How to Love

There is, actually; I just haven’t plugged it into the system yet. “Two Amstels,” I tell him, no preamble. It’s the first thing I’ve said to him all night.

Sawyer raises his eyebrows, teasing me. “What’s the magic word?” he asks.

I scowl. “Sawyer, shut up and get me the beers.”

“Testy,” he says, sticking his tongue out. He turns around to grab the glasses, muscles moving inside his shirt in a way I do my best not to notice. I roll my eyes to cover, trying to sound as annoyed as humanly possible.

“You know,” I tell him shrewishly, “if I were you, I’d be careful what I did with that tongue.”

“That so?” His gaze flicks up and down my body, overt. “Where would be a safe place for it?”

“Seriously?” My stomach twists so hard it almost hurts, like car parts scraping against one another. I’m still holding four dirty plates. “Shut up,” is all I come up with.

Sawyer smiles. “Why do you always tell me to shut up?” he asks pleasantly.

“Why do you always deserve it?” I fire back, and go to dump the dishes in the bin. I come back a minute later and find him leaning forward over the bar, both beers waiting.

“Why’d you pick Hannah?” he asks, as if he’s picking up the thread of an earlier conversation, like we’ve been talking like old friends all the live-long afternoon.

“Huh?” I snatch the bottles off the bar. “Pick Hannah for what?”

Now it’s Sawyer’s turn to roll his eyes. “You know what I’m asking. What’s it mean?”

“Grace of God.”

He nods his approval, thoughtful. “Nicely chosen.”

“I had a book.”

“Efficient,” he says, then: “What about yours?”

“Serena?” I shrug and deliver the beers, then come back against my better judgment. “Just what it sounds like. I was misnamed.”

“Nah,” Sawyer says, shaking his head. He’s still leaning over the bar, dark head tipped close like he thinks I’m going to tell him some kind of secret. “Ever look me up?”

“Nope,” I say; then, because that looked like it hurt his feelings—and honestly, what is that about?—I frown. “Okay, can you stop?”

Sawyer frowns back. “Stop what?” he asks, as if he honestly doesn’t know.

“Whatever you’re doing,” I say. I feel so stupidly close to the edge here, like anything could set me off. For some reason idle chatter seems worse than the nastiest of fights. “Asking about names. Being my buddy.”

“I’m being civil.”

“Well,” I tell him, “don’t.”

Sawyer snorts. “That’s very mature.”

“Do you even have feelings?”

He stares at me. “Do I have what?”

“Feelings,” I repeat, as if maybe I just wasn’t speaking loudly enough. “Do you have any? Or was there some kind of genetic fluke?”

For a moment Sawyer just gapes, shaking his head slightly. “Okay,” he says finally, flipping up the wooden partition and stalking around the front of the bar. He grabs my arm, not gently. “That’s it.”

“What are you doing?” I hiss as he pulls me down the back hallway, past the office and the kitchen. He flips the lock on the patio door and pushes it open. “Let go of me,” I tell him. “It’s raining.”

“No shit. It’s Florida.” He turns to face me once we’re outside, half covered by the awning over the door. The air is hot and muggy; my right shoulder is getting wet. “You know, this is classic,” he says, like he honestly can’t believe we’re still having this conversation after all this time. “This is great!”

“What is?” I ask, playing dumb. I don’t want to do this. Not now.

“You, out of everyone, asking me if I have feelings.” He scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You know, I always thought it was messed up when people said you were an ice queen, like maybe they just didn’t know you well enough, but honestly, at this point—”

“You’re not so sure?” I round on him. “Well, can’t say I didn’t warn you.” I shove past him, aiming for the door—I’m done here, done with him—but he catches my arm again.

“Reena,” Sawyer says sharply. “Can you stop?”

I shake my head. “Look, I’m sorry,” I tell him, trying to get away as cleanly as I can, as if that’s even a thing that’s possible with Sawyer. “Last night, all of it, I’m just—”

“Don’t apologize,” he orders. “Look, I don’t—I just don’t want this to be another way for us to leave each other, okay?”

Oh, come on. “Each other?” I look at him skeptically. “I’ve been right here.”

“I know,” Sawyer agrees. “And now you don’t trust me as far as you can throw me, I know that, too. You’ve been pretty clear.” He bends down close to my ear. “But I think you’re glad it happened that way.”

I snort derisively. “Oh, yeah, it was awesome.”

“I’m serious,” he says, and I can tell by his voice that he really is. “I think secretly you love it because it gives you an excuse to be closed off to everyone and not give anybody the chance to mess with you.” Sawyer gets closer, both of us still under the patio awning, this place we’ve known all our lives. “But the truth is, you wouldn’t let me mess with you to begin with. You never let me that far in. And now you get to hold me at arm’s length and tell yourself I deserve it, and maybe I do, but that’s tough because it’s not good enough this time.” He’s got me backed against the exterior wall of the restaurant, right up in my space like he wants to make one hundred percent sure I know he’s not going away. “You hear me, Reena? I want more than that.”

I shake my head again, wishing I didn’t have to hear him. “Shelby’s never going to forgive me,” is what comes out.

“Goddamnit, Reena,” he says, voice rising; oh, I’m making him mad. “Can you please let me in for one second?”

“Seriously?” I demand. I feel myself get a little bigger, my shoulders broadening out. “Let you in? The whole entire time we were together I tried to get you to talk to me.”

That gets his attention. “About what?” he asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“About everything!” I tell him. “About your family, about your friends, about Allie—”

“I gave Allie the keys to her car.”

“What?” It’s so sudden I think I’ve misheard him, and when I look at his face I can tell he’s surprised himself. For a second we only just stare at each other, recalibrating, but then he takes a breath and goes on.

“The night she died.” It looks as if it’s physically painful for him to say it, as if the words taste like gravel or bone. “I had her keys. And I let her have them.”

I don’t—It feels like he’s speaking Mandarin. “But we were together the night she died,” I say, still not understanding. “At the ice cream place.”

“Before that.” Sawyer exhales, rakes his hands through his hair. All of a sudden the tenor of this conversation has changed completely, like it’s about so much more than just him and me. “Before I came to the restaurant. We were at a party with some people. Lauren and all of them. We didn’t drive together, but she gave me her keys because she didn’t want to carry a purse. She had that big stupid purse, you know?” Sawyer shrugs and heads across the patio even though it’s still raining, leaves the safe harbor of the awning for the glider at the edge of the yard. After a minute I follow.

“We were there for like an hour,” he tells me, swinging just a little, picking reflexively at the seam of his work pants. “Maybe an hour and a half. And we started to argue.”

“Okay,” I say softly. I perch beside him on the glider, same as the night just after Allie’s funeral. It makes it easier, somehow, not to have to stare him in the eye. I can hear the restaurant sounds just like I could the last time we did this, the same underwater sensation. “I’m with you so far.”

Sawyer nods. “She said she was leaving,” he continues after a minute. My heart is thudding hard behind my ribs. “She yelled at me to give her the keys, and she wasn’t—she wasn’t sloppy, you know? It wasn’t like she was falling down. But she’d had a couple beers and there was that look in her eye, and—” He breaks off all of a sudden, shrugging helplessly. He looks about ten years old. “I never, ever should have let her go. But I did. I threw her the keys and I told her to get the hell lost, if that’s how she felt about stuff, and I—”