How to Love

“Right.” I swallowed the sudden thickness in my throat. “Well,” I said brightly, “State is filled with screwups. He’d have fit right in.”

* * *

One thing Sawyer definitely wasn’t doing was showing up for his shifts at the restaurant, which is why I was so surprised when I came in to work the dinner shift one Friday in September and found him mixing a mojito at the bar. “Hey,” he said, grabbing a rag and wiping a spill from the glossy surface, barely looking up. “Your dad said to come find him when you got in.”

“Do you still work here?” I blurted, my backpack slipping from my shoulder. I was used to not seeing him by this point, used to the notion that we were never going to talk about anything: that I was going to spend the next twelve months in a sinkhole of guilt and confusion and sadness, and then I was going to leave. For a second I thought of that night in the parking lot, the taste of chocolate ice cream and the feeling of his fingers on my neck.

You kissed me, I thought as I looked at him. You kissed me and then Allie died. For a second it felt like she was sitting at the bar in front of me, sharp chin cradled in one skinny hand—both of us watching Sawyer just like we used to, back when watching Sawyer never felt like something that hurt.

Now he tilted his head, lips barely quirking. “It’s nice to see you, too,” he told me, snapping me back to the present. Just like that, Allie was gone.

“That’s not what I meant.” I blushed. “It’s just … you know. Been a while.”

“I guess so.” He rattled the shaker a couple of times, poured its contents over ice and added a couple of mint leaves for garnish. Sawyer had been tending the bar at Antonia’s practically since puberty; he could have mixed drinks in his sleep. “You miss me?”

“No,” I said immediately. I glanced around, skittish—it was early yet, three or four people nursing drinks at the bar. The Best of Ella Fitzgerald pumped in through the speakers, afternoon music. “I don’t know.”

I picked up my bag again, ready to go find my father, but Sawyer wasn’t finished. “I saw you the other day,” he told me. “In your car, by the flea market.”

I blinked. “What were you doing at the flea market?”

“I wasn’t at the flea ma—I had band practice,” he said, as if perusing antiques and collectibles was any more ridiculous than the rest of the James Dean/James Franco crap he’d been doing. “Our drummer lives over near there.”

“How do you play piano with a broken hand?” I asked him, and Sawyer grinned wryly.

“It’s not broken anymore, princess.” He nodded for me to sit down on an empty stool and, once I did, slid some pretzels down in my direction. I glanced at the clock above the bar—I had a couple of minutes before I needed to punch in.

“Is that what you’ve been doing instead of coming to work?” I asked, cautious. “Playing with your band?”

“You mean as opposed to pursuing higher education?”

I shrugged. “As opposed to … whatever.”

“I guess,” Sawyer said. “I don’t know. We play at the Prime Meridian sometimes.” He raised his eyebrows like a dare. “You should come.”

The Prime Meridian was a seedy little club off the highway in Dania, Bud Light and bouncers who didn’t bother to card. People got stabbed at the Prime Meridian. “Why don’t you ever play here?” I asked, without comment.

Sawyer snorted like that was hilarious. “My father would love that, I’m sure.”

“Why?” I shot back. “Do you suck that bad?”

“Hey, now.” He laughed again. “We’re freaking awesome, Serena.”

“Well,” I said, fidgeting. “I’m sure you are.”

A guy at the end of the bar ordered a scotch and soda; Sawyer stood up and reached for a bottle on the top shelf, shirt riding up his rib cage to reveal a small tattoo winding above the waistband of his jeans, a curling green infinity that I recognized from my calc book. “Did that hurt?” I asked as he scooped ice into a rocks glass.

“Did what hurt?”

I gestured vaguely. “On your back.”

“Oh. Nah.” Sawyer handed the guy his drink and leaned over the bar like he was going to tell me a secret. I smelled polished wood and limes. “I’m really manly.”

“Right,” I said, leaning in a little bit myself without meaning to. “Obviously.”

He tapped the bar twice, like a rhythm, and straightened up. “What about you, princess?” he asked me, in a voice like maybe he was kidding and maybe he wasn’t. “You got tattoos nobody knows about?”

I was opening my mouth to answer when my father came through the swinging doors at the far end of the restaurant. He stopped when he caught us at the bar. “Reena,” he said sharply—and I think he was more surprised than anything else, but still we’d never talked about what I’d been doing with Sawyer that night at the hospital, and one look at his face said he didn’t like what he saw. “You know I don’t want you sitting up there when we have customers. Come on.”

“Sorry,” I said, scrambling down from the barstool. My skin felt tight and hot. I didn’t look at Sawyer as I headed back to the office, two minutes late to punch in.

17

After

“It’s not a date,” I promise Soledad the next morning, when she asks for the particulars of my playground trip with Sawyer and Hannah. She’s sitting at the table drinking her favorite chai latte from an old Northwestern mug she ordered a million years ago, her tawny skin smooth and makeup-free. I really, really hate that mug. “He just wants to spend a little time with Hannah, so I said he could.” I tickle Hannah’s feet in her high chair, and she giggles. “Kiss, please,” I demand, then wait for her to plant one on me before I turn back to Sol. “I actually think it’s very adult behavior on my part.”

Soledad eyes me over her latte like she thinks perhaps the lady doth protest too much. “I hear you and Hannah have a very busy social calendar,” is all she says.

“Oh, you’re hilarious.” I scowl.

Now it’s three thirty and 89 degrees out, and Sawyer and I are pushing Hannah in the baby swings on the playground outside the elementary school, asphalt warm and sticky under our feet. My car is still at the mechanic’s and Sawyer picked me up at the house, just like he used to; Count Basie was on the stereo and I had to concentrate hard on looking out the window, on not breaking to smithereens right there in the front seat. I don’t remember why I agreed to this. It didn’t even seem like a good idea at the time.

“So what made you change your mind?” he wants to know now. He’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead, and I’m shocked to realize that he looks not like a rock star or a runaway boyfriend, but like a dad. He’s got another Slurpee and he brought me one, too, Coke-flavored and freezing, sweating pleasantly in my hand.

I raise my eyebrows, make him work. “About?”

“I don’t know,” he says, taking over as I step away from the swing set. We’ve been trading back-and-forth for nearly half an hour, steady like a metronome. Hannah could swing for days, chubby baby legs kicking happily; she figured out clapping a few months ago, and every once in a while she smacks her hands together with some kind of secret baby glee. “This. Me.”

I shake my head. “I haven’t changed my mind about you.”

Sawyer snorts. “Ouch.”

“Sawyer—” I break off, huffing a little. “I’m trying, you know?”

“I know,” he says.

We push in silence, patient. The sun glares. My lungs ache like they’re full of dust, dry and barren. “What