by Penny Reid
“Yes. And don’t let them use you.”
I watched the corner of his mouth reluctantly curve upward as he gave an almost imperceptible head shake. “Okay… Maybe I’ll try that.”
His easy acceptance of my suggestion made me feel brave, so I pushed, “Maybe even apologize to the people you’ve used.”
I watched as his eyebrows lifted and his smile faltered. “You want me to apologize to my father?”
“Oh, hell no! Not him, never him. But maybe…Rose?”
Martin’s smile completely fell away. We were quiet for a moment and I could tell he was giving my suggestion serious consideration. Again I left him to his thoughts.
Then abruptly—and I suspected mostly to himself—he said, “We weren’t involved, but she was a friend and I did use her. She wanted to be more than friends, but I wasn’t…I didn’t. At least I was honest about that from the beginning.”
I bit my top lip because, inexplicably, I felt like smiling. It was likely the vain, selfish part of me; the part that did jigs in Grand Central Station. I was relieved, so very relieved, that he and Rose had never been involved. Because, obviously on some fundamental level, I was a selfish harpy and never wanted Martin to find happiness if I wasn’t the source of it.
But instead of giving into the smile, I suggested, “Then tell her you’re sorry and make an effort to not be that guy. Be a good friend.”
His smile was back as he watched the road, but this time it was softer. “I think I will.”
“Good.”
It was a nice friend moment for us. It felt…pleasant, meaningful. We fell into a companionable silence, the earlier strain between us seemed entirely forgotten.
Martin’s eyes darted to mine then away, and I watched his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I’m so glad you changed your major.”
I gave him a mock suspicious stare. “Why? Because I sucked at chemistry?”
“No, no. You excel at chemistry. Plus you excel at sucking…” Martin’s smile turned sly and he glanced at me. Then he winked.
The villain was flirting with me…!
FLIRTING!
WITH ME!
AFTER OUR FRIEND MOMENT!!
Hot outrage flooded my system with an unexpected violence. I couldn’t believe he was bringing up friends with benefits again after our conversation last night, after how much it had hurt me. I couldn’t do that with him. Before I could catch myself, I reached over and pinched the inside of his thigh, just above his knee.
“You’re a dirty, shameless flirt!” I spat.
“Ow!”
“That didn’t hurt, flirt.”
“I’m driving. Are you trying to kill us?” His words had no effect since he was smiling and trying not to laugh.
“No more flirting.” I crossed my arms over my chest and scooched lower in the seat, tucking my chin to my chest, seething.
I felt him eyeball me before he demanded, “Why?”
“Because it—” I caught myself, gulped a large breath of air, and glanced out the window.
The silence was not companionable. It was tense and unwieldy. I fought my desire to reach over and pinch him harder.
“Why?” he asked again, this time his tone was softer, curious.
I heaved a heavy sigh and tried to release some of the potentially irrational anger that had built a home in my chest.
“I loved you, Martin. You were my…” I had to pause again, clear my throat before I could finish. “You were my first in every way that matters, and losing what we had was a big deal for me. That month, after we broke up, I lost twenty pounds. I felt no joy. I didn’t even like cookies. Things didn’t improve and I didn’t start moving on at all until August.”
Silence stretched again. He downshifted, turned on his blinker. The car decelerated. We stopped at a light. I heard him gather a breath like he was about to speak.
Still staring out the window, I cut him off before he could. “I don’t think I’m ready for you to flirt with me. It…hurts. I need us to be one thing or the other. In between stuff just confuses me. So don’t flirt with me. And don’t suggest that we have no-strings sex.”
“Kaitlyn, I’m doing this all wrong—”
“Then stop. Just,” I glanced at him, allowed a hint of pleading to enter my voice, “stop confusing me. Be a good friend.”
He nodded solemnly, his jaw working, and returned his attention to the road. Once again, tension hovered and surrounded us, permeating the inside of the car.
I tried to push the melancholy from my mind. I tried and failed. Therefore I felt remorseful relief when we pulled up to Grand Central five minutes later.
He opened my car door and helped me affix the large backpack in place. He remarked on the size of the backpack. We loitered for a few moments at the trunk of his car, continuing our benign discussion until uncomfortable conversation gave way to uncomfortable silence.
I stared at my shoes for five seconds then forced myself to look at him in the eye.
“Well,” I said louder than necessary, nodding for no reason, “I guess I’ll see you later.”
His jaw ticked as his eyes moved between mine, searching. “Yeah…”
I stuck out my hand, gathering a bracing breath and feeling some unknown emotion rise in my chest, making it tight. He hesitated, then fit his hand in mine. Neither of us shook our combined hands. We just stood there, our hands suspended between us, sharing a strange stare.
“When will I see you?” he asked.
“I’ll call you when I have the dates for our next show in the city. Maybe we can grab pizza.”
He nodded, not exactly frowning. “We could watch The Princess Bride.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
“And you can visit your piano.”
I gave him a half smile and moved to withdraw, but he tightened his grip, halting my progress. I glanced at our hands then back at him.
“I have to go.”
“Right.” He nodded again, again not exactly frowning; he let my fingers slip away, took a step back, and repeated, “Right.”
“Goodbye, Martin.” I reached into his trunk for my sleeping bag, my gaze flickering to his once more. He wasn’t looking at me. His hands were in his pockets and his attention was on his shoes. I waited for a beat.
When he said nothing, I turned and walked toward the station. But this time, because I felt oddly and irresistibly compelled, I looked back.
He was still there, right where I’d left him, and he was watching me walk away. So I waved. He waved back, stuffed his hands in his pockets, but he made no move to leave.
After a long moment, I tore my gaze from his and entered the building.
CHAPTER 12
The Atomic Theory of Matter
After no contact for a week, during which I tried my best to ignore all non-friend feelings for Martin, I received a very nice text message from him on New Year’s at exactly midnight. It read,
Martin: I wish you were here so we could start this New Year together.
It was painfully sweet.
And confusing.
I didn’t reply right away because I didn’t know what to say. Was that a friend message?
My heart was scrambled and tangled in my chest, and I had difficulty sleeping because I was obsessing about his text. I waited until the next morning to respond. In the clear light of day I read his message again. Pragmatic and sober Kaitlyn decided I’d inferred way too much from the simple message of well wishes, and I opted to tap out a benign and friendly reply.
Kaitlyn: Happy New Year! I wish you’d been here so I could show you your new towels. Look for “An Unexpected Party” to arrive this week.
I stared at my screen afterward, but then set my phone aside when he hadn’t replied after ten minutes. Really, it was the perfect friend response. I couldn’t figure out why it made me feel so lame.
I didn’t know how to navigate these waters with Martin. Yes, I was doing this blindly. But I realized late in the a
fternoon on January first—after reading his text message at least twenty times—that I was not following my heart. Eventually I meandered to my keyboard and tried to arrange music as a conduit for my chaotic feelings.
A thought began to form, that felt suspiciously like the beginning of a plan, which I assumed was the start of a decision. I was going to have to come clean with Martin. I was going to have to put it all out there, all my messy and disorganized wishes, and be brave. I was in the limbo of uncertainty and I was tired of it.
“I’m giving you my copy of Cosmo. Can you put it in the kitchen when you’re finished?”
I blinked at Sam’s sudden appearance in my room then at the copy of Cosmopolitan she’d just tossed on my bed.
“You’re giving me your copy of Cosmo?”
“Yes. To borrow. There’s a stupid quiz I want you to take on whether you and your best friend are compatible.”
“If it’s stupid then why do you want me to take it?”
“So we can make fun of it later. Also, remember my friend Kara? The one we went dancing with? The one who needs a place to stay?”
“Ah, yes. The potential new roommate.”
“That’s the one. Let me know what night next week we can all get together so you can interview her and share your chore checklist. We need to make a decision soon.”
I studied Sam for a bit as she thumbed through our mail. “Sam…do you like the chore checklist?”
She shrugged, not looking up. “It doesn’t bother me. I know you like it, but you’re a lot tidier than I am. Dirty dishes don’t give me hives.”
With that statement she meandered out of my room.
My eyes drifted back to the magazine on my bed; a heavily photoshopped and airbrushed model graced the cover—more a manufactured pixilation than an actual person. I twisted my lips in distaste at her unrealistically long legs and the unnatural curve of her waist and boobs.
Basically, magazines wanted Jessica Rabbit—the animated character—not real women. Heck, even supermodels weren’t good enough anymore. Real women didn’t sell magazines. Unrealistic and unhealthy images of female beauty sold magazines. And in this men were not to blame, because the female readership dictated and perpetuated the cycle of dysfunction, not men. Women.
In many ways, women were the enemy of realistic representations of beauty. We sabotaged our own self-interests…and that was sad. I sighed at the model and flipped open the magazine, scanning the contents, noticing with no interest that there was an interview with America’s Next Top Model’s latest winner.
And then I remembered.
I remembered I’d been derelict in reading Martin’s Men’s Health interview from over the summer. Now that his relationship status with Rose Patterson had been clarified for me, I felt no trepidation at the thought of being faced with images of them together.
Sucking in an anxious breath, I jumped from my bed, and in my haste to scramble for my computer, tripped over a chair. It took a bit of browsing through smiling pictures of Rose, but I finally managed to locate the magazine article.
It had been given a month before his birthday and published the month after. His wasn’t the feature story. In fact, the interview was rather short and toward the back of the magazine. There were several pictures of him—shirtless of course, and in spandex of course—looking pensive and muscular, staring out over the water with a blue sky behind him.
The first half was about him being the youngest team captain in the American Collegiate Rowing Association. But, as Sam had warned, the second half was about me.
Interviewer: We have to ask you about your love life now, as a service to all our female readers. Any special girl in the picture?
Martin: No. Not anymore.
Interviewer: Not anymore?
Martin: Nope.
Interviewer: Care to elaborate?
Martin: Nope.
Interviewer: You were at one time romantically linked with Kaitlyn Parker, Senator Joss Parker’s daughter. Any credibility to that rumor?
Martin: Yes.
Interviewer: But you two split up?
Martin: Yes.
Interviewer: Did it have anything to do with Senator Parker’s politics?
Martin: No. It had to do with me being an a__hole.
Interviewer: Whoa! Should we take this to mean Kaitlyn Parker is The One That Got Away?
Martin: If you want, but I prefer to think of her as simply The One.
Interviewer: Okay then. You should know you’ve just broken a lot of hearts with that statement, but let’s move on. So what’s next for Martin Sandeke?
The first time I read it I didn’t absorb half of what it said. The second through hundredth time, I paused at the part where Martin said, If you want, but I prefer to think of her as simply The One, and my chest constricted.
If I thought I’d been obsessing about Martin before, then I hadn’t known the true meaning of the word. I tried to remember every look, every conversation we’d had over the last few weeks. Basically, I chased my tail in a racetrack of circular logic, ala:
If I was The One, as Martin had said, then why didn’t he try to contact me before December?
Because you told him to leave you alone, that’s why. So he left you alone.
But now he’s, what? He’s over me? He wants to be friends? Then that means I was never The One.
That’s right. You’re not The One.
Then why did he say that in the interview?
Maybe you were The One over the summer but he changed his mind, or maybe you are The One, but he’s waiting for you to give him a sign.
A sign? Like what? Ye Martin of Old would have just told me how he feels! What am I supposed to do?
I don’t know! Ask him!! I HAVE NO ANSWERS FOR YOU BECAUSE I AM YOU!!
Stop yelling at me…
Going to sleep that night I was still epically muddled.
However, I was also experiencing a growing sense of responsibility for the current state of my relationship (or non-relationship) with Martin.
***
January second rolled around, and I was very happy to be back at the Bluesy Bean making coffee and going through the motions, though—admittedly—still obsessing about Martin Sandeke. But instead of obsessing about what ifs, I’d moved on to obsessing about my plan to confront him.
I was going to do it.
I was going to arrange to meet him in a neutral spot and point blank ask him about the interview and the text message on New Year’s. I was going to put on my bad-ass-girl trucker hat and “adult” like an adult.
That’s why, when Martin Sandeke walked into The Bluesy Bean that afternoon, an immobilizing shock coursed through my body and I dropped the glass measuring cup I was holding. It shattered on the floor, making a really obnoxious crash.
Chelsea sucked in a sharp breath and jumped back from my inadvertent mess, possibly because she was wearing brand new, soft-soled leather slip-ons and didn’t want shards of glass near her feet.
“You startled me!” She pressed her hand to her chest, fluttering her eyelashes like she might faint.
The male customer who was at the counter (and with whom she’d been flirting for the last ten minutes) gave me a harsh glower and reached forward, gripping her upper arm.
“Are you all right? Do you need to sit down?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.” She nodded and gave him a grateful smile.
She turned to face me so she could sit on the counter. Just before she swung her legs over, Chelsea gave me a conspiratorial wink, then turned into the waiting arms of the man. He was a Brad Pitt. Or, at least that’s the label she’d given him when he’d walked in.
Luckily the place was empty except for Chelsea, the Brad Pitt, Martin, and me.
Martin didn’t walk to the counter. He took a beeline to where I was standing behind the machines, his eyes moving over me as though searching for injury.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, releasing a weary laugh. “Yes.
Just…clumsy.”
He gave me a half smile. “Let me help you clean this up.”
“It’s okay, I can get it.”
But he was already walking into the back closet and returned quickly with a broom. “I’ll clean, you make me an Americano.”
“Martin—”
“Don’t argue with me, just once. Just once, please.”
I pressed my lips together, showing him I was displeased.
He mimicked my expression, but it looked ridiculous on him. Then he made the strangest face. His eyes crossed and he bared his front teeth as though he were a rabbit.
I blinked at him. “What are you doing?”
“Making a funny face in an effort to make you stop staring at me like I murdered your beloved goldfish. What are you doing?”
Of course, this made me laugh.
The problem was, I couldn’t stop laughing once I started. It was absurd that he was reminding me of our time on the island, using my own lines and strategy against me so he could clean the floor. But it worked. It distracted me from the mess and it also distracted me from my Martin Sandeke obsession. It felt good to laugh, a necessary release. I had to hold on to the counter because I was laughing so hard. Basically, I had laugh-paralysis.
He chuckled and squinted his eyes at my inability to control the hysterics, but took advantage of my arrested state to sweep the glass and deposit it in the trash.
As soon as I could breathe again, yet still wiping tears, I turned from him and grabbed a paper cup to make his Americano. I figured I couldn’t be trusted with anything breakable at this point.
When he finished, he replaced the broom and dustpan then moved back to the other side of the machines, waiting for me to finish.
“Feel better?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Can you take a break?”
My gaze flickered to his then around the shop. No one new had entered.
“Yes.” I sighed and paired it with a nod. “But just until we get a customer.”
“Good. I’ll be over there.” He indicated with his head to the table we’d used the last time he was here, then added, “And grab some cookies.”