Opposite of Always

by Justin A. Reynolds

  But then I remember: I have also dumped the sick girl.

  So, plan B.

  First, I secure her room number from the information desk.

  Then I race to the gift shop and buy ALL THE FLOWERS. The volunteer cashier loans me a cart to transport my flowers. I barely clear the elevator, flowers blooming in every direction. But I make it inside, petals largely intact. The car starts to climb and my stomach churns, only it’s not the elevator motion.

  I pause outside her door, my stomach queasy now. What are you doing here, Jack? But then, without my consent, my hand knocks.

  “Come in,” Kate calls.

  I push the cart inside. I can’t see her and I imagine she can’t see me, the botanical wall separating us.

  “I think you have the wrong room,” she says.

  I step around the cart and there she is, lying in bed, a book open on her lap, and although she’s staring right at me, it’s clear she doesn’t know me. Which, while expected, is still brutal on a level I’m incapable of articulating.

  “You’re not Kate Edwards?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” she confirms.

  “No mistake then.”

  I gather as many bouquets as I can hold, arranging the flowers around the room.

  “Who are these from?” she asks.

  I set a vase filled with yellow and red tulips on the windowsill. There’s a stack of books there, and movies, too. Short Term 12. We’d watched it together. Well, more like I’d watched it and she’d watched me at all her favorite parts. What are you doing? I’d asked, blushing at her staring. I just want to see your reaction, she’d said. If it hits you the same. Do you want me to stop? I’m creeping you out, right? No, I’d said, don’t stop.

  “Is there a card?” she asks.

  “Uh, no, ma’am. Not that I see.”

  She laughs. “Please never call me ma’am again.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She points to the cart. “I don’t understand who’d do this.”

  “Your boyfriend,” I suggest.

  “You obviously haven’t met my boyfriend.”

  Okay, I admit, this makes me happy. But also not happy, because she deserves a boyfriend who’d fill her room with flowers. Although, she deserves a boyfriend who wouldn’t abandon her just because things got hard, so I shouldn’t toot my own horn too enthusiastically, either.

  “Parents maybe? Siblings?”

  “Not their style.”

  I study her eyes. I can’t help but wonder if on some deep-down, hard-to-retrieve level she still knows me. Like if she burrowed far enough into her subconscious she might find traces of us. That maybe with the right combination of words, if I moved a certain way, she might remember. But she grabs her phone, taps the screen.

  “You figured it out?” I ask.

  She glances up, smiles. “Unless someone steps forward and takes responsibility for this flower assault, I think it’s likely to remain a mystery.”

  I nod. “Right.”

  She goes back to her phone.

  “Well, that’s all of them,” I say, purposely saving the last flower arrangement for the table beside her.

  “Thanks,” she says, not looking up.

  “Sure. My pleasure.” I’m lingering; I don’t want to leave. But if I stay any longer, it’s going to be creepy. Maybe she’ll call security. I stop in the doorway. “Well, you take care. I hope you feel better soon.”

  In the hallway, my heart thumps so hard I have to lean against the wall to steady myself.

  “Hey, wait,” she calls out. “Hey!”

  Could it be? She feels something? Somehow remembers?

  I step back in. “Yeah?”

  “Phalaenopsis Blume. How did you know?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Phalaenopsis Blume, also known as moth orchids.”

  “Oh. Right. The phalen . . . phalanges . . . what you said.”

  She laughs. “So, how’d you know these are my favorite?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She grins. “Out of all these flowers, you put the orchid next to my bed. Who are you, really? Do we know each other? Someone put you up to this?”

  “I’m just a hospital volunteer.”

  “Oh yeah? Then where’s your red volunteer vest?”

  Good point. “Dry cleaner’s,” I say. It takes everything in my power not to slap myself across the forehead.

  She stares at me like she doesn’t believe me. “Well, thanks, anyway. You made my day.”

  “Glad I could help,” I say, wishing I could say more. That I could pull up a chair beside her. Find out how’s she’s been. Apologize for abandoning her.

  But I can’t.

  I shuffle out into the hallway, pulling the door behind me. As it closes, I take her in one final time. Kate brings the tiger lily to her nose and her eyes drift toward the window, the smell triggering a memory.

  The door clicks shut.

  Jillian’s in the waiting room outside her cousin’s room, munching dried cranberries.

  “There you are,” Jillian says.

  “Is everything okay?” I touch her arm. “Is your cousin all right?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I was just worried about you. You vanished. And you weren’t answering your phone.”

  I fish my phone out. I’ve missed nine calls, a slew of texts. All but one text is from Jillian. The other one from Mom asking if I’ll be home for dinner. “Sorry, J.”

  She leans into me. “I missed you, baby.”

  I wrap my arms around her. And she feels so good. So warm and comfy.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you been in a nursery?”

  “Why?” I ask, glancing down at the top of her head. “Don’t tell me someone’s baby spit up on me without me noticing.”

  “Not that kind of nursery. I mean a plant nursery. You smell like you’ve been rolling around in a flower bed.”

  You know how in the movies the two people who are in love and who will inevitably wind up together by the end have all these artificial obstacles thrown in front of them? How as we, the audience, watch the two lovers fight through these obstacles in the name of true love, we can’t help but want them to be together at all costs; no matter what, they have to be together, right?

  Except at least one of them, if not both of them, are already in semiserious relationships. And everyone knows your two main characters need to be somewhat likable, so you can’t just have them be complete assholes and dump their SOs. And so, to make the inevitable happy ending more plausible, the writers decide to make their SOs complete assholes—that way we hate the people that they’re with and have no problem rooting for our two lovebirds to kick their crappy relationships to the curb, and to run into the waiting arms of their true, always-meant-to-be loves—

  And boom, our Hollywood happy ending. Everyone wins.

  Except I don’t have an awful relationship with Jillian. She’s pretty much perfect. The only fault I can possibly attribute to her, you know, other than the minor transgressions, like how she squeezes from the bottom of the toothpaste tube (uh, weird) or how she leaves the toilet seat down after she’s finished (the nerve!), is that she’s not Kate.

  She’s not Kate.

  But of course she’s not.

  She’s Jillian.

  And Jillian is incredibly awesome in her own right.

  And we’re happy together, right?

  Right.

  Then how come it feels like I’ve made a mistake?

  Like This

  “There was a time,” Jillian admits, “when I thought you and I would end up together.”

  By now, after all that’s happened, I’ve mostly cobbled this sentiment together, but it’s different to hear her say it, to echo what I’d always thought, too.

  “Really?”

  She cocks her head to the side like she’s considering this even as she says it. “Maybe not in the near future. Certainly n
ot like . . .”

  We both know the word she’s omitting.

  Not like this.

  But that word never materializes. It hangs, a ghost in the room.

  “But still,” she continues. “I thought maybe something would happen at college, you know. And if not at college, then after we’d graduated, and gone off to different grad schools.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you were this great writer and I’m a pretty decent entertainment lawyer . . .”

  “The best entertainment lawyer,” I interject.

  “. . . and we show up at the same work meeting and we’re all grown up and single and finally ready. Or something like that.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Something like that.”

  But maybe not like this.

  Duffel Bag Baggage

  He hands me a black duffel bag, disbelief frozen on his face. “C’mon, don’t do me like that. You gotta tell me how in the hell you knew.”

  I don’t look inside the bag. I’ve only held $200K in my hands one other time before, but this is roughly the same weight.

  “I got lucky.”

  “Stop. This wasn’t luck. Somehow you knew. You knew. And now you don’t wanna tell the man who helped you make it happen.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “How about the truth, Jack?”

  “I’m from six months into the future and I already knew that Mandrake was going to win.”

  Franny’s dad waves me off. “Fine, don’t tell me. But this is the last bet I make for you. I had a hard time collecting. You pull another rabbit out of your hat and we’ll both be floating in Lake Erie.”

  “I’m done with gambling.”

  “Good,” he says, folding his arms.

  “But there is one more thing.”

  “Fine, you can tell me at the bar. Drinks on you. But first, we drop this money off. I’m not the nervous type, but damn.”

  The bar’s a ghost town.

  There’s a couple sitting at the end, their faces twisted, the woman picking up her drink every so often and sloshing its melting ice.

  After Franny’s dad orders, he turns to me, says, “So, what’d you want to talk about?”

  I opt not to mince words. “You haven’t seen Franny.”

  He slumps forward on his bar stool, pulls from his beer. “Yeah, well, I’ve been busy. I’ll get to it, when the time’s right.”

  “You’ve been busy. You’re going to get around to it,” I say. “You’ve been out of prison for weeks and you can’t manage one phone call? To your only son?”

  “How do you know what I’ve done?” he asks.

  The truth is I don’t one hundred percent know. But it seemed like a safe bet.

  “Jack, I did you a favor because you’re my kid’s friend, but that’s where our business begins and ends. Don’t think for a second you and me are friends now. That we’re gonna discuss how I deal with my son. Our relationship is none of your business.”

  “Relationship? Are you kidding? What relationship?”

  Franny’s dad jumps, his stool skittering behind him, his fist raised at me. “Don’t make this go sideways, kid.”

  “Look, I’m sorry if—”

  “You stay here another second, you’ll be more than sorry.”

  “Fine.” I pull a twenty from my pocket, toss the money onto the bar.

  “Drinks on me,” I say. “Bullshit on you.”

  I call out to Mom and Dad but no one’s home.

  I kick off my shoes, grab water from the kitchen. I collapse on my unmade bed and commence a lengthy Pointless Ceiling Stare session.

  That’s when I remember:

  The duffel.

  I reach under my bed, grabbing for the strap. Nothing. I reach again, still nothing. I drop to my knees to get a better look, my stomach dropping.

  Because I know without looking.

  The bag is gone.

  I freak the fuck out. Checking under my pillows, tossing my sheets, doing ridiculous things like pulling out all my desk drawers and checking under the rug—as if $200K could fit in an envelope-size drawer or somehow slip under a square of commercial-grade carpet.

  I race around the house that way.

  I check every nook, cranny, and then recheck. All while screaming wholly original curses. I just lost $200,000 type curses.

  Nothing cool, mind you.

  Mostly nonsensical. Definitely irrational.

  Mother-squeezing-tiger-lily-having-crappy-poop-pants.

  Stuff like that.

  But in the end, for all my destroy-the-house efforts, all I have is shortness of breath and my crying, trembling face.

  I call my mom’s phone. Voice mail. I nearly hurl my phone against the wall, but I stop myself. Try Dad’s.

  “Dad, did you, uh, find . . . ,” I say, stammering, my voice an avalanche of panic and dread.

  “Jack, are you okay, son? What’s wrong?”

  “No, I’m not okay. I need to know if you found something.”

  “Found what? What are you talking about?”

  “A bag, Dad,” I blurt out, even though at this point I’m confident he has no idea what I’m talking about.

  “What bag? Are you in some kind of trouble, Jack? Do you need—”

  But I don’t hear the rest of his sentence because I take the phone away from my ear and glance at the screen.

  A text pops up.

  I have something that belongs to you.

  Be at The Wood in 20.

  I can’t tell you why we call it The Wood. I guess because it’s in the woods, except the exact location is in a large clearing in the least woodsy part of the woods.

  Anyway—

  When I stick my head up through the floor, Franny’s leaning against the wall, arms folded, the duffel bag at his feet.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Why the hell do you have this money?”

  “I robbed a bank?”

  “The truth. Now, Jack.”

  What is it with everyone demanding the truth?

  The truth? The truth? You can’t handle the truth! No, really, you can’t. I know the truth and I can barely deal with it.

  “I won a bet.”

  Franny’s eyebrows rise. “You won a bet? That’s the best you’ve got?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, King, you know that?”

  “I bet that Mandrake would win the tourney.”

  “You did what? Only a fool would make that bet.”

  “I sold my car, used all of my savings, and I made the bet.”

  “Even if that was true, you wouldn’t know how to place a bet this size.”

  “I got someone else to do it for me.”

  Franny laughs. “I know for damn sure Mama or Papa King didn’t place any wagers for you.”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t them.”

  “Then who?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Franny.”

  “No, I think it does. It matters to me. I want to know.”

  “What were you even doing at my house, anyway? You think you can just drop by anytime, unannounced? Just take a shower or grab a bite or steal someone’s money from under their bed?”

  Franny shrugs. “I left some clothes at your house. And my phone charger. I knocked, but no one was home, which actually seemed better. I didn’t want to have to see . . . it was just better. I grabbed the spare key from the rock.”

  Damn you, fake, spare-key-holding, save-Kate-plan-foiling rock!

  “Just give me my money and I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, Jack?”

  “I’ll forget about the whole breaking and entering thing.”

  “To be so smart, sometimes you’re so stupid. Where’d the money come from? Huh, Jack? Tell me so we can be done here.”

  “It was your dad, okay! There! Now you know! Are you happy now?”

  But Franny’s shaking his head. “I already knew, man. I just wanted to hear you sa
y it.” He kicks the bag toward me, and it zips across the uneven planks. “Take your money and stay the fuck away from me.”

  “Franny . . .”

  “I promise you on Abuela’s life that if you don’t climb down that ladder right now, I’m going to throw your lying, backstabbing, trifling ass down myself.”

  I believe him.

  But part of me wants to hang out on that ladder just long enough to antagonize Franny and get the ass beating I’ve deserved for far too long, the one that he has no business sparing me.

  “What? You think I’m lying? That I won’t do it?” he spits. His face and fists squeezed in fury.

  “No,” I say. “I believe you.”

  Say what you want, but Franny’s a man of his word.

  Which is far more than anyone could say about me.

  I drop the duffel to the ground. I let go of the ladder.

  Prom and graduation fly by in the senior-year whirlwind.

  Prom with Jillian is fun. We dance the night away. But I spend a lot of the evening wondering what’ll happen once Franny shows up. He never does.

  I take my Avoid Franny at All Costs tactics to new heights. He’s playing the same game. And we rarely see each other.

  The Panthers advance deeper into the playoffs than before, and I wonder what the Franny-Jack rift has to do with that. Of course, maybe the answer is nothing at all.

  Jillian and I go to their third playoff game, and Jillian waves at Franny from up in the stands during warm-ups, and he flashes her a small smile. Rita Marquez, who rumor has it is his new girlfriend, is three rows below us, holding up a poster that she’s adorned in Magic Marker swirls and happy faces and that has a massive hot-pink arrow that points down at her head, and the poster says Cisco’s Cheerleader. She waves the poster around like she’s fanning the crowd, as though she’s attempting to single-handedly cool down the entire gymnasium.

  Franny’s a madman on the court. There’s not a rebound he doesn’t snag, a shot he doesn’t contest on defense. As usual, he’s an offensive stat-stuffer, scoring twenty-eight points and racking up five assists.

  This time his play spells victory for Elytown High.

  Our classmates and his teammates mob him at center court.

  I consider congratulating him, but I decide not to press my luck. But then he bursts through the crowd, runs up the stands, and squeezes Rita, and it’s weird not to say something.