Forks, Knives, and Spoons

  “Sounds a little crazy, but what am I anyway?” Andrew turned to Amy.

  Veronica sighed as Amy assured him that he was her steak knife.

  Once Andrew found out, though, he would ask Amy to peg someone on the spot, never with any discretion. Whenever a guy heard someone else being called a butcher knife or a serving spoon, he would put down his pool cue or his pizza slice and instantly be curious. “What am I?” he’d ask as soon as he got a whiff of the categories.

  Amy was shocked, sprinkling a few grains of rice on the hotel bedspread as she scooped out more. “You’ve really never heard me talk about the UCS?” Then, to Veronica, she asked coyly, “Should we tell him?”

  Veronica shrugged. “Don’t involve me, you know how I feel about it. Go ahead, you’re going to tell him anyway, but I’m warning you, Matt, you’re about to peek into another one of Amy’s romantic notions. I can’t convince her that the whole thing falsely categorizes people and follows all sorts of arbitrary rules.”

  Amy jumped in before Veronica could continue her arguments against the UCS. “There are three types of guys: forks, knives, and spoons . . .”

  Throughout the summary, Matt was shaking his head but smiling, appearing both intrigued and puzzled. Amy summed up: “Basically, cocky jerks are forks, nerdy geeks are spoons, and knives are the biggest category, where we’ll find Mr. Right. And that’s our shorthand way to label guys.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Veronica muttered.

  Matt was quiet for a moment, his thumb stroking his jaw. “So, it sounds like I’m a spoon.” He looked back and forth between the silverware labeler and the disbeliever. “But just because I’m a computer geek doesn’t mean I can’t be someone’s knife, you know. I’m not sure your system would hold up under much scrutiny. I might have to agree with Veronica on this one.”

  Veronica burst out laughing and reached over the white cartons to give Matt a high-five. “And that is why we don’t tell guys about this,” Amy said, deflated, “you just don’t get it. Guys are always analyzing themselves and no one ever likes it unless they’re a golden steak knife.”

  Matt chuckled. “Fine. I’m a spoon and proud of it. Pass the lo mein, please.”

  Veronica handed over the container from the array balanced on the bed in front of her. “I still haven’t told you what Kate said.”

  Amy nodded, her mouth full.

  “She ran into Jenny last night.”

  “She’s here? How’s she doing?” Amy mumbled through noodles.

  “Jenny only told Kate that she works in a restaurant.”

  Matt followed the conversation with his eyes, eating an egg roll.

  “She asked Kate if she had your New York phone number.”

  “My number? Why?” Amy’s forehead wrinkled and she winced as her stitches pulled beneath the gauze.

  “I asked Kate that, too. She didn’t know, but she said that Jenny also asked about you and Andrew.”

  “Hmm.” Amy chewed the end of a chopstick.

  “Kate told her that you’re living together and that you’re waiting for a ring.”

  “She said that? He keeps me guessing, that’s for sure. Did I tell you he mentioned going to the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day?”

  “That would be right up your romantic alley. Maybe that’s when he’ll propose.” Veronica’s enthusiasm fizzled as that triggered another thought. “I really blew it with Joey. He made last Valentine’s Day like one of your fairy tales. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I should never have lied.”

  The phone rang from the nightstand like an intruder. The red message light fluttered with the ringing. Amy’s mouth was full; she looked to Veronica to answer, but she was locked in with cartons of food on the bed in a crescent around her. Matt was sitting on Amy’s bed, leaning against the headboard. He rested his plate on his lap, reached over, and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” Matt shrugged and repeated, “Hello?”

  He covered the mouthpiece. “No one there,” he said, clarifying the obvious, then tried again. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Oh, just hang up, Matt,” Amy said, and giggled. “It’s probably some drunk kid making prank calls. Pass the dumplings, please.”

  PULLING UP TO THE FRONT OF Amy’s building, Veronica said, “It was fun going back to school together. Tell Andrew I’m sorry for getting you back late, but I couldn’t pass up Sunday morning Bloody Marys at Faegan’s. Besides I really needed to have you to myself this weekend. Thanks for listening to me go on and on about Joey. You’re a good friend, Amy.”

  Amy hugged her, then hopped out and bounded into the lobby toward the elevators.

  “Hi, Sam,” she said to the doorman, and the ding of the opening elevator doors welcomed her.

  She knocked on their apartment door. “Hey, Drew, it’s me,” she called.

  She dropped her bag and fumbled to find her keys, wondering where Andrew would be. Before she could unlock it, the door swung open, and she greeted Andrew by throwing her whole body into his. He stiffened and held his arms at his sides, waiting for her to let go, and then he closed the door and turned abruptly toward her.

  “What are you so cheerful about? You come back late and happy after spending a weekend all snuggled up with your nerdy boyfriend.” Andrew’s tone cut and the accusation stunned Amy into wordlessness. Memories flickered of how he’d snapped at her before their vacation and the way he spoke to his mother at Easter.

  “I can’t believe I’ve been so naive. All this time I trusted you when you said he was just a friend and right under my nose he’s sending you postcards and calling you, I should’ve guessed it, but I couldn’t imagine my girlfriend being interested in someone like him.”

  A vein on Andrew’s forehead pushed itself through his skin, pulsing blue. Amy had never witnessed this intensity in him. She stared from the popping vein to his eyes and shook her head, making it throb slightly.

  Amy found her voice and it rose in defense. “What are you talking about? Matt has never been anything but a friend. He’s a kind and decent person and has never so much as tried to hold my hand.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.” Amy’s head hurt, and she pressed her bandage and moved from the entry to sit on the couch. Her motion shifted Andrew’s attention to her injury.

  “What’s that? What happened?” Andrew sat beside her, his voice softened. “Did he do something to you? Did he hit you?”

  “Are you nuts? What is wrong with you?” Amy spat the words at him, ignoring the pain it caused. “I was talking—nothing but talking—with Matt on the quad when some guys whipped a football that whacked me in the head. It wouldn’t stop gushing blood so we went to the health center and I got a few stitches. Matt is a friend, a really great friend, but that’s all. Why are you so suspicious all of a sudden? What’s going on, Drew?”

  He folded forward, leaning his head into his open palms. As if there could be only one voice between them, when Amy found hers, Andrew went mute. Her insides vibrated like a nervous foot tapping. Seeing his hunched body motionless beside her, she suddenly felt sad for him. Slowly, like reaching to touch an unknown dog, she rested her hand upon his back and felt the rise of his breath, the exhale.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” she whispered. “I haven’t seen you like this before.”

  In the slowest of movements, Andrew straightened himself, leaving his hands over his face. He rose until his back was against the sofa and his head fell back.

  “Shit, Aim, I’m sorry.”

  She sat still, waiting for more. Andrew dropped his hands to his lap and released his breath in a loud sigh.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you, sorry I didn’t trust you. I love you and don’t want to lose you. When Buzz called and said he saw you and Matt together, I’ve been going crazy here waiting—”

  “Buzz? I didn’t see him all weekend. Why would he say that?”

  “He said he saw you and
Matt hugging and all over each other in the quad, and that Matt wouldn’t let go of you. Then when I called your hotel room Saturday night and Matt answered, I just thought . . .” Andrew drifted off, visibly trying to disassemble the picture he’d conjured and reorder the pieces into a new image of truth.

  Amy let a small laugh escape; it wasn’t a laugh of humor or joy, but of relief.

  “Chinese food with Veronica,” Amy said, and Andrew wrinkled his brow. “Saturday night. Veronica, Matt, and I stayed in because of my head, and we had Chinese food in our room. And as for Buzz, he should mind his own business. He doesn’t know what he saw, because all Matt was doing was keeping me from bleeding everywhere. He should’ve just come over to say hello. Your buddy can be the worst gossip, and he really got it wrong.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Andrew threw his arms around her, trying to get a do-over of her original greeting. He gingerly avoided her bruised forehead but pulled her to him so tightly that she had to strain to take a breath. “I’m sorry,” he repeated into her hair.

  They made their way to get ready for bed and the workweek ahead. Amy left her bag packed and picked through it for what she needed, then went to brush her teeth. The toothpaste was squeezed in the middle. Andrew always made sure it was neat and flattened from the bottom. With her finger, she wiped a blob of toothpaste off the tube. Andrew really isn’t himself, she thought.

  Amy chatted about the weekend as she slipped into her pajamas and dabbed lotion on her face keeping it away from her bandages. “We went to an amazing school. I’d forgotten just how great it is. The music blaring all over campus, the Crouse chimes ringing, the craziness of M Street, the Greek houses on the hill and on Walnut—it felt like we’d just left and at the same time like we’ve been gone forever. It’s such a strange trick of time.

  “Oh, you changed the sheets. Wow! I go away for the weekend and you become Mr. Domestic? I like it.” She slid in beside him and thanked him with a kiss. “Do you remember kissing me on the Kissing Bench? You know what that means, right?”

  Andrew nodded with a half-smile and shut off the bedside lamp. He rolled toward Amy, hugging her to him and molding his body to fit hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured again.

  As Andrew’s body flinched into sleep, Amy lay awake thinking about her weekend, and her welcome home.

  A NEW HABIT, VERONICA slowed her pace when she walked past Joey’s apartment door. She was both afraid and hungry to see him. She held her breath, listening for any sign of him on the other side of the door. His absence had created an echo in her life, a hole she had dug all on her own. She unlocked her apartment and glanced down the hall again before letting the door click behind her.

  “Chelsea?” She sighed into the quiet, relieved that she was home alone.

  Dropping her workbag and kicking off her heels, she hung up her suit jacket and sat at her desk. She pulled out the last thick, creamy sheet of Crane stationery. Underneath were ten unused envelopes and nine half-completed, semi-started letters to Joey. This time she wanted to get it right. She pictured him finding her note, forgiving her and loving her again. She had lain awake countless nights composing the most beautiful letters, and each night, she fell asleep envisioning herself slipping that eloquent note under his door, the letter that would fix everything. But when she woke, the words were gone. She wanted to write how she missed how he made her feel, how she felt more truly herself with him than anywhere or with anyone else. She wanted him to know that she loved him, that she really loved him for who he was, just the way he was.

  In the months since he left her standing in Mystic, she realized that he was exactly the right person for her. Why had she struggled to fully accept him? That was the kernel that she had worried and examined since September. In that time, she had figured out what she wanted and she knew that she wanted him. She picked up the pen and wiggled it within the crook of her thumb, waiting for the right words.

  Dear Joey—

  I am so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could take it back and never have caused you pain. I understand if you have moved on by now, and I wouldn’t blame you, I was so horrible to you.

  I want you to know that you were the best thing that ever happened to me and I’m sorry I messed it up.

  Veronica stopped writing and dropped her head to her desk, letting tears stream onto her arms and splatter the letter. The ink blurred under the drops. As quickly as the emotions had overcome her, they shifted into determination and courage. She sat up and wiped her eyes across her blouse sleeve, leaving a streak of black mascara. Grasping the pen, she wrote from her heart then finished with, Please forgive me, and signed, Love, Veronica. She folded the letter in half, sealed it into an envelope, and wrote Joey across the front. Before she could analyze it another minute, she walked down the hall and tucked it under his apartment door, deep enough that she couldn’t retrieve it.

  Veronica turned to leave, then instead, she paused and knocked on the door: three solid knocks. She stepped away, second-guessing, and when silence answered, she sat against his door still listening for him inside. She hugged her knees up to her chest and pressed the curve of her back against the door, unconcerned that her skirt hiked up, exposing her control top panty hose at the hem. The knob clicked and she fell backward like a child tumbling on a play mat. She looked up with mascara-smudged eyes to see Joey peering down at her. Veronica rolled to her side, used the doorframe to stand up, and tugged her skirt into place before facing Joey. The creamy envelope was nowhere in sight.

  “Hi,” she said. “Um, thanks for letting me in.”

  He glanced over his shoulder into the apartment, then back to Veronica.

  “Oh, God, oh, you have someone here. Oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m leaving.” Veronica stepped into the hallway.

  “Come in,” Joey said softly, and led her to the living room with his hand lightly on her back, like the first night they met.

  He directed her to the couch, then sat a cushion’s width from her. Being beside him after so long apart, Veronica acted on impulses. She reached across the space between them and tentatively took his hand in hers, relieved that he let her. Her fingertips trembled as they drifted across his callouses. She fixed her eyes on his. He looked different, older somehow, but yet the same, or maybe even better. Could it be true that she was sitting beside him again? That he had invited her inside? The words she’d been wanting to share with him for months streamed out. They flowed without edits, poured without restraint, and revealed the truth in her heart.

  “I love you, Joey, I am so, so, so sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I’ve thought of nothing but you since Mystic and I know now, I know without question, that I want you. You’ve made me a better person and I need you, Joey. Please tell me you haven’t found someone new, I couldn’t—”

  Joey let go of her hand, stopping her words. Veronica held her breath, afraid of what it meant, afraid that he was going to ask her to leave, afraid that he couldn’t forgive her. Her heart was choking and the familiar sobs surfaced. Tears masked her vision until a blink sent them rolling down her face and she could see clearly again.

  Joey was crying, too. Silently, tears fell through his dark stubble as he clasped her face with both hands and pulled her into a kiss. She felt the prickle of his unshaven cheeks, felt the fire at her lips as he moved over her with raw desperation. The world fell away around them, and Veronica was spinning and flying and sailing above herself. Their salty tears mixed together like a potion healing the hurt.

  “I love you,” Veronica said breathlessly into his mouth.

  He touched his forehead to hers and grasped a handful of her curls, holding her head cradled in his palms.

  “I forgive you, Veronica. Thank you for finding your way back to me.”

  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” AMY HANDED Veronica two boxes wrapped in flowered paper, tied together with yellow ribbon.

  “I couldn’t tell this was from you, you and your cheerful colors.” Veronica handed her November birthday sis
ter her present before opening the gifts.

  Tucked into tissue paper, Veronica pulled out Amy’s BELIEVE stone.

  “You’re giving me your Santa rock?”

  “I figured you need it. You had a big decision to make, and like Saint Nick said, you knew what to do.”

  “Thank you, that’s really special.”

  “Open your other gift, it’ll come in handy this weekend.”

  Veronica unwrapped the second box and burst out laughing, “Thanks, I love it, open yours.” She swirled the soft, brick-colored scarf around her neck.

  Amy understood her laughter as she unfolded a cozy pink scarf from Veronica.

  “I’m nervous, but excited to introduce Joey to my parents and show him around Newport. Are you sure about giving me your Santa rock? I think we should share it for whenever either of us has a big decision to make. Andrew has seemed so attentive and doting since homecoming that a big decision may be coming for you, too.” Veronica ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the stone.

  “When he asks me to marry him, it won’t be a big decision, I’m ready,” Amy said. “Have been for years.”

  A loud knock at the door hammered out a rhythm.

  “That’s Joey!” Veronica jumped up and hugged him in.

  “You two look ready for some cold weather,” Joey laughed grabbing Veronica’s bags, and the trio made their way to Joey’s car.

  “Have an amazing time,” Amy said as they parted ways.

  “Any advice for me?” Joey asked.

  “Yeah. Just be yourself.”

  “Be myself. Is that what you want me to do, Veronica?”

  “Yes, be yourself. I love you just the way you are, no matter what my parents do or say, I love you. Who knows how they’ll act. We’ll just have to hang on for that one, but don’t say you weren’t forewarned,” Veronica teased him while pushing away her own worries.