My Best Friend, Maybe

by Caela Carter

I wonder what Sam is really like. My whole life—at home, at school, at church—I’ve felt like I’m the different one, but here, sitting next to me, is someone who knows what it’s like to be different. He’s different from his own family.

  Later, at eight fifteen, I wait in my room. I’m in my mint-green dress. It’s a church dress, but it’s the only one I have, besides the new red one that I’m saving for the wedding. And it’s not that bad—hits just below the knee, buttons up in a businesslike way, and has a wide-lapel collar. I left three buttons undone. For church I only leave two.

  I lie sprawled out on my bed, my feet kicking the bottom of the mattress, my skirt spreading out from my hips, my freshly shaven legs enjoying the smooth fabric of my bedspread beneath them. And I wait. I know there’s some dinner and I’m supposed to be ready at eight thirty, but I don’t know where I’m going or how I’ll get there or who will come and get me.

  Despite the coffee, my eyelids are already heavy. So I let them close.

  Mark.

  Mark, smiling with crooked tooth and bouncing freckles. My Mark. My Mark who I accidentally dumped. Mark, sitting shirtless on a towel playing cards at the town pool, kicking a winning goal at his soccer game and leaping in celebration with his buddies, leaning against my locker with sunflowers. Mark, squeezing me as tight as possible in Sally’s little brother’s room. Mark, cupping my cheek like it was a goodbye in the middle of our last make-out session.

  Why did we keep so many things from each other? Why didn’t I tell him about Sadie being fun? About drinking beer at parties? About getting bored with being perfect?

  Then, I’m not only seeing him. It’s Pert Plus and salty skin in my nose. Muscles and silky body hair under my palms. The roughness of his stubble against my cheek. The taste of his tongue. The music of his laughter.

  If I’d been honest with him from the start, would we still be together?

  I’m on the brink of crying when there’s finally a knock on my cave door.

  I cross the cold floor and swing it open. The twilight surrounds Sadie, stars dancing over her head and shoulders, fresh air moving past her silhouette and into my room.

  “That’s what you’re wearing?” She wrinkles her nose in disgust.

  I look down. The mint-green stands out in stark contrast to my tanning skin. The black belt hugs my waist at just the right spot. It looks okay.

  I shrug.

  “Wait here,” she says. She darts across my balcony and starts up the side set of stairs.

  “Oh, hi!” I call, sarcastically.

  She spins, her own hot-pink minidress flying dangerously up her tan leg. She rolls her eyes at me but she’s smiling. “I’ll be right back, Coley,” she says. Like now she remembers I’m a real person.

  When she returns, it’s not with any of the teeny-skirted, crazy-low-cut dresses I’ve been dreading. Instead it’s a deep gold, almost mustard-colored, lace dress with a fitted top and a slightly poofy skirt. Under the lace is a layer of nude-colored fabric.

  Sadie turns her head while I slip into it and when I face the mirror I can’t believe how good I look. How does she know these things?

  She comes up behind me to finish zipping the back. The top of it reaches all the way to my collarbone. It’s cut like a fitted tank top but it flares at the waist. It reaches almost to my knees. Somehow it’s both more modest and more sexy than the mint-green one I was just wearing.

  Sadie rakes her fingers through my hair and clips up the top like she did for Sally’s party.

  She spins me so I’m facing her. “There,” she says, smiling a smile I’ve never seen before. She pats my cheek. “You’re ready.”

  We haven’t stood close like this in so long, only inches between us. She smells like cherries, her own hair in a messy bun and her eye makeup extending her blue eyes.

  Suddenly I’m missing her. Almost as much as I was missing Mark a few minutes ago. But this is stupid. Sadie is right in front of me.

  “Ready for what?” I ask when she steps away from me.

  Sadie sighs, her face caught for an instant between dread and excitement. “That, I don’t know,” she says.

  We walk back over the marble walkway and down yet another set of stairs to a huge patio. The patio is the restaurant, I realize. The entire business doesn’t need an inside. There are tables set up across it, lined with brown-paper tablecloths, and the flat surface juts out over the cliff so that it appears to be hovering above the sea. I can’t wait to get into that sea.

  There’s a small cluster of people by the far edge of the patio and the rest of the space is empty. I follow Sadie toward the crowd and recognize Andrea talking to Charlie and Mary Anne and Sam. She looks so much older, her blond hair pulled into a French twist, her plump body in a rose sundress. She was our babysitter a million years ago. It hits me for the first time when I see her profile across the patio, outlined by the black night sea: Andrea is getting married. I’m here for a wedding. I’m not here for myself or my friendship with Sadie or an adventure; I’m here for Andrea’s wedding. I’m here for the wedding of a woman I haven’t spoken to in over three years.

  I chew my cheek.

  When we’re about ten feet away, she looks up. Her face spreads into a huge smile and she calls, “Colette! Is that you?”

  Sadie smiles. “I told you I’d have a surprise for you.”

  Andrea hugs her cousin and stares at me over her shoulder, shaking her head. “I had no idea you’d be at my wedding,” she says, happy.

  Neither did I.

  Sadie bites her bottom lip.

  “Come here,” Andrea says to me. She hugs me and it brings back skinned knees and unfair snubs from Sadie’s older brothers. “It’s so good to see you,” she says.

  Why won’t Edie hug me like this?

  “You, too,” I say, and I mean it. I guess I didn’t realize how many people I was giving up when Sadie slipped away.

  Three feet away, Edie watches her niece and me. I swear her eyes fall, sad, to the patio beneath her feet. She shakes her head. Even though it’s not my fault, I feel awful that she hates me now.

  Andrea leads us around the deck, introducing us to Ivan and his parents.

  I smile and answer questions about how old I am and where I’m from and what I’m interested in studying. I let my face act the way it’s been trained to act around adults, while my mind spins and searches and wonders what I’m doing at this family party.

  “Is that it?” Sadie asks once Ivan’s and his parents have wandered away.

  Andrea gives Sadie a big squeeze. “Yup, you got it down pat? This is the easy one. You should get to know all of these wedding guests so you guys have some people to talk to at the party in Crete next week.”

  My eyes go wide. “These are all of the wedding guests?” I ask.

  It feels like we’ve only met, like, fifteen people. At my cousin’s wedding last summer there were over a hundred people. At the wedding I went to with Mark there were over two hundred. This is the smallest wedding I’ve ever heard of.

  Still, I should have held my tongue. For a moment I’m afraid I’ve offended Andrea but then she laughs a big, openmouthed laugh. “We couldn’t expect everyone to travel across the sea like you two, could we? So that’s everyone except—” She pauses for a second to wave cheerfully toward the entrance stairs. “There they are. Now that’s everyone.”

  Sadie and I turn and watch a dark-haired family—a woman, a man, and a girl who looks about our age—walking down the stairs.

  “These are all the wedding guests? This is it?” I ask Sadie. She keeps her eyes on the family. I spin around to count the number of people on the deck—Edie, Sadie’s aunt and uncle, Charlie, Mary Anne, Sam, Ivan’s mom and dad, Ivan’s sister, brother-in-law, and two nephews. Plus the three who just entered. Seventeen. Seventeen guests at this wedding.

  “Sadie?” I say. She still doesn’t turn her head. “Sadie?”

  Seventeen. There are only seventeen people coming to this wedding.
>
  “Sadie,” I say, jabbing her upper arm with my pointer finger.

  She whips her head around and the length of her sad face scares the demanding tone out of my voice. “What am I doing here? Why am I one of the seventeen people at this wedding?” I say it, but too quietly.

  “Come on,” she says. She puts her fingertips lightly on my elbow and leads me over to Charlie and Mary Anne, who are standing by the bar. I order another Greek coffee and listen to Sadie laughing too loudly at Mary Anne’s story about whatever they did this afternoon.

  I lean my elbows on the bar while I watch the bartender add cream to ice before even putting in any coffee.

  This is too weird.

  Suddenly I feel the heat of a large body standing next to me. “You’re hooked, aren’t you?”

  I look up and there’s Sam, laughter in his deep eyes.

  I shrug. “I’m tired,” I say. Even though, really, I’m confused.

  He laughs and I turn back to my coffee. I wonder if I can ask Sam what I’m doing here. I wonder if he knows.

  “It’s so beautiful,” he says, pointing out at the sea. I turn to look while he keeps talking. “You never want to sleep when you’re in Greece. You look out at the sky at night, at the stars, at the black sea, and you hear the music drifting on the wind, the waves crashing into the rocks beneath your feet. You can’t sleep when it’s this beautiful. But then the sun comes up and you remember it was even better in the daylight. When I was here last year, I stayed tired the whole time.”

  I turn to smile at him.

  “Hey, is that Sadie’s dress?” he asks.

  “Oh. My. God. You share clothes? How cute is that?” The voice is as sharp as a blade and it cuts into the middle of our little group, making everyone stand up straighter and turn to look at the speaker. It’s the dark-haired girl who just entered. She’s tall and scowling and beautiful and intimidating. Everything about her that could be is thick: her long black hair, her perfectly curled eyelashes, her curvy figure. She wears a skin-tight black dress that makes her breasts and butt seem to launch out from the rest of her body. Up close, she looks much older than us.

  And she’s looking at me as if I smell like the Dumpsters behind the gym at school.

  She sticks her left hand on her hip and extends her right palm. “I’m Rose,” she says. Her voice has a hint of a Spanish accent, which reminds me how little I know about the world. “You must be Coley.”

  My eyes go wide. I can’t believe she called me that. But I manage to shake her large hand.

  She turns back to Sadie and says “cute” in a way that makes me feel like an ant or a speck on the end of someone’s nose. Sadie shrinks along with me.

  “Hi, Rose,” Sam tries, but she’s already walking away.

  “Who was that?” I ask.

  Sadie keeps her mouth shut. She watches the girl cross the patio.

  “Andrea’s other cousin,” Sam says slowly. “On her mom’s side . . . you know? Rose.”

  “I do?” I look to Sadie for an explanation. She’s tiny, standing between her two brothers, who both seem to puff out their chests to make up for the way she’s shrinking.

  “Sadie?” I say.

  “Let’s go,” she says. She yanks my arm, pulling me toward the stairway exit.

  “What?” I say.

  “Let’s go. We’ll get room service. Andrea will understand,” she says toward her brothers.

  Sam says, “Sadie, you really have to—”

  “I will.” She cuts him off. “Come on.” She pulls me away. I leave my sweating, ice-cold coffee on the bar and follow her toward the stairs. She moves so quickly I trip back and forth on my high heels. We’re only halfway up when Rose’s thick voice rings out behind us.

  “She isn’t even, is she?” Rose calls, laughing. I turn and see her standing on the bottom step and for a second she looks sad. But then she makes herself large and mean again.

  Sadie keeps walking.

  Rose laughs a horrible fake laugh. “Good luck, Sadie,” she calls. “Good luck.”

  Sadie follows me onto my balcony. I turn around to ask her what this is all about but before I can say anything I’m startled once again by the view. She’s surrounded by a canvas of black interrupted only by stars sparkling and blue gemstones—swimming pools on the cliffs in the distance. “Room service?” she asks before I can say anything.

  “Sadie . . .” I trail off. I want to demand some answers but I’m not even sure what to ask her. She looks tiny, so wide-eyed and sad, in stark contrast to the beauty behind her. Finally I say, “Sure.”

  “Good. I’m starving!” She plows ahead of me into my cave. I watch her through the door for a few moments as she leans over the room service menu, contemplating. I know I should say something. After all this time I deserve to know what she needs from me, what I’m doing here. But with Sadie it’s never about what I deserve.

  I think of Mark again. Tomorrow he’ll be somewhere in Costa Rica pounding a nail with a hammer and missing me. Is he missing me? Did I get what I deserved with him?

  Sadie turns around. “Coley? Aren’t you coming?”

  I tilt my head at her, trying to ask the questions with my eyes that I’m not going to ask out loud. She sighs. “I’ll tell you everything when I’m not so tired. I didn’t know . . . I thought that . . . I’ll tell you about everything. I promise,” she says in a voice so small and pathetic it makes me feel like the one in control. “I’m really glad you’re here, Coley. I’m really glad you can forgive me.”

  I nod.

  “Can we have fun tonight?” she asks.

  I did come here to have fun.

  So I try not to wonder what she thought and what she didn’t and what I’m doing here while we order lamb kebabs and Greek salads and we sit facing each other at the little table on the balcony, waiting. Sadie pulls a deck of cards out of her purse. I don’t know why I’m not tired. I’ve never been awake for this long at a time. But I know I’d never sleep with all of the questions running through my head. About Sadie. About Dad. About the Peppers. About Mark. About me.

  She divides the deck into two piles.

  “Remember how Spit was our game?” she says, handing me my half of the cards.

  I tap the edges of my pile until it’s a neat, perfect square. She leaves hers a shapeless blob.

  “Uh-huh,” I say. Because I do remember endless hours of this game with Sadie the summer after fourth grade, when Andrea taught it to us. On rainy days, we would play game after game sitting criss-cross-applesauce on Sadie’s gold carpet while the gray sky split with lightning outside her windows.

  But that’s not what Spit is to me anymore. It’s Mark and the hill at the town pool. It’s his hand on my shoulder after each game whether I win or lose.

  “I still play this game,” I say quietly when we start flipping cards. I’m the one who stayed. I don’t have to say it out loud for Sadie to hear my thoughts.

  Sadie pauses, a hand and a card halfway to the table. She looks hurt but I won’t let her.

  “We’re supposed to act like it didn’t happen,” she reminds me.

  Flip-flap. Flip-flap. The cards pound quickly on the table.

  Like what didn’t happen?

  Flip-flap. Flip-flap.

  I’ve always loved the speed of this game. Flip so fast you can’t think about anything but the cards.

  Then the table beneath them becomes a bed of green grass and the dark sky brightens to pale blue and the buzzing silence is replaced by distant yelps and screams of little kids and Sadie becomes Mark.

  I blink and then it’s over.

  I don’t want to miss Mark. I don’t want to miss Sadie.

  I shake my head at her. We’re only halfway through the first round but I stop flipping. “Where’s the darn food? I can’t play this anymore.”

  I think about going to bed and letting Sadie eat my dinner out on my balcony but my stomach is gurgling with hunger. I haven’t eaten since we were on the airplane and
that was hours ago. My internal clock is too messed up for me to figure out how long it’s been since I ate or slept.

  “I guess it’s more fun to play with Mark than with me, huh?” Sadie says.

  I’m so sick of this hurt act. I’m sick of her assuming that whatever this need of hers is, it’s worse than anything I’m going through. So I spit it out: “Mark dumped me.”

  She freezes, her eyes steady on my face. I’m ready for her to say something else, to make fun of the way he was quiet or awkward or the way we barely ever kissed in the hallway for the full two years we were dating, but she doesn’t say anything.

  Finally I glance at her. She doesn’t look sad or pathetic anymore. She doesn’t look smug and superior. Half of her face is shocked and the other is . . . guilty?

  “Why?” she says.

  I sigh. “Or maybe I broke up with him. I don’t know. It was confusing.”

  “Does he know about me?” she asks quickly.

  I nod.

  Sadie starts to clean up the cards. “Was it because of that? Because of me?” she asks.

  I almost deny it. I want to be annoyed with her for being vain enough to think she could break us up. But I can’t because she’s kind of right.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  The air rushes out of her like a river. “Then you’ll get back together. When you get home you’ll get back together. He’s freaked out but he won’t end it because of something this temporary. Believe me.”

  I shrug. Will he try to get back together? The thought is both relieving and exhausting.

  “Do you love him?” Sadie asks, her eyes on the cards.

  I pause. “Yeah. Or, I did, at least.”

  Sadie nods. “I’m sorry, Coley. Broken hearts are the worst.”

  I raise my eyebrows, ready to ask her how she knows about broken hearts. But then our food is here. The waiter scrambles around us, laying everything out so that the knives and forks are parallel on the napkins and the salad is between our two plates and the sodas we ordered are fizzing by our right hands. It’s nice, all this attention to detail, but I want him to go away so I can ask Sadie.

  Finally he does.

  “So who was he?” I ask. I study Sadie salting her salad.