The List

by Melanie Jacobson

  BoardRyder: Fair enough. And where should meet for this hello-goodbye?

  TwinkieSmash: *

  TwinkieSmash: *

  TwinkieSmash: I think maybe the pier. You know where that is?

  BoardRyder: I’ve surfed there before.

  TwinkieSmash: There’s a little grassy area right by it. Would that work?

  BoardRyder: Sounds good. When?

  I sat back, unnerved. Did I really just agree to meet my Internet buddy for a blind date? I must be crazy.

  Then again, everything about Ryder struck me as extremely normal, especially compared to so many of the e-mails I’d gotten from guys that were clearly a little “off.” I knew better than to invite Ryder to my aunt and uncle’s house or anywhere that it would be to easy to trace me once we parted ways. And I knew that even if common sense said I shouldn’t meet up with people I met from the Internet, I at least had enough sense to pick a place where I would be safe if anything bad crossed Ryder’s mind.

  Somehow, I didn’t think I’d need a contingency, but it was good to have one. My only reservation about meeting him near the pier was that it seemed like the faintest betrayal of Matt to bring another guy to our stomping grounds. But the “our” was all in my mind. Thanks to my clear no-strings-attached policy, other than ask that I not kiss anyone else, Matt had steered clear of any other requests or demands. Since I had no intention of kissing Ryder, I doubt Matt would care if I passed a little time on a public lawn saying good-bye to someone I barely even knew and had no intention of seeing again. Feeling more sure, I answered Ryder’s question.

  TwinkieSmash: How about tomorrow night?

  BoardRyder: A Saturday? Won’t you be hanging out with Mr. G?

  TwinkieSmash: We’re competing in a triathlon all day together. I’m sure he’ll be fine if I don’t hang out with him tomorrow night too. He’s independent like that.

  BoardRyder: It’s a date. A first and last date, but a date.

  TwinkieSmash: Cool. How will I find you? I’ve only seen you in snow goggles.

  BoardRyder: Don’t worry. I know what you look like. I’ll find you.

  TwinkieSmash: That sounds all stalker-ish.

  BoardRyder: You’re the one who put a profile picture up. Don’t blame me.

  TwinkieSmash: Good point. Okay, tomorrow around six, then?

  BoardRyder: Sure.

  TwinkieSmash: Well . . . good night.

  BoardRyder: See you tomorrow.

  He would. How weird.

  * * *

  “I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die.”

  “You’re not going to die. You made it! You’re fine,” Matt said.

  I stayed in my heap on the ground. “I can’t move,” I mumbled into the grass beneath me.

  “Sure you can. You moved your mouth. That counts.”

  I mustered the energy to grab a fistful of grass and throw it in his direction.

  “See, there’s your arm moving. That’s progress.”

  “When did you become so relentlessly cheerful?” I complained.

  “I’m not cheerful. I’m pragmatic when I say that you just proved your body can move and so you probably ought to get off the church lawn.”

  I thought about it for a minute, then, with a groan, pushed myself up and brushed off the grass sticking to my sweaty skin, grumbling some more.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have some postrace adrenaline high?” he asked. “You know, with all these happy endorphins swimming around and stuff?”

  “I think I’ve got the ‘and stuff.’ Like for example, my vision is swimming. But I’m pretty sure it’s not endorphin-related. In fact, I’m positive it’s because there’s no blood flow going to my head right now.”

  He pulled me into a hug. His shoulder muffled my cry of, “I’m really sweaty and gross!” It came out sounding like “Mwph rmny frum whass.”

  “Me too,” he said, not relaxing his hold at all.

  “You’re not gross,” I said.

  “You’re not gross, either,” he responded and dropped a kiss on my nose.

  “Is this a Princess Bride moment where ‘you’re not gross’ is code for something else?”

  He pulled his head back to stare down at me. “Like what?”

  “Like if you say ‘you’re not gross,’ it really means ‘you’re kind of hot’?”

  He laughed. “Yes. That’s definitely what it is.” He let go of me but only to take my hand and walk me toward his car. He must have loaded the bikes while I was facedown in the grass because they were already on the rack and ready to go.

  “You did awesome today, Ashley,” he said as he opened my door for me.

  “If by awesome you mean finished near the end, then thanks,” I said.

  “No, really. You only had two weeks to train for this, and you really hung in there.”

  I tried not to blush.

  “What’s more, you didn’t cause or experience any bodily injury. We should celebrate.”

  “With what?” I said. “Ice cream? A whole lot of ice cream?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said. “Maybe you won’t be able to lift the ice cream cone all the way to your face. Are you recovered enough for that?”

  “Ice cream cures everything. If I eat some now, then I can recover even faster.”

  “I should have thought of that,” he said. “Waiting until after dinner is for chumps and lightweights.”

  “Yeah, I’m hard-core. Get me ice cream!”

  In minutes we were pulling away from a popular ice cream chain and I set about demolishing two scoops of mint chocolate chip. The thirty other flavors never stood a chance. Once at least half of the minty goodness was on its way to my stomach, I slowed down and started negotiating with myself. When you get down to the cone, let him know you can’t hang out tonight. I finished all the ice cream on top. Just finish the cone, and then you have tell him. I slowed down more, eating barely fast enough to stay ahead of the melting. I didn’t know how to tell Matt that I would be on a date with someone else or even if I had to. Keeping my business to myself was supposed to be a perk of “no strings attached,” but it seemed kind of cheap to hold out on Matt that way. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t care or want to know. What if I said, “Hey, Matt. I can’t hang out with you tonight because I have a date with someone else,” and he said something like, “I didn’t ask you to hang out.” And I would feel dumb and never even get to the part where I explained that it was a hello, good-bye date. But it seemed only fair to let him know.

  I popped the last bite of my ice cream cone into my mouth and chewed slowly. And then more slowly still. And then it was gone and I didn’t have any more excuses.

  I cleared my throat. I shifted in my seat. I cleared my throat again.

  “Do you need some water?” Matt asked, reaching for his sport bottle in the cup holder.

  “No, thanks.” I cleared my throat again. He gave me a strange look and then turned his eyes back to the road.

  “So you know how I don’t have to work tonight?”

  “Yeah. That must be nice. You always have to work on Saturday.”

  “Right. Yes, it’s nice. But, uh, even though I don’t have to work, I . . .”

  “You’re going in, anyway?”

  “Uh, no. But I won’t be able to hang out with you tonight.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “No problem.”

  No problem? No problem? Did he not realize I was leaving in less than a week and our time was ticking down? He must not, because otherwise me spending one of our last evenings together somewhere else should have been a very big problem for him.

  I nearly opened my mouth to tell him so until I realized what a hypocrite that made me. Since I was the whole reason we wouldn’t be hanging out, it wasn’t really fair to jump all over him for not being more upset about it. Stuff like that was how girls earned the “psycho” label far too often. Instead I asked, “Do you want to know what I’m going to be doing?”


  “Not unless you really want to tell me.”

  “I don’t. But I kind of think I should, and that annoys me.”

  We turned into my aunt and uncle’s tract. Matt didn’t say anything until he pulled in front of their house and killed his engine.

  “Look, Ashley. I trust you. I think you’ve been straight with me about everything from the first time we ever hung out, and I know that what you do is none of my business. I’d love to make it my business, but you were really clear on the no strings, so I’ll just leave it alone.” His voice was tight.

  I stared, not sure what to say. He didn’t sound angry, exactly, and he wasn’t asking anything from me, so I had no idea where to go next. “Okay,” I managed after a minute. “I just didn’t want you to be mad that I can’t hang out tonight even though I’m leaving soon.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  I didn’t believe him. A thick silence hung between us, full of prickles and squirminess. I stared out of the window, feeling like an idiot for sitting there instead of heading for the house.

  “Ashley.”

  I turned to face him.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—” He stopped and shoved his hand through his hair, the movement jerky. “I try to give you all the room you ask for, but the truth is, I’m a strings kind of guy. This is hard.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I stared at the glove compartment for a minute until I felt a smile tugging up the corner of my mouth against my will.

  “You’re laughing at me?” he asked. “Great.”

  “I’m not, I promise,” I said. “I was just thinking that maybe I wanted to revisit that clause.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I felt the squirminess coming on again and tried not to give into it. “It means that I’ve gotten kind of used to you. And maybe it would be weird to all of a sudden not see you anymore. And maybe it would be kind of cool to see you when you come out to snowboard.”

  “Maybe,” he said noncommittally.

  I stared at him.

  “Maybe?” I said, an embarrassing shrillness driving my voice up an octave.

  “Maybe it would be awesome,” he said, grinning.

  I smacked his arm, and he pulled me into a big hug. The awkward space the cup holder console created evaporated in that warm embrace. When he finally let me go, I sat back in my seat and smiled. I couldn’t help it. It felt good to erase one of the boundaries I had drawn at the beginning of the summer to keep Matt at a distance. Even the thought that this could be the first step toward endangering The List didn’t bother me. I sat, soaking up the moment.

  “So . . .” Matt finally said after a moment. “That wasn’t so bad, right? You can still breathe and stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  He tapped the dashboard clock. “I figure you’ve had about thirty seconds to adjust to the idea of me being around a little more often, so how about if I drop a bomb on you now?”

  “What the heck am I supposed to say to that?”

  “Say yes again,” he ordered.

  “Yes again.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “I know I made a point of not telling you where I went on business—”

  “No, you made a point of not telling me where you went.”

  “Fair enough,” he said and smiled. “But I’m ready to tell you now.”

  “No, I want to guess. You’re setting up a surf shop in South Dakota?”

  “No.”

  “How about Georgia? New Mexico? Nebraska?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ashley, but you might not be very good at geography.”

  “Fine, then tell me.”

  “We’re setting up a board shop in Utah. Two, actually.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “There’s a surf clientele in Utah?”

  “It’s not a surf shop. It’s a board shop, specifically snowboards.” He let me think about that for a minute before adding, “That means I’m going to be in Utah all winter, getting everything set up.”

  I soaked that in. “Are you saying a seven-hundred-mile buffer is about to evaporate?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  I rubbed at my nose like it was a magic lamp and a genie would pop out and tell me what to think about all of this. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped and laid my hands in my lap and studied them instead. Matt was moving to Utah for the winter? Holy cow.

  “When do you go up there?” Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t see him until the ski season started. That way I could at least get the semester underway and into a groove that I was less likely to stray from.

  “Our lease occupancy starts at the beginning of September and I need to be there to oversee the remodeling in our spaces.”

  “That’s barely two weeks away!”

  He nodded. “It’s going to be insanely busy for a while. I think I can promise to stay out of your hair. At first.”

  He touched one of my curls as he said it. Winding it around his finger, he gave it a soft tug and added, “Only at first, though.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this weeks ago?”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t a for-sure thing until last month. Jay and I have been thinking about this for two years but once the economy tanked, it dropped the commercial leasing prices so low that we couldn’t pass it up. We can afford to grow our business slowly while everything turns around, and we decided now is the time.”

  “I still don’t understand why I’m just hearing about it now.”

  “I didn’t see a point in saying anything when, for all I knew, I wasn’t going to see you once you went back to school. You were pretty clear about it shaking out that way. Now that you’re open to dating past the end of the summer, I thought I better let you know.”

  “Wow. I so did not see this coming.”

  “Is it a bad thing?” he asked, his voice suspiciously casual.

  I sighed. “No.”

  “You sound so happy about that,” he said dryly.

  “I know, right?” I stared out the window for a few more moments trying to collect thoughts that had been scattered like a dandelion wish. “It’s not a bad thing,” I started again. “But it’s a much different thing than I planned for at the beginning of this summer when I met you. It’s not like I suddenly don’t want to spend time with you just because you’re going to be around more. But this intensity we have right now, it isn’t going to work in the fall, and that makes me really nervous.”

  “You feel like this is intense?” Matt asked. “Have I done anything to pressure you or make you feel that way?”

  “No, of course not. But I spend every free moment I have with you and even moments that aren’t free, when I should be doing something else. It’s fine now, but there’s no way I could keep this up when school starts, plus all the TA stuff I’ll be doing. So I guess that freaks me out a little.”

  “Just because I’m around, it doesn’t mean you have to see me,” he said with no inflection.

  Realizing I’d hurt him, I rushed to fix it. “Oh, Matt, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m going to want to see you all the time.”

  He smiled. “That’s more what I was hoping to hear.” He wrapped me in another loose hug. “I don’t want you to stress, Ash. I meant it when I said things would be crazy busy at first. I’m going to have some major supervision to do, plus lining up all of our vendors and our advertising. Louisa doesn’t really have any marketing contacts up there, so I’ll be working with a new agency and everything’s going to be nuts. I really can stay out of your hair,” he said, even as he threaded his fingers through it in a delicious scalp massage.

  “Are you going to be mad if I want to study instead of go out sometimes?” I asked.

  “No. Will you care if I hang out on your sofa and read a book while you study?”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  “And will you let me give you subtle reminders when you’re working too hard?”

  “It s
ounds like you’ll need them more than I will.”

  He laughed. “Probably. How about you watch my back and I’ll watch yours?”

  “All right. I can handle that.”

  He tightened his squeeze and then let me go completely. “I’m going to get better at it starting now. You said you have something to do tonight, so this is me reminding you to go do it. I’ll walk you to the door.”

  On the porch, I leaned up to give him another hug. “Thanks for letting me tag along on your triathlon. And tell Louisa thanks again for letting me use her bike.”

  He turned and headed down the path again. “You weren’t a tagalong, Ashley. You’ve carried you own weight in everything I’ve seen you do. I’ll see you at church tomorrow,” he called as he climbed into his truck.

  I watched until he disappeared around the corner, then turned toward the house and the problem of what to wear on a hello, good-bye date.

  * * *

  I scraped my fingernail across the rough concrete beneath me, attempting to file down a slightly ragged edge. I looked up every now and then, scanning the crowd of people ebbing and flowing like a human wave across the nearby pier. Unless Ryder showed up in the snowboarding gear from his LDS Lookup profile picture, there was no way I’d recognize him. My perch on the edge of one of the grassy areas descending toward the beach was designed to make me easy to find, but instead of feeling smart, I felt exposed and a little silly. I’d seen more than a dozen guys that fit the right range to be my mysterious Internet friend, but none of them did more than glance in my direction.

  I pulled out my phone to check the time. There were still five minutes left until our official meeting time. I shoved it back into my purse, feeling impatient. I debated heading home and e-mailing Ryder with an apology for standing him up. It didn’t make much sense to meet up with someone I had no intention of dating, and I wished I had the evening to process what this sudden shift in my relationship with Matt meant. Instead, I was waiting for a virtual stranger to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hi.”

  A few more minutes ticked by, and I wondered if I should have arranged with Ryder to wear a certain color or some kind of accessory so he could be sure it was me. I glanced down at my outfit. I hadn’t put much thought into it, not like I did when I hung out with Matt, but the thin purple cardigan I layered over a white tee and jeans was bright enough to catch someone’s eye if they were looking for me.