“Okay,” said Ruby. “Well, I should probably go practice with the guys, now that we have a show to prepare for.”
“Right. No time to waste.”
She smiled at me a little quizzically. “You’re funny. Thanks for doing this.”
Then she leaned over and hugged me, one-armed, across the console. Her hand on my shoulder blade felt electric, and her hair smelled salty-sweet and expensive. I put my hand on her back and let it slide the tiniest bit lower, not wanting to seem too platonic but not wanting to creep her out, either. Every day at school I watched straight girls cling to their friends like they were long-lost lovers, but I worried those girls thought it was different when I did it.
Ruby pulled back, opened the door, and hopped out. “This was fun.”
“Agreed,” I said. “See you Monday?”
“Don’t remind me.” She waved and then began the long trip back up her driveway, and I fought the urge to honk my horn, just to get her to look at me one more time.
On Sunday I woke up to the beach calling my name through the window. It was that kind of morning, where you can sense it before your eyes are all the way open, in the way the sunlight filters through the blinds and in the salty-clean smell of the breeze. It was perfect, and I knew that toward the end of September, it would be one of the last (if not the last) tolerable ocean temperature days of the year, sans wet suit. As I lay in bed scrolling through everything that had happened on my phone overnight, I briefly considered asking Ruby to go to the beach with me. But seeing her two days in a row would be pushing it, for someone I had no relationship with until this week. Not that we were in a relationship. Plus, I didn’t want her to think I had no one else to hang out with, even if it was true. Ronni could never hang out on Sundays because of church and the extended family get-togethers that followed, and Alexis didn’t “do” beaches because she didn’t like being hot, sweating, or getting sand in her shoes.
Technically, this left me with one final option.
Before I could overthink it, I texted Jamie, because if I pretended to be at the stage at which asking Jamie to hang out was habitual, and emotionally unloaded, maybe I would trick my brain into actually moving into that stage. In fact, I thought, why not go a step further and offer to make us a picnic? Picnics didn’t have to be romantic. Two best friends could share a platonic picnic, no problem.
It took Jamie seven minutes to respond, during which time I weighed the pros and cons of moving to Romania to start a new life. But then, finally:
Sure
I sighed. During our relationship I’d repeatedly begged Jamie to use punctuation—exclamation marks, specifically—in her text messages so I’d know she didn’t hate me. She tried a few times, but soon reverted to habit, and when I brought it up again she said I should know she didn’t hate me because we were girlfriends, and we saw each other every day. Which is exactly what someone who will eventually break up with you would say.
Friends, fortunately, didn’t care about punctuation. So I got up and got dressed, and walked downstairs to the kitchen, where my mom sat at the table drinking at least her third cup of coffee and reading an Ann Rule book over a box of half- and three-quarters-eaten Sunny Donuts. One might think she’d get sick of crime, given the day job, but in the seventeen years and counting I’d been around, she hadn’t. Every weekend was the same: on Saturdays she took an eight-mile hike with her middle-aged lady hiking friends, and on Sundays she read about murder. Early on in high school I used to ask her once every few weeks if she had any dates coming up, but eventually she asked me if I really wanted to come downstairs in the morning to find some strange man sitting at the table with her, eating our doughnuts, and I’d been forced to concede she had a point.
“Good morning,” she said. “Nice day. You should go to the beach.”
“I’m going to,” I said. “I’m meeting Jamie.”
My mom peered at me over the rim of her coffee cup and said nothing.
“What?” I snapped. “We’re friends.”
She held up a hand in defense. “Okay! It just seems soon.”
“Well, it’s not,” I said. “I see her every day, and the sooner it’s normal, the better.”
“If I were you, I’d still be mad,” she said, poking the doughnut carcasses. She picked up a piece of powdered sugar and took a bite, leaving white residue on the corner of her mouth. “The anger stage is the best part of the grief cycle.”
I brushed the corner of my mouth so my mom would wipe hers. Ten years since the divorce, and you’re still in it, I thought. I felt guilty immediately. “Wouldn’t that be acceptance?”
My mom scrunched up her face as if thinking it over. “Nah.”
I laughed, which made her smile. She returned to her book, and I began assembling twin turkey-tomato-mustard-provolone sandwiches. I threw them into a bag with chips and cookies and two giant water bottles left over from soccer seasons past.
“Okay, Mom,” I said. “I’m headed out.”
“Hey, Quinn?”
“Yeah?”
“Speaking of your dad. You know he’s coming into town, right?”
“Yeah,” I said cautiously. I didn’t know she knew, actually. I was never really sure how transparent to be with either of them about the other. “I think we’re going to get breakfast or something.” I knew we were, really, but I didn’t want my mom to think I was too eager.
“You know why, right?”
“He said he’s visiting a friend?”
She sighed. “He’s got a job interview.”
“A job…here?” I asked dumbly.
“Yeah.”
She peered at me again, trying to see how I felt, which meant I had to work out how I felt and then keep it from showing on my face. Mainly I was confused.
“It’s not a sure thing,” my mom added. “They might not make an offer, and even if they do he might not take it. I think he’s content where he is.”
Only then did it hit me. “What about UNC?”
“If he took the job, and if UNC is where you end up—”
“It will be,” I interjected, now fully annoyed. I couldn’t believe this. Any of it.
“Okay, well,” my mom sighed. “We’ll cross those bridges when we come to them.”
My mom watched me stew for a few moments, until I remembered that the polite thing to do was to not make this all about me.