Jack doesn’t look like he minds not going to breakfast with me.
In fact, it’s almost like he can’t get out of here fast enough, telling me he’ll call me later about tonight.
The minute the door closes behind him, I burst into tears, knowing I’ve scared him away.
After I put the picture of me and Jack back in the drawer and the one of me and Raphael back in the frame, I spend the day reading my book when I’m not drifting around my apartment, waiting for the phone to ring and for Jack to tell me he can’t make it tonight after all.
When he doesn’t, I call him instead.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “I think I’m coming down with some sort of stomach thing, Jack. I’m really queasy and I haven’t been able to eat anything all day.”
That’s true, actually. But it’s not a stomach thing. It’s a humiliation thing.
“That’s okay,” Jack says.
Is it my imagination, or does he sound relieved?
Well, duh. Of course he sounds relieved.
He probably spent the day trying to figure out how to let me down easily, because he’s a nice guy.
“So…I’ll see you at work on Monday, then,” Jack says.
“Sure.”
“I hope you feel better soon.”
I hang up, thinking, So do I.
13
On Sunday morning, I go to church at St. Fabian’s again.
I know I’m supposed to be listening to the sermon—I mean, that’s the purpose of being here, right?
But I spend the whole time reliving the moment when Jack saw himself in a picture frame in my apartment.
Well, not the whole time.
I spend part of the time rewinding to Thursday night and the phone call from Will, whose fault, I have concluded, this whole mess really is.
If Will hadn’t called, I wouldn’t have felt lonely enough to take out the picture of Jack and fantasize about our relationship. I wouldn’t have put the picture in a frame to see how we looked as an official couple. I wouldn’t have left it there overnight…or forgotten to take it out. Jack wouldn’t have seen it.
Blaming Will feels good.
Well, as good as anything can feel on this miserable Sunday morning when I’d much rather be in bed asleep.
I can’t stop yawning. Have I ever been this exhausted in my whole life? Not just physically exhausted. Emotionally exhausted.
I mean, misery and humiliation take a lot out of a gal.
Ironically, the organist plays “Joy to the World” as mass ends.
Yeah, right.
No joy in the world of Tracey, I think, stepping out into the cold, gray, rainy morning. That’s right. Rain. Again.
Back home in Brookside, December is snowy, transforming the small and somewhat dingy town into the proverbial Currier and Ives print.
Here in Manhattan, it never snows.
Oh, wait, it did snow. It snowed the night Jack and I were at the Rockefeller Center tree.
Yeah, it snowed, but it didn’t stick, I think gloomily, trudging along Eighth Street.
Nothing ever sticks.
Snow.
Relationships.
I scowl.
Well, at least my pissy mood is a perfect match for Buckley’s. He called me just before I left to remind me that we’re hanging out later.
He sounded depressed about Sonja and said he’d meet me at our favorite dive bar later.
We can cry on each other’s shoulders about love gone wrong.
Gee. I can hardly wait.
“I made it!” I shout gleefully. “Did you see that? I made it!”
“I saw it. You did!” Buckley slaps me a high five and I jump around a bit to celebrate sinking the second-to-last ball into the corner pocket, just the way I called the shot.
I’ve never been very good at pool, but we’ve been playing for two hours straight and tonight I’m on fire.
“Okay, that striped ball over there into that pocket over there,” I tell Buckley as I line up the next—and last—shot.
“Are you sure? Not the corner pocket?”
“Nope. That pocket,” I insist, pointing.
He shrugs.
I squint. Aim. Shoot.
The ball goes right into the pocket I predicted.
With a squeal, I break into a happy little dance across the empty barroom floor, using my pool cue as a prop. You know, like a cane. Like in A Chorus Line.
“What are you doing?” Buckley asks, laughing.
“I beat you again. I won. So I’m dancing,” I say in an Isn’t it-obvious? tone.
“You look like you’re having a blast,” Buckley says dryly.
I am having a blast.
I know I said I thought tonight would be a bust, but the whole time we’ve been playing pool and drinking beers and cracking jokes, neither of us has even mentioned Sonja or Will or Jack.
Maybe it’s the beer. Maybe it’s my sudden pool ace status. Or maybe it’s just being with Buckley.
In any case, I’m feeling lighthearted for a change.
Humming “One,” I sway a little too much to the left and almost fall over.
“Oops.”
Buckley laughs and reaches out to steady me.
I pull on his hand. “Come on, Buckley, do a kick line with me. Let’s be A Chorus Line.”
He protests, but I drag him around until he joins in, and we’re having a good old time dancing around the almost empty pool room.
Until I do an overexuberant move and swing the cue stick into his hand.
Actually, it would have been something far more vulnerable than his hand, but he saw the stick coming and used his hand to protect himself.
“Ow!” he howls, doubling over.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling too giddy to mean it.
“That thing is dangerous.” He snatches it out of my hand.
“Hey! That’s my cane.”
“Why do you need a cane?”
“You know…” I hum a few more bars of “One.”
You know, Dut-da-da-dut-da-da-dut-da-dadadadada-dut-da-da-dut-da-da-daaahhh….
Buckley the Broadway Musically Challenged still doesn’t get it.
“Why do you need a cane?” he repeats.
“Didn’t the dancers use canes in A Chorus Line?”
“I don’t know. I never saw it,” Buckley says.
“I didn’t either.” I stop dancing, stricken by inspiration. “We should see it!”
“A Chorus Line? Didn’t it close years ago?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
“How?”
“We’ll ask someone.”
“Who?”
I look around the bar.
The bartender is busy on the phone in the corner, and the only other patrons are a couple of unshaven, red-faced, unkempt career drunks sitting on stools watching television. They look like they’ve been here every night for the last forty or fifty years.
“Excuse me,” I call to them. “Does anybody know if A Chorus Line is still playing on Broadway?”
I guess nobody knows, because nobody even turns around.
“Yoo-hoo!” I call. “Men at the bar!”
One guy barely swivels in his stool and grunts, “Yeah?”
“Do you know anything about A Chorus Line?”
“Nope. And I don’t want to, either.”
He swivels back.
“Yeah, well, you could all use a little culture,” I mutter, scowling. “Don’t you think they could all use a little culture, Buckley?”
“Yeah, let’s clean them up and take them to the Met.”
“Seriously?”
“Are you out of your mind?” Buckley laughs. “You’re drunk, Tracey.”
“I am not,” I protest lamely, then say, “So are you.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, “I am feeling a little trashed.”
We both laugh.
Then we lean against the pool table, side by side. I’m a little winded from all
that dancing.
“Want to go get something to eat?” Buckley asks, checking his watch. “It’s late. We never got dinner.”
“No. I want a cigarette.”
“No smoking.” He points to the sign.
“Well, then I want to go see A Chorus Line.”
“Why? What’s up with you and this sudden fascination with A Chorus Line?”
“I don’t know. I just miss seeing shows. I used to see them all the time when…”
“When you were with Will,” he finishes for me when I trail off.
I didn’t mean to go there.
But now that I’m there….
“Yeah. When I was with Will, I saw all the shows he was in, and all the shows his friends were in and a lot of other stuff, too. But I never saw A Chorus Line. And now I might never get to,” I add, feeling desolate.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know why it matters, but suddenly it does. A lot. So much that I have a lump in my throat.
“I really miss Will, Buckley.”
“You’re drunk, Trace,” Buckley says again. Only, this time he doesn’t sound amused. He sounds sad.
“I know. I am drunk. So are you.”
“I know. And I miss Sonja.”
“I know you do. And I miss Jack.”
“I know you—wait a minute. Jack? State Capital Guy Jack? You just went out with him last night.”
“No, I didn’t. I was supposed to, but…” I quickly—and mostly without slurring—explain to Buckley about the photo and Jack fleeing my apartment.
To my utter irritation, Buckley is amused again.
“It’s not funny,” I say, jabbing him with my elbow.
“I think it is. I’m trying to picture myself going out with somebody twice and then—”
“Three times,” I amend. “Four, if you count the Christmas party.”
“Still—four times, and you find yourself in a frame in some girl’s apartment?” He laughs. Hard.
“I hate you,” I say darkly.
“I’m sorry. It’s just funny.”
“Not to me. I really liked him, Buckley.”
He stops laughing. “I know you did. And I’m sorry.” This time, he sounds like he means it.
He also sounds so…something. Something that I can’t put my finger on.
“You know,” he says seriously, “you said yourself that this guy Jack was just supposed to be Transformer Man, so it’s not like—”
“Transition Boy,” I correct him, pulling myself up so that I’m sitting on the edge of the pool table. “He was Transition Boy.”
“Right. Transistor Boy.” He shrugs and sits beside me. “I thought you figured you’d only go out with him a few times and then it would be over, anyway.”
“I did think that.”
“But…?”
I stare down at the Marc Jacobs shoes Raphael bought for me on one of our splurges. They’re a half size too big and they give me blisters on my heels, but they look great with these jeans.
Buckley prods, “You did think that, but…?”
“But I really liked Jack,” I admit. Hell, might as well put it all right out there. “And I’m sick of being alone.”
“Yeah.” He touches my hand. “That sucks. But, Tracey, I’m kind of glad Jack blew you off.”
“He didn’t blow me off, really,” I protest before I realize what he’s said.
I look up at him in surprise. “What do you mean, you’re glad, Buckley?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I was jealous.”
“Jealous?” I gape at nice, sweet, cute Buckley. My good friend Buckley. The one who now—like me—is available.
“Yeah.” He looks sheepish. “Lately I’ve been wondering if we—”
“Don’t say it!”
“Say what?”
“Say what I think you’re going to say. About us. Because if you say it—”
“What? That lately I’ve been wanting to kiss you again?”
I wince.
Okay, it’s an exhilarated Buckley-wants-to-kiss-me-again! kind of wince.
“You said it,” I say with as much dismay as I can muster. “I told you not to say it.”
“I couldn’t help it. I’m drunk.”
“That’s no excuse. We’ve been drunk together before, plenty of times, since that time you kissed me. Which you never should have done in the first place.”
“I thought we were out on a date.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think that. And I had a boyfriend.”
“You don’t now.”
I realize that he’s gone from patting my hand in sympathy to holding my hand.
“True…”
My head is spinning. My hand feels snug and secure clasped in his.
“But this isn’t a date, Buckley,” I remind him.
“It feels like one.”
He’s right. It does. I try to focus intently on his face, to envision him as good, old, platonic Buckley.
But I can’t. Suddenly, he’s this guy I want to kiss.
And he’s staring right back at me, into my eyes, like he wants to do just that.
How can he want to kiss me?
He’s seen me at my worst. He’s seen me throw up; he’s seen me with my face broken out and with no makeup; scariest of all, he’s seen me in a bathing suit before I lost all of my weight.
Uh-oh. He’s leaning in.
“Buckley…”
“Let’s try it, Trace,” he says. “Just once.”
“We already tried it once.”
“That was six months ago. And you were in love with Will. It doesn’t count.”
“Count? Count as what?”
“You know, as…a test.”
I pretend I have no idea what he means. In truth, I know exactly what he’s saying.
As he elaborates, I find myself staring at his full lips, and my stomach gets all quivery.
“If we kiss and we both feel nothing, we won’t have to wonder anymore,” he tells me. “And if we kiss and we both feel something…”
“We won’t have to wonder either?”
“Exactly,” he says, squeezing my hand.
Yeah. And what if we kiss and one of us feels something and the other one feels nothing? What if the one who feels something is me and the one who feels nothing is Buckley?
Then I’ll have been rejected by two guys in the space of a single weekend, which has to be some kind of world record. Three guys, if you count Will and expand the time frame.
Then again, Jack hasn’t officially rejected me…yet.
And what if Buckley is the one who feels something and I’m the one who feels nothing?
“I’m going to do it now,” Buckley says, jarring me out of what-iffy-ness.
“Okay. Go ahead….” I close my eyes.
Nothing.
I wet my lips nervously.
Still nothing.
I open my eyes.
Buckley’s face is, like, two inches away.
“I can’t do it,” he says. “I want to, but I don’t want to ruin—”
Take-Charge Tracey cuts him off by grabbing his head, pulling him closer and kissing him. Brazen, I know. But I can’t help it. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if we got this far and I didn’t find out….
That kissing Buckley six months later isn’t like kissing a friend at all.
That I’m attracted to him.
That my heart is pounding and it isn’t impossible to imagine taking things further than this.
When we pull apart, my eyes snap open and I have a moment of dread. What if Buckley is wearing a distasteful expression and it’s clear that he wasn’t as into the kiss as he seemed?
Enough with the what-ifs, already. Sheesh.
His expression isn’t distasteful. But it is uncharacteristically anxious.
“Was that okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I tell him, smiling. “Very okay.”
H
e looks relieved. “I thought so, too. I’m glad you did it. I thought it might ruin our friendship.”
“It didn’t,” I say. “Right?”
“Right,” he agrees with a grin.
I find myself looking for his dimples before I remember that he’s not Jack.
We sit there on the edge of the pool table, side by side, swinging our legs.
“Want to play another game of pool?” he asks.
“Maybe. Do you?”
“Maybe. Do you want another beer?”
“Maybe in a minute.”
“Okay.”
We sit there in companionable silence.
Then Buckley asks, “So now what?”
“Hmm?”
“What happens next?”
“I don’t know,” I say, not sure if he’s referring to the next five minutes or the grand scheme of our relationship.
“Maybe we should try a real date,” Buckley suggests.
Grand scheme of relationship, I conclude.
“A real date would be fine,” I tell him.
“Great. What should we do?”
“We could go see A Chorus Line.”
“I really think that closed a few years ago, Trace.”
“Then we could go see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular,” I tell him, remembering. “I’ve got two tickets to see it on Friday night.”
Technically, I already asked Jack, but there’s no way he’s going to go after what happened Saturday morning. I’m sure he’ll say he’ll be stuck in Atlanta Friday night. Or maybe even all weekend, just to be sure I won’t try and corner him into another date.
“That would be fun,” Buckley says. “I haven’t seen it since I was a kid.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
We smile at each other.
Look, I want to see the Radio City show with Buckley. Really, I do.
It’s just…
I still feel a little pang of regret at the thought of Jack.
Okay, a huge pang that’s more of a stabbing pain, really, when I think about how I’ll never know what the surprise was, and, even worse, how we’ll never have a chance to see where things might have gone with us just because I made one stupid, stupid mistake.
I mean, kissing Buckley was great.
But kissing Jack was great, too.
With Jack, there was more…