And why you’ve transformed the basement into a scene from a creature feature, I added silently.
“I don’t know that I’d say I was excited about them,” Dad demurred.
Naturally. Excitement was an emotion, after all, and he couldn’t admit to those.
“You have about sixty tanks down there,” I retorted. “You have a seventeen-page flowchart. If it’s not excitement, what is it?”
I tacked a smile onto the end of that, to cushion the tone.
Dad eyed me for a moment.
“The thing about fish is that you can control the breeding,” he said after a while. “So if you’re interested in fins, for example, you can breed for fins. You can see the results quickly, you know. It’s about a thirty-day gestation period.”
“You like fins?”
“For example,” Dad said.
Fins, scales, bulging eyes, and slimy tails—who really cared? He was obviously insane! But he looked back down at the flowchart, and I noticed that his hands looked old: knobby and tired. I remembered them from when I was small and thought they could block out the sun. I had to catch a sudden breath.
“So you like the breeding part,” I said, determined to make sense of it.
“I like that I can control their environments,” Dad said. “They become what I want them to become. There are very few surprises when you get the science right. You get out what you put in.”
Unlike your family, I thought, watching him.
“Well,” I said when it was clear he’d not only finished speaking, but had possibly forgotten that he had been speaking. “I’m glad you found something that makes you happy.”
I wanted to rush over and hug him, but I restrained myself. He might swoon.
As if he could read my mind, he stiffened.
“What would make me even happier,” he said gruffly, “would be a fresh ginger ale, if you wouldn’t mind.”
He didn’t look up from the chart, and still, I felt a deep ache inside my chest. I didn’t move.
“I’d appreciate it, Meredith.”
“Of course,” I murmured, and then went to fetch it.
“I want to see you, and I want to see the movie,” Scott said with a show of great patience. “It’s a matter of convenience and is in no way a date. You might want to consider getting over yourself.”
“It seems pretty datelike to me,” I sulked at him, slumped in the front seat of his car.
The window was open and the marginally cooler night air swirled inside, scented with cut grass and flowers. Summer smells.
They didn’t make me feel any better.
“And yet you haven’t flung yourself from the car in disgust,” Scott pointed out. “So I guess you don’t really mind.”
I turned my head to look at him. He glanced at me, then back at the road.
“Don’t,” he said, before I could speak. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
“We’re going to have to.” I watched him narrowly. “Sooner or later.”
“Later.” He kept his eyes on the road. “I’ve been wanting to see pretty girls die gruesome deaths all week and I know you’re going to ruin it.”
“We can’t pretend—”
“No one’s pretending anything!” He flicked me a look. “Well, I guess you are. But I just want to go and see this movie, Meredith, okay? And I definitely don’t want to have this discussion while operating a motor vehicle, because I think we can both be sure you’re going to piss me off.”
I’d been feeling sad and a little angry all day, thanks to that conversation with my father. Part of me wanted to lash out. Another huge part of me wanted to sink into Scott and forget about everything, including all the reasons that was a terrible idea. And I didn’t want to think about any of it.
“Just for that you can buy my ticket and popcorn,” I replied after a long moment.
“I can’t do that.” He sounded smug. “That would make it a date.”
Later, having laughed away the urge for serious discussion in the delightfully bad movie, we sat in a shadowy bar on the outskirts of town—a bar that I had long associated with the sketchier graduates of our high school. I played with my beer bottle absently and periodically peered through the haze of cigarette smoke and classic rock to see if I recognized anyone.
I didn’t. Thank God.
“So exactly what do you do with your days?” Scott asked. “You can’t sit in that house all the time. Do you have friends in the city?”
I frowned. “Actually, no. Not really.”
He waited. I sighed.
“You know, I don’t actually have so many friends around here anymore,” I admitted carefully.
There was Rachel, sure, but she was something so new and also so old—not to mention complicated—that I wasn’t sure I could use her as evidence. I was fairly certain we would both have to cry and maybe hug before we could be sure of each other again.
“I’ve always had Christian,” I reminded Scott. “And there was Jeannie. You know, that group in high school, they were mostly Jeannie’s friends and I don’t really keep in touch with them. She does.”
I shrugged. Scott smirked.
“What a loss. And here I wanted to know all about what that evil little monster Ashley Mueller was up to these days.”
He took a pull from his beer, and I decided not to mention that Ashley Mueller was, in fact, Jeannie’s maid of honor.
“What about college?” Scott continued. “Don’t tell me you sat in your dorm room for four years to make up for your high school sins. Though that kind of appeals to me.”
“I had friends!” I made a face at him. “My freshman year I ran around with this whole group of girls from my dorm. We had fun. But then I met Billy.” I felt unaccountably embarrassed, saying his name and seeing the look on Scott’s face. I hurried on. “And so then I mostly just hung out with him.”
“Billy?” Scott pronounced the name with far too much amusement. “Let me guess. Blond, tall, and oh so charming?”
“He was just my college boyfriend.” I ignored his tone, and also his alarmingly on-the-nose description. I sat back, thinking about the Billy years. “We dated for a long time in college, and then, less successfully, out of college. It turned out I didn’t think his being a complete pothead was all that attractive off campus. So I moved down to Atlanta and met Travis, literally my second day of work. We started hanging out immediately.”
“Uh-huh.” Scott watched me closely. “I’m going to bet you have all the same friends, and they were his friends first.”
“We have mutual friends, yes,” I said. Defensively.
He smiled at his drink, and then slanted a look my way.
“I can’t decide if that’s sad or just pathetic,” he told me. “Or maybe scary. Have you ever thought about making your own friends?”
“Are you an example of what that would entail?” I asked crisply. “Because so far, it hasn’t been a great success.”
Scott snorted. “Nice comeback, Atlanta, but we’re not friends.”
“Oh, of course not,” I scoffed. “Because men and women can never be friends, blah blah blah, When Harry Met Sally—you know, you might think about updating your—”
“We’re not friends,” Scott said very distinctly, “because you don’t want to know anything about me. I know something about you, but you, Meredith, have never even asked a question about me.”
He watched me with his eyes sharp again, and I wanted to shrink away in a sudden intense burst of shame.
“Then you should probably think about hanging out with someone else,” I said finally. Weakly.
“Maybe I should,” he agreed. “In the meantime, though, I’m fine with being your sex object.” He smiled, but I didn’t entirely believe it.
“Ugh,” I groaned, but I was thankful to change the subject, and to look away. “Do you ever think about anything else?”
“Around you?” He shook his head, and played with his beer bottle. He smiled
. “No, not really.”
He just watched me, in a silence that I found unnerving.
I looked away, back into the haze all around us.
“Why are you cheating on him?” he asked, very quietly. With me, his eyes clarified.
Of course, I thought dimly, part of me should have been expecting this question. Because you’re here, I wanted to say, but it was mean. And untrue.
“I don’t know,” I said instead, which was closer to true. “I didn’t know I could . . . I mean, I never have before, if that’s what you wondered.”
“Because you’re such a nice girl,” Scott supplied, his mouth curving. Although not in a smile. Not exactly.
“I think we should go,” I said at length. “I’m tired.”
“Yeah,” Scott agreed, and laughed. “I bet you are.”
“Guess where I am?” Travis asked.
“On vacation?” I asked. I was washing Dad’s lunch dishes. I almost dropped the phone into the sink while transporting a plate to the dishwasher, and had to clench it harder with my shoulder. “Did you go up to the lake? That’s so unfair, it’s boiling hot here—”
“Nothing quite that scenic,” Travis said, cutting me off. “I just landed. I’m at Newark. You gonna come pick me up or what?”
Then I really did drop the phone—happily, not into the sink. It clattered across the linoleum and lay there, staring back at me. Balefully, I thought.
This time, I actually did move without thought. It was panic mode.
I calmly informed Dad that I would be running out for a bit, and that we would be having a houseguest. I navigated the labyrinth of New Jersey highways to Newark with intense concentration, the radio up high.
I even sang along.
When I had picked the phone up from the ground and laughed uneasily to explain dropping it, Travis had said he would be waiting outside at the arrivals hall. And there he was, as promised, lounging in the sunshine, grinning when he saw me sitting high behind the wheel of Mom’s huge SUV, so far off the ground I practically had to use a ladder to get in and out.
I put it into park and climbed out. He is so blond, I thought. He needs a haircut, I thought, and then I was enveloped in his arms, in the familiar heft and scent of him, which should have felt like coming home but instead felt strange and unusual. As if we had stopped fitting. Even his mouth felt odd on mine, his kiss old and forgotten.
The guilt kicked in. Hard.
“I can only stay for the weekend,” he said, slinging an arm across my shoulders and heading toward the car. “I have this pain-in-the-ass presentation on Monday morning that I couldn’t get out of.”
“The weekend’s great,” I said.
I smiled up at him and willed myself to be happy. My boyfriend was here. This was my real life. This was what mattered.
Everything else was darkness and bad dreams, and barely signified.
“Well, well, well,” Hope drawled, sauntering into the kitchen. “If it isn’t Travis.”
“Hey there, Hope,” Travis said. “How’s graduation treating you?”
“Oh, just fine,” Hope said, with her prettiest smile and a quick glance my way. I avoided her eyes.
“We’re going out to dinner,” I announced without inflection. “I made up Dad’s tray. Could you take it to him when he wants it?”
Normally, this request would precipitate a snort and a quick exit, but Hope only looked at me for a moment.
“Of course,” she said. “I’m going out around ten, if you guys are interested.” Another glance my way. “There are a few bars in town that are fun sometimes.”
“That sounds a little bit late for me,” Travis replied easily, southern charm on high. He didn’t notice the evil eye I turned on Hope. “I’m turning into an old man.”
“Bye,” was what I said, and grabbed Travis by the hand to drag him out.
We sat outside at one of the sidewalk cafés. The fact that the town boasted more than one sidewalk café still amazed me, given what the place had been like while I was growing up, and I decided to comment on this.
At length.
“What’s going on with you?” Travis asked after we’d ordered and were sitting there with only air between us, my dissertation on the gentrification of my hometown having finally been exhausted. “You’re taking tense to a new level.”
“Family stuff,” I offered immediately, with a nervous smile.
I shoved a piece of bread in my mouth. Because it’s always best to sublimate emotions via carbs.
“You look good,” Travis said quietly. He smiled. “Different, but real good.”
“Different? What does ‘different’ mean?” I demanded, with, I could hear, unnecessary paranoia. Could he see my infidelity marked in ink across my face? Or did he just sense it?
Travis sat back in his chair, surprised.
“It just means different,” he said, sounding slightly defensive. “Your hair or something. I don’t know. You usually look more— What is going on with you?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. I considered denying it, but who was I kidding? “I think I’m just a little freaked out that you’re here. All summer I’ve felt like I’m reliving my teenage years and then suddenly here you are—it’s just weird, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve barely touched me,” he continued in a low tone. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d forgotten all about me.”
His grin told me he didn’t really think anything of the kind.
I smiled apologetically and reached across the table to take his hand.
“I haven’t forgotten about you for even five minutes,” I said. Funny how the lies kept coming. “Things are just crazy here. I’m crazy here.”
“You’re the most down-to-earth, reliable person I know,” Travis said with an instant loyalty that caused an answering flash of shame in my gut. “I don’t know why you let your family get to you. When do you think you’re coming home? The place is practically falling apart without you around.”
“Let me guess—pizza boxes on every available surface, laundry in huge piles around the bedroom, and the vacuum cleaner gathering dust in the closet?”
“Worse,” Travis said, laughing. “I’ve had to order food in every night since you left. Look at me, I’m getting fat!” He patted his stomach.
“Just solid,” I assured him, the way I always did.
Conversely, when I’d put on a few pounds after a few months of nonstop weekend weddings, Travis had clucked and suggested a personal trainer. I had rolled my eyes and called him a southern chauvinist.
Stop it! I scolded myself. You’re just trying to make him the bad guy.
“Charlie and Becky got engaged,” Travis said.
He used that as a springboard into updates on everyone else we knew. And I couldn’t help but think about the last conversation I’d had with Scott. He’d been right—everyone Travis and I knew, Travis had known first.
I had originally met him through a girl at work who had long since married and moved away to Houston. The rest of our circle was made up of Travis’s college buddies and the many Atlanta-born and -bred people he’d grown up with. The girlfriends came and went and the wives were nice enough, but none of them were mine. None of them knew me outside of my role as “Travis’s girlfriend.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I was pretty certain it spoke to some tremendous void inside of me. The one that permitted deception and betrayal on the one hand, and on the other, the smile on my face as I sat there and held Travis’s hand. As if I was still that girl he trusted.
After dinner we walked out into the warm night and stood for a minute outside the restaurant. Travis ran his hands up and down my arms and smiled down at me. I smiled back into his warm, open gaze and willed myself to be good again, to be worthy of him. He kissed me gently, and then again, with more intensity, and I told myself that it felt like coming home.
I reminded myself of the life we had together, and how hard I’d worked
to make it wonderful. I thought of the way he smiled down at me so proudly when we danced, all done up in formal wear, at the succession of weddings we always seemed to be attending. I thought of how he looked when he was sleepy and silly, and how I only pretended to be exasperated. I reminded myself that when our “state of the union” discussion had taken place in the spring, he’d indicated that a marriage proposal was coming, and I’d been so ecstatic about finally winning him I’d basked in it for days.
This was love. This was real. It had to be.
We pulled away from each other, and I smiled at him.
“I missed you,” Travis murmured.
“I missed you too,” I replied.
It wasn’t exactly a lie if I wanted it to be true, was it?
There was another kiss, a sweet kiss. I thought maybe things would be okay, or at least I would be better, and things would be all right again. We had to be. I had to be.
So of course Scott was standing right there when I turned around.
We stared at each other. I could feel his stare in the soles of my feet and actually swayed back, away from him, like that might help.
It was a moment, maybe two, and then he turned on his heel and walked away.
“Come on,” Travis said to me, completely oblivious. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 10
So what’s the deal?” Hope asked in an undertone.
We were sitting in the backseat of Jeannie’s SUV, tearing through the suburbs at about ninety miles an hour.
Christian and Jeannie had appeared in the kitchen just after ten in the morning and announced that it was Bridesmaid Time. Jeannie’s maid of honor, the odious Ashley Mueller, had shown up shortly thereafter. I’d been forced to leave Travis to Christian, which was really just as well, since I felt a little bit insane whenever I was around Travis. My attempts to overcompensate just made it worse—it made him think I was insane as well. He’d been giving me that what time of the month is it? look since dinner the night before. Which would ordinarily enrage me on principle, but I was in no position to complain.