by Cameron Lowe
To his right, Tristan nodded. He was a tall, delicate man and had been the worst on Malcolm’s team, though he was pretty good on defense once he settled in. “And if you keep an ear out, there’s always something to do here. We’ve got at least, I don’t know, thirty places for good live music. We’ve got the biggest paintball complex in the States.”
Gwen played right off that. “So many theaters here for movies or plays. Not so many museums, but they’ve got them all around the state. Oh! The zoos! Those are always fun.”
“This city’s really not so bad,” Tristan said.
“But it seems like everyone’s so depressed here,” Malcolm said. “I mean, the crime rate, the joblessness, the homeless problems…”
“You’re only looking at the problems, not the people trying to find solutions,” Gwen said chidingly. “For every crime in this town, there are a dozen potlucks or fundraisers for people in need. Homelessness, you’re right, that’s a huge problem, but private shelters are opening as fast as they can.”
“You really have to look past the surface,” Calvin agreed, “but you’ll see it. Eventually.”
Once it was determined no one had to be back home anytime soon, Calvin made the call to go outside the city and show of a bit of Montana. They hit the Interstate, heading back roughly north, stopping for gas at the edge of the city. From there, they drove another hour through wheatgrass and fading suburbs all the way to Fort Peck and stopped to check out the massive dam. The reservoir was too thick with mosquitos to stick around long, so they headed for the nearby town and stopped in at an interpretive center at Gwen’s request.
Her eyes danced over the enormous T-rex display, a grin stretched wide across her face. Calvin tried to pretend to be interested while Tristan bought a bottle of Coke and stepped outside to make a call. Malcolm trailed along behind the couple, trying not to peek at Gwen’s legs, nicely shown off by a pair of white khaki shorts she’d changed into after the game. Soon, though, her enthusiasm ensnared him too, and he began to pay more and more attention to the displays around him. Calvin soon pretended to have a phone call of his own to make, and made them promise to take their time looking around.
Gwen watched as he left, a wry smile fixed in place. When Calvin was out of earshot, she said to Malcolm, “You don’t have to entertain me either.”
Malcolm shrugged. “I like history okay. Well… I like stories, if that makes sense. The dates and figures and all that, I don’t really care about. But you talk about old outlaws and pioneers and stuff like that, and I’m hooked. And dinosaurs! How could you not be excited about dinosaurs?”
She studied him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s just… honest. It’s not something I’m really used to. Calvin’s sweet to me, but half the time he’s just… sorta putting up with my craziness.” Gwen stared at him for a while longer, then turned away, blushing. “I barely know you. I shouldn’t be talking relationship stuff with you.”
Mystified, Malcolm just shrugged and said, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Gwen said, almost sounding disappointed, and they slowly headed out of the museum, her face lighting back up when she saw Calvin again. If it seemed a little forced, Malcolm said nothing.
They cruised west a couple hours and dove south eventually, skirting a wide range of mountains in the distance. Calvin and Tristan talked excitedly about getting down to Bozeman that year and doing some skiing and snowboarding, while Gwen made a sour face. She might have liked most sports, but being cold and miserable weren’t two of her favorite things. They stopped in Lewistown for fried chicken and tater gems sopped in grease, and took the food to a small local park. As they sprawled out on the grass, eating and talking, Malcolm realized it wasn’t the Flats that was going to keep him around, but the people, the friends he was making.
It was a lie, of course, but a gentle one he had to tell himself, because he was already falling for Gwen, even if he knew there was no chance there.
Right?
* * *
Those first few weeks she knew Malcolm, Gwen thought of him as a pleasant, cute friend. There wasn’t much more to it at first, though it grew more apparent how he felt about her. They invited him to dinner a few times, and when Calvin was out of the room, Malcolm would steal a quick glance or two at Gwen. Sometimes his looks made her glow, sometimes they worried her because she shouldn’t be so interested in the guy.
At a matinee horror movie, when she jumped at a particularly nasty scare, she accidentally gripped both guys’ knees. Calvin jumped too, but it wasn’t her boyfriend’s response that Gwen noticed, but Malcolm’s sharp intake of air and the way he tried to subtly adjust himself after she lifted her hand. That was… interesting. Unsettling, if she was being honest. Gwen’s own body responded to that little discreet gesture, and it replayed in her mind a dozen times in the following days. She chalked up her own growing fascination with him to nothing but megrims with Calvin, but at night, when her boyfriend was out and she lay staring up at the ceiling in the near-perfect darkness, Gwen wondered, and the tiniest seeds of something uncomfortable and powerful began to grow.
She began to throw herself into other distractions to take her mind off her budding crush. Thankfully, those were plentiful, especially with her family so close there in the Flats. Her mom, Daphne, hosted a regular weekly dinner for Gwen and Calvin and whichever distant family members happened to be in the neighborhood that week. Gwen liked the dinners under the best of times, and one particular day after Malcolm crept into one of her more passionate dreams, Gwen accepted her mother’s invitation with gratitude because it would certainly help distract her. But of course the man she was trying to avoid ended up calling Calvin that morning needing a favor, just a simple ride to a couple of job interviews. Truth was, Gwen wasn’t even mad. In a way, she was almost relieved that Malcolm found yet another way to be around her and Calvin, though her conscious mind tried her damnedest to avoid thinking too much about those feelings.
The heads of the Caplan brood called Morristown home too, and couldn’t have been happier their daughter and her boyfriend were now just about a ten-minute drive. Their home had started life as a simple one-story built in the 1920s, devoid of any charm unless you liked completely square buildings. Over the decades, its owners added two more bedrooms and an unfinished split-level basement on the ass end, along with a couple storage rooms and a badly planned office. It left the house feeling eclectic and strange, as though it had been designed by a think tank comprised of mad scientists. Rooms rammed into each other without much thought or foresight as to how they would actually all fit together or be functional. It suited the Caplans just fine in that regard.
“Thanks for coming,” Gwen told Juliet as they unbuckled.
Her sixtieth-cousin-fifty-times-removed or some such and her best friend, Juliet was a full decade older than Gwen and wore the years with a smile. When her hair started to go prematurely gray in her late twenties, she began dying it with wild streaks, and took to wearing matching “crazy lady makeup,” as she called it. She loved bright colors on her cheeks and around her eyes, and wore them to full effect that day, complete with a little dusting of glitter on her cheeks.
“This ain’t a chore, Baby Bird,” Juliet said. The baby bird was her bizarre affectation for Gwen. She had one for all their countless cousins and their children. Gwen had given up on memorizing them a long time ago, and Juliet once confessed she kept them on a scrap of paper in her wallet so she could brush up on them when the whole family got together at their grandparents’ place on the holidays.
“I know. But the last couple weeks, they’re just being… weird.”
Juliet laughed as they stepped out. “They’re excited for you. I am too. Moving on to the next stage.”
They walked up the sidewalk together, Juliet’s huge purse swinging back and forth. The yard was impeccably trimmed thanks to her dad, and Gwen realized she and Calvin would probably need to
look at mowers sometime if they didn’t want to pay someone a fortune every other week. Good God, going from dorms and a crappy apartment to thinking about mowers in less than two years.
Inside, Hugh leaned forward over the coffee table, intent on a Risk board, his hand on Vanessa’s thigh beside him. His on-again off-again amore since junior high, she was as much a staple around their house as Hugh or Gwen. Her brother drew in a certain type of female attracted to the brooding intellectual type, and Vanessa was one of them. A clever girl herself, she’d been the head varsity cheerleader and, as Hugh told Gwen while she tried to clamp her hands over her ears, could bend fifty-seven ways from Sunday.
“Heyyyy!” Vanessa said to Gwen and Juliet.
“God, don’t let him finger you right in the living room,” Juliet said.
From the kitchen came a crash of a pot. “Hugh Leslie Caplan!” their mom Daphne shouted.
“Thank you for that,” Hugh said mildly, staring at the board. He added troops to a territory in South America, and settled back, folding his hands behind his head. “Dad! I’m about to take Venezuela from you!”
Down the hallway a toilet flushed and their dad ran the sink. Elliot rushed out, drying his hands on his shirt. “Like hell.”
“I’ve already got Australia,” Vanessa said. “It’s all just math from here on out.”
As father and son prepared to duke it out with dice, Gwen headed over and kissed her dad on the cheek. He acknowledged her with a grunt, and Hugh was too intent on the game to notice when she squeezed his shoulder.
Gwen and Juliet headed into the kitchen, where Daphne was in the midst of rolling out sugar cookie dough. “Hey baby,” Daphne said. “Get me a mug?”
“Sure. Also, hi, Mom.”
Daphne wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be an attention hog. It was implied. Hi, Jay-Jay.”
“Why, hello!” Juliet said, grinning at her aunt ten-billion-times-removed. Untangling the massive knot of their family heritage would likely take weeks and cause hemorrhages. “See who she loves more, Gwen? I got a hello.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gwen said, and headed for a cupboard above the coffee maker. She pulled down a Southwestern-styled mug.
“Not one of the good ones,” her mom said.
“Is the World’s Best Mom one of the good ones?” Gwen asked, and Daphne gave her daughter a long-suffering look. Gwen pulled that one down and set it on the counter next to the cookie sheets. “Mm, here, I’ll help.” She peeled off a huge ball of cookie dough and bit into it.
“Oooh, I’ll help too,” Juliet said, and snatched her own piece before Daphne could smack her hands.
“Where’s Cal?” Daphne asked. Calvin was insistent on everyone calling him Calvin, even Gwen, but for whatever reason, Daphne was the one and only being in existence who he not only allowed to call him by his dreaded nickname, but seemed pleased by it.
“Cal-VIN will be a little bit late. He’s taking a friend around to some job interviews today.”
“Aw, that’s so nice,” Daphne gushed. When it came to Calvin, she always gushed. “Who’s the friend? Anyone we know?”
“No. Wait, remember the guy I told you about a month ago? Helped us move in?”
“The pot dealer?” her mother said, frowning.
“No, no, his friend. Malcolm.”
“I don’t.”
“Doesn’t matter. Anyways, he lost his job at a grocery store, Calvin’s driving him, the end.”
“A grocery store?” Daphne asked, her frown deepening. “How do you get fired from a grocery store?”
“Be nice, Mom.”
Juliet pushed out one of the kitchen chairs and settled into it, nibbling on her cookie dough. “Oh oh oh, was he the tall one at the basketball court last week? Shaggy hair, kinda dopey looking?”
“He’s not dopey looking,” Gwen protested. “He’s cute in a… way.”
“In a dopey way.”
“Anyways, he’s got an interview at the Radio Shack on Fuller, so when they’re done there, they’ll swing by before heading downtown.”
Daphne began working the lip of the mug into the dough, cutting the cookies into circles and doling them out along the baking sheet. “I didn’t plan for an extra guest to eat, honey.”
Gritting her teeth and smiling, Gwen said, “If they stick around, Malcolm can have mine then, and I’ll just have a bite later.”
“Well, I just don’t think-”
“Mom. He’s a nice guy having a tough time. He could use a home cooked meal.”
Juliet finished off her cookie dough and wiped her hands on her pants. “You’re awfully defensive about him.”
“What? No. Look, we have, and he…” Gwen eyed Juliet as she started cracking up. “Oh, stop giving me shit.”
“Language!” Daphne said. “And I know how much you love Calvin, honey. You wouldn’t cheat. What does he have that Cal doesn’t?”
“Scruff,” Juliet offered. “Weed, probably. Looks like a pothead.”
“Would you two stop?”
“Fine,” Juliet said, but the twinkle in her eyes said this wasn’t over. “So, are you and Calvin trying yet?”
Daphne sucked in a long, somehow shrill breath, her eyes bugging out as her hands went to her chest.
“You son of a bi-” Gwen growled at Juliet, just before her mom exploded.
“Kids? You’re really thinking about kids? Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, baby!”
“No, Mom, she was-”
Daphne raced out of the room. “Honey, honey, Elliot, they’re trying!”
“No we’re not!” Gwen shouted after her.
“They’re what?” Elliot asked. Well… growled, really. “Has he even proposed yet? What would they do, get married when she’s pregnant? I swear, I’m going to…”
Juliet shook from holding her laughter back, and when Daphne came back in to grab Gwen’s face and plant a huge kiss on her forehead, she couldn’t hold back the dam any longer. “Auntie, Auntie, I was giving her hell.”
“What?” Daphne asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I just was teasing her a bit.”
“That’s a mean prank, Jay-Jay.”
“Sorry.”
“A mean prank.” Daphne eyed her daughter up and down slowly. “But it’s not like an accident couldn’t happen. Like your brother.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Hugh called out from the living room.
Her humor fading, Gwen said quietly, “Mom, he laughs about it, but it really does bug him when you say that to him.”
Daphne stepped over to a boiling pot of water on the stove, ready to dump in the ravioli. “Well, it’s the truth. Your dad’s little swimmers beat the snip.”
“Please, Mom, please don’t ever talk about Dad’s sperm again. Or anything related to his wang. Please. Thank you.” To Juliet, she hissed, “Remember our talk? ‘Hey, I’ll buy you a donut tomorrow at Mountie Moose if you help me avoid all the inevitable marriage and baby chat?’”
“Marriage?” Daphne asked, again immediately going nearly breathless.
“Oh good God,” Gwen muttered. “I’m abandoning ship. Maybe I’ll go see if Vanessa wants to run away to Taiwan or something. No, Taiwan’s not far enough. Pluto. There you go. Pluto.”
* * *
“Should I wait out in the car, or…?” Malcolm asked.
“No, no,” Calvin said as he pulled in behind Gwen’s car. “Come on in. Gwen told them you’ll be dropping by with me. We’ll say hello, maybe stay a minute if Daphne insists, and hustle out of there.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
They got out of the car, and Malcolm followed the other man up to a nice, somewhat eclectic house with a ton of additions that didn’t quite jive with what he assumed was the original house. Gwen stormed out the door and barreled right for Calvin. “Mom’s being extra Mom-ish today,” she said.
He leaned down to kiss her, and Malcolm fought down a pang of jealousy. Cal had been nothing but nice to him and deserved better. When they
pulled apart again, Gwen favored Malcom with that beautiful smile of hers, the one she’d only started to use on him after they’d met up another few times after their trip through the northern part of the state, mostly to play basketball and one time to grab dinner again.
“Hey, Malcolm.”
“Hi, Gwen.”
Surprising him, she stepped forward for a hug. It might have been his imagination, but Malcolm thought Calvin’s eyes might have narrowed. But her hug was so brief that it barely even registered.
“I hope you’re killing it out there,” she said to Malcolm, nestling into Calvin when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“I hope so too,” he said. “The grocery store thing was dumb of me. I had it coming.”
“What happened?” she asked as they headed up the sidewalk.
“Ah,” Malcolm said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was late a few times.”
“A few times?” she repeated. “You just started working there.”
“Yeah, well… it was an early shift.”
“Dude,” she said reproachfully, and Malcolm shrugged.
“I know, I know. But I’m gonna do better the next time.”
Inside, a handsome young man who looked to be about Gwen’s age glanced up from a game of Risk. Beside him was an achingly pretty blonde twirling one of the plastic figures in her fingers, staring at the board and jutting her jaw back and forth in thought. A middle-aged man with hair given mostly over to a salty shade completed the trio playing the game.
“Fresh blood!” the young man said cheerfully.
“Uh. Hi?” Malcolm asked. Then he caught himself and walked over, hand outstretched. “Malcolm. Friend of Cal’s. And Gwen’s.”
“Malcolm, friend of Cal and Gwen’s, I’m Hugh, brother of Gwen, friend of Cal,” the young man said, grinning hard with an awful lot of teeth.
The blonde elbowed him. “Don’t be an ass. Vanessa,” she said, half-rising and shaking before settling back down again.