She grips my hands and I grip hers. We hold on for dear life.
“I miss you already,” I say, and the thought of her leaving feels much more real than anything.
She pulls me toward her, and we lay down with our arms around each other. Holding on—blood thicker than anger, than fear, than time.
“We shouldn’t tell Mom that I know,” she says. “Ray will have to tell her about Michael. And I guess I’ll have to tell her about Peru. Otherwise she’s going to wonder where the heck I am. I guess we all have a part to play in things.”
“Life is a stage, and all the men and women in it are merely players. Or something like that,” I say.
I want to ask Lola if Peru is forever, but I can’t. She says it’s just a mission trip, and right now she probably thinks it is. But what about when she gets there and learns how to fly? What if she just keeps going?
Maybe not today, but one day, I will fly.
“Do you think we make things harder than they need to be?” she asks.
“Most of the time.”
I know I do. Maybe I’ve made everything harder than it needs to be. I decide to make a call in the morning and try again.
24
Come home I said, and they did.
I open the door and there stands Cassie with her purple-and-daisy-patterned suitcase and Jack with his arms folded across his chest. No suitcase.
I step back to let them in. I want to reach out to Cassie, but I need to let her call the shots. She chooses to slip past me and disappears into her bedroom.
“Am I too late?” I ask Jack.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I really don’t.”
He closes the door behind him and stands in the entryway to the living room. His eyes fix on my face like he’s sizing me up.
“I told Cassie she could go to Teen Swim this evening,” Jack says. “You and I should talk.”
I’ve said that sentence a time or two and it’s never been pleasant.
“I thought you wanted to try again,” I say, jumping to conclusions.
“I do, Nina,” Jack says. “I just don’t know if I can. Those aren’t the same thing.”
Cassie comes out of her room wearing her swimsuit and carrying a bag of clothes. She looks at me in challenge and puts her hand on her bathing suit-clad hip. “Aren’t you going to tell me I can’t go?”
“We can go.”
“No,” she says and actually stomps her foot. “Dad says I can go alone. Zach’s dad is going to be there anyway.”
“Who’s Zach?” I ask, looking at Jack.
“My boyfriend,” Cassie says and clicks her tongue at me. Like mother, like daughter.
I open my mouth, but I hear Jack’s voice.
“I’ve already worked it out, Nina,” he says. “Zach’s dad will take them back to their place after the swim, and we can pick up Cassie after dinner.”
Cassie stands so firmly in place that her feet grow roots down into the carpet. Her stare stings my skin, and I sigh out an agreement.
“I don’t like this,” I say once she’s gone. “I feel like I’ve been out of the loop for years, not months.”
“You have,” Jack says.
“Tell me this isn’t better than pizza and a movie,” Jack says across the candlelit table of a local restaurant.
“Is that what you think it’s like with Oliver?” I ask.
Jack doesn’t know how things ended with Oliver, and I find that I don’t want to tell him that it’s over. Jack picks up his water, and the gold on his ring finger clicks against the glass.
“Ok,” Jack concedes. “So, what, he’s the coffeehouse-and-
book-reading type? Does he quote you lines from some dead poet?”
Jack smirks to himself and cuts into his steak.
I can’t talk about Oliver with Jack. I can’t talk about him at all. My phone registers a text message, and I fumble frantically, thinking it might be from Cassie. It’s a note from Carol.
Saw you go into Limones with Jack. What’s up?
I don’t answer. I don’t know what’s up.
“Is that him?” Jack asks, taking a sip of water. “Are you going to tell him where you are?”
“Is this night about you and me? Or you and Oliver? What if it was Cassie? What if she needs me and I’m sitting in some restaurant eating seared scallops and stone-ground grits?”
“She’s fine,” Jack says. “And that’s new by the way. I knew you’d order that.”
“Is this your spot?” I ask, bold. “Is this where you took them? Did you come here so often you know the menu by heart?”
“Took who?”
I roll my eyes like a teenager, and Jack lets out a chortle.
“You think I brought other women here. I’m not that suave, I promise you. Who do you think I am, anyway?”
I’m not sure that I know.
“So you went straight to the motel, then?” I’m angry, and maybe a little jealous.
He sighs. “What do you want me to say? Because I’ve told you in these exact words a number of times—I did not have an affair, multiple affairs, or any other loophole of syntax that you’re trying to catch me in.”
“Whatever, Jack. I don’t expect you to own up to it. Let’s just eat.”
“What do you want, Nina?” Jack waves his hand in resignation, yet doesn’t answer any of my questions. “Do you want to adopt? Do you want me to apologize for ruining your life? What?”
“You didn’t ruin my life. I don’t know what I want.”
“That’s the problem,” Jack says and pushes his half-eaten dinner aside. “You’re always looking ahead for something that might never come. You’re never happy with where you are, what you have, who you have.”
I look up sharply at this comment. The truth of it is a perfectly round floodlight in a high school play, illuminating the two of us at the table.
In the play, the “me” character gets up and steps into the darkness. It’s like walking behind a wall
