What I didn’t have, I thought on Thanksgiving Day while recovering from a gravy overdose on my parents’ couch, was a time machine that could catapult me forward to the next party.
I couldn’t wait to see Nate. I couldn’t wait to get him back.
And when I did, maybe I’d spend some time hanging around Helen’s apartment, harassing her into awkward conversations. Maybe I’d embarrass her in public by throwing her at random men, the better to suggest that she was incapable of finding one on her own. Maybe I’d trap her in bathrooms and, when she asked how I could treat her so badly, maybe I’d act confused as to why she wasn’t just a little bit more supportive of me and my needs.
Turnabout on Helen wouldn’t just be fair play, it would be sheer delight.
I felt a searing sort of pang then, and remembered that hushed dawn on Cadillac Mountain, with the world still and dark everywhere around us. We’d huddled together in the early-morning cold—so cold I couldn’t bring myself to imagine winters in Maine, if that was what June felt like—and giggled. It didn’t feel like a personal memory—it was more like a movie I’d seen once. The kind of movie that made you believe that friendships that involved vision quests to Cadillac Mountain would last until the friends in question were old, quarrelsome women on a porch somewhere. Men should never come between those kinds of friends. Not even someone as golden and sweet as Nate Manning.
I curled myself into a ball and pulled the fleece throw up to my chin, tuning out the football game and my mother’s chatter.
Cadillac Mountain hadn’t mattered to Helen. It shouldn’t matter to me, either. She’d showed me what our friendship meant to her.
Now it was my turn.
Back in Boston, I spent the first week of the last month of my twenties recovering from food overindulgence and trying to cope with Minerva’s new affinity for the didgeridoo, traditional musical instrument of the Australian aborigines.
“The power!” Minerva warbled from halfway up the stairs. “The earthy mysticism, Gus!”
It was a long week.
And then, soon enough, it was Friday night and I was on my way to a party at a sprawling house out in Winchester that belonged to an old friend of ours who’d given in entirely to her Daughters of the American Revolution roots. We all assembled dutifully enough at Amy Lee and Oscar’s place in Somerville so we could pile into Oscar’s car. We’d even come bearing the hostess gift all the manners mavens insisted upon. Because we were grown-ups, damn it!
This time around I was dressed like a normal human being instead of a giant berry, which was doing wonders for my mood. Not to put too fine a point on it, I felt hot and sexy in the sparkly little dress I’d found on sale just that morning, during the shopping trip I’d felt compelled to take after a long contemplation of my blueberry appearance at the last event.
I’d put my hair up and created a little mascara magic. Everything was perfect. All I needed was to see Nate, andeverything would fall into place. He would forget all about Helen and race to my side, and in a year or so we’d laugh about that strange gap of time when he’d been so confused.
I didn’t consider Helen’s feelings in this scenario.
Which concerned me for about as long as my feelings had concerned her—about three point five seconds.
I was sipping my white wine and feeling very nearlymerry when there was a sudden pressure at my elbow.
An unpleasant pressure.
“Ouch,” I said.
“We need to talk.”
I looked up, and was somewhat confused to find Nate standing there, still grabbing me. Not to mention, looking as close to furious as I’d ever seen him. Nate didn’t really get mad, as far as I knew. This had a lot to do with the fact that most people simply melted when he looked at them with those big brown eyes. Except tonight those eyes were narrowed with temper and aimed right at me.
This wasn’t how I’d planned our reunion.
There was no knowing glance or secret smile. His eyes were darker than usual, the rose in his cheeks more pronounced. He was definitely worked up about something. Something that appeared to be me.
“What is wrong with you?” I demanded.
“What’s wrong with you?” he retorted. “Helen told me all about the conversation she had with you. You are out of control, Gus!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Helen—”
“Don’t try to put this on her! I had to drag the story out of her! She was actually trying to protect you!”
“I bet she was.” I glared at him. “I don’t know what she told you, Nate, but she’s playing you—again. This is what Helen does.”
He glanced around then, which is when I noticed that we were attracting attention. Not in a Janis Joplin karaoke way, thank the gods, but attention nonetheless.
“I can’t believe you would try to mess with me like this,” Nate hissed at me. “But it stops now.”
He propelled me across the well-appointed living room with its lush Oriental rug and huge blue-and-white china vases, into the drafty front hall laid with bricks and sporting a wrought-iron banister on the stairs. I was forced to concentrate on the decor, because the only other thing to concentrate on was the fact that Nate was manhandling me.
I let him do this mostly because I was determined that this time I would not cause a scene. I wouldn’t cause one, and I wouldn’t be part of one. The vision of me in the blueberry gown, reflected back to me in the Park Plaza bathroom mirrors, was with me still. Which meant Nate got off pretty lucky.
“Exactly what is it you think I’m doing?” I asked him when we were more or less alone.
“Like you don’t know,” he scoffed. “Helen refused to come tonight, by the way. She’s mad at me because I forced her to break your confidence, but I’m glad she did.”
“I still have no clue what you’re talking about,” I assured him. Although I wasn’t that dim. I had an inkling.
“Stay away from Helen!” Nate ordered me, leaning closer for emphasis. “I’m glad that you want to be friends, Gus, but ranting on about what good friends we are in some weird attempt to make Helen jealous isn’t going to make me anything but mad. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
He wasn’t making sense, of course, but I understood him anyway. I could see how it had gone. Realizing she’d overplayed her hand, Helen had no doubt taken advantage of the holiday week to let Nate drag this story out of her. She’d even gotten “mad” at him, the better to make him feel all self-righteous and furious with me.
“Let me guess,” I said dryly. Because I could practically see the scene unfold in my head like a movie. “Helen stopped by to extend an olive branch, I ranted alarmingly about my close friendship with you, and she wasn’t necessarily threatened but . . . ?”
Nate looked as if he pitied me.
“Yes,” he said. “She told me everything.”
It was genius, really. You had to appreciate the beautiful simplicity of it. She was so good, it was scary.
I almost regretted the fact that I was going to have to kill her.
Preferably with my bare hands.
chapter eleven
I let my extreme, focused outrage take charge, and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the grand house in Winchester, watching my breath form huge clouds in the frigid night air. I tucked myself a little deeper into my coat and wished passionately for a car.
A few minutes later—when I was reconsidering my burning need to race back into the city and confront Helen in her lair, mostly because my feet were turning into ice, and not metaphorically—Henry’s Jeep pulled into the driveway.
I was going to have to learn to be more specific about the wishes I made.
A million dollars in my pocket right now, I thought fervently, but nothing happened. There were only my hands in my pockets, curled up in their mittens. It was very disappointing, and then there was Henry to contend with, too.
“And what to my wondering eyes did appear,” Henry inton
ed as he climbed the front steps toward me. He stopped on the step below mine and smirked. We were at eye level. “But Augusta Curtis, Boston’s own Christmas cheer.”
I wanted very much to fling something snarky right back at him, but I held myself in check. Not because I’d suddenly discovered my inner maturity, but because I’d had an idea. I looked at him for a long moment, considering it. It was flawed, that was for sure.
“What?” he asked, looking more amused than unnerved. “Is it because I said ‘Augusta’? I don’t know what your issue is with it, it’s a great old name. Of course I could be biased—”
“Is there any possibility at all that you would do me a huge favor?” I asked him.
Henry smiled, and rocked back on his heels.
“Gus,” he said, as if enjoying the shape of my name in his mouth. “There’s always the possibility.”
“How much of a possibility?”
“That would depend on a number of factors, obviously.” He was enjoying himself. “How much you wanted the favor versus how much fun it would be for me to do it, versus—of course—how much more fun it might be for me not to do it. It’s a tricky analysis that can only be performed on a case-by-case basis.”
I frowned, thinking it over.
I had been on fire with self-righteous indignation after Nate stalked away from me, true, but this inferno had not managed to persuade Amy Lee to leave the party.
“You need to let go of this,” she’d snapped, glaring at me. “Stalking your ex through his girlfriend is the kind of thing that never, ever ends well.”
“She needs to be taken down as a matter of liberty and justice!” I replied, outraged. “This has nothing to do with stalking!”
“It has to do with Nate, and I’m not driving you back into Boston so you can make the whole situation worse,” Amy Lee had told me. “End of discussion.”
“Just see if I’m ever available again for one of your hours of need,” I told her then, but she was already ignoring me.
In retrospect, I would have been better off concealing my motives. I could see that now. Amy Lee was very often prickly about the strangest things, and sometimes required careful handling.
It was too late now: I was freezing my ass off on a front porch in Winchester.
The front porch that now held Henry Farland. I gazed at him, thoughtfully.
“You’re trying to figure the best way to work this, aren’t you?” Henry asked.
“I might be.”
“Because you think a specific approach will somehow make me forget or overlook the past few weeks?” He shook his head. “I can only think of one that might work.” He considered. “No, two. But it’s a little bit too cold for either of them.”
I shook my head at him. “You’re—”
Just in time, I caught myself. Henry smiled.
“If I were you,” he advised me, “I’d just ask.”
Which was how I found myself bundled up in the front of Henry’s car, being chauffeured back into Boston. He had the heat turned up and the music low. I-93 spread out before us, the lights of Medford twinkling off to the right as we headed south toward home.
Henry drove like a benign lunatic—which was to say, he was better than most of the other drivers on the road. Massachusetts drivers weren’t called “Massholes” by accident.
“Why are you so quiet?” Henry asked, shifting in his seat.
I was quiet because I was suspended in the dark with him, racing down the highway, with nothing to do but realize how intimate it could be to find yourself cocooned in a car with someone else. Intimate and awkward. Particularly someone else with whom you had a history. I hunched down in my seat and kept my eyes on the red taillights dotting the road in front of us, wishing he would speed up.
(That one didn’t work, either. Apparently the wish thing was a one-shot deal.)
This was exactly why I’d gone to great lengths to keep from thinking about this situation in the first place. I avoided Henry for a reason.
I was so flushed in the face I was worried he might actually be able to see me glowing red in the darkness.
“I thought the point of this was for you to be more entertaining than that stupid party,” Henry said when I still hadn’t answered him. Because, obviously, despite his many nefarious powers, he still couldn’t read my mind. “If I wanted to sit in uncomfortable silence, I’d find myself a girlfriend.”
“Wow,” I said, knocked out of my discomfort, which, it occurred to me belatedly, might have been his intention. “Was that sexist or misogynistic? Or both?”
“Just the voice of sad experience.”
“I believe you,” I told him. “Where’s Ashley tonight?”
“I think we already talked about Ashley,” Henry said reprovingly, although his mouth was twitching. He was trying not to laugh.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Not your girlfriend, just your fuck-buddy.”
He actually laughed then. “I think that’s a glass house you’re standing in, Gus.”
He had a point. I felt myself flush again, even hotter and more ashamed, but for some reason he still seemed to be amused.
“Anyway,” he said after a moment of silence. “Ashley’s kind of crazy, it turns out.”
“I would be surprised if she’s even twenty—”
“She’s twenty-two! I think.”
“—So you shouldn’t be surprised. You were crazy at that age yourself. I was there, I remember.”
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Henry said, looking over at me. “I don’t know why or how, but I can pick out the raving lunatic lurking in a roomful of normal women. It’s like I have this homing device. Usually you can’t even tell when you look at her, but it’s there. Waiting. Everything’s fine for a while and then BOOM! She goes nuts.”
I considered that for a moment. “Maybe it’s you.”
“I figured that might be your take on it.”
“I don’t mean because you’re evil,” I hastened to assure him. “Although, of course—”
“Of course.” He let out a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “Satan. Got it.”
“I just mean, maybe there’s something about the kind of boyfriend you are that lets the lunatic creep out.” I was warming to my topic. “I think everyone walks around with the possibility of crazy lurking around in them, but it takes certain circumstances for it to burst free.”
“Which you think I provide,” Henry said. “I’m like the conduit for craziness.”
“Maybe. It’s like how Georgia will date only men who are, essentially, genetically predetermined to be assholes.” This didn’t qualify as sharing personal information with the enemy. Henry had known Georgia as long as he’d known me. He knew the guys Georgia dated.
“And what about you?” he asked.
“Me?” I shot him a look, but he didn’t appear to notice. “I don’t really date that much.”
“Just disastrously,” Henry said, and let out a laugh.
Ha ha.
He ignored the scowl I sent his way easily enough, and before I knew it we were sitting outside my building. I wanted to flounce out of the car, slam the door behind me, and have that action garner the sort of response it would if I were a girl like Helen. If I were Helen, the faintest hint of disapproval would have the man groveling. A slammed car door would guarantee weeks of flower deliveries, I was sure of it.
I didn’t know what it said about me that I wanted that, but I suspected it was a moot point in any case, because I didn’t do it, because I wouldn’t stoop to Helen’s level. (And also because my disapproval had so far inspired Henry only to match my level of snideness and immaturity whenever possible. There was a decided lack of blossoms.)
“Thank you for driving me home,” I said very stiffly. “Um. Have a good night.”
“Oh, come on.” Henry had one arm propped up on the steering wheel, and leaned back against his door so he could face me. “What are you going to do now?”
I glar
ed at him. He returned the glare mildly, with a hint of smile, as usual.
“Things,” I said coldly.
“Like what things?” He grinned. “I’m not driving all the way back out to Winchester. It’s Saturday night. You look like you want to kill somebody and I’m betting that’s the most entertainment I’m likely to see tonight. Bring it on.”
“I think, actually, that you’re the raving lunatic. That exposure to you makes people feel like they’re also crazy but, no, it’s really just you.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” Henry said. “Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
Which is how I found myself trudging up the stairs in my apartment building with Henry at my side. Not an eventuality I’d ever thought to plan for. I was actually struck dumb by the fact that it was happening.
“I just have to change,” I said when we got to my door.
“I heard you the first time,” he said, his eyes laughing at me as he stood over me. “I promise not to look.”
“The point is that my apartment is a mess,” I said. A little bit desperate.
“Because I care deeply about the state of your apartment?”
“I do!” Just flat-out desperate.
“Why does everything with you regress to the sixth grade?” Henry asked. Rhetorically, I assumed.
“Look, I don’t live in a historic town house, okay? It’s just the same crappy one-bedroom I’ve had for years,” I said—still just as desperate and also a bit too loud. It reverberated up and down the hall. Henry looked incredulous.
But he didn’t get a chance to respond, because the door next to mine flew open then, and Irwin the Irritating—clad, as ever, in that same tatty bathrobe—threw himself into the hall.