Puzzled, I lean in. And then I realize he wants to take a selfie. It seems to be a thing with him. I tilt my head so it’s near his and paste on a big smile that I can feel isn’t reaching my eyes.
Brandon turns the camera toward me so I can see our smiling faces. “It’s good,” I say, giving him an “okay, you’re nuts” kind of look.
He chuckles. “I’m doing an online journal,” he says. “On social media. Kind of a record of how I’m changing my life.”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh, well, that’s cool.” And surprising. And…a little weird. What’s weirder is how common this “change my life” theme seems to be among my friends and me lately. Me, Carrie, Jeremy, Brandon. Gen Y probably should be renamed “Generation Lost.”
Brandon taps at his phone screen for a few seconds longer and then resumes backing out of my driveway. When he exits my neighborhood and hits the main road, he doesn’t turn west as I’m expecting him to, toward Downtown or the going-out parts of Midtown. Instead he heads east—toward suburbs and childhood homes.
“Where are we heading?” I ask.
“I told you, it’s a surprise.” He glances over at me, and his eyes are excited. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of stomach.
We spend the next five minutes or so in relative silence, me watching the familiar planes of my city flash past the car windows…Overton Park, which wraps around the zoo and the Brooks Museum of Art with its dense canopy of green; the Central Library, with its high glass walls and colorful shelves; the strip-mall record store with a big glass display case at the top corner that for most of my life flaunted a life-size image of Elvis wearing the gold lamé jumpsuit, his hips scandalously mid-pivot. At some point in the past decade it disappeared, later replaced by a smaller cardboard cutout that somehow doesn’t have the same panache.
By the time Brandon turns onto the Ridgeway Loop, I’m not surprised. I could feel that we were heading here, back in time to our high school haunts, to this little, safe pocket we’d all carved out of the city as kids. It feels natural and completely weird when he pulls into the parking lot of the movie theater we used to come to every weekend. It’s a wonder it’s still around—so many have closed up or moved or changed to make way for giant Cineplexes. This little guy only has four screens. When we were in high school, it was the “cheap theater,” which meant it showed second-run movies for about a third of the cost of new releases. Now it’s been reformed into an art-house cinema.
“I hope you’re not starving?” Brandon asks. “I thought we’d get some popcorn here and then I made us a reservation for after.”
“Um, okay,” I say. I actually am hungry, but now my stomach is growling for buttery theater popcorn, which I love.
On the way up to the ticket window, Brandon grabs my hand, spreading this night with a new, thick layer of déjà vu. We buy tickets to a French film with subtitles that I’ve never heard of. But then again, I’ve had my head tucked so deep inside my job for so long that I’m not exactly up on culture or pop culture of any sort—even music, which is my thing. I feel a deep sense of longing for Eleanor’s and my old days of concert-going. I really need to surprise her with tickets to a show sometime soon.
In the darkened theater, I start to feel more comfortable. This movie house sells alcohol, and Brandon and I each have a glass of wine, along with one big tub of extra-buttery popcorn. Our greasy fingers collide every time I reach into the bucket, to the point that it starts to feel intentional. I glance over at Brandon, suspicious, the next time it happens. He responds by lifting a few kernels out of the bucket, reaching up, and popping them into my mouth before I can protest. And then he chuckles.
At the risk of feeling uncomfortable again, I drink more wine. The movie—a quirky wartime film that seems to pivot between romance and tragedy—draws me in and helps me relax, and when we finish the popcorn and Brandon twines his fingers into mine again, I don’t protest or move away.
Once the movie is over and credits start to roll, I stand, but Brandon remains in his seat. I cock my head at him, but he’s staring at the theater screen and not looking at me, and so as the other theatergoers file out, I sit back down beside him.
“You okay?” I ask.
He finally looks at me. “Yeah, I’m fine.” His voice has surprise in it and an edge of something else. “I was just thinking, trying to remember how many times we did this, all those years ago.” He gestures around us. “We might have even sat in these very seats.”
I shake my head. “Brandon.” But he ignores me.
“I kissed you for the first time in this place. Do you remember?”
Oh, God. Oh, God oh God oh God. Why am I letting myself be pulled into this game he’s playing? He’s clearly in a place that I am not. I search in my head for the right words, the words to let him know that going back again isn’t the best way forward, but nothing comes.
He leans toward me and places one finger under my chin, tilting my face up to meet his. When his lips meet mine, my thoughts are still racing, but I can’t help myself—I’m drawn into the moment too, drawn back in time, and for a minute it feels good. Before I know it I’m kissing him back, and he’s right. It does feel almost sacred, in this place, like going home.
And then a sudden flash lights up the room, and I pull back from him, stunned. “What the hell?”
He chuckles. “Sorry.” His fingers are clasped around his phone. I’m thinking, Really???
“Please don’t do anything with that picture.”
He holds up two fingers. “Scout’s promise. This one’s just for me.”
I stare at him for a long second, until I’m sure he’s telling the truth. “Way to kill the mood, Royer.”
At this, he gives me a sad smile. “I seem to be good at that.”
* * *
He takes me to Jim’s Place, an upscale restaurant and an institution in the city—it’s been around since before our time. But at least we never came here in high school. It was outside the reach of our meager part-time wages.
Over dinner, we discuss things we haven’t yet talked about. He finally asks a few questions about me, and I tell him about design school and living in Atlanta and my early days at the firm after landing my job with Candace. For some reason, I don’t go into anything that’s currently happening. It feels safer this way, to hold him at a distance.
He tells me about his job—although, after a lengthy explanation I still don’t have the foggiest idea what he does. He’s verbose about the past, like me, but when I ask him about plans for the future, he’s reticent. He turns the conversation to me again, to me and Jeremy, and I haltingly tell him about our seven years of on-again, off-again dating, but I leave out the details of how it ended. He talks more about his ex-fiancée, really just repeating things I already know. I notice, as we’re talking, that he’s drinking at a much more moderate pace tonight. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or bad.
“Her baby’s due in a few weeks,” he says, and just before he says it, he downs the remaining few sips of his wine, as if he needs it to get the words out.
My thoughts flit to Jeremy and Brianna. I almost tell Brandon about them, but for some reason, I hold it in. I’m wondering how far along Brianna is in her pregnancy when Brandon adds, “I wish it was my baby.”
“Oh, Brandon.” I move my hand and rest it on top of his, wishing I could be what he needed and wishing he didn’t need me to be those things all at the same time.
He flips his hand over and takes my fingers in his. And when the server comes, he gestures for another glass of wine, and I can feel the night tipping dangerously close to where it went the last time. I shake my head and make a motion that we’re finished and ask if we can get our bill. As the server walks away Brandon gives me a look that’s mingled with surprise, resignation, and something like loneliness. My heart aches for him.
Since I’m not sure how hard Brandon is buzzing, I insist on taking his keys, and I drive myself home. After I pull up to the curb and cut
the engine, I remain seated, anxious in the sudden pool of dark. Brandon watches me, brooding.
“This was a nice night,” I say. “Thank you.”
He’s still watching me, but he doesn’t make a move toward me. “You’re not inviting me in, are you?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He closes his eyes for a brief moment, then says, “Jenny.” He leans toward me and, tensing up, I let him. As his lips meet mine I inhale, breathing in the sweet scent of a past we can’t get back, no matter how much he might think he wants it. No matter that there’s a part of me that wants it too.
When the kiss starts to grow heated, I gently excise myself from his grasp, turning my head from his. His lips move to my cheek, travel down my jaw, and his right hand moves from my knee, up my thigh, up. “Jenny,” he says again.
I inhale sharply as his fingers graze my inner thigh so, so dangerously close to losing my control of this situation.
I push his hand away, edge back from him. “Brandon,” I say.
His lips are still moving against my ear, against my hair. “Brandon.” I say it more firmly, but he doesn’t move away.
“Brandon, I’m sorry.”
Finally, he pulls back and looks at me with disbelief. “I thought you wanted me.”
It hits me then that he’s always thought I wanted him. That he’s probably always known I wanted him. I’ve been his backup plan, his emergency supply, this heartbroken woman waiting in the wings that he could scoop back up and rescue any time he needed. I think about how wrong he was, and how right he was, and how weird his timing was, that he came into my life at a time when I almost was that woman.
Finally, I say the only thing I can think of that will get me out of this car. “There’s somebody else, Brandon. Somebody else I want.”
He pulls away, proving my instincts correct. The relief of it melts away a tiny degree of my tension. “I thought things were over between you.”
I shake my head. “It isn’t him. There’s…someone else. I’ve met someone else.”
As I say it, I realize it’s true—and I consider for the first time how very, very stupid I’ve been. The most stupid thing I’ve done yet was accept this date with Brandon. I thought I was being kind, but in the end, it was just cruel. Unintentionally cruel but cruel nonetheless. And self-destructive.
I wonder where he is, whether he’s out with somebody else—Annalise—while I’m in this car with Brandon, very likely screwing up any and every chance I could have had to be with him.
Brandon is shaking his head with disgust. “You’re all alike. Every damn one of you.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, in a whisper.
“Missy wanted me, you know.”
This throws me. “What?”
He leans back against his own passenger-side door. “When I went out with her, before I texted you. We were at the restaurant in the Westin, and she wanted to get a room.”
I’m still thinking about Todd, and I can’t quite process what he’s saying. “You and Missy?” I shake my head. “Wait, what?” I stare at him across the darkened car. “Isn’t she…? But…but she’s married.”
He nods. “She’s fucking miserable.” He pauses. “She hates me, don’t get me wrong. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to go upstairs and give me a charity fuck, for old times’ sake.” He shakes his head in a way that’s almost indulgent. “She hasn’t changed. Her looks have though. She’s starting to let things go.” His eyes travel down my body, making me cringe.
“Unlike you.” He laughs, and the sound is bitter. “You haven’t changed in other ways though. Still as uptight as always.”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” I make a move for the door handle, no longer feeling sorry for him. I can see that, instead of making himself vulnerable, he’s playing on other people’s vulnerability—first Missy’s and now mine.
He reaches over and grabs my right wrist. “Wait.”
I look down at his hand on me and then up at him in disbelief. “You’re the one who hasn’t changed. Except maybe for the worse.”
His face is wearing a hangdog look that reminds me of my nephew Oliver when he’s trying to wheedle something he wants out of his overwrought parents. “I don’t want to leave like this,” he says, loosening his grip on me and lightly running his thumb over the inside of my wrist, as if that’s the way he intended the gesture all along. “Why don’t I come in, and we can talk this out over a drink.”
“There’s nothing to talk out, Brandon.” I pull the door handle, and the car door inches open, not enough to turn on the interior lights but enough to make the dashboard sensor start to ding. “It’s been nice hanging out with you again”—Ugh, what the hell is that? A lie to spare his feelings? I wish I could bite the words back in—“but I know when something isn’t good for me. This isn’t good for either one of us.”
“Whatever.” He opens his door and gets out of the car, and he’s around to my side before I can gather my bag and climb out.
I maintain careful non-contact, stepping around him when I exit the car. But he reaches out and grasps me by the wrist again, then bends his head to mine and attempts to kiss me on the lips. I turn my face so his lips graze my cheek, trying but unable to keep the pity out of my eyes.
“Drive safe,” I say, and then I turn and walk toward my front steps, not looking back. His car is still at the curb with the engine not yet running when I open my front door, slip inside, and close and lock it behind me.
* * *
An hour and a half later I’m in my pj’s with a towel wrapped turban-style around my head, unable to sit still. After coming inside and calling Carrie to tell her about my night, I decided to give the ancient claw-foot tub in my master bathroom some rare exercise—as crappy as this night was, I felt a deep need to scrub it off my skin.
But it didn’t help me relax.
Oddly, I’m not too worked up about what happened with Brandon. Our argument in the car feels less than real, like a flicker of a bad dream, or an insipid TV show droning in the background. Instead, what I’m thinking about as I pace my house like a restless feline is where in this city Todd might be tonight and who he might be with. I have no way to see him again without stalking him. I know his number, of course, but I don’t have any jobs for him and therefore no reason to call. I could go to the restaurant where he works, but now he knows that I know he works there—in other words, stalking.
Wait…the fund-raiser. I stop pacing for a few seconds as the realization hits. Chick’s opening night event for the bakery is happening next week. She’s included me on the invitation list, but I doubt she thought to invite Todd. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I forwarded the invite to him. Or brought a date. The thought of Todd as my date warms the tips of my ears and tingles in my fingers.
I resume pacing my bedroom. Simon is sprawled on the woven rug in front of the window, his head alert and cocked to one side, one ear folded down and the other folded back in that adorable little schnauzer stance that alternately says, “What’s going on?” and “You humans sure are weird.” His eyes follow my every movement.
I turn toward my dresser, where I last laid my phone, but then I stop mid-step. Should I invite him? What if he says no? It’s as much as I deserve.
This is crazy. I should just invite him. I stride across the room and pause with my hand on my phone, which is upside down on the dresser’s matte gray surface. I take a deep breath, pick it up, and flip it over.
When I do, the screen is lit with a new text. I see that it’s from Carrie, but it flashes off before I can read it. I click and swipe, and then I feel as if I’m flashing back in time, as if the past four months haven’t happened at all.
Girl, I hate to tell you this, but you’d better get on Facebook. Now.
“What the hell?” I say it out loud, and my voice is so abrupt in the stillness of my bedroom that it surprises even me. Simon, who’d settled back into a cozy furball on the rug, lifts his he
ad again, his ear newly cocked.
The energy expunges itself from my body in a single gush, as if my body were inflatable and someone just uncapped the plug. I sink to the floor and land in a cross-legged heap with my back against my dresser. Sensing an invitation, Simon jumps up from his perch and trots over to me, his collar tags clanging a cheerful song. He sniffs around for a few seconds and then settles in beside me with a huff, resting his chin on my left thigh. Absently, I reach down with my left hand and stroke the soft hair behind his ears. And then, cringing inside, I swipe over to my Facebook app with my thumb and click it, squeezing my eyes shut as my profile pulls up.
I take a deep breath and then open one eye, squinting at the screen. But I didn’t put anything on Facebook. Wait…did I? I assess my level of buzz and decide it’s nonexistent. I definitely did not update my Facebook status this evening. So how bad can this be? Certainly not as bad as last time, whatever it is.
I see that I have four new notifications. Clicking the icon feels like pulling the pin from a grenade, and my finger hovers above it for an extra couple of seconds. And then I hold my breath and click.
Brandon Royer has tagged you in a photo.
That’s what I see first. My stomach gives a warning jolt, bracing itself. I move on to the next notification, which reads, Brandon Royer has updated his relationship status. And then, Quinn Cunningham and 26 others have commented on your photo.
“Oh no, he did not.”
Now I’m clicking with fury—my fingers can’t move fast enough, and I fumble over them as I struggle to navigate the app. I pull up the wall on my profile and see that Brandon has posted both of the photos he took tonight, first the cheesy shot of us smiling in the front seat of his car and then the shot of us kissing in the movie theater. That shot is a little fuzzy and cuts off the back half of my head, but it’s effective enough as a tool for revenge. When I click on it, the caption reads, Just like old times.
How to Look Happy Page 25