by Adi Alsaid
“I’ll photograph the whole city,” she said, smiling at the thought. “I’ll need something to look at when I’m missing it.”
Other than that moment, they looked completely comfortable in each other’s presence, even in front of me. They held hands and smiled at each other warmly without making it feel like they were about to start making out, which is honestly how almost every couple I’ve seen has ever acted.
I spent more time with Pete than anyone else, and sometimes I still felt awkward around him. Hell, I feel awkward when I’m alone in my room sometimes, like maybe my limbs are at strange angles or I’m doing something weird with my face and the whole world can see. I tried to remember if I was like this with Leo, but I couldn’t recall. I remembered being happy with him, and in love, and turned on. But I’m pretty sure you can be all those things and still be awkward.
That two eighteen-year-olds could be in front of a third wheel and make each other laugh without making the third wheel uncomfortable astounded me, especially because I kept remembering the fight I’d witnessed, kept remembering that this was a couple that knew they were going to break up at summer’s end. I’d never really looked at two people who were in love. I’d listened in, sure. But every couple I’d ever seen, I’d only glanced at for a few moments at a time. At the movies or at school or just walking down the street. I’d seen people and recognized them as a couple, but I’d never really studied the way two people acted when they were together. I wondered if this was what Leo and I had looked like, at least for a time.
“So, Lu, doing anything exciting this weekend?” Iris asked.
“Does New Jersey count?”
“Not normally, but I’m going to New Jersey this weekend too,” Cal said. “Where in Jersey are you going?”
“Princeton, you?”
“No way! Me too.”
“Whoa. Weird. Are you visiting my dad too?”
Cal laughed. “Yeah, he and I haven’t had a night out on the town in a while, so we figured we’d go tear it up like the old days.”
“Cal, be normal,” Iris said.
“Do you take the train?” Cal asked.
“Friday afternoon,” I replied, stealing some more rose petal jam for my baguette.
“Cool, I was gonna go on Saturday, but I’m sure my mom would love it if I showed up a day early, and a little company on the train is nice. If that’s cool, I mean.”
My mood was already the best it’d been in a while, and his awkward self-invite made it surge even further.
* * *
As the sky turned cotton candy colors and the air got a little less suffocating, Cal and Iris lay against each other on the blanket. He ran a hand through her hair. The noise of everyone else at the park came into focus—the joggers, the cyclists, the cheers from the baseball field nearby—and the three of us fell quiet, watching the clouds. I was starting to wonder how long this would go on for, but I was comfortable, and I wanted to see how quickly my statement would cause them to spring like a jack-in-the-box. I was so ready for them to start talking that I’d already started composing the article in my mind.
Cal and Iris were going to break up. Then they didn’t.
The summer before college starts is riddled with the casualties of high school romances. Some couples survive the minefield of long-distance dating and opposing ambitions, some only think they can.
Other people on the field packed up their blankets and their books and Frisbees and went back to their lives. The joggers dwindled, the tourists disappeared. A breeze picked up.
“When does it start?” Iris asked.
“When does what start?” I asked, but too softly and Cal spoke over me.
“Technically, it already has. They say the best hours to view it are right before dawn.”
“Cal! My parents will kill me.”
“Don’t worry, we can leave as soon as we see one.”
“And how long’s that going to take?”
“Well, we are in one of the brightest cities on Earth, it’s a bit cloudy out, and there’s a half-moon tonight, so chances are we’re not gonna see a damn thing. But you’ve never seen one, and you’ve always wanted to. While I still hold the title of Guy Trying to Bring You Joy, I’m not going to let a meteor shower pass us by without you being around to witness it.”
“I have questions,” I said.
“Oh right.” Iris sat up, reaching for a handful of kettle chips. “I forgot to mention, there’s a meteor shower happening tonight. You wanna stick around for it?”
“Um,” I said because I wanted to shout “Yes” for six full seconds but wanted to be cool about it, and also probably had to check the time and come up with some excuse for my mom as to why I wasn’t coming home yet again.
“Come on,” Cal said, propping himself up on his elbows. His hair was messy from lying down, sticking out in the back in two perfect cowlicks. Iris noticed too and tried to comb them down with her hand. “It’ll be fun.” When his hair refused to comply, Iris chose to instead muss it up some more, and he grabbed at her wrist with a chuckle, his fingers crawling to hers to clasp around them.
I know this is a weird thing to say, but it felt so good to be just near their love. It was complicated, sure. Doomed to end up like mine and Leo’s, maybe. But it just felt good to be near them. To be in the presence of a love like that.
I smiled and pulled my phone out of my bag, to text my mom that I was crashing at my cousin Cindy’s tonight. “I’m in.”
14
LIKE THE MOVIES
I woke up early to Cindy and her roommates getting ready for the day. The smell of coffee was in the air, and I had a vague notion that I’d had a dream about Cal and Iris, though I couldn’t recall any details from it.
I already had six missed calls and three poorly spelled texts from my mom telling me to call her as soon as I woke up and that I was an awful sister for leaving Jase alone. What my mom probably meant to say was that I was an awful daughter for having escaped the tight clutches of her umbilical cord.
After calling to assure my mom that I was alive and had no plans to abandon the family, I joined Cindy and her roommates Melissa and Sal in the kitchen. Melissa had been up last night to let me in, and now she asked what I was doing in Central Park until 2:00 a.m. I wanted to tell them, but I thought the details might be a little hard to explain to anyone other than Pete, so I just said I was working on a writing project and left it at that. They shrugged and went on with their morning routines, which was great, but left me with the urge to talk about the previous night.
Okay, so Cal and Iris hadn’t quite unloaded on me the way I’d been hoping, but I’d gotten to see more of their relationship, enough to write about. I’d even written out something on my phone in the middle of the night: He turns and kisses Iris on her temple, which is the most appropriate word for a body part that Cal can imagine, since the place it occupies feels sacred. What a thrill it is to have someone to kiss every day, someone to watch the skies with, someone to treasure, someone whose happiness is at least as important as your own.
Not quite the makings of a relationship column, especially since I’d taken the liberty to go into Cal’s perspective. Fiction, basically. And a little cheesy. Still. I woke up with the thrill of writing inside of me. I didn’t care that it was Friday and I still didn’t have my column written, or even a backup plan. The writer’s block wasn’t quite unblocked, but at least I’d written something. I didn’t even need their permission, really, if I changed the names.
I poured myself a bowl of cereal, and texted an assurance to my mom that I’d see her at Penn Station before Jase and I headed off to Princeton. Then I chewed happily, a little exhausted but thrilled to be hanging out in the kitchen with Cindy and her roommates. They had already graduated from college but the whole morning had such a college-y vibe to it, or at least what I imagined college would be like, and
it made me excited that I’d be going off to college in the fall.
Sal kept glancing at Cindy, and I wondered if anything was going on between them, even something unrequited. The whole world is mad with love, I realized. All the time, if they’re not in the midst of it, everyone is seeking it out or hoping for it or recovering from it or looking for a better one.
* * *
I worked my morning shift, mostly bored out of my mind because Pete wasn’t there. I tried texting him, but he wasn’t the most efficient responder, and I couldn’t always have my phone on me at work, so I had to keep myself entertained, which almost took the wind out of my I-wrote-something sails. Thankfully, my imagination kept going through my upcoming train ride with Cal, and I thought about how maybe just one more conversation would crack my writer’s block. I still didn’t have quite enough to comprise a good column without slipping into fiction, and if I fictionalized anything Hafsah would fire me quickly and ruthlessly, like a literal fire. So I needed just a little more.
After work I went straight to Penn Station to meet up with Jase and take the train to Jersey. A bunch of other divorcelings were huddled by the schedule board with their weekend packs. I’d noticed that more kids came into the city on weekends to spend time with their dads, but there was a good group of us that made the trek out to the suburbs every now and then. Mom was always more of a city girl, having grown up in Manila, and after the divorce, Dad had fled back to Jersey and the quiet he’d always been more comfortable in.
Mom had accompanied Jase to the station, bringing a bag full of clothes for me and several complaints about my life choices. After she kissed us goodbye at the platform, I pulled out my book and settled onto the floor near Jase, scanning the crowd every now and then looking for Cal.
Eventually I fell into my reading, thinking maybe Cal was a late-person who might show up right before the train pulled away. I felt some weirdo take a seat right next to me and ignored him as best as I could, but then the creep had the chutzpah to scoot closer, so that our legs were almost touching. Fuming, I had to keep rereading the same paragraph over and over again, until finally I decided to speak my mind. Granted, I suck at confrontation, but I give a solid stink-eye, and I figured that would be good enough.
When I put my book down though, I saw that it was Cal, and he was smiling like an idiot. “Wow, that took way longer than I thought.”
I closed my book over my finger, responding with my own idiotic smile (to be honest, I don’t have many other kinds). “Long time no see,” I said, which is a stupid thing people say to each other when they’ve seen each other recently.
“How is this?” He gestured to my book.
“So far so good.”
He leaned forward to take a look at Jase, who had a unique talent for concentrating on whatever was in front of him. I have no idea what he’s going to be when he grows up, but, man, is he gonna be a good one. Unless it involves multitasking. Then he’s gonna be only partly good.
The train pulled into the station just then, rumbling a few newbies to their feet. The rest of us knew an onslaught of people coming into the city for the weekend were going to take their sweet time and we stayed out of the way. Jase didn’t even glance up.
Cal smiled and nodded, then put his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, looking out at the passengers. “How late did you guys stay last night?” I whispered, hoping Jase wouldn’t hear me and deduce something he could blackmail me with at a future date.
“Sunrise,” Cal said, smirking, but trying to hide it.
I caught myself staring at the side of his face. I wanted to ask him everything about the night but wasn’t sure that was a conversation I was ready for. Then he pulled a book out of his bag and started reading, so I tried to do the same, though I kept thinking he was glancing over at me and couldn’t focus on a word I was reading. After a few minutes the platform cleared and we boarded the train.
Cal walked behind me and Jase and helped us put our bags in the overhead bins, since I’m tiny and, even though Jase seemed like he was huge to me, he was still only thirteen and couldn’t lift his bags without struggling. I plopped down into a window seat, expecting Cal to say bye, but instead he hoisted his own bag over his head, his T-shirt coming up a little and giving me an unexpected glance at his stomach. It was just an inch of stomach or so, nothing of any note, but I caught sight of a faint trail of hair leading up to his belly button.
I turned to look out the window but saw only the tunnel wall and my reflection. Then I felt Cal’s weight sink into the seat next to me. Jase was sitting across the aisle, looking for an outlet beneath the seats to plug his phone charger into.
The train started moving, and one of those train guys came by to check our tickets. He punched holes in them without ever looking at our faces. Cal stretched his legs out. We each opened our books, but I found myself rereading the same sentence again. I closed the book, and even though Pete and I have a golden rule never to disturb someone reading, I just couldn’t help myself. “Do you and Iris do stuff like that all the time?”
Cal furrowed his brow. “Like what?”
“Picnics at Central Park, watching a meteor shower until dawn. Crazy romantic stuff that people in real life don’t do.”
He thought for a moment, setting his book down on his lap. “I don’t know. I don’t think we’re all that different from other relationships.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not the most romantically experienced person in the world, but I do write about relationships. Semiprofessionally. And I’m here to tell you, you are. No one does that. My ex and I once went out for a sit-down sushi dinner, and that was about the pinnacle of our romance.” I paused as a couple walked down the aisle wearing huge traveler backpacks with straps flapping all around. I wondered if what I’d said was true. Surely, Leo and I had done something more romantic than that. Nothing came to mind, but I made a mental note to dig deeper into my memories. “Oh, and once we picked a rom-com on Netflix and held hands the whole way through, reaching for popcorn with our free hands.”
Cal laughed and sat up straighter. “I think people want to be more romantic. They just keep themselves from being romantic because they don’t know that it’s actually pretty easy to do stuff like that. All you have to do is open the door.”
“Open the door?”
“Yeah, it’s this thing I think about often. It’s from a story called ‘Light of Lucy’ by Jane McCafferty. There’s this quote Iris and I love about how we all have just one life and every night is numbered and could be more like the movies if only we opened up our hearts, not all the way or all the time, but like you open the door for a cat, just enough to let it out into the open air.”
I stared at him. “See? Who does that? Who quotes stories all the time? Both of you have done that already and I’ve barely even hung out with you guys.”
“You don’t love quotes?”
“Of course I do, but I can never work them into conversation that easily. Or remember a whole freakin’ paragraph.” I totally do and can, but it was fun to have a little outburst anyway. It felt justified.
The train came aboveground at that point, the darkness cut by the Manhattan skyline reflecting off the clouds and making the whole sky look orange. Jase was asleep in his seat, his phone dead in his lap. Someone a few rows away was listening to music loud enough for us to hear.
“I’m sorry I’m being weird,” I said. “But now you see why I want to write about you, right? You guys do open that door, instead of all of us schmucks who just watch other people do it in movies.”
“What do you mean write about us?” Cal asked.
I frowned. “Iris didn’t tell you?”
The train screeched to a halt, sending Cal’s book tumbling to the ground. He reached down for it, his arm brushing past my leg. A few of the divorcelings got off, their bags bumping into the backs of seats. Jase woke up and asked me i
f he could borrow my phone, and by the time I’d turned back Cal was looking out the window and it felt like too much time had passed to nudge him about it.
The car lurched forward again, and we stayed quiet all the way to the next station, which was a repeat of the last. A handful of people got off, most of them recognizable divorcelings.
Cal smacked his book into the palm of his other hand, the noise pulling me from my thoughts. “So, you should come to my friend’s party tomorrow night,” he said, as if the book-smack had obviously been a way to end the conversation.
“Uh, I don’t know if my dad will let me.” I’m not great at parties. I go to the corner and start writing in my head and I either get all quiet and judgy, or I come up with something good and have to write it into my phone, then everyone thinks I’m an antisocial jerk.
“Okay, I’ll talk to him. I’m good with parents. What side of town does he live on?”
“Palmer Square. But, seriously, my dad usually likes us to spend the whole time together. He hands us itineraries when we walk in the door. There’s no way he’ll let me go to a party with someone he’s never met.”
“Don’t worry. The party’s super close to that area. I’ll convince him.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and leaned into his seat, putting a foot up on the armrest in front of him. “Iris says you should come,” he said, showing me the conversation which had somehow been going on this whole time.
“Okay,” I said, not really believing I’d go to the party.
The rest of the train ride, Cal read from his book, occasionally pausing to text Iris. I stared out the window, watching New Jersey towns go by. I usually couldn’t stand being on the train without reading or listening to music, but I was strangely at peace, happy with my thoughts.
We got to Princeton and Cal helped us with our bags again, and then he took off to catch a bus. “I’ll text you when I’m on the way tomorrow,” he called back.