“Hello to you too,” I say pointedly. “A few minutes ago.”
“I stole her away,” Julie tells him, handing me the mug and squeezing my shoulder. “It was great to see you, honey. Tell your mom I’ll call her this week.”
“Sorry about her,” Miles says once she’s gone, getting himself a can of pop from the enormous refrigerator. He’s wearing jeans and a different T-shirt than usual, the word Rogue emblazoned over the NASA logo. His bare feet are long and pale.
“No, it’s fine,” I say, shaking my head. “It was good to see her.” I hold up the grocery bag slung over my arm, setting it down on the expansive island. “I brought snacks.”
“Nice,” says Miles. Then, as he peers at its contents: “Holy shit, you brought throwback snacks.”
“Yeah, kind of.” I went a little crazy at the store on the way over, picking up cheddar Goldfish and Fruit by the Foot and two-tone string cheese, all the stuff we used to eat when we were small. “I feel like adult life doesn’t offer enough opportunities to eat Go-Gurt.”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” Miles says, but his smile is more genuine than I’m used to seeing it. “This is awesome. Come on, let’s go downstairs.”
Miles and Tommy used the basement as a playroom when we were kids, and I’m expecting the high school version of that: dated sofas and dingy lighting coated in a layer of Cheetos dust, that old-sock teenage boy fug. But it turns out that this space has gotten the same Chip and Jojo makeover as the rest of the house: an oversized sectional with a full canoe and oars hanging on the wall behind it, a foosball table, and a wall of built-in bookshelves. There isn’t a TV, although some kind of high-tech projector hangs close to the ceiling: “That wall has special paint that turns it into a high-definition screen,” Miles says.
“Seriously?” I step closer to examine. It looks like all the other walls, but with the press of a button, the projector sets it alight. The glow of the menu is partially blocked by my shadow. “That is so cool.”
“Welcome to the future, Walls.” Miles grins.
“Thank you,” I say dryly, looking around for another moment. The far wall is covered in a series of black and white photos, artfully displayed gallery-style. The Vandenbergs at Disney, Miles and Tommy each wearing matching Pluto baseball caps. Miles and his mom at our middle school graduation. Miles and Tommy building a snowman, bundled up in parkas and snowsuits until they’re barely recognizable. Even I make an appearance, I notice with a start: There’s a shot of me and Miles running through the backyard at twilight, our pudgy toddler hands just barely touching, my sundress tangled around my knees.
“So when did this all get redone?” I ask, grateful that Miles is fussing with one of the eighteen remotes and didn’t see me staring at the photo. “The basement, I mean.”
Miles shrugs. “Couple years ago?” he guesses, flopping down onto the sectional. “After Tommy died, my mom went into a sort of HGTV tailspin. She went from a room-by-room plan to the whole damn house right-this-very-minute.” He shrugs. “Honestly, I’m surprised my dad didn’t erect a life-size bronze statue of him down here.”
I open my mouth to say something but think better of it, sitting down a few cushions over from him on the sectional and slipping off my flip-flops before tucking my bare feet underneath me. “Good to have projects, I guess.”
“I guess so.” Miles glances at me sidelong. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m probably going to be living down here until I’m forty, so, like, I appreciate the amenities.”
“Oh, get over yourself.” I toss a Fruit by the Foot in his direction. “You are not. You could probably get a coding job in like two seconds, if you wanted one.”
Miles tears open the foil wrapper, cuts off a six-inch strip. “I actually already have an offer,” he confesses, sticking it into his mouth.
“Seriously?” I whip my head around to look at him. “Where at?”
“Some health insurance company out of Detroit,” he says once he’s swallowed. “It’s not exciting or anything, but it pays. My mom wants me to do a couple years of at least community college first, though.”
I raise my eyebrows. “What do you want?”
Miles shrugs. “Honestly?”
Part of me is surprised he’s even offering the truth as an option. “Honestly,” I echo.
“I was kind of hoping maybe I’d get recruited.”
I grin at him; I can’t help it. “Like, by the NFL?”
“Funny girl.” Miles makes a face. “No. Have you ever heard of white hats?”
I shake my head.
“It’s a kind of hacker that, like, sneaks into companies’ networks to find flaws,” he explains. “With their permission, obviously. Nothing nefarious.”
“That’s a job?” I ask, leaning back against one of the four dozen color-coordinated throw pillows. “I mean, there’s actual money in it?”
“Tons,” Miles says, finishing the rest of his fruit snack and reaching for the bag of Goldfish. “Well, technically there’s more in real hacking, but that carries with it the pesky threat of prison time.” He shrugs. “Radware hosts a big competition every year. I’m saving up to go next summer. It’s somewhere different every year, all over the world. Chile, Germany, France.” His whole demeanor shifts as he talks about it, I notice; he isn’t even trying to mask the enthusiasm in his voice.
“Wow,” I say once he’s finished. The last time I heard him talk so excitedly about something was probably his WWII phase in second grade. “That’s cool, Miles. I had no idea you had, like…goals.”
“Yes, thank you,” he says, rolling his eyes a little. “Hopes and dreams, even.”
“Well,” I say. “Color me shocked.”
I’m teasing, but for once Miles doesn’t play along. “I swear,” he says, dumping a handful of Goldfish into his mouth, “sometimes it’s like everybody thinks all I do is make sandwiches and play video games.”
“Hey,” I say, shaking my head a little. I think of what he said a minute ago, about the bronze statue of his brother, then reach out with one foot and kick him gently in the thigh. “That’s not what I think.”
Miles looks at me with some interest. “Oh no?” he asks, and it sounds like a challenge. He reaches down and grabs hold of my ankle. “Then what do you think?”
That stops me, every nerve ending in my body on alert in half a second; his grip on my ankle is warm and surprisingly strong. “What, like, about you?”
“Yeah.” His gaze is steady.
“I…I don’t know,” I say, flustered. All of a sudden it’s like the rules of this conversation—the rules of our entire relationship—have completely changed. “I have no idea.” I glance around the room, my gaze finally lighting on Tommy’s vintage Star Wars figurines, displayed in a Plexiglas case. They’re 1977 Kenner originals. I know because Jackson used to beg to play with them and Miles wouldn’t let him. “You still have those?” I ask.
Miles makes a snorting noise, low and animal. I’m 100 percent sure he’s about to make fun of me, but in the end he just lets go of my ankle like nothing happened. “Yep,” he says, and he is so, so casual, “but Barkley ate Obi-Wan a year or two ago. So that’s the only one missing.” He shakes his head. “Hopefully someday I’ll track down a replacement.”
He picks up the remote again, dims the lights, and clicks over to Netflix. “Okay,” he says, nodding at the projector wall. “You want to watch this dumb thing or what?”
“It’s not dumb,” I insist, my voice coming out the slightest bit whiny. For one truly ridiculous second I consider kicking him again, just to see what he’d do.
The show starts, but it’s difficult to concentrate for several reasons: one, it is a little dumb, even though I do think good feminist representation is important.
And two, I can tell Miles isn’t paying attention eith
er.
Neither one of us acknowledges it—the way we’re both edging a tiny bit closer together on the sofa, how every so often I catch him glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. The skin of my ankle pulses hotly where he touched it, like a branding iron.
I’m busying myself dissecting a string cheese into the smallest possible particles when Miles puts one arm behind his head and slouches down against the pillows, his shirt hiking up just slightly. It’s the same thing that happened when he was under the Cream Cart the other day, except now I’m suddenly extremely aware that we’re alone in his darkened basement; in the glow of the screen I can see the sliver of skin that’s revealed, right where his jeans sit low on his hips.
Celestial girdle, eleven letters, two words. Starts with A.
Apollo’s belt.
Oh my God. What is wrong with me? Two nights ago I was making out with Clayton Carville in the front seat of his SUV, and now…I shove the rest of the string cheese into my mouth, washing it down with a gulp of cold Earl Grey.
“What happened there?” Miles asks as I’m setting my mug back on the coffee table.
“Huh?” I blink at him. It’s the first thing either of us has said in an episode and a half. “What?”
“On your arm.” He reaches out and runs one blunt fingertip along the scratch I got from my parents’ window this afternoon, so gentle it’s almost like he isn’t touching me at all.
I look from his finger and up at his mouth without entirely meaning to. Down at his finger again. “Oh.” My voice comes out shaky and breathless. “Um. Window washing accident.”
Miles looks at me for another second, biting at the corner of his lip before nodding. “Watch your stupid show” is all he says.
I meet Carrie at Moxie’s for ice cream a couple nights later, the two of us waiting for the better part of half an hour on a line that snakes clear down the boardwalk. Moxie’s is a landmark in town, an old-fashioned sundae shop with fake Tiffany lamps hung over every table and walls festooned with all kinds of vintage memorabilia: old metal signs and yards of fishing net, a full-size rowboat suspended from the ceiling. There’s even a working wooden phone booth tucked into one corner, which I used to love to shut myself inside when I was a kid. Now it’s practically a rite of passage for couples at school to take pictures of themselves kissing inside it, which is called being #MoxiesOfficial.
Not that I would know.
Tonight the leather booths are packed with families stuffing themselves with banana splits and ice cream sundaes shaped like clowns. I count at least three Scooper Bowls, which each contain a full gallon of ice cream and are free if you can manage to consume them in one sitting. Carrie and I bail out once we’ve gotten our milkshakes, weaving through the crowd and heading down the boardwalk until we find an empty bench that faces the water.
A thing I always loved about Carrie when we were kids was how easy it was to be around her, and tonight I listen gamely as she chats about the wacko tourists who wander into the gallery all summer looking for souvenirs—“Souvenirs!” she says, sounding offended. “Like they think we’re going to be selling seashell art and those airbrushed T-shirts that say, like, Surf’s up!”—and her dads’ newest rescue cat, Salvador Dalí. He brings the total feline population in her household to three, Carrie tells me, all of whom are named after famous artists of the Dadaist movement. “I’m kind of worried about what’s going to happen when I move out,” she confesses.
“Worried how?” I ask, taking a sip of my shake. “Like you’re going to come home at Christmas and it’s going to be like the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and all her children?”
“Exactly.” Carrie nods. “Except my parents are an interracial gay couple and the children are cats.” She makes a face, stretching her long legs out in front of her. “So,” she says, her voice just the slightest bit sly, “speaking of nothing at all except that I’m curious, how’s your summer of new experiences treating you?”
I huff out a laugh. “I don’t know,” I say. I think of Clayton, who’s disappeared from my life just as quick and definitively as he turned up in it. I think of Miles’s gentle fingertips skimming over the broken skin on my arm. “Confusing.”
Carrie raises her eyebrows. “In a sexy way?”
“In an embarrassing way, more like.”
“Well.” Carrie shrugs. “That’s just the price you pay for being a person out in the world, right?”
“For me, maybe.”
“For everyone,” she counters immediately.
I shake my head, dismissive. “Not you.”
“Seriously?” Carrie asks, looking askance in my direction. “You think it makes you special because you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of a hot guy or two? I literally tripped over nothing in front of Adam the other night and went sprawling face-first down the stairs at his parents’ house.”
“What?” I laugh for real now; I can’t help it. “You did not. Are you okay?”
“Oh, I did,” she assures me, her full lips twisting. “I’m fine. Only hurt my pride, blah blah.”
“What happened then?”
“We laughed it off,” Carrie says with a shrug, flashing me a grin. “And then we made out for a while.”
“I mean, well played.” I hold my milkshake up in a salute.
“Thank you.”
We’re quiet for a moment, facing the water, listening to the rhythmic pound of it against the shore. “I don’t know,” I say finally. “It just seems like it’s so much easier for other people, you know? Being a…what did you call it? A person out in the world. For somebody like…Bethany, for example. It just feels like she knows how to do it.”
I try to make it sound like I’m just coming up with Bethany’s name as a random example and not like she’s my chief romantic rival in the tragic opera I have been composing in my head the last few days, but Carrie’s not buying. “Uh-huh,” she says dryly. “That’s because your entire concept of Bethany as a person is based on you, like, stalking her Instagram or whatever.”
I blow a breath out, insulted. God, does everyone think I’m a huge creep? “Who says I stalk her Instagram?”
“I do,” Carrie deadpans, “because I know you.”
“Fine,” I admit sulkily.
“Bethany’s life isn’t perfect,” Carrie says. “She’s got her shit, just like everybody else. Somebody stuck a maxipad to her back during senior week. Didn’t you see that?”
“What?” My eyes widen in horror. “No!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Carrie says, sounding pleased with herself. “Because she didn’t put it on social media.”
Truthfully this anecdote satisfies me in a small, mean way, because apparently I am a giant monster, but I take Carrie’s point. It’s not just experiences I missed out on all these years by refusing to put myself out there. It’s people too. The versions of them I’ve had in my head all this time—of Bethany, of Clayton, even of Miles—are mostly just stories I’ve made up to tell myself, to keep me from being too lonely.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, scraping my nail along the ridges ringing the lid of my waxy paper cup. “As long as we’re talking about Bethany?”
“They’re broken up,” Carrie says in a voice that communicates pretty clearly she’s told me that already.
“Okay, but like…are you sure?” I explain about Miles seeing Clayton’s car in her driveway the other night, leaving out the most humiliating parts of our argument in front of the dollar theater. “It probably doesn’t make a difference at this point. But I just want to know.”
“Hmm.” Carrie nibbles her straw thoughtfully. “I mean, to be completely honest with you, if they’re back together, I might not be the first person she talked to about it.”
“Really?” That surprises me. “I thought you guys were, like, best friends.” I make a face. “Saw i
t on her Snapchat and everything.”
“Cute,” Carrie says. “I don’t know, things have been kind of weird with us lately.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know,” she says again. “It’s not like we had a falling out or anything. We’re just…not as close as we used to be, all of a sudden.”
“That sucks,” I tell her honestly. “It’s hard to grow apart from somebody like that.”
“Yeah.” Carrie glances at me sidelong. “It is.”
I take a deep breath. “Look,” I blurt out, because one of us has to bring it up sooner or later, and maybe one of the things I’m saying yes to this summer is being a person who brings up hard topics. “I’m really glad we’ve been hanging out lately. And we definitely don’t have to talk about this if it’s going to ruin it or make it weird. But like, did we do something, way back when? Me and Ruoxi? To make you not want to hang out with us anymore?”
“Wait.” Carrie’s dark eyes narrow. “What?”
“I’m not mad about it,” I promise her. “It was a long time ago, clearly. I just always wondered.”
Carrie looks at me like I’ve totally lost it. “You think I’m the one who ditched you guys?”
I frown. “Yes?”
“Rachel, you guys didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“What?” Now it’s my turn to gape. “That is fully untrue.”
“It is true!” she says, sounding surprisingly hurt after all this time. “You guys were girl geniuses—which is obviously fine and great, and the last thing I’m going to do is begrudge you your freakin’ brainpower. But it was like eventually you just got bored of me or something.”
“Huh? No!” I shake my head. “That’s not what happened.”
“Um, yeah it is,” she says with a nod. “Remember that summer program at Hope College in sixth grade? Or the debate team? Or the quiz bowl tournaments in seventh grade?”
“Yes,” I say slowly, not sure what that has to do with anything. “Of course.”
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