This Lullaby

Chapter Twelve

“Come on! Who wants to KaBoom?”

I looked at Lissa. It was over ninety degrees out, the sun was blasting hot, and somewhere over to my left, a barbershop quartet was singing “My Old Kentucky Home.” It was official: we were in hell.

“Not me,” I said. Again. Two weeks into her job shilling a new sports drink/caffeine jolt soda, and Lissa still couldn’t accept that I didn’t like the taste of it. And I wasn’t alone.

“It’s… it’s like… fizzy lemonade,” Chloe said delicately, swirling the tiniest sip of it around in her mouth. “With a weird cheap cola aftertaste.”

“So what do you think?” Lissa asked her, refilling the row of plastic cups on the table in front of her.

“I think…” Chloe said. Then she swallowed, and made a face. “Eeeech.”

“Chloe!” Lissa hissed, glancing around. “Honestly.”

“I told you, it tastes like crap,” I said, but she just ignored me, piling more KaBoom merchandise-plastic Frisbees, T-shirts, and plastic cups all emblazoned with the same swirling yellow sunshine logo-onto the table. “You know that, Lissa. You don’t even drink this stuff.”

“That is not true,” she said, adjusting her KaBoom name tag, which said Hi, I’m Lissa! Want to Boom? I’d tried to point out that this could be taken in other ways than sampling products, but she’d only waved me off, so self-righteous in her quest to spread the KaBoom message to cola drinkers everywhere. “I drink this stuff like water. It’s amazing!”

I turned around and looked behind me, where a family of four was passing by, hands already full of Don Davis Toyotafaire freebie merchandise. They didn’t stop, though. In fact, the KaBoom table was pretty much deserted, even with all the free stuff Lissa and her coworker, P.J., were giving away.

“Balloons, everyone! Who wants a KaBoom balloon?” Lissa shouted out into the crowd. “Free samples, folks! And we’ve got Frisbees!” She picked up one of the Frisbees and hurled it across the parking lot. It sailed evenly for a little ways before banking off and missing one of the new Land Cruisers by about a foot before crashing to the pavement. Don, who was talking up some customers by a row of Camrys, glanced over at us.

“Sorry!” Lissa said, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Easy on the Frisbees, slugger,” P.J. told her, picking up one of the plastic sample cups and downing it. “It’s still early.”

Lissa smiled at him gratefully, blushing, and I realized Chloe’s hunch about her feelings for P.J. were, in fact, correct. KaBoom, indeed.

The Don Davis Motors Toyotafaire had been in the works for weeks. It was one of the biggest sales bonanzas of the year, with games for the kids, fortune-tellers, Slurpee machines, even one very tired looking pony that was walking circles around the auto bays. And, right this way, in the shade by the showroom, local author and celebrity Barbara Starr.

Normally my mother never did publicity except when she had a new book out, and she now was at a point in her writing when she didn’t even want to leave her study, much less the house. Chris and I had been used to her schedule for years and knew to keep quiet when she was sleeping-even if it was at four in the afternoon-to stay out of the way when she passed through the kitchen mumbling to herself, and to understand that we’d know when she was done when she pushed the typewriter carriage to the left one last time, clapped her hands twice, and let out a loud, very emphatic, “Thank you!” It was the closest she came to religion-this one, final expression of gratitude.

But Don didn’t get it. First, he had no respect for the beaded curtain. In he’d walk, without hesitation, putting his hands on her shoulders even as she was still typing. When he did this, my mother’s keystrokes grew speedier: you could hear it, as if she was rushing to get out what was in her head before he broke her train of thought entirely. Then he’d go to take a shower, asking her to bring him a cold beer in a few minutes, would you, darling. Fifteen minutes later he’d be calling for her, wondering where that beer was, and she’d type fast again, pounding out the last lines she could before he padded back in, smelling of aftershave and asking what they were having for dinner.

The weird thing was that my mother was going along with it. She seemed totally smitten, still, with Don, to the point that she saw creeping around in the wee hours to write as a completely fair trade. With all her other husbands and boyfriends, she’d always stuck to her schedule, lecturing them, as she had us, about her “creative needs” and the “disciplinary necessity” of her time spent in the office. But she seemed more willing to compromise now, as if this was, indeed, going to be her last marriage.

Now, Chloe headed to the bathroom as I walked over to the table Don had set up for my mother next to the showroom. MEET BEST-SELLING AUTHOR BARBARA STARR! was painted on the banner that hung behind her, in big red letters framed by hearts. She was wearing sunglasses, fanning herself with a magazine while she talked to a woman wearing a fanny pack who had a toddler on her hip.

“… that Melina Kennedy was just the best character ever!” the woman was saying, switching the baby to her other side. “You know, you just really felt her pain when she and Donovan were separated. I couldn’t stop reading, I really couldn’t. I just had to know if they got back together.”

“Thank you so much,” my mother said, smiling.

“Are you working on something new?” the woman asked.

“I am,” my mother said. Then she lowered her voice and added, “I think you’ll like it. The main character is a lot like Melina.”

“Oooh!” the woman said. “I can’t wait. I honestly can’t.”

“Betsy!” a voice shouted from over by the popcorn machine. “Come here a second, will you?”

“Oh, that’s my husband,” the woman said. “It was just so nice to finally meet you. Really.”

“Same to you,” my mother replied as the woman walked away, over to where her husband, a shorter man wearing a bandanna around his neck, was scrutinizing the mileage on a minivan. My mother watched her go, then glanced at her watch. Don wanted her to stay for the full three hours, but I was hoping we’d get to go soon. I wasn’t sure how much more barbershop music I could take.

“Your public loves you,” I said as I walked up.

“My public is not really here, I don’t think. I’ve already had two people ask me about financing, and I’ve mostly just directed people to the bathroom,” she said. Then, more brightly, she added, “But I have really enjoyed that wonderful barbershop quartet. Aren’t they charming?”

I plopped down on the curb beside her, not even bothering to answer this.

She sighed, fanning herself again. “It’s very hot,” she said. “Could I have some of your drink?”

I looked down at the bottle of KaBoom Lissa had forced on me. “You don’t want this,” I said.

“Nonsense,” she said easily. “It’s scorching out here. Just let me have a sip.”

I shrugged and handed it over. She screwed off the top, tipped it to her lips, and took a decent-size mouthful. Then she made a somewhat uneasy face, swallowed, and handed the bottle back to me.

“Told you,” I said.

Just then the white Truth Squad van bumped into the parking lot, pulling into a space by the auto bay. The back door opened and John Miller jumped out, his drumsticks tucked under his arm, followed by Lucas, who was eating a tangerine. They started unloading equipment and stacking it as Ted climbed out of the driver’s side, slamming the door behind him. And then, as I watched, Dexter got out of the van, pulling a shirt on over his head. He checked his reflection in the side mirror, then ducked around the side of the van, out of my sight.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him, of course. The morning after we broke up, in fact, I’d been standing in line at Jump Java for Lola’s morning mocha when he walked in, crossed the room in a most determined fashion, and came right up to me.

“So I’m thinking,” he said, no hello or hi or anything, “that we need to be friends.”

Instantly, my internal alarms went off, reminding me of the breakup logic I’d been preaching for almost as long as I could remember. Not possible, I thought, but out loud I said, “Friends?”

“Friends,” he repeated. “Because it would be a shame if we did the whole awkward, ignoring-each-other, pretending-nothing-ever-happened thing. In fact, we could just jump right in and deal with it right now.”

I looked at the clock next to the espresso machine. It was 9:05. “Isn’t it a little early,” I said slowly, “to take that on?”

“That’s just the point!” he said emphatically as a man talking on his cell phone glanced over at us. “Last night we broke up, right?”

“Yes,” I said, in a quieter voice than he was using, hoping he’d catch the hint. No luck.

“And today, here we are. Meeting up, as we are bound to do endless other times between now and when the summer ends. We do work across from each other.”

“Agreed,” I said as I finally got up to the front of the line, nodding as the guy behind the counter asked if I wanted Lola’s usual.

“So,” he went on, “I say that we just admit that things may be a little strange, but that we won’t avoid each other or allow things to be awkward at all. If anything feels weird, we acknowledge it straight up and move on. What do you think?”

“I think,” I said, “that it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that,” I explained, grabbing some napkins out of the dispenser. “It’s a lie. It’s just something that people say they’ll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said ‘friendly’ relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it’s like breaking up all over again. But messier.”

He considered this, then said, “Okay. Point taken. And in this scenario of yours, since I’m the one pursuing the idea of a friendship, then it would be me who would get hurt again. Correct?”

“Hard to say,” I said, taking Lola’s coffee and mouthing a thanks to the counter guy as I stuffed a dollar bill into the tip box. “But if this followed the formula, yes.”

“Then I,” he said, “will prove you wrong.”

“Dexter,” I said softly as we walked to the door, “come on.” It seemed surreal to be discussing the previous night in such analytical terms, as if it had happened to someone else and we were just off to the side, doing the play-by-play.

“Look, this is important to me,” he said as he held the door open and I ducked beneath his arm, keeping the cup in my hands level. “I hate bad breakups. I hate awkwardness and those weird stilted conversations and feeling like I can’t go somewhere because you’re there, or whatever. For once I’d like to just skip all that and agree to part as friends. And mean it.”

I looked at him. Last night, as we’d stood in my front yard, I’d dreaded this, seeing him again. And I had to admit I kind of liked that it was already pretty much over with, the first awkward Ex Sighting. Check it off the list, move on. Break up efficiently. What a concept.

“It would be,” I said, brushing a hair out of my face, “the challenge of all challenges.”

“Ah,” he agreed, smiling. “Indeed. You up for it?”

Was I? It was hard to say. It sounded good on paper, but when actually put into practice I suspected there would be a few variables that would really screw up the numbers. But I hadn’t backed down from a challenge yet.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re on. We’re friends.”

“Friends,” he repeated. And then we shook on it.

That had been two weeks ago, and since then we’d talked several times, sticking to neutral topics like what was happening with Rubber Records (not much yet, but there was talk of A Meeting) and how Monkey was (good, but suffering through an infestation of fleas that had left everyone at the yellow house scratching and cranky). We’d even eaten lunch together once, sitting on the curb outside of Flash Camera. We’d decided there had to be rules, and established two so far. Number one: no unnecessary touching, which could only lead to trouble. And number two was if anything happened or was said that felt strange or awkward, there could be no strained silences: it had to be acknowledged as quickly as possible, brought out in the open, dealt with and dismantled, like diffusing a bomb.

Of course my friends all thought I was crazy. Two days after we’d broken up, I’d gone with them to Bendo, and Dexter had come over and chatted with me. When he’d left, I’d turned back to a row of skeptical, holier-than-thou faces, like I was drinking beer with a bunch of apostles.

“Oh, man,” Chloe said, pointing a finger at me, “don’t tell me you guys are going to be friends.”

“Well, not exactly,” I said, which only made them look more aghast. Lissa, who’d spent the better part of the summer reading the kind of self-help books I normally associated with Jennifer Anne, looked especially disappointed. “Look, we’re better friends than dating. And we hardly dated at all, anyway.”

“It won’t work,” Chloe told me, lighting a cigarette. “Crutch for the weak, the whole friends thing. Who used to say that?”

I rolled my eyes, staring up at the ceiling.

“Oh, that’s right!” she said, snapping her fingers. “It was you! You always said that, just like you always said that you should never date a guy in a band-”

“Chloe,” I said.

“-or give in to a guy who really pursues you, since they’ll just lose interest the moment the chase ends-”

“Give it a rest.”

“-or fall for someone with an ex-girlfriend who is still hanging around, because if she hasn’t gotten the message he probably isn’t sending it.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “That last one has nothing to do with this.”

“Two out of three,” she replied, waving her hand. “My point is made.”

“Remy,” Lissa said, reaching over and patting my hand, “it’s okay. You’re human. You make the same mistakes as any of us. You know, in that book I was reading, Coming to Terms: What Love Can and Can’t Do, there’s a whole chapter on how we break our rules for men.”

“I am not breaking my rules,” I snapped, hating that I’d ended up on the advice-receiving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.

Now, at Toyotafaire, Chloe and I left my mother chatting with another fan and headed over to a patch of grass for some shade. At the microphones, Truth Squad was almost totally set up. Don had told us over dinner a few days earlier that he’d hired them to play an hour-long set of nothing but car-related songs to really push the idea of fun, freewheeling summer driving.

“Okay, so I’ve got some prospects for us,” Chloe said as Truth Squad launched into “Baby You Can Drive My Car.”

“Prospects?”

She nodded. “College guys.”

“Hmm,” I said, fanning myself with one hand.

“His name is Matt,” she continued, “and he’s a junior. Cute, tall. He wants to be a doctor.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s too hot to date.”

She looked at me. “I knew it,” she said, shaking her head. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“You,” she said, “are so not one of us anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

She crossed her legs at the ankles, kicking off her shoes, and leaned back on her palms. “You say that you’re single and ready to be out there with us again.”

“I am.”

“But,” she went on, “every time I’ve tried to set you up or introduce you to anyone, you beg off.”

“It was just the one time,” I told her, “and that was because I’m not into skaters.”

“It was twice,” she corrected me, “and the second time he was totally cute and tall, just the way you like them, so don’t give me that crap. We both know what the problem is.”

“Oh, we do? And what is that?”

She turned her head and nodded toward where Truth Squad was in full swing, while two little kids in KaBoom T-shirts were dancing, jumping around. “Your ‘friend’ over there.”

“Stop,” I said, waving this off as ridiculous, which it was.

“You still see him,” she said, holding up a finger, counting this off.

“We work two feet from each other, Chloe.”

“You’re talking to him,” she said, holding up another finger. “I bet you even have driven past his house when it wasn’t even on your way home.”

That I wasn’t even going to honor with a response. God.

For a minute or two we just sat there, as Truth Squad played a rousing medley of “Cars,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” and “Born to Be Wild.” There were only a certain number of songs related to automobiles, but already they seemed to be grasping a bit.

“So, fine,” I said finally. “Tell me about these guys.”

She cocked her head to the side, suspicious. “Don’t do me any favors,” she said. “If you’re not ready to be out there, it’ll show. We both know that. It’s not even worth the trouble.”

“Just tell me,” I said.

“Okay. They’re all going to be sophomores, and…”

She kept talking, and I half listened, noticing at the same time that Truth Squad was stretching the theme considerably as they started playing “Dead Man’s Curve,” not exactly the kind of song that fired anyone up to plunk down five figures on a shiny new car. Don picked up on this too, glaring at Dexter until the song was cut short, just as the curve was about to get really deadly: instead, they segued, a bit clumsily, into “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.”

I could see Dexter rolling his eyes, between verses, back at John Miller, and felt that twinge again, then quickly shook it off, not wanting to risk another set of told-you-so’s from Chloe. It was time to get back on that horse, before I’d done permanent damage to my reputation.

“… so we set it up for tonight, seven o’clock. We’re all meeting at Rigoberto’s for dinner. It’s free breadstick night.”

“Okay,” I said. “Count me in.”

The thing about Out There that you always forget is how, at times, it can really suck.

This is what I was thinking that night around eight-thirty, as I sat at a table at Rigoberto’s, chewing on a stale breadstick and wishing my date, Evan, a chunky guy with tangled shoulder-length hair that desperately needed washing, would shut his mouth when he chewed.

“Tell me again,” I said under my breath to Chloe, who was already cuddled up close with her date, the only good-looking one in the bunch, “where you found these guys?”

“The Wal-Mart,” she said. “They were buying trash bags, and so was I. Can you believe it?”

I could. But this was because Evan had already told me that the day they’d met Chloe they had been on their way to pick up litter. Their fantasy game club had adopted a stretch of highway and spent one Saturday a month cleaning it up. The rest of their time, apparently, was spent drawing up sketches of their game “alter egos” and combating strange trolls and demons by rolling dice in somebody’s basement. In just an hour, I’d already learned more about Orcs, Klingons, and some master race invented by Evan himself called the Triciptiors than I ever cared to know.

Chloe’s date, Ben, was cute. It was clear, however, that she had not taken the trouble to look past him when making these plans: Evan was, well, Evan, and the twins David and Darrin both were sporting Star Wars T-shirts and had spent the entire dinner so far ignoring Lissa and Jess completely while discussing Japanese animation. Jess was shooting Chloe death looks, while Lissa just smiled politely thinking, I knew, about her KaBoom coworker, P.J., and the crush she had on him that she thought wasn’t obvious. This, basically, was Out There, and I realized in the last four weeks I’d not missed it one bit.

After dinner the brothers Darrin and David headed home with Evan in tow, clearly as smitten with us as we had been with them. Jess begged off by saying she had to put her little brothers to bed, and Chloe and Ben stayed at the table, feeding each other tiramisu, leaving just me and Lissa.

“What now?” she asked me as we climbed into my car. “Bendo?”

“Nah,” I said. “Let’s just go to my house and watch movies or something.”

“Sounds good.”

As we turned into my driveway, the headlights curving across the lawn, the first thing I saw was my mother sitting on the front steps. She had her shoes off, her elbows on her knees, and when she saw me she stood up, waving her arms, as if she was in the middle of the ocean clinging to a life raft instead of twenty feet from me on solid ground.

I got out of the car, Lissa behind me. I hadn’t taken two steps when I heard someone off to my left say, “Finally!”

I turned around: it was Don, and he was holding a croquet mallet in one hand. His face was red, his shirt untucked, and he looked pissed.

“What’s going on?” I asked my mother, who was now coming across the grass to us, quickly, her hands fluttering.

“What’s going on,” Don said loudly, “is that we have been locked out of the house for the last hour and a half with no way of gaining entry. Do you realize how many messages we’ve left for you on your phone? Do you?”

He was yelling at me. This took a moment to compute, simply because it had never happened before. None of my previous stepfathers had taken much interest in the parenting role, even when Chris and I were young enough to actually have tolerated it. Honestly, I was speechless.

“Don’t just stand there. Answer me!” he bellowed, and Lissa stepped back, a nervous look on her face. She hated confrontations. No one in her family yelled, and all discussions and disagreements were held in controlled, sympathetic, indoor voices.

“Don, honey,” my mother said, coming up beside him. “There’s no need to be upset. She’s here now and she can let us in. Remy, give me your keys.”

I didn’t move, keeping my eyes on Don. “I was at dinner,” I said in an even voice. “I didn’t have my phone with me.”

“We have called you six times!” he said. “Do you have any idea how late it is? I have a sales meeting at seven A.M. tomorrow, and I don’t have time to be standing around out here trying to break into my own house!”

“Don, please,” my mother said, reaching out a hand to touch his arm. “Calm down.”

“How did you get home if you don’t have your keys?” I asked her.

“Well,” she said. “We-”

“We drove home one of the new year models,” Don snapped, “and that’s not the point. The point is that we have left messages for you and your brother which were not returned or acknowledged and we have been out here for over an hour, about to bust out a goddamn window-”

“But she’s here now,” my mother said cheerfully, “so let’s just get her key and we’ll get inside and everything will be-”

“Barbara, for Christ’s sake, do not interrupt me when I’m talking!” he snapped, whipping his head around to look at her. “Jesus!”

For a second, it was very quiet. I looked at my mother, feeling a pang of protectiveness that I hadn’t experienced in years, since it was usually me either yelling at her or, more often, just wishing I could. But regardless of the anger my mother could flare in me, there had always been a clear line, at least in my mind, de marking the short but always clear distance between the We that was my family and whatever man was in her life. Don couldn’t see it, but I could.

“Hey,” I said to Don, my voice low, “don’t talk to her like that.”

“Remy, honey, give me your keys,” my mother said, reaching out to touch my arm. “Okay?”

“You,” Don said, pointing right in my face. I stared at his fat finger, focusing only on it, while everything else-Lissa standing off to the side, my mother pleading, the smell of the summer night-fell away. “You need to learn some respect, missy.”

“Remy,” I heard Lissa say softly.

“And you,” I said to Don, “need to respect my mother. This is nobody’s fault but your own and you know it. You forgot your keys, you got locked out. End of story.”

He just stood there, breathing hard. I could see Lissa shrinking down the driveway, bit by bit, as if with just another couple of steps she might be able to disappear completely.

“Remy,” my mother said again. “The keys.”

I pulled them out of my pocket, my eyes still on Don, then handed them past him to her. She took them and started quickly up the lawn. Don was still staring at me, as if he thought I might back down. He was wrong.

The porch light snapped on suddenly, and my mother clapped her hands. “We’re in!” she called out. “All’s well that ends well!”

Don dropped the croquet mallet. It hit the driveway with a thunk. Then he turned his back to me and headed up the walk, taking long, angry strides. Once up the front steps, he pushed past my mother, ignoring her as she spoke to him, and disappeared down the hallway. A second later I heard a door slam.

“What a baby,” I said to Lissa, who was now down by the mailbox, pretending to be engrossed with reading the new letters STARR/DAVIS that had recently been affixed to it.

“He was really mad, Remy.” She came up the driveway carefully, as if expecting Don to throw himself back out the door, ready for round two. “Maybe you should have just said you were sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” I said. “For not being psychic?”

“I don’t know. It just might have been easier.”

I looked up at the house, where my mother was standing in the doorway, hand on the knob, glancing down the hall to the darkened kitchen, the direction in which Don had stalked off. “Hey,” I called out. She turned her head. “What’s his problem, anyway?”

I thought I heard him saying something from inside, and she eased the door shut a bit, turning her body away from me. And suddenly I felt completely strange, like the distance between us was much much greater than what I could see from where I was standing. Like that line, always so clear to me, had somehow shifted, or never even been where I’d thought it was at all.

“Mom?” I called out. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Good night, Remy,” she said. And then she shut the door.

“I’m telling you,” I said to Jess. “It was totally messed up.”

Across from me, Lissa nodded. “Bad,” she said. “Like scary bad.”

Jess sipped on her Zip Coke, pulling her sweater tighter over her shoulders. We’d gone by and knocked on her window after leaving my mom’s, when I decided I wasn’t about to spend the evening under the same roof as Don and his temper. Plus there was something else: this weird feeling of betrayal, almost, as if for so long my mother and I had been on one team, and now suddenly she’d up and defected, pushing me aside for someone who would stick a finger in my face and demand respect he hadn’t even begun to earn.

“It’s really kind of normal behavior,” Jess told me. “This whole my-house-my-rules thing. Very male. Very Dad-esque.”

“He’s not my dad,” I told her.

“It’s a dominance thing,” Lissa chimed in. “Like dogs. He was making clear to you that he is the alpha dog.”

I looked at her.

“I mean, you’re the alpha dog,” she said quickly. “But he doesn’t know that yet. He’s testing you.”

“I don’t want to be the alpha dog,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to be a dog, period.”

“It’s weird that your mom would put up with that,” Jess said in her thinking voice. “She’s never been the type to take much crap, either. That’s where you get it from.”

“I think she’s scared,” I said, and they both looked at me, surprised. I was surprised myself; I didn’t realize I thought this until I said it aloud. “I mean, of being alone. This is her fifth marriage, you know? If it doesn’t work out-”

“-and you’re leaving,” Lissa added. “And Chris is this close to being married himself-”

I sighed, poking at my Zip Diet with my straw.

“-so she thinks this is her last chance. She has to make it work.” Lissa sat back, ripping open the bag of Skittles she’d bought and popping a red one in her mouth. “So maybe, she would pick him over you. Just for now. Because he’s the one she has to live with, you know, indefinitely.”

Jess eyed me as I heard this, as if expecting some reaction. “Welcome to adulthood,” she said. “It sucks as much as high school.”

“This is why I don’t believe in relationships,” I said. “They’re such a crutch. Why would she put up with his baby ways like this? Because she thinks she needs him or something?”

“Well,” Lissa said slowly, “maybe she does need him.”

“Doubtful,” I said. “If he moved out tomorrow she’d have a new prospect within a week. I’d lay money on it.”

“I think she loves him,” Lissa said. “And love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone’s bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”

“Love is an excuse to put up with shit that you shouldn’t,” I replied, and Jess laughed. “That’s how it gets you. It throws off the scales so that things that should weigh heavily don’t seem to. It’s a crock. A trap.”

“Okay, then,” Lissa said, sitting up straighter, “let’s talk about untied shoelaces.”

“What?” I said.

“Dexter,” she said. “His shoelaces were always untied. Right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question.”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Yes, you do, and yes, they were. Plus he was clumsy, his room was a mess, he was completely unorganized, and he ate in your car.”

“He ate in your car?” Jess asked incredulously. “No shit?”

“Just the one time,” I said, and ignored the it’s-a-miracle-throw-up-a-hallelujah face she made. “What’s the point here?”

“The point is,” Lissa cut in, “that these are all things that would have made you send any other guy packing within seconds. But with Dexter, you put up with them.”

“I did not.”

“You did,” she said, pouring more Skittles into her hand, “and why, do you think, were you willing to overlook these things?”

“Don’t say it was because I loved him,” I warned her.

“No,” she said. “But maybe you could have loved him.”

“Unlikely,” I said.

“Extremely unlikely,” Jess agreed. “Although, you did let him eat in your car, so I suppose anything’s possible.”

“You were different around him,” Lissa said to me. “There was something new about you that I’d never seen before. Maybe that was love.”

“Or lust,” Jess said.

“Could have been,” I said, leaning back on my palms. “But I never slept with him.”

Jess raised her eyebrows. “No?”

I shook my head. “I almost did. But no.” The night he’d played the guitar for me, that first time, picking out the chords of my father’s song, I’d been ready to. It had already been a few weeks, which at one time might have been considered a record for me. But just as we’d gotten close, he’d pulled back a bit, taking my hands and folding them against his chest, instead pressing his face into my neck. It was subtle, but clear. Not yet. Not now. I’d wondered what he was waiting for, but hadn’t found a good time to ask him. And now I’d never know.

“That,” Lissa said, snapping her fingers as if she’d just discovered uranium, “proves it. Right there.”

“Proves what?” I said.

“Any other guy you would have slept with. No question.”

“Watch it,” I said, pointing at her. “I have changed, you know.”

“But you would have, right?” she asked. She was so insistent, this new Lissa. “You knew him well enough, you liked him, you’d been hanging out for a while. But you didn’t. And why is that?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“It’s because,” she said grandly, sweeping her hand, “it meant something to you. It was bigger than just one guy and one night and out you go, free and clear. Part of the change I saw in you. That we all saw. It would mean more, and that scared you.”

I glanced at Jess but she was scratching her knee, choosing not to get into this. And what did Lissa know anyway? It was Dexter who’d stopped things, not me. But then again, I hadn’t tried to push it further, and there had been other chances. Not that that meant anything. At all.

“See?” Lissa said, pleased with herself. “You’re speechless.”

“I am not,” I said. “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Dexter,” she said quietly, “was the closest you’ve come to love, Remy. Real love. And you dodged it, at the last second. But it was close. Real close. You could have loved him.”

“No way,” I said. “Not a chance.”

When I got home later that night I realized, irony of ironies, that I was locked out. I’d given my key to my mother, and never thought to ask for it back. Luckily, Chris was home. So I just tapped on the window over the kitchen sink, making him jump about four feet vertically and shriek like a schoolgirl, which made having to forge through the dark and navigate around the pricker bushes in the backyard at least worthwhile.

“Hey,” he said nonchalantly as he opened the back door, all cool now, as if we both hadn’t just witnessed this particularly spineless behavior. “Where’s your key?”

“Here, somewhere,” I said, stopping the door before it slammed shut. “Mom and Don were locked out earlier.” Then I filled him in on the gory details as he munched on a peanut butter sandwich-bread butts again-nodding and rolling his eyes in all the right places.

“No way,” he said as I finished. I shushed him, and he lowered his voice. Our walls, we both knew, were thin. “What a chump. He was yelling at her?”

I nodded. “I mean, not in a violent way. More in a pouty, spoiled brat kind of way.”

He looked down at the last remnants of bread butts in his hand. “No surprise there. He’s a total baby. And the next time I trip over one of those Ensures on the side porch someone’s going down. Down. ”

This made me smile, reminding me of how much I really liked my brother. Despite our differences, we did have a history. No one understood where I was coming from the way he did.

“Hey Chris?” I asked him as he pulled a carton of milk from the fridge and poured himself a glass.

“Yeah?”

I sat down on the edge of the table, running my hand over the surface. I could feel little pieces of sugar, or salt, fine but distinct beneath my fingers. “What made you decide to love Jennifer Anne?”

He turned around and looked at me, then swallowed with a glunking noise my mother always screamed at him about when we were kids, saying it made him sound like he was drinking rocks. “Decide to love?”

“You know what I mean.”

He shook his head. “Nope. No idea.”

“What made you,” I expanded, “feel like it was a worthwhile risk?”

“It isn’t a financial investment, Remy,” he said, sticking the milk back in the fridge. “There’s no math to it.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Forget it.”

He put his glass in the sink, then ran water over it. “Do you mean what made me love her?”

I wasn’t sure I could take further discussion of that question. “No. I mean, when you thought about whether or not you wanted to open yourself up, you know, to the chance that you could get really hurt, somehow, if you moved forward with her, what did you think? To yourself?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” I snapped. “God. It’s a simple question.”

“Yeah, right. So simple I still don’t even know what you’re asking.” He flipped off the light over the sink, then wiped his hands on a dishtowel. “You want to know how I debated about whether or not to fall in love with her? Is that even close?”

“Forget it,” I said, pushing off the table. “I don’t even know what I’m trying to find out. I’ll see you in the morning.” I started toward the foyer, and as I got closer, I could see my keys laid out neatly on the table by the stairs, waiting for me. I slid them into my back pocket.

I was on the second step when Chris appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Remy.”

“Yeah?”

“If what you’re asking is how I debated whether or not to love her the answer is I didn’t. Not at all. It just happened. I didn’t ever question it; by the time I realized what was happening, it was already done.”

I stood there on the stairs, looking down at him. “I don’t get it,” I said.

“What part?”

“Any of it.”

He shrugged and flipped off the last kitchen light, then started up the stairs, brushing past me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Someday, you will.”

He disappeared down the hall, and a minute later I heard him shut his door, his voice low as he made his required good-night-again-this-time-by-phone call to Jennifer Anne. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and was on my way to bed when I stopped by the half-open door of the lizard room.

Most of the cages were dark. The lights for the lizards were kept on timers, which clicked them on and off at just the right cycles to make the lizards believe, I supposed, that they were still sunning themselves on desert rocks instead of sitting in a cage in a converted linen closet. But at the far end of the room, on a middle shelf, one light was on.

It was a glass cage, and the floor of it was covered in sand. There were sticks crisscrossing it, and at the top of one stick were two lizards. As I came closer, I saw that they were entwined-not in a mating, nature-takes-its-course kind of way, but almost tenderly, if that was even possible, like they were holding each other. They both had their eyes closed, and I could see the pattern of their ribs, revealed and hidden with each breath they took.

I kneeled down in front of the cage, pressing my index finger against the glass. The lizard on the top opened his eyes and looked at me, unflinching, his pupil widening slightly as he focused on my finger.

I knew this meant nothing. They were just lizards, cold-blooded and probably no smarter than the average earthworm. But there was something so human about them, and for a minute all the things that had happened in the last few weeks blurred past in my mind: Dexter and I breaking up, my mother’s worried face, Don’s finger pointing at me, all the way up to Chris shaking his head, unable to put into words what seemed to me, at least, the most simple of concepts. And all of it came down to one thing: love, or the lack of it. The chances we take, knowing no better, to fall or to stand back and hold ourselves in, protecting our hearts with the tightest of grips.

I looked back at the lizard in front of me, wondering if I had finally gone completely crazy. He returned my gaze, now having decided I was not a threat, and then slowly closed his eyes again. I leaned in closer, still watching, but already the light was dimming as the timer kicked in, and before I knew it, everything was dark.

Chapter Thirteen

“Remy, sugar? Come here for a minute, will you?”

I got up from behind the reception desk, putting down the stack of body lotion invoices I’d been counting, and walked back into the manicure/pedicure room, where Amanda, our best nail girl, was wiping down her work space. Behind her was Lola, patting her scissors into her open palm.

“What’s going on?” I asked, already suspicious.

“Just sit down,” Amanda told me, and the next thing I knew I was sitting: Talinga had snuck up behind me and pressed down on my shoulders, whipping a hair cape around me and snapping it at the neck before I even knew what was happening.

“Wait a second,” I said as Amanda grabbed my hands and planted them, quick as lightning, onto the table between us. She spread out my fingers and started filing my nails with quick, aggressive jerks of an emory board, biting her lip as she did so.

“Just a quick makeover,” Lola said smoothly, coming up behind me and lifting up my hair. “A little manicure, a little trim, a little makeup-”

“No way,” I said, pulling free from her grip. “You are not touching my hair.”

“Just a trim!” she replied, yanking me back into place. “Ungrateful girl, most women would pay big money for this. And you get it for free!”

“I bet not,” I grumbled, and they all laughed. “What’s the catch?”

“Keep your hands still or I’ll cut more than this cuticle,” Amanda warned me.

“No catch,” Lola said breezily, and I braced myself as I heard snipping behind me. God, she was cutting my hair. “A bonus.”

I looked at Talinga, who was testing lipsticks on the back of her hand, glancing at me every so often as she gauged my colors. “Bonus?”

“A plus. A gift!” Lola laughed one of her big laughs. “A special present for our Miss Remy.”

“A gift,” I repeated, warily. “What is it?”

“Guess,” Amanda said, smiling at me as she started applying smooth streaks of red polish to my pinky nail.

“Is it bigger than a bread box?” I said.

“You wish!” Lola said, and they all started laughing hysterically, like this was the funniest thing ever.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I said sternly, “or I’m out of here. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

They were still tittering, trying to control themselves. Finally Talinga took a deep breath and said, “Remy, honey. We found you a man. ”

“A man?” I said. “God. I thought maybe I was getting some free cosmetics or something. Something I need. ”

“You need a man,” Amanda said, moving to my next nail.

“No,” Talinga said, “ I need a man. Remy needs a boy.”

“A nice boy,” Lola corrected her. “And today is your lucky day, because we happen to have one for you.”

“Forget it,” I said as Talinga bent down next to me, poking at my face with a makeup brush. “Is this the one you tried to set me up with before? The bilingual one with nice hands?”

“He’ll be here at six,” Lola went on, ignoring me completely. “His name is Paul, he’s nineteen, and he thinks he’s coming to pick up some samples for his mother. But instead he’ll see you, with your beautiful hair-”

“And makeup,” Talinga added.

“And nails,” Amanda said, “if you stop wiggling around, goddammit.”

“-and be completely smitten,” Lola finished. Then she did two more small snips and ran a hand through my hair, checking her work. “God, you had some split ends. Disgraceful!”

“What in the world,” I said slowly, “makes you think I’ll go through with this?”

“Because he’s good-looking,” Talinga said.

“Because you should,” Amanda added.

“Because,” Lola said, whisking the cape off me, “you can.”

I had to admit they were right. Paul was good-looking. He was also funny, pronounced my name right, had a firm handshake-and, okay, nice hands-and seemed to be a good sport about the fact that it was such an obvious setup, exchanging a wary expression with me when Lola “just happened” to have a gift certificate from my favorite Mexican place that she was suddenly sure she’d never use.

“Do you get the feeling,” Paul asked me, “that this is out of our control?”

“I do,” I agreed. “But it is a free dinner.”

“Yes,” he said. “Good point. But really, don’t feel obligated.”

“You either,” I told him.

We stood there for a second while Lola and Talinga and Amanda, in the next room, were so quiet I could hear someone’s stomach growling.

“Let’s just go,” I said. “Make their day and all.”

“Okay.” He smiled at me. “I’ll pick you up at seven?”

I wrote down my address on the back of a Joie business card, then watched as he walked out to his car. He was cute, and I was single. It had been almost three weeks since Dexter and I had split, and not only was I dealing with it, we’d almost finessed the impossible: a friendship. And here was this nice guy, an opportunity. Why wouldn’t I take it?

One possible answer to this question appeared as I was walking out to my car, digging in my purse for my keys and sunglasses. I wasn’t looking where I was going, much less around me, and didn’t even see Dexter come out of Flash Camera and cross the parking lot until I heard a loud clicking noise and looked up to see him standing there, holding a disposable wedding camera.

“Hey,” he said, winding the film with one finger. Then he put the camera back up to his eye and bent back a bit, getting me from another angle. “Wow, you look great. Got a hot date or something?”

I hesitated, and he took the picture. Click. “Well, actually…” I said.

For a second, he didn’t move, not winding the film or anything, just looking at me still through the viewfinder. Then he took the camera away from his eye, then smacked his forehead with one hand and said, “Ouch. Oh, man. Awkward moment time. Sorry.”

“It’s just a setup,” I said quickly. “Lola did it.”

“You don’t have to explain,” he said, winding the film, click-click-click. “You know that.”

And then it happened. One of those too-long-to-just-be-a-regular-pause-in-conversation pauses, and I said, “Okay. Well.”

“Oh, man, awkward. Double awkward,” he said. Then shrugged his shoulders briskly, as if shaking this off, and said, “It’s okay. It’s a challenge, after all, right? It’s not supposed to be easy.”

I looked down at my purse, realizing my keys, which I’d been digging for this whole time, were in fact in my back pocket. I pulled them out, glad to have some kind of task, however stupid, to focus on.

“So,” he said casually, pointing the camera over my head and taking a picture of Joie’s storefront, “who’s the guy?”

“Dexter. Really.”

“No. I mean, this is what friends discuss, right? It’s just a question. Like asking about the weather.”

I considered this. We had known what we were getting into: eating ten bananas wasn’t easy either. “The son of a client here. I just met him twenty minutes ago.”

“Ah,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Black Honda?”

I nodded.

“Right. Saw him.” He wound the film again. “Looked like a nice, upstanding guy.”

Upstanding, I thought to myself. As if he were running for student council president, or volunteering to help your grandmother across the street. “It’s just dinner,” I said as he snapped another picture, this one, inexplicably, of my feet. “What’s with the camera?”

“Defective shipment,” he explained. “Somebody at the main office left the box out in the sun, so they’re all warped. Management said we could have them, if we wanted them. Kind of like the tangerines, you know. Can’t turn down free stuff.”

“But will the pictures even come out?” I asked, noticing now, as I looked closer, that the camera itself was bent, warped, like the VCR tape I’d accidentally left on my dash the summer before. It didn’t look like you could even get the film out, much less develop it.

“Don’t know,” he said, taking another picture. “They might. Or they might not.”

“They won’t,” I said. “The film’s probably ruined from the heat.”

“Or maybe,” he said, holding the camera out at arm’s length and smiling big as he snapped a picture of himself, “it isn’t. Maybe it’s just fine. We won’t know until we develop it.”

“But it’s probably a total waste,” I told him. “Why bother?”

He put down the camera and looked at me, really looked at me, not through the lens, or from the side, just me and him. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s the whole problem here. I think they just might come out. Maybe they won’t be perfect-I mean, they could be blurred, or cut off in the middle-but I’m thinking it’s worth a shot. That’s just me, though.”

I just stood there, blinking, as he lifted the camera up and took one more shot of me. I stared straight at him as it clicked, letting him know I got his little metaphor. “I have to go,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, and smiled at me. “See you later.”

As he walked away, he tucked the camera into his back pocket, darting between cars as he headed back to Flash Camera. Maybe he would print out the pictures and find them perfect: my face, my feet, Joie rising up behind me. Or maybe it would just be black, void of light, not even an outline of a face or figure visible. That was the problem, after all. I wouldn’t waste the time on such odds, while he jumped to them. People like Dexter followed risks the way dogs followed smells, thinking only of what could lie ahead and never logically of what probably did. It was good we were friends, and only that. If even that. We never would have lasted. Not a chance.

It had been two days since the scene with Don in the front yard, and so far I’d managed to avoid him, timing my trips to our common area, the kitchen, when I knew he was either out or in the shower. My mother was easier: she was completely immersed in her novel, pushing through the last hundred pages at breakneck speed, and hardly would have noticed a bomb going off in the living room if it meant pulling herself away from Melanie and Brock Dobbin and their impossible love.

Which was why I was surprised to find her sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee beside her, when I came home to get ready for my date with setup Paul. She had her head balanced on one hand and was staring up at Don’s naked lady painting, so lost in thought that she jumped when I touched her shoulder.

“Oh, Remy,” she said, pressing a finger to her temple and smiling. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” I pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, dropping my keys on the table. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for Don,” she said, fluffing her hair with her fingers. “We’re meeting some Toyota VIPs for dinner, and he’s a nervous wreck. He thinks if we don’t impress them they’ll cut back on his dealer perk allotment.”

“His what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “It’s dealership talk. This whole night will be dealership talk, and meanwhile I’ve got Melanie and Brock at a sidewalk café in Brussels with her estranged husband fast approaching and the last thing in the world I want to think about is sales figures and cut-rate financing techniques.” She cast a longing look into her study at her typewriter, as if being pulled there by some tidelike force. “Oh, God, don’t you sometimes wish you could live two lives?”

Inexplicably, or maybe not, Dexter suddenly popped into my head, watching me through a bent disposable camera. Click. “Sometimes, yeah,” I said, shaking this off. “I guess I do.”

“Barbara!” Don bellowed, opening the door to the New Wing. I couldn’t see him, but his voice had no trouble carrying. “Have you seen my red tie?”

“Your what, darling?” she called back.

“My red tie, the one I wore to the sales dinner? Have you seen it?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she said, turning in her chair. “Maybe if you-”

“Never mind, I’ll just wear the green one,” he said, and the door shut again.

My mother smiled at me, as if he was just really something, then reached over and patted my hand. “Enough about me. What’s happening with you?”

“Well,” I said, “Lola set me up with a blind date for tonight.”

“A blind date?” She looked at me warily.

“I already met him, at the salon,” I told her. “He seems really nice. And it’s just dinner.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Just dinner. As if nothing could happen within three courses and a bottle of wine.” Then she sat there, blinking. “That’s good,” she said suddenly. “Oh, my. I should write that down.”

I watched as she picked up an envelope, an old power bill, and a pen. Three courses-just dinner-nothing could happen she scrawled on the side of it, capping it off with a big exclamation point, then slid the envelope under the sugar bowl, where it would probably remain, forgotten, until one day when she was totally blocked and found it. She left these scribblings all around the house, folded into corners, on the backs of shelves, acting as markers in books. I’d once found one about seals, which later turned out to be a major plot point in Memories of Truro, sticking out of a box of tampons under my sink. I guess you just never knew when inspiration would strike.

“Well, we’re going to La Brea,” I told her, “so it’ll probably just be the one course. Even less chance of it working out.”

She smiled at me. “You never know, Remy. Love is so unpredictable. Sometimes you’ll know a man for years and then one day, boom! Suddenly you see him in a different way. And other times, it’s that first date, that first moment. That’s what makes it so great.”

“I’m not falling in love with him. It’s just a date,” I said.

“Barbara!” Don yelled. “What did you do with my cuff links?”

“Darling,” she said, turning around again. “I haven’t touched your cuff links.” She sat there, waiting, and when he didn’t say anything else she just shrugged, turning back to me.

“God,” I said, lowering my voice, “I don’t see how you put up with him.”

She smiled, reaching over to brush my hair out of my face. “He’s not so bad.”

“He’s a big baby,” I said. “And the Ensure thing would make me nuts.”

“Maybe it would,” she agreed. “But I love Don. He’s a good man, he’s kind to me. And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater. Yes, Don has habits that try my patience. And I’m sure I have plenty that do the same for him.”

“At least you act like an adult,” I said, although I knew myself this wasn’t always true. “He can’t even dress himself.”

“But,” she went on, ignoring this, “the love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that’s the key. It’s like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot, Remy.”

“Love is a sham,” I said, sliding the saltshaker in a circle.

“Oh, honey, no!” She reached over and took my hand, squeezing my fingers. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

I shrugged. “I have yet to be convinced otherwise.”

“Oh, Remy.” She picked up my hand, folding her fingers around mine. Hers were smaller, cooler, the nails bright pink. “How can you say that?”

I just looked at her. One, two, three seconds. And then she was with me.

“Oh, now,” she said, letting my hand go, “just because a few marriages didn’t last doesn’t make it a total wash. I had many good years with your father, Remy, and the best part was that I got Chris and you out of it. The four years I was with Harold were wonderful, until the very end. And even with Martin and Win, I was happy for most of the time.”

“But they did end, all of them,” I said. “They failed.”

“Maybe some people would say so.” She folded her hands in her lap and thought for a second. “But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might not be forever?”

“Maybe,” I said, picking at the edge of the table. “Because at least then you’re safe. The fate of your heart is your choice, and no one else gets a vote.”

She considered this, really thinking about it, then said, “Well, it’s true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it’s also true that I have loved, and been loved. And that carries a weight of its own. A greater weight, in my opinion. It’s like that pie chart we talked about earlier. In the end, I’ll look back on my life and see that the greatest piece of it was love. The problems, the divorces, the sadness… those will be there too, but just smaller slivers, tiny pieces.”

“I just think that you have to protect yourself,” I said. “You can’t just give yourself away.”

“No,” she said solemnly. “You can’t. But holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn’t make you strong. If anything, it makes you weaker. Because you’re doing it out of fear.”

“Fear of what?” I said.

“Of taking that chance,” she said simply. “Of letting go and giving into it, and that’s what makes us what we are. Risks. That’s living, Remy. Being too scared to even try it-that’s just a waste. I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t regret things. Because at least I didn’t spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.”

I sat there, not even sure what to say next. I realized I’d felt sorry for my mother for nothing. All these years I’d pitied her all her marriages, saw the very fact that she kept trying as her greatest weakness, not understanding that to her, it was the complete opposite. In her mind, me sending Dexter away made me weaker than him, not stronger.

“Barbara, we’ve got to be there in ten minutes so let’s-” Don appeared in the kitchen doorway, tie crooked, his jacket folded over one arm. He stopped when he saw me. “Oh. Remy. Hello.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Oh, look at your tie,” my mother said, standing up. She walked over to him, smoothing her hands down the front of his shirt, and straightened it, tightening the knot. “There. All fixed.”

“We should go.” Don kissed her on the forehead and she stepped back from him. “Gianni hates having to wait.”

“Oh, well, then let’s get going,” my mother said. “Remy, honey, have a wonderful time. Okay? And think about what I said.”

“I will,” I told her. “Have fun.”

Don headed out to the car, keys in hand-which I noticed, of course-but my mother came over to me as I stood up, putting her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t let your mother’s history make you a cynic, Remy,” she said softly. “Okay?”

Too late, I thought as she kissed me. Then I watched as she walked out to the car, where Don was waiting. He put a hand against the small of her back, guiding her into her seat, and in that one moment I began to think I just might understand what she was talking about. Maybe a marriage, like a life, isn’t only about the Big Moments, whether they be bad or good. Maybe it’s all the small things-like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day-that stretch out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

My luck was continuing. Paul was actually not a bad setup.

I’d been a little wary when he’d picked me up, but was surprised when, actually, we’d immediately fallen into talking about college. Apparently one of his best friends from high school was at Stanford, and he’d been there over Christmas to visit.

“Great campus,” he was saying as the mariachi band, a La Brea staple, started up yet another rendition of “Happy Birthday” across the restaurant. “Plus the ratio in the classes of professors to students is really good. You’re not just dealing with a TA, you know?”

I nodded. “I hear it’s pretty rigorous academically.”

He smiled. “Oh, come on. I know how smart you have to be to get in there. I doubt you’ll have a problem. You probably, like, aced the SATs, right?”

“Wrong,” I said, shaking my head.

“I, however,” he said grandly, taking a sip of his water, “scored in the moron category. Which is why I’ll still be at my fine state school pulling the gentleman’s C, while you head off to lead the free world. You can send me a postcard. Or, better yet, come see me at my postgraduate job, where I’ll be happy to Supersize your order because, you know, we’re friends and all.”

I smiled. Paul was a charmer, and a rich boy, but I liked him. He was the kind of guy where talking comes easily because he has something in common with everyone. Already, other than Stanford we’d discussed waterskiing (he was terrible, but addicted), the fact that he was bilingual (Spanish-his grandmother was Venezuelan), and the fact that once summer was over, he’d head back to school, where he was a brother at Sigma Nu, majored in psychology, and managed what he described as the “all heart, no skills” men’s basketball team. He wasn’t goofy or uproariously hilarious, but then again, he wasn’t clumsy either, and both his shoes were tied. Before I knew it, our food had come, we’d eaten, and we were still sitting there talking, even as they cleared every plate from around us in a subtle hint that we were lingering too long.

“Okay,” he said, as we made our waiter’s day by finally leaving, “in the interest of full disclosure, I have to say I was a little wary about this.”

“In the interest of full disclosure,” I replied, “I would say that you were not alone in that feeling.”

As we reached the car, he surprised me by unlocking my door, then holding it open as I climbed in. Nice, I thought, as he walked around to the driver’s side. Very nice.

“So, if this had been a total disaster,” he said as he got in, “I’d tell you I had a great time, then take you home, walk you to your door, and run every stop sign on the way out of your neighborhood.”

“Classy,” I said.

“But,” he went on, “since it wasn’t, I was wondering if you wanted to go to a party with me. Some friends of mine are having a pool thing. You interested?”

I considered my options. So far, it had been a good night. A good date. Nothing had happened that I would regret, or have to think about too much later. It was all going by the book, but for some reason I couldn’t shake what my mother had said to me from my mind. Maybe I did hold the world at arm’s length, and so far it had worked for me. But you just never knew.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Great.” He smiled, then cranked the engine. As he started to back out, I caught him glancing over at me, and knew, right then, that already things were in motion. It was funny how easy it was to start again, after only three weeks. I’d thought Dexter would affect me more, change me, but here I was with another boy in another car, the cycle starting all over again. Dexter was the different one, the aberration. This was what I was used to, and it was good to be back on a sure footing again.

“Man,” Lissa said, dipping a fry into her ketchup, “it’s like you special-ordered him or something. How is that?”

I smiled, sipping on my Diet Coke. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“He’s totally cute.” Lissa stuffed another fry in her mouth. “God, all the good ones are taken, aren’t they?”

“So does this whining,” Jess asked Lissa, “mean that KaBoom P.J. has a girlfriend?”

“Don’t call him that,” Lissa said sulkily, eating another fry. “And they’ve already broken up once this summer. She hasn’t come to a single event, either.”

“Bitch,” Jess said, and I laughed out loud.

“The point is,” Lissa continued, ignoring us, “that it’s just not fair that I’ve been dumped and now the guy I like is unavailable while Remy gets not only fun band boyfriend but now cute college boyfriend. It’s not right.” She ate another fry. “And, I can’t stop eating. Not that anybody cares, since I’m completely unlovable anyway.”

“Oh, please,” Jess grumbled. “Get out the violin.”

“Fun band boyfriend?” I said.

“Dexter was nice,” she told me, wiping her mouth. “And now you have perfect Paul too. And all I’ve got is an endless supply of KaBoom and the appetite of a truck driver.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite,” Jess told her. “Guys like a few curves.”

“I have curves already,” Lissa replied. “What’s next? Clumps?” Chloe, the thinnest of all of us, snorted at this. “That’s one word for it.”

Lissa sighed, shoving her tray away and wiping her hands on a napkin. “I gotta go. I’m due at the Tri-Country track meet in fifteen minutes. We’re KaBooming the all-state athletes.”

“Well,” Jess said dryly, “be sure to wear protection.”

Lissa made a face. She was over the KaBoom jokes, but they were just too easy.

Back at work, Paul dropped by to see me on his way home from his life-guarding job at the Y. I couldn’t help but notice a couple of bridesmaids waiting for prewedding manicures ogle him a bit as he came in, tanned and smelling like suntan lotion and chlorine.

“Hey,” he said, and I stood up and kissed him, very lightly, because that was about where we were at relationship-wise. It had been a week and a half, and we’d seen each other almost every day: lunches, dinners, a couple of parties. “I know you’re busy tonight, but I just wanted to say hello.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello.” He grinned at me. God, he was cute. I kept thinking that if only I’d gone out with him way back when Lola had first tried to set us up, the entire summer would have been different. Totally different.

After all, Paul met just about every criteria on my guy list. He was tall. Good-looking. Had no annoying personal habits. Was older than me but not by more than three years. Was a decent dresser but didn’t shop more than I did. Fell within the acceptable limits in terms of personal hygiene (i.e., aftershave and cologne yes, mousse and fake tan, no). Was smart enough to carry on good conversation but not an eggbert. But the big whammy, the tipping point, was that he was leaving at the end of the summer and we’d already established that we would part as friends and go our separate ways.

Which left me with a nice, cute, courteous guy with his own life and hobbies who liked me, kissed very well, paid for dinner, and had no problem with any of the terms that so many before him had stumbled over. And all this from a blind date. Amazing.

“So I know tonight is girls’ night,” he said as I slid my hands across the counter, over his, “but I wondered what the chances were for getting up with you later?”

“Not good,” I told him. “Only the lamest women bail their girlfriends for a guy. It’s against the code.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Well. It was worth a shot.”

Across the parking lot, I could see the white Truth Squad van pulling up to Flash Camera. Ted parked in the loading zone and hopped out of the driver’s side, slamming the door behind him, then disappeared inside.

“So what are you doing tonight?” I asked Paul. “Boy stuff?”

“Yep,” he said as I looked across at Flash Camera again, watching as Dexter followed Ted back to the van. They were talking animatedly-arguing?-as they hopped in and drove off, running the stop sign that led past Mayor’s Market, toward the main road.

“… some band the guys want to see is playing at that club over by the university.”

“Really,” I said, not exactly listening as the white van pulled out into traffic in front of a station wagon, which let loose with an angry beep.

“Yeah, Trey says they’re really good… Spinnerbait, I think they’re called.”

“Hate Spinnerbait,” I said automatically.

“What?”

I looked at him, realizing I’d been in a complete fog for this entire conversation. “Oh, nothing. I just, um, I heard that band kind of sucked.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Really? Trey says they’re great.”

“Oh, well,” I said quickly. “I’m sure he knows better than me.”

“I doubt that.” He leaned across the counter and kissed me. “I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

As he left, the two bridesmaids eyed me appreciatively, as if I was due respect simply because such a guy was with me. But for some reason I was distracted, ringing up Mrs. Jameson’s hair streaking as a bikini wax and then charging her fifty bucks instead of five for some cuticle cream. At least it was almost time to go home.

I was getting into my car when I heard someone tap on the passenger window. I looked up: it was Lucas. “Hey Remy,” he said, when I rolled down the window. “Can you give me a ride home? Dex already left with the van and otherwise I have to hoof it.”

“Sure,” I said, even though I was already running late. I was supposed to pick up Lissa, and the yellow house was entirely in the other direction. But it wasn’t like I could just leave him there.

He climbed in, then immediately began to fiddle with the radio as I backed out of my parking spot. This, at one point, would have been grounds for instant ejection, but I let it slide because I was in a decent mood. “What CDs you got?” he asked, flipping past my main preset to the lower end of the dial and cranking up some experimental-sounding, shrieking-ish noise on the college radio station.

“They’re in the glove box,” I said, pointing. He opened it up and shuffled through them-they had been arranged alphabetically, but only because I’d had some extra time when stuck in a traffic jam a few days earlier. He kept making clucking noises, low sighs, and mumbles. Apparently my collection, like my presets, wasn’t up to his standards. But I had no need to impress Lucas. Thanks to Dexter I knew not only that his given name was Archibald, but also that in high school he’d had long hair and played in a metal band called Residew. Apparently there was only one picture existing of Lucas wailing on his keyboard in full-hair-sprayed mode, and Dexter had it.

“So,” I said, feeling the need to mess with him a bit anyway, “I hear Spinnerbait’s playing tonight.”

He jerked his head around and looked at me. “Where?”

“Murray’s,” I told him as we cruised through a yellow light.

“Where’s that?”

“Across town, by the university. It’s a pretty big place.” I could see him in my peripheral vision; he was gnawing on the cuff of his shirt, looking irritated.

“Hate Spinnerbait,” he grumbled. “Bunch of poser rock assholes. Totally manufactured sound, and their fans are a bunch of pretty-boy, frat-a-tat blondies with good hair driving Daddy’s car with no taste whatsoever. ”

“Ouch,” I said, unable to help but notice this description, while harsh, did somewhat describe Trey, Paul’s best friend, as well as Paul himself, if you didn’t know him better. Which, of course, I did.

“Well, this is big news,” Lucas said as I turned onto their street. “But not as big as what else is going on.”

“What’s that?” I said, immediately flashing back to the van speeding out of Mayor’s Village earlier.

He glanced over at me, and I could tell by his face he was weighing whether it was even my business. “High-level band stuff,” he said cryptically. “We’re on the brink. Basically.”

“Really,” I said. “The brink of what?”

He shrugged as I slowed down, the yellow house coming up in sight. I could see Ted and Scary Mary in the front yard, sitting in lawn chairs: she had her feet in his lap, and they were sharing a box of Twinkies. “Rubber Records wants to meet with us. We’re going up to D.C. next week, to you know, talk to them.”

“Wow,” I said, navigating my way into the driveway, where the van was parked at an angle. Ted looked over at us, mildly interested, and Mary waved as Lucas popped open his door and got out. “That’s great.”

“Get this,” he yelled at Ted. “Spinnerbait’s playing tonight.”

“Hate Spinnerbait!” Mary said.

“Where at?” Ted asked as Lucas shut my door and walked around the front of the car.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, knocking his hand on my half-open window. “I appreciate it.”

“Man, what is that all about?” Ted yelled. “They’re invading our territory!”

“It’s a turf war!” Lucas said back, and they both laughed.

He started to walk away, but I beeped the horn, and he turned around. “Hey, Lucas.”

“Yeah?” He took a couple of steps back toward me.

“Good luck with everything,” I said, then felt somewhat awkward, seeing that I hardly knew him. Still, for some reason I needed to say something. “I mean, good luck to you guys.”

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “We’ll see how it goes.”

As I pulled out, he was dragging up a milk crate to join Mary and Ted’s outdoor picnic as Ted tossed him a Twinkie. I glanced back one last time at the house, where I could see Monkey sitting in the doorway, panting. I wondered where Dexter was, then reminded myself that it wasn’t my concern any longer. But if he’d been home, he probably would have come out and said hello to me. Just because we were friends.

I started down the street, easing to a slow stop at the stop sign. In my rearview, I could see Ted, Mary, and Lucas still sitting there, talking, but now Dexter was with them, crouching down next to the makeshift table, unwrapping a Twinkie while Monkey circled them, tail wagging. They were all talking, and for a split second I felt a pang, as if I was missing out on something. Weird. Then, the car behind me beeped, impatient, and I jerked myself back to reality, shaking off this fog and moving forward again.

When I got home, the house was quiet. My mother was out of town, at a writers’ conference she attended every August, where she taught workshops to aspiring romance novelists, soaking up buckets of admiration for three days and two nights in the Florida Keys. As for Chris, he was basically living and sleeping at Jennifer Anne’s, where the bread wasn’t all butts and he could eat his breakfast staring at prints of cheerful flower gardens instead of fifteen-pound neoclassic breasts. Normally I liked having the house to myself, but things were still awkward with me and Don, so I’d taken Lissa up on her offer of sleeping at her house for the weekend, informing Don of my decision with a formal note I wedged under the growing pyramid of empty Ensure cans on the kitchen table.

Now I went into my mother’s office, pushing the curtain aside. On the shelf next to her desk, there was a stack of papers: the new novel, or what there was of it so far. I pulled it into my lap and tucked my legs up underneath me, flipping the pages. When I’d last left Melanie, she’d been facing a cold marital bed with a distant husband, realizing her marriage had been a mistake. That had been about page 200, and by 250, she had left Paris and was back in New York, working in fashion design for a nasty woman with villain written all over her. Apparently, coincidence of coincidences, Brock Dobbin was also back in New York, having been injured during some kind of third world riot while working in his prizewinning career as a photojournalist. At the fall shows, they’d caught each other’s eye from across the runaway, and a romance was reborn.

I skipped to page 300, where things had obviously gone bad: Melanie was in a mental hospital, doped up on painkillers, while her former boss took credit for her entire fall line. Her estranged husband, Luc, was also back in the picture, involved in some kind of elaborate financial scheme. Brock Dobbin seemed to have disappeared entirely, but I found him on page 374, in a Mexican prison, where he was facing dubious charges of trafficking drugs and falling for the charms of a local beggar girl named Carmelita. This, I figured, had to be where my mother was losing her train of thought, but by 400 she seemed to have her steam back, and everyone was in Milan preparing for the fall shows. Luc was trying to reconcile with Melanie, but his intentions weren’t good, while Brock was back on the job, chasing a story about the dirty underside of fashion with his trusty Nikon and a sense of justice that no injury, not even a rock to the head in Guatemala, could quell.

The last sheet in my lap was numbered 405, and in it Melanie and Brock were drinking espresso at a café in Milan.

They only had eyes for one another, as if their time apart had made them hungry for each other in a way that could be conveyed solely by a glance, forbidden to be expressed in words. Melanie’s hands were shaking, even as she wrapped them in her silk shawl, the fabric providing little comfort in the stiff breeze.

“And you love him?” Brock asked her. His green eyes, so deep and probing, were watching her intently.

Melanie was shocked at his bluntness. But it seemed the time in prison had given him an urgency, a need for answers. He stared at her, waiting. “He is my husband,” she said.

“ That is not what I asked.” Brock reached over and took her hand, folding it within his. His fingers were calloused and thick, rough against her pale skin. “Do you love him?”

Melanie bit her lip, forcing down the sob she feared would escape if she was pressed to tell the truth about Luc and his cold, cold heart. Brock had left her all those months ago with no other choice. She’d given him up for dead, their love as well. He had been like a ghost walking up to her as she sat at the café, crossing over from that world to her own.

“I do not believe in love,” she said.

Brock squeezed her hand. “How can you say that, after what we had? What we still have?”

“We have nothing,” she said, and took her hand back. “I am married. I will make my marriage work because…”

“Melanie.”

“Because this man loves me,” she finished.

“ This man,” Brock said, his voice grave, “loves you.”

“You are too late.” Melanie stood. She had put Brock Dobbin from her mind again and again, telling herself that she could make a life with Luc. Luc, so suave and debonair, so steady and strong. Brock was always coming in and out of her life, making promises, the love they shared so passionate, and then just gone, leaving her behind in a cloud of memories and train smoke as he disappeared, heading across the world, chasing the story that would never be theirs. Maybe Luc wasn’t ever going to love her the way Brock had, filling her body and mind with a joy that made the world fall away. But that joy never lasted, and she wanted to believe in a forever. Even one that sometimes left her wanting at night, dreaming of better things.

“Melanie,” Brock called after her as she started down the cobblestone street, wrapping her scarf around her. “Come back.”

They were words she knew well. She had said them herself, at the station in Prague. Outside the Plaza, as he’d climbed into a cab. On the deck of the yacht, as his boat sped away, riding the waves. He always did the leaving. But not this time. She kept walking, and did not look back.

Go Melanie, I thought, turning the last page over on the stack on my lap. But I had to admit, it was not typical of my mother’s heroines to turn from a man of passion to a faulty man who provided a steady hand, if not a passionate one. Was my mother preaching settling? It was a discomforting thought. She’d been so quick to tell me I was wrong about love. But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.

Chapter Fourteen

“Pull over at this store up here,” Paul called out to Trey, who was driving. “Okay?”

Trey nodded and put on the turn signal. In the front seat, Lissa turned around to look at me, raising her eyebrows as she nodded toward the backseat console, where there was not only the standard ashtray and cup holder but also a separate CD player and a video screen.

“This car is amazing,” she whispered. I had to agree with her. Trey drove one of those huge SUVs, fully loaded. It reminded me of a spaceship, full of glowing buttons and levers, and I half expected that somewhere to the left of the steering wheel would be a small switch marked WARP SPEED.

We pulled up in front of the Quik Zip and Trey cut the engine. “Who wants what?” he asked. “It’s a long ride ahead.”

“We definitely need provisions,” Paul told him, opening his door. A small, polite chiming noise sounded, bing bing bing. “Beer and…?”

“Skittles,” Lissa finished for him, and he laughed.

“One pack of Skittles,” he said. “Okay. Remy?”

“Diet Coke,” I told him. “Please.”

He hopped out of the car, shutting his door behind him. Trey jumped out as well, leaving the keys in and the radio on low. We were on our way to the drive-in one town over that played triple features on summer nights. It wasn’t a double date, since Trey had a girlfriend at school, and we’d originally invited Chloe and Jess as well. But Jess had to baby-sit, and Chloe, having already dumped her nerd boyfriend, was now pursuing some guy she’d met at the mall.

“If I had a car like this,” Lissa said now, turning around completely in her seat, “I would live in it. I could live in it. And still have room to rent.”

“It is huge,” I agreed, glancing behind me, where there were two more rows of seats before you even got close to the back door. “It’s kind of sick, actually. Who needs this much room?”

“Maybe he buys a lot of groceries,” Lissa suggested.

“He’s a college student,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, shrugging, “all I know is I wish he didn’t have a girlfriend. I’ve decided I like cute rich boys.”

“What’s not to like,” I said absently as I watched Paul and Trey eye the guy behind the counter-it was well-known underground information which Zip clerks checked IDs closely and which didn’t-and make their way to the rear of the store, picking up not one but two packs of Skittles for Lissa on the way. These boys did nothing in a small way, or so I was learning. Everything Paul had bought me in the two weeks we’d been dating had been Supersized or Doubled, and he always reached for his wallet immediately, not even entertaining my efforts to go Dutch every once in a while. He was still Perfect Paul, the Ideal Boyfriend Exhibit A. And yet something in me continued to nag, as if I just wasn’t enjoying this-the fruit of so many years of hard dating work-enough.

I heard a rattling noise and glanced over to my left, startled to see the Truth Squad van pull up right beside us. I started to lean back, out of sight, before remembering that the windows were tinted so black you couldn’t see in. Ted was behind the wheel, a cigarette poking out of his mouth, and John Miller was in the passenger seat. As we watched, he leaned down and pulled on his door handle, and it swung open, but for some reason he forgot to let go and was taken with it, quickly dropping out of sight, the door left ajar.

Ted glanced over at the empty seat, sighed in an irritated way, and got out of the van, slamming his door behind him. “Idiot,” he said loud enough for us to hear as he rounded the front bumper, where we could still see him through the windshield. He was looking down at the pavement. “Are you hurt?”

We couldn’t hear John Miller’s reply. But by then I was distracted anyway, because I’d spotted Dexter climbing clumsily into the front seat of the van, tripping over the gearshift before tumbling into the driver’s seat and then out the door, dropping to the pavement a bit more gracefully than John Miller but not by much. He had on the same orange T-shirt as the day I’d met him, with a white oxford cloth shirt over it. Sticking out of the front pocket was another one of those warped wedding cameras. He looked in Lissa’s window, peering close, but couldn’t see anything. She just stared back, as if on the hidden side of a two-way mirror.

“Isn’t that Dexter?” she whispered, keeping her voice low-Trey’s window, on the driver’s side, was open-as he pulled the camera out of his pocket and leaned in, taking a picture of her black window. The flash lit the whole inside of the truck for a second, and then he went to stick it back in his pocket, missing once, before fitting it back in.

“Yeah,” I said as we watched him stumble slightly as he rounded the front of the van, reaching out a hand to touch Trey’s bumper for support. He was weaving, and not in the typical Dexter-clumsy way. He seemed drunk.

“Okay, look you two,” Ted announced as Dexter ambled up, “I said I’d get you here and I did. But I’ve got a date with Mary and she’s already pissed at me so this is the end of the line. I’m not a taxi service.”

“My good man,” I heard John Miller say, in a faux Robin Hood voice, “you have done your duty.”

“Are you going to get up, or what?” Ted asked.

John Miller got to his feet. He was still in his work clothes but looked entirely wrinkled, as if someone had balled him up in a pocket for a couple of hours. His shirt was hanging out, his pants totally creased, and he, too, had a disposable camera, sticking out of one of his pants pockets. He had a scratch on his cheek, too, which looked fresh, probably the result of the tumble from the van. He reached up and touched it, as if surprised to find it there, then let his hand drop.

“My good man,” Dexter said, flopping an arm around Ted, who immediately made a face, clearly fed up, “we owe you the greatest of favors.”

“My good man,” John Miller echoed, “we will repay you with gold, and maidens, and our eternal allegiance to your cause. Huffah!”

“Huffah!” Dexter repeated, raising his fist.

“Will you two cut that shit out?” Ted snapped, shaking off Dexter’s arm. “It’s annoying.”

“As you wish, comrade,” John Miller told him. “Raise a glass and huffah!”

“Huffah!” Dexter said again.

“That’s it.” Ted started back to the van. “I’m gone. You guys can huffah all you want-”

“Huffah!” they yelled in unison. John Miller, throwing his arms into it, seemed close to tumbling over again.

“-but you get home on your own. And don’t do anything stupid, okay? We don’t have bail money right now.”

“Huffah!” John Miller said, saluting Ted’s retreating back as he walked away. “Thank you, oh kind sir!”

Ted flipped them the bird, obviously over it, then coaxed the van’s engine to life and backed away, leaving them there in front of the Quik Zip, where they commenced taking pictures of each other posing by the newspaper racks. Inside, I watched as Paul and Trey chatted up the guy behind the counter as he slid their two six-packs into a paper bag.

“Okay, now give me some pout,” Dexter was saying to John Miller, who struck a model’s pose, sticking out his chest and using a stack of coupon fliers as a prop, fanning them in front of his face and peeking over them, seductively. “There, that’s good! Great!” The flash popped, and Dexter wound the film, giggling. “Okay, now do somber. That’s right. You’re serious. You’re hurt…”

John Miller looked out at the road, suddenly mournful, contemplating the Double Burger, which was across the street, with a wistful expression.

“Beautiful!” Dexter said, and they both busted out laughing. I could hear Lissa chuckling in front of me.

John Miller had struck his best pose yet, draping himself across the phone booth and fluttering his eyelashes, when Dexter popped one last flash and ran out of film. “Damn,” he said, shaking the camera, as if that would suddenly make more pictures appear. “Oh, well. So much for that.”

They sat down on the curb. I kept thinking we should roll down the window, say something to let them know we were there, but already it seemed too late to do so without repercussions.

“Truth be told, my good man,” John Miller said solemnly, turning his own disposable camera in his hands, “I am somber. And serious. And hurt.”

“My good man,” Dexter told him, leaning back on his palms and stretching his feet out in front of him, “I understand.”

“The woman I love will not have me.” John Miller squinted up at the sky. “She thinks I am not husband material, and, in her words, a bit immature. And today, in defiance of this proclamation, I quit my very easy job in which I made nine bucks an hour doing not very much at all.”

“There are other jobs, my squire,” Dexter said.

“And, on top of that,” John Miller continued, “the band will mostly likely be rejected by yet another record label because of the artistic integrity of Sir Ted, who will drive us all into retirement by stubbornly refusing to admit that his potato opuses are a bunch of crap.”

“Aye,” Dexter said, nodding. “It is true. Young Ted may, indeed, shoot us all in the foot.”

This was news to me, but not entirely surprising. Dexter had told me that Ted’s vehement insistence that they do no covers for a demo, ever, had worked against them in previous towns, with previous chances.

“But you, fine sir.” John Miller clapped Dexter on the shoulder, a bit unsteadily. “You have problems of your own.”

“This is true,” Dexter replied, nodding.

“The women,” John Miller sighed.

Dexter wiped a hand over his face, and glanced down the road. “The women. Indeed, dear squire, they perplex me as well.”

“Ah, the fair Remy,” John Miller said grandly, and I felt a flush run up my face. Lissa, in the front seat, put a hand to her mouth.

“The fair Remy,” Dexter repeated, “did not see me as a worthwhile risk.”

“Indeed.”

“I am, of course, a rogue. A rapscallion. A musician. I would bring her nothing but poverty, shame, and bruised shins from my flailing limbs. She is the better for our parting.”

John Miller pantomimed stabbing himself in the heart. “Cold words, my squire.”

“Huffah,” Dexter agreed.

“Huffah,” John Miller repeated. “Indeed.”

Then they just sat there, saying nothing for a moment. In the back of the Excursion, I could feel my heart beating. Watching him, I knew there was nothing I could do now to take any of it back. And I felt ashamed for hiding.

“What kind of money you got?” John Miller said suddenly, digging into his own pocket. “I think we need more beer.”

“I think,” Dexter said, pulling out a wad of bills and some change, which he promptly dropped on the ground, “that you’re right.”

Paul and Trey came out of the store then, and Paul yelled over at us, “Hey, Remy-was that diet you wanted or regular? I couldn’t remember.” He stuck his hand in the bag he was carrying and pulled out two bottles, one of each. “I got you both, but…”

Lissa put her hand on the window button to lower it, then glanced back at me, not knowing what she should do. But I just froze, my eyes on Dexter. He looked at Paul, slowly comprehending the situation, and then over at the truck, at us.

“Diet,” he said out loud, looking right at me, as if suddenly he could see me.

Paul looked over at him. “What’s that?”

Dexter cleared his throat. “She wants diet,” he said. “But not in a bottle, like that.”

“Hey man,” Paul said, smiling slightly, “what are you talking about?”

“Remy drinks Diet Coke,” Dexter told him, standing up. “But from the fountain drink thing. Extra large, lots of ice. Isn’t that right, Remy?”

“Remy,” Lissa said softly. “Should we-”

I opened up my door and was out, dropping to the ground-it was unbelievable how high up the Excursion was-before I even really knew what I was doing. I walked up to them. Paul was still smiling, confused, while Dexter just looked at me.

“Huffah,” he said, but this time John Miller didn’t chime in.

“This is fine,” I said to Paul, taking the drinks from him. “Thanks.”

Dexter was just staring at us and I could tell Paul was uneasy, wondering what was going on.

“No, it’s okay,” Dexter said suddenly, as if someone had asked him. “Not awkward at all. But we’d say if it was, right? Because that’s the deal. The friends deal.”

By now, Trey had started toward the truck, wisely knowing to keep out of this. John Miller walked into the Quik Zip. And then there were three.

Paul glanced at me and said, “Everything okay?”

“Everything,” Dexter told him, “is just fine. Fine.”

Paul was still watching me, waiting for verification. I said, “It’s fine. Just give me a minute, okay?”

“Sure.” He squeezed my arm-as Dexter watched, a pointed look on his face-then walked over to the truck, climbing in and shutting the door behind him.

Dexter looked at me. “You know,” he said, “you could have let me know you were there.”

I bit my lip, looking down at the Diet Coke. I lowered my voice, then said, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said, too quickly, then snapped his fingers, all happy-go-lucky. “Absolutely-freaking-fantastic!” Then he looked at the truck again. “Man,” he said, shaking his head. “That thing has a freaking Spinnerbait sticker on it, for God’s sake. Better hurry, Remy, old Tucker and Bubba the third are probably getting impatient.”

“Dexter.”

“What?”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?”

Okay, so I knew why. This, in fact, was the standard post-breakup behavior, the way he should have been behaving all along. But since it was starting now, instead of then, I was thrown a bit.

“You were the one who said we should be friends,” I said.

He shrugged. “Oh, come on. You were just playing along with that, right?”

“No,” I said.

“This is all you,” he said, pointing one somewhat wobbly finger at my chest. “You don’t believe in love, so it just follows logic you wouldn’t believe in like, either. Or friendship. Or anything that might involve even the smallest personal risk.”

“Look,” I said, and now I was starting to get a little pissed. “I was honest with you.”

“Oh, well let’s just give you a medal, then!” he said, clapping his hands. “You break up with me because I might really like you, enough to look past just hooking up for the summer, and now I’m the bad guy?”

“Okay,” I said, “so you would have rather I lied and said I felt the same way, then dumped you a month later instead?”

“Which would have been just so inconvenient,” he said sarcastically, “making you miss Mr. Spinnerbait and that opportunity.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is that what this is about?” I asked him. “You’re jealous?”

“That would make it simple, wouldn’t it?” he said, nodding. “And Remy likes simple. You think you have everything figured out, that you can chart my reaction and what I’m saying on some little graph you keep tucked away. But life isn’t like that.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Then what is it like? You tell me. ”

He leaned in very close to me, lowering his voice. “I meant what I said to you. I wasn’t playing some kind of summer game. Everything I said was true, from the first day. Every goddamn word.”

My mind flitted back then, over the challenges, the jokes, the half-sung songs. What meaningful truth was there in that? It had only been that first day that he’d said anything big, and that was just-

There was a whirring noise behind me, and next Lissa’s voice, slight and tentative. “Um, Remy?” she asked, then cleared her throat, as if realizing how she sounded. “We’re going to miss the beginning of the movie.”

“Okay,” I said, over my shoulder. “I’ll be right there.”

“We’re done anyway,” Dexter explained, saluting the truck. To me he added, “That’s what this has been all about for you, correct? Making it clear. That you and me-it was nothing more than what you’ll have with Spinnerbait boy, or the guy after that, or the guy after that. Right?”

For one split second, I wanted to tell him he was wrong. But there was something in the way he said this, a cocky angriness, that stopped me. He’d said himself I was a bitch, and once I would have taken pride in that. So sure, okay. I’d play.

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “You’re right.”

He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I’d been all along. I’d just hidden her well.

I started to walk away, toward the truck. Paul opened the back door for me. “Is he bothering you?” he asked, his face serious. “Because if he is-”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s fine. We’re done.”

“Young knight!” Dexter yelled at Paul, just as he was shutting the door. “Be forewarned, when she does have the fountain drink, she has a vicious arm on her. She will peg you, my good man. When you least see it coming!”

“Let’s go,” Paul said, and Trey nodded, starting to back up.

As we drove away I was determined not to look back. But in Lissa’s side mirror, I could still see him standing there, shirttails flapping, arms spread, up in the air, as if waving us off on a grand trip while he stayed behind. Bon voyage, take care. Go in peace. Huffah.

The next day when I got back from spending the night at Lissa’s, my mother was home. I dropped my keys on the side table, my purse on the stairs, and was just starting into the kitchen when I heard her.

“Don?” she called out, her voice bouncing down the hallway that led to the new wing. “Honey? Is that you? I took an earlier flight, thought I could surprise-” She rounded the corner, the sandals she was wearing clicking across the floor, then stopped when she saw it was me. “Oh, Remy. Hello. I thought you were Don.”

“Obviously,” I said. “How was Florida?”

“Heavenly!” She walked over and hugged me, pulling me close against her. She had a nice tan and a new haircut, shorter and streaked with a bit of blond, as if in Florida you are required by law to go tropical. “Just wonderful. Invigorating. Rejuvenating!”

“Wow,” I told her as she released me, stepping back. “All that in only three days?”

“Oh,” she sighed, walking ahead of me into the kitchen, “it was just what I needed. Things have been so busy and stressful since the wedding, and then before the wedding with all the planning and organizing… it was just too much, you know?”

I decided not to point out how little wedding planning she had actually done, figuring she was going somewhere with this. So instead I just leaned against the sink as she pulled an Ensure out of the fridge, popping the little tab top and taking a sip.

“But once I was there,” she said, pressing a hand to her heart and closing her eyes, dramatically. “Sheer heaven. The surf. The sunsets. Oh, and my fans. I just felt like I was finally myself again. You know?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, although it had been a while since I’d felt anything like myself. All night I’d kept seeing Dexter in my mind, arms waving, calling after me.

“So I came home on an earlier flight, hoping to share this new feeling of contentment with Don, but-he’s not here.” She took another sip of her Ensure, glancing out the kitchen window. “I guess I was just feeling hopeful.”

“He hasn’t been around at all,” I told her. “I think he worked, like, all weekend.”

She nodded gravely, putting the Ensure down on the counter. “It’s been such a problem for us. His work. My work. All the details of each. I feel like we haven’t even had a chance to really bond as husband and wife yet.”

Uh-oh, I thought again, as a warning bell sounded softly in my head. “Well,” I began, “you’ve only been married a couple of months.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And while I was gone, I realized that we really have to focus on this marriage. The work can wait. Everything can wait. I think I’ve been guilty too long of putting other things first, but not this time. I just know things are going to be better now.”

Okay. So that sounded positive. “That’s great, Mom.”

She smiled at me, pleased. “I really believe it, Remy. We may have had a bumpy adjustment, but this one’s for good. I’m finally realizing what it takes to really be a partner. And it just feels great.”

She was smiling so happily, with this new conversion. As if somewhere high over the Southeast seaboard, she’d finally found the answer to the puzzle that had eluded her for so long. My mother always had ducked out of relationships when the going got tough, not wanting to dirty her hands with messy details. Maybe people could change.

“Oh, goodness, I just can’t wait to see him,” she said to me now, walking to the table and picking up her purse. “I think I’ll just run down to the dealership and bring him lunch. He loves it when I do that. Honey, if he calls, don’t let on, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”

“Okay,” I told her, and she blew me a kiss as she sailed out the door and across the lawn to her car. I had to admire it, that absolute kind of love that couldn’t even wait a couple of hours. I’d never felt that strongly about anyone. It was nice, this rushing need to say something to someone right this very second. Almost romantic, really. If you liked that sort of thing.

The next morning I was in line at Jump Java, half asleep and waiting for Lola’s morning mocha, when I saw the white Truth Squad van pull up outside, rattling to a stop in the fire lane. Ted hopped out and came into the store, pulling some wrinkled bills out of his pocket.

“Hey,” he said when he saw me.

“Hey,” I replied, pretending to be engrossed in a story on redistricting on the front page of the local newspaper.

The line for coffee was long, and full of cranky people who wanted their drinks made with such intricate specifics that it gave me a headache just listening to the orders. Scarlett was working the espresso machine, trying to keep up with a slew of nonfat, soy-milk double-tall requests with a sour look on her face.

Ted was a bit behind me in line, but then the guy between us, disgusted by the wait, walked out. Which left us next to each other, so we had no choice but to talk to each other.

“So Lucas told me you guys have a meeting with Rubber Records,” I said.

“Yup. Tonight, in D.C. We’re leaving in an hour.”

“Really,” I said as we slowly crept forward about an inch in the line.

“Yeah. They want us to play for them, you know, in the office. And then maybe at this showcase on Thursday, if they can get us a spot. Then, if they like us, it might get us something permanent up there.”

“That’s great.”

He shrugged. “It is if they like our stuff. But they’re pushing for some stupid covers instead, which, you know, totally goes against our integrity as a band.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I mean, the other guys, they’d do freaking anything for a contract, but, you know, to me it’s about more than that. It’s about music, man. Art. Personal expression. Not a bunch of corporate, upper-management bullshit.”

A businessman holding the Wall Street Journal glanced back at us, but Ted just looked at him, indignant, until he faced forward again.

“So you’re doing ‘The Potato Opus’?” I asked.

“I think we should. That’s what I’ve been pushing all along. Like us for our original stuff, or not at all. But you know Lucas. He’s never been behind the potato stuff at all. He’s so freaking lowbrow, it’s ridiculous: I mean, he was in a hair-metal band. What the hell does he know about real music?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to this.

“And then there’s John Miller, who’d play anything as long as he doesn’t have to go back to school and push paper in his daddy’s company some day. Which leaves us with Dexter, and you know how he is.”

I was startled, slightly, at this. “How he is?” I repeated.

Ted rolled his eyes. “Mr. Positive. Mr. Everything’s-Gonna-Be-All-Right-I-Swear. If we left it up to him, we’d just go up there with no game plan, no set of demands, and just see how it goes.” He flipped his hand in a loose, silly way, punctuating this. “God! No plan, no worries whatsoever. Ever! I hate people like that. You know what I’m talking about.”

I took in a breath, wondering how to respond to this. It was the same thing I’d always been so annoyed with about Dexter, as well, but coming from Ted it sounded so small-minded, and negative. He was so opinionated, so sure he knew everything. God. I mean, sure, maybe Dexter didn’t think things through quite enough, but at least you could stand to-

“Next!” Scarlett yelled. I was at the front of the line. I stepped up and told her I wanted Lola’s regular, then moved aside so Ted could get his extra-large, black coffee, no lid.

“Well,” I said, as he paid, “good luck this week.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Thanks.”

We walked out together, him to the van, me starting down to Joie, where I was ticking down my last days as receptionist ex traordinaire. It was August 20, and I was leaving for school in three weeks. If we’d stayed together, I’d always assumed it would be me leaving Dexter behind. But now, I saw, it might have been me staying here, watching him go. Funny all the ways things could work out. But this was better, totally. Of course it was.

With Dexter gone for a full week, I didn’t have to worry about chance encounters or awkward moments. It made life so much easier, and inspired me to really get things done, as if him being in my same area code was enough to affect my sense of equilibrium.

First, I cleaned. Everything. I detailed my car, Armor All-ing every inch of it, and had my oil changed. I shampooed the interior, realphabetized my CDs, and, yes, cleaned the windows and windshield from the inside. This inspired me so much I tackled my room, stuffing four garbage bags with my closet discards for the thrift shop before hitting the clearance rack at the Gap, to stock up on new, college-me clothes. I was so industrious I shocked myself.

How had I gotten so disorganized? Once, keeping the vacuum cleaner lines even on my bedroom carpet was second nature. Now, struck with this sudden fervor, I found mud tracks in my closet, spilled mascara in my cosmetic drawer, one mismatched shoe-one!-stuffed far underneath my bed. It made me wonder if I’d been in some sort of fugue state. Restoring order to my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuffed the toes of my shoes with tissue paper, and arranged all the bills in my secret stash box facing the same way, instead of tossed in sloppy and wild, as if by my evil twin.

All week, I kept making lists and crossing things off them, ending each day with a sense of great accomplishment eclipsed only by complete and total exhaustion. This, I told myself, was exactly what I’d wanted: a clean exit, smooth and effortless, every t crossed and i dotted. There were only a few more loose ends, a couple of items to deal with. But I already had a game plan set, the steps numbered and outlined clearly, and there was still plenty of time.

“Uh-oh,” Jess said darkly as we sat at Bendo. “I know that look.”

Chloe looked at her watch. “Well,” she said, “it is about that time. You leave in three weeks.”

“Oh no!” Lissa cried, finally catching on. “Not Paul. Not yet.”

I shrugged, sliding my beer in a circle on the table. “It makes sense,” I said. “The time I have left, I want to concentrate on being with my family. And you guys. There’s no point in dragging it out so there has to be some big airport scene with him.”

“Good point,” Chloe agreed. “He definitely hasn’t been of airport status.”

“But I like Paul,” Lissa said to me. “He’s so sweet.”

“He is,” I said. “But he’s also temporary. As I am for him.”

“And so, he joins the club,” Chloe said, holding up her beer. “To Paul.”

We drank, but even as I did so I flashed back to what Dexter had said to me in the parking lot of the Quik Zip, about how he’d end up no different from the guy before, or the guy after. And he wasn’t, really. Just a blip between Jerk Jonathan and Perfect Paul, one more summer boyfriend who was already fading from memory.

Or was he? Dexter had been on my mind. I knew it was because things had, in fact, ended badly, regardless of our efforts. He was one thing that didn’t get done as planned, and I couldn’t check him off the way I wanted to.

Paul, on the other hand, had been inching that way for the last few days. But honestly, I hadn’t really been in it from the get-go. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe I was just tapped out and needed a break instead of starting something new. But so often I’d felt like I was going through the motions, moving mechanically as we talked, or went to dinner, or hung out with his friends, or even made out in the darkness of his room or mine. Sometimes, when we weren’t together, I had trouble even picturing him clearly. It seemed, in light of this, the right time to end things neatly and totally.

“The boyfriend club,” Jess said now, leaning back in the booth. “God. How many guys has Remy dated?”

“A hundred,” Lissa said instantly, then shrank back when I looked at her. “I mean, I don’t know.”

“Fifty,” Chloe decided. “Not less than.”

They all looked at me. “I have no idea,” I said. “Why are we talking about this?”

“Because it’s topical. And now, as you are about to leave to spread your dating experience across not only this town but also the country -”

Jess laughed out loud.

“-it’s only fair that we run through a greatest hits, if you will, of your past just as you embark on your present.”

“Are you drunk?” I asked her.

“First!” she said, ignoring me. “Randall Baucom.”

“Oh, Randall,” Lissa sighed. “I loved him too.”

“That was sixth grade,” I pointed out. “God, how far back are we going?”

“Next,” Jess said, “seventh grade. Mitchell Loehmann, Thomas Gibbs, Elijah what’s-his-bucket…”

“The one with the jug head,” Lissa added. “What was his last name?”

“I never dated anybody with a jug head,” I said indignantly.

“Then we had the six months of Roger,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “Not a good time.”

“He was an asshole,” I agreed.

“Remember when he cheated on you with Jennifer Task and the whole school knew but you?” Lissa asked me.

“No,” I said darkly.

“Moving on,” Chloe sang out, “we get to ninth grade, and the triple whammy of Kel, Daniel, and Evan, as Remy methodically works her way through the offensive line of the soccer team.”

“Now, wait just a second,” I said, knowing I was getting defensive, but God, I had to stick up for myself sometime. “You’re making me sound like a total slut.”

Silence. Then they all burst out laughing.

“Not funny,” I grumbled. “I’ve changed.”

“We know you have,” Lissa said earnestly, patting my hand in her sweet way. “We’re just talking about the old days here.”

“Why don’t we talk about you guys, then?” I said. “How about Chloe and the fifty-odd people she’s dated?”

“I cheerfully claim every one of them,” she said, smiling at me. “God, Remy. What’s up with you? Lost your touch? Not proud of your conquests anymore?”

I just looked at her. “I’m fine,” I said.

The count continued, while I tried not to squirm. There were guys I didn’t remember-Anton, who’d worked selling vitamins at the mall-and guys I wished I didn’t, like Peter Scranton, who’d turned out to be not only a total jerk but also involved with a girl from a school in Fayetteville who’d made the two-hour trip to town specifically to kick my ass. That had been a fun weekend. And still the names kept coming.

“Brian Tisch,” Lissa said, folding down a finger. “He drove that blue Porsche.”

“Edward from Atlantic Beach,” Jess added. “The two-week required summer fling.”

Chloe took a deep breath, then said dramatically, one hand fluttering over her chest, “Dante.”

“Oh, man!” Jess said, snapping her fingers. “The exchange student. Remy goes international!”

“Which leads us,” Chloe said finally, “to Jonathan. And then Dexter. And now…”

“Paul,” Lissa said sadly, into her beer. “Perfect Paul.”

Who was now, as I watched, walking in the door of Bendo, pausing to get his ID checked. Then he saw me. And smiled. He started across the room, the same way Jonathan had, unaware of what was about to happen. I took a deep breath, telling myself that by now this should be second nature, like falling into the water and instantly knowing to swim. But instead I just sat there as he approached.

“Hey,” he said, sliding in beside me.

“Hey.”

He took my hand, wrapping his fingers around mine, and suddenly I felt so tired. Another breakup. Another end. I hadn’t even taken the time to figure out how, exactly, he’d react, the kind of prep work that had always come naturally before.

“You need a beer?” he asked me. “Remy?”

“Look,” I said, and the words came on their own, no thought required. It was just process, cold and indifferent, like plugging numbers into an equation, and I could have been someone else, listening and watching this, for all I felt. “We need to talk.”

Chapter Fifteen

“And for when she told that awful Mrs. Tucker to sit down and wait her turn…” Talinga said, her glass wobbling.

“And for the time she untangled the judge’s wife from the overhead dryer…” Amanda chimed in.

“And,” Lola said, louder than either of them, “for all the days she just wouldn’t put up with our mess…”

A pause. Talinga sniffled, then wiped her eye with one very long, bright red, perfectly shaped nail.

“… To Remy,” Lola finished, and we let our glasses knock together, champagne sloshing onto the floor. “Girl, we’re gonna miss you.”

We drank. It was all we’d been doing, toasting and drinking, since Lola had officially closed down the salon for appointments at four o’clock, two hours early, so we could celebrate my leaving in high style. It had hardly been a workday up until then, anyway. Talinga brought me a corsage, which she insisted I wear, so I’d spent the day answering the phone and looking as if I was waiting for my prom date to pull up in his father’s car. But it was a sweet gesture, as was the cake, the champagne, and the envelope that they’d given me, which held five hundred bucks, all mine.

“For incidentals,” Lola had said as she pressed it into my hand. “Important stuff.”

“Like manicures,” Amanda added. “And eyebrow waxing.”

It was almost enough to choke me up, but I knew that would only set them all off. Joie girls loved a good cry. But even more so, it reminded me that this was all really happening. Stanford. The end of the summer. The beginning of my real life. It was no longer just creeping up, peeking over the horizon, but instead lingering in plain sight.

The signs were everywhere. I was getting tons of stuff in the mail from school, forms and last-minute To Do lists, and my room was now lined with boxes, clearly labeled for what was going and what would stay behind. I did not entertain any notions about my mother keeping my room as some sort of a shrine to The Remy That Had Been. The minute my plane took off she’d be in there poking around, trying to figure out if the new bookshelves she’d been wanting to build a proper library around would fit within my walls. When I came home everything would be different. Especially me.

Everyone was getting ready to go. Lissa was the weepiest, even though her trip was only one across town, with the steeple of the church on her block visible from her dorm room window. Jess had a job lined up at the hospital, doing administrative stuff in the kids’ ward, and started night classes right after Labor Day. And Chloe was busy with her own boxes, buying new stuff to take on her trip to a school just far enough away to provide new boys who didn’t already know about her reputation as a pure-T heartbreaker. Our in-between time, which had once seemed to stretch into forever, was ending.

The night before, I’d dug out my CD Walkman from the back of my closet, then sat down on my bed with it, carefully removing my father’s CD from it and sliding it back into the case. The Walkman I was taking, but when I went to put the CD in the box with the others, something stopped me. Just because my father had left me a legacy of the expectation that men would let me down didn’t mean I had to accept it. Or carry a reminder of it across the country. So instead I put it in a drawer in my now empty desk. I hadn’t taped up the box yet, however, so there was still time to change my mind.

“Okay, ladies,” Lola said now, picking up the bottle of champagne, “who wants a refill?”

“Me,” Talinga said, handing over her glass. “And let’s have more cake.”

“You don’t need more cake,” Amanda told her.

“I don’t need more champagne, either,” Talinga replied. “But damned if that’s going to stop me.”

They all laughed, and then the phone rang and Lola scurried off, still holding the bottle, to answer it. I picked a rose off the top of the cake and popped it into my mouth, feeling the sugar melt on my tongue. I was supposed to be saving my appetite for the dinner my mother was having tonight, one of the final family celebrations before I left. The mood she’d picked up in Florida still seemed to be lingering, making her work extra hard at playing Don’s Wife. Her novel had clearly come to a lurching halt, and I wondered where Melanie was now. It wasn’t like my mother to walk away from a story, especially so close to the end. But each time I felt that anxious pull, I reminded myself that she would be okay. That she had to be.

I walked to the front window, sipping my champagne, and looked out at the parking lot. Across the way I could see the door to Flash Camera was open, and I was feeling the champagne as I leaned into the glass, pressing my forehead against it. Truth Squad had come back a couple of days earlier. I’d seen Lucas from a distance, eating a bag of potato chips in front of Mayor’s Market, but knew better than to go up and ask him how things had gone in D.C. Ever since the day I’d driven away from the yellow house, with them all out in the yard behind me, I’d felt more clearly than ever that their fate was in no way entwined with mine.

Still, I did keep thinking of Dexter. He was the one loose end that still remained, and I hated loose ends. Making things right wasn’t an emotional thing. It was more that I didn’t want to go across the country feeling like I had left the iron on or forgotten to turn off the coffeemaker. It was about my mental health, I told myself. As in, necessary.

Just as I thought this, I saw him move across the open doorway of Flash Camera, recognizing him immediately from his gangly, crooked walk. Well, I thought. Perfect timing. I downed the rest of my champagne then checked my lipstick. It would be a good feeling to deal with this one last thing and still be home on time for dinner.

“Where you going?” Talinga called after me as I opened the front door. She and Amanda had now turned on the stereo we kept in the shampoo room and were dancing around the empty salon, both of them barefooted, while Lola helped herself to more cake. “You need more champagne, Remy! This is a party, after all.”

“I’ll be back in a sec,” I said. “Pour me another glass, okay?”

She nodded, then poured herself one instead, while Amanda cackled, swaying her hips wide and bumping into a display of nail polishes. They all burst out laughing, the door falling shut on the sound when I walked out into the heat.

My head was buzzing as I crossed the parking lot to Flash Camera. When I came in, I saw Lucas behind the counter, working the developing machine. He glanced up at me and said, “Hey. When’s the prom?”

I started at this, then realized he was talking about my corsage, which was now hanging kind of limply, as if it, too, had consumed a bit too much champagne. “Is Dexter around?”

Lucas pushed back his chair, which was on casters, and rolled a bit, sticking his head through a door in the back. “Dex!” he said.

“What?” Dexter yelled back.

“Customer!”

Dexter came out, wiping his hands on his shirt, with an easygoing, can-I-help-you kind of smile. When he saw me it shifted, but just a bit. “Hey,” he said. “When’s the homecoming dance?”

“Weak,” Lucas mumbled, pushing himself back to the machine. “And late.”

Dexter ignored this, coming up to the counter. “So,” he said, picking up a stack of snapshots and shuffling them, “what can we do for you? Need some pictures developed? Perhaps an enlargement? We’re running a special on four-by-sixes today.”

“No,” I said, talking over the sound of the machine Lucas was working, as it made chunk-chunk noises, spitting out someone’s precious memories. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay.” He kept messing with the pictures, not really looking at me. “Talk.”

“How was D.C.?”

He shrugged. “Ted threw a fit, the whole artistic integrity thing. Stormed out. We managed to sweet-talk them into another meeting, but for now we’re stuck doing another wedding tonight while we’re left hanging. In the lurch. Happening a lot lately, it seems.”

I just stood there for a second, gathering my words. He was being kind of a jerk, I decided, but pressed on anyway. “So,” I said, “I’m leaving soon, and-”

“I know.” Now he looked at me. “Next week, right?”

I nodded. “And I just wanted to, you know, make peace with you.”

“Peace?” He put the pictures down. The one on top, I saw, was of a group of women posing around a quilt, all of them smiling. “Are we at war?”

“Well,” I said, “we didn’t exactly part well the other night. At the Quik Zip.”

“I was kind of drunk,” he admitted. “And, uh… maybe I wasn’t dealing with your Spinnerbait relationship quite as well as I might have.”

“The Spinnerbait relationship,” I said slowly, “has now been terminated.”

“Well. Can’t say I’m sorry about that. They are, like the biggest suckjob band, and their fans-”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I know. Hate Spinnerbait.”

“Hate Spinnerbait!” Lucas mumbled.

“Look.” Dexter leaned across the counter at me, “I liked you, Remy. And maybe we couldn’t be friends. But, God, you sure didn’t waste any time, you know?”

“I never wanted it to be ugly,” I told him. “And I did want us to be friends. But it just never works. Never.”

He considered this. “Okay. I think you’re right. Maybe we’re both a bit at fault here. I wasn’t exactly honest when I said I could deal with us being friends. And you weren’t exactly honest when you said, you know, that you loved me.”

“What?” I said, a bit too loudly. It was the champagne. “I never said I loved you.”

“Maybe not in so many words,” he said, shuffling the pictures again. “But I think we both knew the truth.”

“No way,” I said, but I could feel it now, that loose end slowly winding up, closer and closer to tied tight.

“In five more days,” he decided, holding up his open hand, “you would have loved me.”

“Doubtful.”

“Well, it is a challenge. Five days, and then-”

“Dexter,” I said.

“I’m kidding.” He put the pictures down, and smiled at me. “But we’ll never know, right? Could have happened.”

I smiled back. “Maybe.”

And there we had it. Closure. The last item of so many, eliminated from my list with a big, thick check mark. I could almost feel the weight of it lifting, the slow, steady feeling as all my planets aligned and everything, at least for now, was right with the world.

“Remy!” I heard someone yell from outside, and then turned around to see Amanda standing in the doorway to Joie, wearing a dye cap on her head and snapping her fingers. “You’re missing the dance party!” Behind her, Talinga and Lola were laughing.

“Wow,” Dexter said as Amanda continued her bump-and-grind, unaware of the elderly couple passing, carrying a bag of birdseed and eyeing her disapprovingly. “Looks like we work at the wrong place.”

“I should get back,” I said.

“Okay, but before you go, you should check these out.” He pulled out a drawer, then took out a stack of glossy prints, spreading them on the counter in front of me. “The last and best shots for our wall of shame. Just look.”

They were pretty bad. One was of a middle-aged guy posing bodybuilder style, flexing his muscles while his potbelly pooched over a very small Speedo bathing suit. Another featured two people standing on the bow of a ship: the man was grinning, loving it, while the woman was literally green, and you just knew the next picture featured vomit. Depravity and embarrassment was pretty much the theme of the collection, each one sillier or more disgusting than the last. I was so caught up reacting to a shot of what looked like a cat trying to mate with an iguana that I almost skimmed past a picture of a woman in her bra and panties, posing seductively, entirely.

“Oh, Dexter,” I said. “Honestly.”

“Hey.” He shrugged. “You do what you gotta do. Right?”

I was about to answer this when I suddenly realized something. I knew this woman. She was dark-haired, lower lip pouting seductively, sitting on the end of a bed with her hands on her hips so that her cleavage was enhanced, considerably. But even more importantly, I knew what was behind her: a large, ugly tapestry, depicting biblical scenes. Right over her head, to the left, was John the Baptist’s head being served on a plate.

“Oh, my God,” I said. It was my mother’s room. And this woman on the bed was Patty, Don’s secretary. I looked at the date stamp at the bottom of the picture: Aug 14. The previous weekend. When I’d been staying at Lissa’s and my mother was in Florida, deciding that everything was now going to be okay.

“Really something, huh?” Dexter asked me, peeking over the top of the picture. “I knew you’d like that one.”

I looked up at him, everything now falling into place. Closure. Yeah, right. This was Dexter’s little revenge scheme, his way of poking me back when I wasn’t even protecting myself. Suddenly I was so mad I could feel the blood rising in my face, hot and flushed. “You asshole, ” I said.

“What?” His eyes widened.

“You think this is some little game?” I snapped, throwing the picture at him. It hit him in the chest, the corner poking, and he stepped back, letting it fall to the floor. “You want to get back at me and you do this? God, I was trying to leave things right, Dexter. I was trying to be beyond this!”

“Remy,” he said, holding up his hands. Behind him Lucas had pushed his chair back and was just staring at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. “All this talk about faith, and love. And then you do something like this, just to hurt me. And not even me! My family-”

“Remy.” He tried to reach out and grab my hand, to calm me, but I pulled back, my wrist smacking wildly against the register, as if it wasn’t even under my control. “Come on. Just tell me-”

“Fuck you!” I screamed, and my voice sounded so shrill.

“What is the problem?” he yelled back, then ducked down, picking the picture up off the floor. He stared at it. “I don’t-”

But I was already walking across the store, toward the door. I just kept seeing my mother in my mind, floating toward me on a wave of perfume and hopefulness, trying so hard to make this, of all marriages, work. She’d been ready to settle, to give it all up, even her own voice, just to stay with this man who would not only commit adultery but save the evidence on film. Bastard. I hated him. I hated Dexter. I had come so close to wanting to be wrong about the possibilities of what the heart could really do. Give me proof, I’d said, and she had tried. It’s not tangible, she’d said, you can’t mark it so clearly. But against love, the case was solid. Easily argued. And you could, indeed, hold it in your hand.

Finding out about Don pretty much ended my party. Which was fine, actually, since Amanda had already fallen asleep on the table in the waxing room and Lola and Talinga were finishing off the cake and bemoaning whose love life was more pathetic. We said our final good-byes, and then I left, carrying the envelope they’d given me, a freebie case of my favorite conditioner, and the burden of knowing that my mother’s latest husband was the worst of the lot. Which was saying quite a bit, considering.

My head was clear as I drove home, blasting my air conditioner and trying to calm down. The shock of seeing Patty on my mother’s bed, in my mother’s room, had sobered me up quick, the way only bad news can. I was so mad at Dexter for showing me the picture, and as I drove I wondered why I’d never seen this duplicitous, petty, evil side of him. He’d hid it well. And it was low-down, bringing my family into it. Hurt me, fine. I could handle it. But my mother was different.

I pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, then just sat there as the A/C whined to a stop. I was dreading what I had to do. I knew that someone else might not have said anything, just letting the marriage, sham that it was, take its course. But I couldn’t allow that. I wouldn’t have been able to leave knowing that my mother was stuck here, living with that kind of deception. As a firm believer in the rip-it-off-like-a-Band-Aid school of bad news, I had to tell her.

As I walked up the driveway to the front porch, however, something was off. I couldn’t say exactly what: it was more of a hunch, unexplainable. Even before I came upon the Ensure cans, which were scattered across the front walk, some in the grass, some rolled under the bushes, one just sitting upright on the steps, as if waiting to be retrieved, I had a feeling I was too late.

I pushed open the front door, then felt it hit against something: another can. They were everywhere, scattered across the foyer as I crossed it, going into the kitchen.

“Mom?” I said, and listened to my voice bounce off the countertops and cabinets, back at me. No response. On the table, I could see the food stacked for our big family dinner: steaks, corn on the cob, most of it still in the plastic bags from the supermarket. Next to them, a stack of mail, with one envelope, addressed to my mother in clean block writing, ripped open.

I moved across the room, stepping over another Ensure, to the doorway of her study. The curtain was hanging down, the old busy-don’t-bother-me sign, but this time I pushed it aside and walked right through.

She was sitting in her chair, in front of the typewriter. Sticking out of it was a copy of the picture I’d thrown at Dexter. It was positioned the same way a sheet of paper would have been right before she rolled it in.

My mother, strangely, seemed very calm. Whatever fury had caused the explosion and scattering of Ensure cans had obviously passed, leaving her sitting there with a stoic expression as she considered Patty’s face, so pouty and posed, staring back at her.

“Mom?” I said again, and then I reached out my hand and put it over hers, carefully. “Are you okay?”

She swallowed, and nodded. I could tell she’d been crying. Her mascara was smeared, black smudgy arcs underneath both her eyes. This, I thought, was the most disturbing thing of all. Even in the worst of circumstances, my mother always looked put together.

“They took it in my own room,” she said. “This picture. On my bed.”

“I know,” I said. She turned her head, looking at me quizzically, and I backtracked, knowing it was best to keep the fact that yet another copy existed to myself. “I mean, that’s the quilt, right? Behind her.”

She turned her gaze back to the snapshot, and for a second we both just looked at it, the only sound that of the refrigerator ice machine cheerfully spitting out a new batch of cubes in the next room. “I missed him,” she said finally.

I put my hand over hers and sat down, pulling my chair closer. “I know,” I said softly. “You came back from Florida feeling really good, and then you find out he’s such a rat bastard that he-”

“No,” she said distractedly, interrupting me. “I missed him. All those Ensures, and not a one made contact. I have terrible aim.” And then she sighed. “Even just one would have made it better. Somehow.”

It took a second for this to sink in. “You threw all those cans?” I asked her.

“I was very upset,” she explained. Then she sniffled, wiping her nose with a Kleenex she was gripping in her other hand. “Oh, Remy. My heart is just breaking.”

Whatever humor I might have been able to see in her pelting Don with empty Ensures-and it was funny, no question-left me as she said this.

She sniffled again, and clenched her fingers around mine, holding on tight. “What now?” she said, waving her Kleenex in a helpless way, the white blurring past my vision. “Where am I supposed to go from here?”

My ulcer, long dormant, rumbled in my stomach, as if answering this call. Here I was, so close to my getaway, and now my mother was adrift again, needing me most. I felt another flash of hate for Don, so selfish, leaving me with a mess to deal with while he slipped away scot-free. I wished I had been here when it all came down, because I did have a good arm. I wouldn’t have missed. Not a chance.

“Well,” I said to her, “first, you should probably call that lawyer. Mr. Jacobs. Or Johnson. Did he take anything with him?”

“Just one bag,” she said, wiping at her eyes again.

I could already feel it happening, the neat click as I shifted into crisis management mode. It wasn’t like it had been that long since Martin left. The path might have grown over a bit, but it was still there. “Okay,” I continued, “so we’ll need to tell him he has to set up a specific time to come back and get everything. He can’t just come whenever he feels like it, and one of us should be here. And we should probably get in touch with the bank, just to be safe, and put a freeze on your joint account. Not that he doesn’t have money of his own, but people do weird stuff in the first few days, right?”

She didn’t answer me, instead just staring out the window at the backyard, where the trees were swaying, just slightly.

“Look, I’ll find that lawyer’s number,” I said, standing up. “He’s probably not in, with it being a Saturday and all, but at least we could leave a message, so he’d get back to you first thing-”

“Remy.”

I stopped, midbreath, and realized she’d turned her head to look at me. “Yes?”

“Oh, honey,” she said quietly. “It’s okay.”

“Mom,” I said. “I know you’re upset, but it’s important that we-”

She reached over for my hand, pulling me back into my chair. “I think,” she said, and then stopped. A breath, and then she said, “I think it’s time I handle this myself.”

“Oh,” I said. Weird, but my first thought was that I was somewhat offended. “I just thought-”

She smiled at me, very weakly, and then patted my hand. “I know,” she said. “But you’ve dealt with enough, don’t you think?”

I just sat there. This was it, what I’d always wanted. The official out, the moment I was finally set free. But it didn’t feel the way I’d thought it would. Instead of a wash of victory, I felt strangely alone, as if everything fell away suddenly, leaving me with only the sound of my own heart beating. It scared me.

It was almost as if she sensed this, saw it on my face. “Remy,” she said softly, “it’s all going to be all right. It’s time you worry about yourself, for a change. I can take it from here.”

“Why now?” I asked her.

“It feels right,” she replied simply. “Don’t you feel it? It just feels… okay.”

Did I feel it? Everything seemed so tangled, all at once. But then in my mind, I saw something. The country, spread out so wide, with my mother and me separated not only by our difference of opinions, but also by miles and miles of space, too far to cross with just a look or a touch. My mother was down, but not out. And she might have denied me some of my childhood, or the childhood I’d thought I deserved, but it wasn’t too late for her to give something in return. An even trade, years for years. Those passed for those to come.

But for now, I scooted closer, until we were touching. Knee to knee, arm to arm, forehead to forehead. I leaned into her for once, instead of away, appreciating the pull I felt there, something almost magnetic that held us to each other. I knew it would always be there, no matter how much of the world I put between us. That strong sense of what we shared, good and bad, that led us to here, where my own story began.

Chapter Sixteen

In the hour before Chris and Jennifer Anne were due to show up for dinner, I gathered all the Ensure cans from the front yard and various spots in the house, depositing them with a satisfying clank in the recycling bin. My mother was taking a shower, having insisted we go ahead with our family dinner, despite what had happened. While I was doing my best to adjust to my new hands-off role in this separation, some habits died hard. Or so I told myself as I took down the big naked woman off the kitchen wall, sliding it behind the refrigerator.

After our talk, my mother had filled me in on the gruesome details. Apparently the Patty thing had been going on for a while, since even before my mother and Don met. Patty had been married, and the affair had been a series of breakups and makeups, ultimatums and backsliding, finally ending with Don saying if she wasn’t serious enough to leave her husband, he was moving on. Don’s marrying my mother, however, was a catalyst for her subsequent separation, and while they’d tried to stay apart they couldn’t, in Don’s words, “fight the feeling.” My mother winced as she repeated this phrase: I was sure I winced hearing it. It was Patty who’d sent the picture, fed up with waiting. Don, according to my mother, hadn’t even denied it, instead sighing and walking into the bedroom to pack a bag. This, I felt, said a lot. What kind of car salesman doesn’t at least try to talk his way out of things?

“He couldn’t,” my mother said when I asked her this. “He loves her.”

“He’s an asshole,” I said.

“It was unfortunate,” she agreed. She was taking it so well, but I wondered if she was just still in shock. “Everything, in the end, comes down to timing.”

I considered this as I piled the steaks onto a plate, then went out to the fancy new grill, opening it up. After struggling for about fifteen minutes with the high-tech, supposed-to-be-moron-proof ignition system, I decided I liked having my eyebrows intact and instead dug out our old Weber grill from behind a stack of lawn chairs. A few handfuls of charcoal, some fluid, and I was in business.

As I poked at the coals, I kept thinking about Dexter. If once he had been a loose end, now it was a full hanging string, capable of pulling everything apart with one good tug. Chalk it up to another bad boyfriend story, one more added to the canon. It was where I’d intended him to be, all along.

I was in the kitchen, arranging some chips and salsa on a plate, when Chris and Jennifer Anne pulled up. They came across the lawn, carrying her trademark Tupperware, and they were holding hands. I could only imagine how Jennifer Anne, who’d found my cynicism about this marriage to be completely abhorrent, would react to this latest family news. Chris, I figured, would instantly move into protective mode for my mother’s sake while privately feeling grateful to have his bread back, butts and all.

They came in the front door, chatting and laughing. They sounded positively giddy, in fact. As they got closer to the kitchen. I looked up, noticing they were both flushed, and Jennifer Anne was as relaxed as I’d ever seen her, as if she’d had a double dose of self-esteem affirmations that day. Chris looked pretty happy too, at least until he saw the empty space on the wall over the breakfast table.

“Oh, man,” he said, his face falling. Next to him, Jennifer Anne was still grinning. “What’s going on?”

“Well,” I said. “Actually-”

“We’re engaged!” Jennifer Anne shrieked, thrusting her left hand out in front of her.

“-Don’s got a mistress, and he’s left to be with her,” I finished.

For a minute, there was total silence as Jennifer Anne caught up with what I’d said, and I backtracked, clumsily, finally hearing her news. Then, at the same time, we both blurted out, “What?”

“Oh, my God,” Chris groaned, stumbling back against the fridge with a thud.

“You’re engaged?” I said.

“It’s just-” Jennifer Anne said, putting a hand to her face. Now I could see a ring on her finger: a good-size diamond, so sparkly as it caught the light shining from over the sink.

“Wonderful,” I heard my mother say, and turning around I saw she’d come in behind me, and was now standing there, her eyes a bit watery, but smiling. “Oh, my. It’s just wonderful. ”

It says something about my mother, and her utter and total belief in the love stories she not only wrote but lived, that she was able to say this then, not two hours after her fifth marriage had dissolved in a puddle of deceit, bad clichés, and discarded Ensure cans. As I watched her move across the room, pulling Jennifer Anne into her arms, I felt an appreciation for her I would not have been capable of three months earlier. My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.

We ate at the table in the backyard, off paper plates. My mother’s contribution: Brazilian beefsteaks, imported artichoke salad, and fresh Italian bread, baked just that day. Jennifer Anne’s: macaroni and cheese, salad with iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island dressing, and a Jell-O mold with whipped cream. Worlds may have been colliding, but as the conversation began to roll around to wedding plans and preparations, it was clear there was a common ground.

“I just have no idea where to start,” Jennifer Anne said. She and Chris held hands all through dinner, which was somewhat disgusting but a bit tolerable, considering the newness of their engaged status. “Reception halls, cakes, invitations… the whole thing. It’s overwhelming.”

“It’s not that bad,” I told her, spearing a bit of lettuce with my fork. “Just get a folder, a notebook, and get second estimates on everything. And don’t use the Inverness Inn because they overcharge and never have toilet paper in the bathrooms.”

“Oh, weddings are always fun!” my mother chirped, sipping on her glass of wine. And for a second I caught her as a wave of sadness crossed over her face. But she shook it off, smiling at Chris instead. “Anything you two need, help, money… let me know. Promise you will.”

“We will,” Chris said.

I gathered up the plates as they kept talking, discussing possible dates, places, all the things that I’d been starting to think about this time last year, when my mother was the bride-to-be. There was something incongruous about one marriage ending the same day another began, as if there was an exchange program in the universe or something, a trade required in order to keep the numbers even.

As I pulled open the screen door, I turned around, looking again at the backyard, where the dark was now coming on. I could hear their voices rising and falling, and for a second I closed my eyes, just listening. Times like this it did seem real I was leaving, and even more that my family, and this life, would go on without me. And again I felt that emptiness rise up, but pushed it away. Still, I lingered there, in the doorway, memorizing the noise. The moment. Tucking it away out of sight, to be remembered when I needed it most.

After dinner and dessert, Jennifer Anne and Chris packed up the Tupperware and went home, armed with all the crap I’d kept from planning my mother’s wedding to Don-brochures, price lists, and phone numbers of everything from limo services to the best makeup guy in town. In my typical cynical fashion, I’d had no doubt we would need it again, and I was right. Just not in the way I’d thought.

My mother kissed me and headed off to bed, a bit teary but okay. I went up to my room and double-checked some of my boxes, reorganizing a few more items and packing up a few last things. Then I sat on my bed, restless, listening to the whir of the air-conditioning until I couldn’t take it anymore.

When I pulled up to the Quik Zip, heeding the call of that Extra Large Zip Diet, I was surprised to see Lissa’s car parked in front of the pay phones. I snuck up behind her in the candy section as she stood debating whether to get Skittles or Spree. She had one in each hand, and when I poked her in the small of her back, she jumped, shrieking, sending both flying.

“Remy!” She swatted at my hand, the color rising in her face. “God, you scared me.”

“Sorry,” I told her. “Couldn’t resist.”

She bent down, collecting the candy. “Not funny,” she grumbled. “What are you doing out, anyway? I thought you were having a big family night.”

“I was,” I said, heading over to the Zip Fountain station. It was weird how even the smallest things were making me nostalgic now, and I had a moment of quiet respect as I picked a cup off the stack, then filled it with ice. “I mean, I did. Bigger family night than you would even believe. You having a Zip?”

“Sure,” she said, and I handed her a cup. We didn’t talk for a second as I filled mine, stopping at the right intervals to allow the fizz to die down. Plus, sometimes you got a new shot of syrup when you pushed in the Diet Coke button, which made them extra wonderful. Then I got a lid and a straw, as Lissa did the same with the 7UP. As I sipped mine, testing it for full flavor, I noticed that she looked very nice; she appeared to be wearing a new skirt, and had painted her toenails. Plus she smelled good, a light floral scent, and I was almost positive she had curled her eyelashes.

“Okay,” I said. “Confess. What are you doing tonight?”

She smiled slyly, dropping the candy by the register. As the guy ran it up, she said, offhandedly, “Got a date.”

“Lissa,” I said. “No way.”

“Three seventy-eight,” the guy said.

“I’ll get hers too,” Lissa told him, nodding at my Diet Zip.

“Thanks,” I said, surprised.

“No problem.” She handed the guy a couple of folded bills. “Well, you know that P.J. and I have been kind of circling lately.”

“Yeah,” I said as she took her change and we headed for the door.

“And the summer is close to over. And today, when we were at this craft festival KaBooming, I just decided the hell with it. I was tired of waiting around, wondering if he was ever going to make a move. So I asked him out.”

“Lissa. I’m impressed.”

She stuck her straw in her mouth and took a dainty sip, shrugging. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought, actually. It was even… kind of nice. Empowering. I liked it.”

“Watch out, P.J.,” I said as we came up to her car, both of us climbing up to sit on the hood. “It’s a whole new girl.”

“I’ll drink to that,” she replied, and we pressed our cups together.

For a minute we just sat there, watching the traffic pass on the road in front of us. Another Saturday night at the Quik Zip, one of so many in the years we’d been friends.

“So,” I said finally, prompted by this, “my mom and Don are over.”

She jerked her straw out of her mouth, turning to look at me. “No.”

“Yep.”

“No way! What happened?”

I filled her in, going all the way back to seeing the picture at Flash Camera, stopping at certain intervals so she could shake her head, request specific details, and call Don all the names I already had that day, which didn’t exactly stop me from chiming in again, for good measure.

“God,” she said, when it was all done. “That sucks. Your poor mom.”

“I know. But I think she’ll be okay. Oh, and Chris and Jennifer Anne are engaged.”

“What?” she said, shocked. “I can’t believe that you stood there calm and cool, fixing a Diet Zip, and had an entire conversation with me when you had such big information, Remy. God!”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just been a long day, I guess.”

She sighed loudly, still upset with me. “What a summer,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago your mom and Don were getting married and I was getting dumped.”

“It’s been a shitty season for relationships,” I agreed. “Enough to make you give up on love altogether.”

“Nah,” she said easily, not even considering this. “You can never really do that.”

I took a measured sip of my drink, pulling my hair out of my face. “I don’t know,” I said to her. “I did. I mean, I don’t believe things can really work out. And this latest with Don just confirms it.”

“Confirms what?”

“That relationships suck. And that I was right to break things off with Dexter, because it never would have worked. Not in a million years.”

She thought about this for a second. “You know what?” she said finally, crossing her legs. “Frankly, I think that’s a bunch of shit. ”

I almost choked on my straw. “What?”

“You heard me.” She pulled a hand through her hair, tucking a mass of curls behind one ear. “Remy, as long as I’ve known you, you always thought you had it all figured out. And then something happened this summer that made you wonder if you were right after all. I think you always believed in love, deep down.”

“I did not,” I said firmly. “Things have happened to me, Lissa. I’ve seen stuff that-”

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “I am new to this, I’m not disputing that. But if you truly didn’t believe in it, why did you keep looking all this time? So many boys, so many relationships. For what?”

“Sex,” I said, but she just shook her head.

“Nope. Because a part of you wanted to find it. To prove yourself wrong. You had that faith. You know you did.”

“You’re wrong,” I told her. “I lost that faith a long time ago.”

She looked at me as I said this, an expression of quiet understanding on her face. “Maybe you didn’t, though,” she said softly. “Lose it, I mean.”

“Lissa.”

“No, just hear me out.” She looked out at the road for a second, then back at me. “Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It’s been there. But you just haven’t been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it’s gone. But misplaced… that means it’s still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.”

As she said this, I saw a blur in my mind of the faces of all the boys I’d been with, literally or just figuratively. They passed quickly, their features melting into one another, like the pages in one of my old Barbie dream date books, none of them truly distinct. They had certain things in common, now that I thought about it: nice faces, good bodies, so many of the qualities I’d drawn up in my mind on yet another checklist. In fact, I’d always approached boys this way, so methodically, making sure before I took even one step that they fit the profile.

Except, of course, for one.

I heard a horn beep, loud, and looked up to see Jess pulling in beside us. To my shock, Chloe was in the passenger seat.

“Hey,” Jess said as they got out, doors slamming, “nobody said anything to me about a meeting. What gives?”

Lissa and I just sat there, staring at them. Finally she said, “What on earth is going on tonight, anyway? Has everyone gone crazy? What are you two doing together?”

“Don’t get too excited,” Chloe said flatly. “My car got a flat over at the mall, and neither one of you was answering the phone.”

“Imagine my surprise,” Jess added drolly, “when I was her last resort.”

Chloe made a face at her, but it wasn’t a mean one, more just rankled irritation. “I said thank you,” she told Jess. “And I will buy you that Zip Drink, as promised.”

“The deal was Zip Drinks for life,” Jess said, “but for now I’ll just take one Coke. Extra large, light on the ice.”

Chloe rolled her eyes and headed into the store. Lissa slid off the hood, shaking her own cup. “Refill time,” she said. “You?”

I handed over my drink, and she followed Chloe in, one in each hand. Jess came over and sat on the bumper, smiling to herself. “I love it that she owes me,” she said, watching as Chloe fixed the drinks, with Lissa chattering away beside her. From the way Chloe kept glancing at her, her mouth dropping open, aghast, I knew she was getting the full story about my mother and Don. So I filled Jess in, getting much of the same reaction, and by the time they returned and we all had our drinks, everyone was more or less on the same page.

“Asshole,” Chloe said decisively, taking a sip of her drink. Then she made a face, coughed, and said, “Yuck. This is regular Coke.”

“Thank God,” Jess said as they traded, both of them wincing now. “Because this stuff I’m drinking tastes like shit.”

“So let me get this straight,” Chloe said, ignoring this. “Patty sent the picture to your mom?”

“Yep,” I replied.

“But she got the pictures developed at Flash Camera.”

“Correct.”

Chloe swallowed, considering this. “And Dexter knew it was her, and what the implications were, so he showed it to you to get you back for dumping him.”

“Exactly.”

There was a moment of silence, during which all I could hear was the sloshing of ice, creaking of straws, and a few doubtful murmurings. Finally Jess said, “I’m not getting the logic of that, exactly.”

“Me neither, now that I think about it,” Lissa agreed.

“There is no logic,” I said. “He was just being a jerk. He knew it was the one way he could really hurt me, so he did it, just when I’d tried to make amends and had my guard down.”

More silence.

“What?” I said, irritated.

“I think,” Chloe began tentatively, “that there’s really no proof that he even knew that you knew her.”

“Wrong. He met her at my mother’s cookout. And she was at Toyotafaire too.”

“Not naked,” Lissa pointed out.

“What does that have to do with it? Naked or not she still had the same face.”

“But,” Chloe said, “how could he have known it was Don that took the picture? Or even that it was in your mom’s room? I mean, I haven’t even been in there. Has he?”

Now, I was the quiet one, as this logic-if it was even that-suddenly began to click together in my head. I’d just assumed, in my shock, that Dexter had seen my mother’s bedroom, and especially that ugly biblical tapestry. But had he? For all he knew, it was just a picture of a woman who worked for my stepfather getting her kicks taking nudie lingerie pictures in someone’s bedroom. Anyone’s bedroom.

“I’m all for you being pissed at Dexter,” Chloe said, tapping her nails on the hood of the car. “But it should be for a good reason. Face it, Remy Starr. You’re in the wrong here.”

And I was. I’d been so ready to blame Dexter for everything, from my mother’s marriage dissolving to making me trust him in a way I hadn’t anyone else in a long time. But none of it was his fault.

“Oh, my God,” I said softly. “What now?”

“Go find him and apologize,” Lissa said decisively.

“Admit it was a mistake, don’t find him, move on,” Chloe countered.

I looked at Jess, but she just shrugged and said, “I have no idea. It’s all you.”

I’d yelled at him. Told him to fuck off, thrown the picture at him, and stalked out even as he was trying to explain. I’d dumped him because he’d wanted more from me than to be a faceless, smelling-of-sunshine-and-chlorine summer boyfriend, made to order.

So what had changed? Nothing. Even if I did go to him, we’d already be too late, no time left to make a foundation before we were flung to opposite coasts, and everyone knew that kind of relationship never worked.

It was just like my mother said. Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour, could make all the difference. So much hanging on just these things, tiny increments that together build a life. Like words build a story, and what had Ted said? One word can change the entire world.

Hey, Dexter had said that first day he sat down beside me. That was one word. If I’d talked one minute longer with Don in the office, Dexter might already have been called away and gone when I came out. If my mother and I waited maybe another hour, Don might not have been at the dealership the day we went shopping for her new car. And if Jennifer Anne hadn’t needed that oil change on that particular day of that particular week, maybe she wouldn’t have ever looked over a Jiffy Lube counter and seen Chris at all. But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn’t find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

“Oh, man,” Jess said suddenly, tugging at the cuff of my jeans. “Check this out.”

I looked up, my mind still reeling. It was Don. He was driving a shiny, brand-new dealer-tagged Land Cruiser, which he parked on the other side of the Quik Zip. He didn’t see us as he got out, hitting the remote door lock, and went inside, smoothing a hand over the thinning hair on the back of his head as he did so.

“God,” I said. “Talk about timing.”

“What?” Lissa whispered.

“Nothing.” We all watched as he moved down the aisle of the Quik Zip, picking up a bottle of aspirin and a bag of potato chips, which, I figured, was the chosen meal of adulterers. Even when he was checking out he didn’t look at us, glancing instead at the headlines of the newspapers stacked by the register. Then he walked out, fiddling with the lid of the aspirin, and got back into his car.

“Asshole,” Chloe said.

It was true. He’d hurt my mother badly, and there wasn’t much I could do to make her feel better. Except maybe one thing.

Don started the car and headed toward us. I lifted up my Diet Zip, feeling the weight in my hands.

“Oh, yes,” Lissa whispered.

“On three,” Jess said.

He didn’t see us until he was right next to Lissa’s car, and by then I’d already put my whole arm into it, my cup sailing through the air and smacking right against the windshield, exploding soda all over the shiny hood. He hit the brakes, swerving slightly, as two other cups crashed against the back door and sunroof, respectively. But it was Lissa’s, surprisingly, that had the best hit. It nailed his half-open window perfectly, the lid breaking off on impact, sending a wave of ice and 7UP smack in his face and down his shirt. He slowed down but didn’t stop, the cups sailing off as he jerked into traffic, the car leaving a wet trail as it drove away from us.

“Nice shot,” Jess said to Lissa. “Great arc.”

“Thanks,” Lissa said. “Chloe’s was good too. Did you see that impact?”

“It’s all in the wrist,” Chloe said, shrugging.

Then we just sat there. I could hear the buzz of the Quik Zip sign overhead, that constant hum of fluorescence, and for a minute I lost myself in it, remembering Dexter standing in this same place not too long before, waving after me. Arms open. Calling me back, or saying good-bye. Or maybe a little bit of both.

He’d always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm. I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though. And time was passing. Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.

I drove off, with my friends watching me go, all of them grouped on Lissa’s hood. As I pulled onto the road, I glanced into the rearview and saw them: they were waving, hands moving through the air, their voices loud, calling out after me. The square of that mirror was like a frame, holding this picture of them saying good-bye, pushing me forward, before shifting gently out of sight, inch by fluid inch, as I turned away.

Chapter Seventeen

I knew from experience that there were nine decent reception halls in town. At the fifth one, I found Truth Squad.

I saw the white van as soon as I pulled into the parking lot of the Hanover Inn. It was parked around back, by the service entrance, next to a catering van. As I got out of my car, I could hear music, the faint beat of bass guitar. Through the long windows that broke up the building, I saw people dancing. The bride was in the center, a blur of white, trailing tulle, leading a conga line around in a wide, lopsided circle.

In the lobby, I passed some girls in hideous baby blue bridesmaids dresses, complete with big bows on the back, as well as someone wheeling a big ice sculpture depicting wedding bells. The sign next to the door said MEADOWS-DOYLE reception, and I slipped in the far door and moved along the back wall, trying to stay hidden.

The band was onstage, in their G Flats garb. Dexter was singing an old Motown song, which I recognized as one of their regular covers, and behind him Ted was strumming his guitar with a bored, irritated expression, as if just standing there was paining him.

The song ended with a flourish, provided by John Miller, who then stood up for applause. It came, but barely, and he sat back down again with a sigh.

“Hello everyone,” Dexter said into the microphone in his game show host voice. “Let’s give another big congratulations to Janine and Robert, the Doyles!”

Now, a big cheer as the bride beamed, blowing kisses at everyone.

“This next song is a special one from the bride to her groom,” Dexter went on, glancing at Lucas, who nodded. “But the rest of you, feel free to sing along.”

The band launched into the opening chords of a song I barely recognized as one from a recent blockbuster movie. It was a power ballad, totally schmaltzy, and even Dexter, who was usually the best sport of the bunch, seemed to deflate when he had to deliver a line about loving you till the stars are gone / and the heart I have just turns to stone… Around the second chorus, Ted actually started gagging, stopping only when he had to concentrate hard on the guitar solo that wound up the final verse. The bride and groom, however, seemed oblivious to this, staring into each other’s eyes as they danced, their bodies pressed together so closely they were hardly moving.

The song finished and everyone clapped. The bride was crying, her new husband reaching up to wipe her eyes while everyone made ain’t-it-sweet noises. Truth Squad left the stage squabbling, Ted and Lucas already at each other, with Dexter and John Miller lagging behind. They all disappeared out a side door as the canned music came on and the staff wheeled the cake, four tiered and covered with roses, onto the dance floor.

As the door shut behind them I moved to follow, but something stopped me, and I took a step back, pressing myself against the wall and closing my eyes. God, it was one thing to come over here on a wave of post-Don soakage euphoria, but another thing entirely to actually do this crazy thing. It was like driving on the wrong side of the road, or letting my gas gauge get down to flat empty before refilling, something that went completely against my nature and everything I had, up until this point, believed in.

But what had that gotten me so far, anyway? A string of boyfriends. A reputation as a cold, bitter bitch. And a secure bubble that I’d drawn so tightly around myself that no one, not even someone with the best of intentions, could get in, even if I wanted them to. The only way to truly reach me was to sneak up, crash in, bust past the barricades on the equivalent of a kamikaze mission, end result unknown.

That night at the Quik Zip he’d told me, so angrily, that everything he’d said to me, from the first day, was true. Then, I had blanked, not remembering anything. But now, as I pressed my back into the wall, it came to me.

I just thought to myself, all of a sudden, that we had something in common, he’d said. A natural chemistry, if you will.

That had been right after he’d crashed into me. My arm had been still buzzing at the funny bone.

And I just had a feeling that something big was going to happen.

I remembered, suddenly, how ridiculous this had sounded. A car dealership soothsayer, telling my fortune.

To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.

Meant to be. He hadn’t known me at all. Just seen me from across a room.

You didn’t feel it?

Not then. Or maybe, deep in some hidden, misplaced spot, I had. And when I couldn’t find it later, it came looking for me.

“They’re about to cut the cake!” some woman in a green, shimmery dress was calling out as I pushed away from the wall, headed to that side door. Halfway there I got lost in a mass of people, all depositing their empty drinks on tables and pressing toward the dance floor. I navigated through them, past suits and tuxedos, crinkly dresses and a thick cloud of mixed perfumes before finally coming out on the other side. The door to the parking lot was open now, and as I stepped through it I saw the band had disappeared, with only a few tangerine peels remaining, scattered around the curb.

From behind me, I heard a drum roll, followed by a crash of cymbals, and the best man was at the microphone, holding his glass aloft. John Miller was behind his drum set, picking at his teeth, while Lucas snuck some more beer into a cup off to the side of the stage. Ted was standing glumly next to his amp, as if he’d lost a bet. I craned my neck, looking for Dexter, but then a large woman in a pink dress stepped in front of the door, blocking my view. And suddenly I just knew I was too late.

I stepped back out into the fresh air, crossing my arms over my chest. Bad timing, again. It was hard not to think this was some kind of cue from the universe, letting me know that this wasn’t the right thing to do. I tried, and failed. There. It was over.

But God! Who could live like this, anyway, with the kind of guesswork that was enough to make a person crazy, just sailing along, taking the bumps here and there, no course navigated whatsoever, with any big wave capable of just tipping and sinking you entirely. It was madness, stupidity, and-

Then I saw him. Sitting there on the curb, under a streetlight, knees pulled up to his chest. And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally, pieces falling into place. Behind me, the best man was winding up his toast, his voice sounding tight, emotional. To the happy couple, he said, and everyone repeated it, their voices blending as one. To the happy couple.

And then I was walking toward Dexter, folding my fingers tight into my hands. I could hear the cheers as the bridal couple cut their cake. So I took the last few steps of this long journey fast, almost running, before plunking myself down and knocking into Dexter, just enough to tip his balance for a second. Because I knew, now, this was how it had to begin. The only way was to crash in.

I knocked him sideways, startling him. But once he got his equilibrium, and his wits, back, he just looked at me. Not even one word. Because we knew it had to come from me this time.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

I took in his dark curls, the smell of his skin, that cheap tuxedo with the loose threads on the cuff. He was just looking at me, not pulling back, but not moving closer either. And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was now inevitable, that I wasn’t just on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in midair.

“Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together?” I asked him.

He looked at me and then said, “You’re here, aren’t you?”

There was only so much space between us, not even a real distance if measured in miles or feet or even inches, all the things that told you how far you’d come or had left to go. But this was a big space, if only for me. And as I moved forward to him, covering it, he waited there on the other side. It was only the last little bit I had to go, but in the end, I knew it would be all I would truly remember. So as I kissed him, bringing this summer and everything else full circle, I let myself fall, and was not scared of the ground I knew would rise up to meet me. Instead, I just pulled him closer, my hand sliding up around his neck to find that one place where I could feel his heartbeat pulsing. It was fast, like my own, and finding it, I pressed down hard, as if it was all that connected us, and kept my finger there.