”

  Shit. “Meg,” he said again. “Wait. I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

  Meg blew a breath out. “Why are you picking a fight with me right now?”

  Colby felt himself bristle. “I’m not picking a fight with you,” he protested. “I’m just—”

  “You are, though,” she interrupted. “Which sucks, because I literally just invited you to this wedding, and now I’m actually kind of thinking maybe it’s about the wedding, which, like—”

  “It’s not,” he said, though suddenly he wasn’t totally sure if that was the truth. Hadn’t he just been wondering if there was a way to get out of it, in the back of his secret brain? “It’s not.”

  “Then what’s it about?” Meg asked, sounding wounded. “I don’t care what you do, Colby. Take the job or don’t take the job; I won’t bring it up again. I just want you to be happy. Like, actually, honestly, sincerely happy. Whatever you might think.”

  Colby was silent for a moment, staring out at the darkened tree line. He wanted to believe her, but he didn’t know if he did. Even if she thought she meant it, what exactly was going to happen when her bossy friend Emily found out he’d barely graduated high school? What was going to happen when this whole thing inevitably crashed and burned?

  Still, though. Still.

  Colby flopped back onto the grass so hard he winced, his ribs protesting. Just for a moment, he’d forgotten his whole body was bruised. “I don’t think we’re messing around,” he admitted finally, his voice barely more than a mumble. Tris, sleeping fitfully now, grumbled quietly at his side. “At least, I don’t think that’s all we’re doing.”

  Meg cackled a sound that wasn’t a laugh, not really. “Oh no?”

  “No,” he said, swallowing the fear down. “I don’t.”

  “Then what are we doing?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s not how this works, Colby.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not!”

  “That doesn’t sound very feminist of you.”

  “Oh my God. I’m hanging up.”

  “Meg—”

  “No, I am, because—”

  “Meg—”

  “I don’t know what your problem is tonight, but—”

  “Meg!”

  “What?”

  “You want to be my girlfriend?” he heard himself blurt.

  Meg didn’t answer for a moment. Colby could picture her, the way she pulled at her bottom lip when she was thinking about something. “Do you want me to be your girlfriend?” she finally asked.

  “I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t.”

  Another pause. Then, more quietly: “Oka
y.”

  Something turned over in Colby’s chest, surprised, though honestly he wouldn’t have asked her to begin with unless he’d been reasonably sure she’d say yes. Still, the feeling pressed at the inside of his rib cage, buoyant: his girlfriend. Jesus Christ on a cracker. Colby smiled dumbly into the dark.

  Twenty-Three

  Meg

  It was her dad’s turn to plan their next dinner, but instead of sending her a restaurant link like usual, he suggested dinner at Lisa’s house in Penn Wynne. “I think it would be nice for us all to spend some time together,” he said, which Meg felt kind of violated the spirit of their tradition, though it didn’t feel worth it to argue. “Um, sure,” she said. “Sounds great.”

  Lisa lived in a tidy Cape Cod at the top of a hill with a swing set in the yard and a We Are All Welcome Here sign staked into the tulip bed. All the furniture was made of pale blond wood. Literally everything, from the glass canister of whole-wheat flour on the kitchen counter to the wire bins of art supplies on the bookshelves in the living room, had been labeled with a white paint pen in Lisa’s immaculate hand.

  “So, Meg,” Lisa said, heaping more barley salad onto Meg’s dad’s plate. Lisa was a strict pescatarian, and her kids had a million different food allergies Meg could never keep track of. They all ate a lot of grilled mahi. “Your dad told me about Cornell! Did you send them your acceptance yet?”

  Meg nodded. She’d done it the night before, in fact, at basically the absolute last second before the deadline, waiting to feel anything other than numb. “I did,” she said, the words tasting a little bit like sand in her mouth. She glanced at her dad across the table, and then she just blurted it out. “What do you think about me maybe taking a gap year?”

  Her dad looked surprised. “A gap year?” he asked. “To do what?”

  “I mean, I don’t know, exactly,” Meg lied, already kind of wishing she hadn’t said it out loud. She thought of the thrill that had built in her belly the other night as she’d filled out her application on the Annie Hernandez website, how she’d bumped up against the character limit as she frantically typed out her answer to the question Why do you want to work with Annie? In the end, though, she’d been too chicken to click submit. “An internship, maybe? Or I could probably pick up more hours at WeCount—”

  “Don’t they have internships at Cornell?”

  Meg hesitated. “No, of course they do, but—”

  “Is this about your mother?” Her dad frowned, shooting a glance in Lisa’s direction. “Because if she’s giving you grief about money—”

  “No, no, it isn’t that.” Meg shook her head, feeling something inside her deflate a little. Probably she was just being dumb. “Forget it,” she said, mustering a smile. “I’m just being silly. Cold feet about leaving for college, that’s all.”

  “I want to look at colleges when we go to New Orleans,” Brent piped up from across the table.

  “It’s a little soon for you to be looking at colleges,” Lisa said, even as Meg felt her eyebrows shoot up. It was the first she had heard of a trip to New Orleans, and she glanced across the table at her dad before she could quell the impulse. He looked like he wished the earth would open and swallow him whole.

  “Their school year ends a couple of weeks before yours does,” he explained, looking embarrassed. “And Hal’s got a gig in Baton Rouge a couple of days later, so . . .” He trailed off.

  “No, it’s fine,” Meg assured him. A trip to New Orleans with Lisa and her kids wasn’t even something she’d want to do. It was just strange to think about, she guessed, the four of them taking family pictures and getting beignets at Café du Monde and trooping through airport security together. She thought of all the vacations they’d taken with her mom, all the nights she’d fallen asleep against her dad’s shoulder in booths at restaurants. Lisa’s kids had extremely strict bedtimes.

  After dinner, they all headed into the TV room to watch a movie. Lisa’s kids were eight and ten, and so the four of them had been working their way through every superhero franchise ever made. Meg thought there was something totally bizarre about her dad getting excited about Batman: he and her mom used to be total movie snobs, with a membership to the fine arts theater in Philly, which they talked about more than they actually used. It occurred to her to wonder if this was what her dad had wished he’d been watching the whole entire time.

  “You want ice cream?” Lisa asked as Meg’s dad settled onto the couch and scrolled through the Netflix menu with the casual comfort of someone who’d obviously spent a lot of time in this exact position. Miley, the little one, curled up beside him. “I’ve got vanilla and mango.”

  Meg shook her head, knowing that by ice cream, Lisa meant some kind of hippie coconut concoction that cost twelve dollars a pint and would have been deeply appalling to Colby. Still, she smiled. “No thanks.” She liked Lisa fine, actually—she could tell Lisa was trying from the way she asked questions and saved magazine articles about voter registration and emailed links so Meg could pick out a new sheet set and comforter for the guest room in her house. I want you to feel at home here, she’d said the first time Meg had come over. Meg didn’t know how to tell her she hadn’t felt totally at home anywhere in a long, long time.

  Now she wriggled around in the armchair she was perching in and dug her phone out of her pocket. What are you up to? she texted Emily. They’d hardly spoken at all since their fight the week before, though Meg had apologized about a hundred times. She didn’t actually regret not telling her about Colby, was the secret truth of it. Mostly what she regretted was getting caught.

  Emily didn’t answer, predictably. Meg was trying to figure out if she should text again when her phone buzzed in her hand. Hey! Lillian had written. What are you doing right now?

  Meg raised her eyebrows, surprised: Lillian had never texted about something that wasn’t WeCount-related. Watching Ben Affleck being emo in tights and wishing I could bail out of my future stepmom’s house, she typed. What about you?

  Oh noooo, Lillian said. Is she awful?

  Not at all, Meg reported. Which kind of makes it worse.

  Lillian texted back an emoji with her hand over her face. Maja’s sister was supposed to come with us to a show at Union Transfer, but she has period cramps and doesn’t want to go. Any interest?

  Meg looked across the room at her dad and Lisa holding hands on the sofa, at the kids and their coconut dessert. Give me twenty minutes.

  She made it downtown in half an hour, parking her car in a spot she hoped was legal and hurrying around the corner to where Lillian and Maja were waiting outside the theater. “You made it!” Lillian said, looking sincerely happy Meg had shown. “What’d you tell your dad?”

  Meg grinned guiltily. “Period cramps.”

  “Nice.” Maja laughed, her bleached-white hair swishing. “I think my sister was probably faking, too.”

  Meg had never heard of the band that was playing—she hadn’t even asked who it was before she’d agreed to come—but they turned out to be an all-female bluegrass ensemble, with fiddles and a standing bass and a tiny redhead wailing away on a washboard. Meg couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. It wasn’t the kind of thing she and Emily would have ever done—Emily hated city driving; she got stressed out by big crowds—but for the first time it occurred to her that she didn’t actually care what Emily would have thought.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said to Lillian, filling a cup at the water station as Maja fought the crowd at the bar. “Where did you go to college?”

  Lillian shook her head, looking surprised by the question. “I didn’t.”

  “I—really?” Meg couldn’t quite keep the alarm out of her voice.

  Lillian laughed. “Really,” she said, reaching out to take the can of craft cider Maja was proffering. “Thanks, babe.” She turned back to Meg. “I had a partial scholarship to Penn, actually. But even with the help, my loans would have been insane, and then I met this organizer at a rally in Ritt
enhouse Square, and it all just kind of . . .” She waved a hand. “I still might go at some point,” she finished, with the unconcerned smile of a person who really liked her life. “Or maybe not. Who knows?”

  Meg took a deep breath, suddenly anxious, like even saying the words out loud was somehow disloyal to Emily, or to the future she’d assumed she would have. “Do you think it would be totally bonkers for me to take a year off and try to get a job on a campaign?”

  “What?” Lillian shook her head, smiling curiously. “Why would that be bonkers?”

  “I don’t know.” Meg shrugged. “I guess it’s just not what I’d planned, that’s all. And not something any of my friends would ever do.”

  “I mean, we’re friends, aren’t we?” Lillian raised her eyebrows, mischievous.

  “No, of course we are,” Meg amended hurriedly. “But you’re, like . . . brave.”

  “You’re brave,” Lillian countered. “And you’re smart, and you’re capable.” She took a sip of her cider. “Who do you want to work for? Hernandez?”

  Meg’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “Well, your endless parade of campaign swag gave me a clue,” Lillian said with a grin. “You wear your heart on your sleeve, Meg—literally. And not for nothing, but it’s not like you’ve spent the last six months prancing around in a Cornell hoodie.”

  Meg glanced down at her Anne with a Plan T-shirt. “Yeah,” she admitted, her response barely audible over the chorus of nos and wrongs and stupids clanging deep inside her head. Still, it was like saying the words out loud had broken some kind of invisible seal: it was out there now, a possibility. A different kind of life. “I guess you’re not wrong.”

  When the show was over, Maja and Lillian walked her to her car and hugged her goodbye, Maja promising to send something delicious to WeCount on Tuesday. “I’m really glad you came out tonight,” Lillian said. She paused a moment, like she was debating saying anything. Then she took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, “I know we don’t know each other that well outside of work or whatever. But if you ever need anything, you can call me, okay? I stay up late.”

 

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