“He’s my dream guy,” Kitty says in a proprietary tone.
“Well, he’s all grown up now,” I say, not taking my eyes off the screen. “He’s practically Daddy’s age.” Still . . .
“Wait, I thought I was your dream guy,” Peter says. Not to me, to Kitty. He knows he’s not my dream guy. My dream guy is Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables. Handsome, loyal, smart in school.
“Ew,” Kitty says. “You’re like my brother.”
Peter looks genuinely wounded, so I pat him on the shoulder.
“Don’t you think he’s a little scrawny?” Peter presses.
I shush him.
He crosses his arms. “I don’t get why you guys get to talk during movies and I get shushed. It’s pretty bullshit.”
“It’s our house,” Kitty says.
“Your sister shushes me at my house too!”
We ignore him in unison.
In the play, Romeo and Juliet were only thirteen. In the movie they’re more like seventeen or eighteen. Definitely still teens. How did they know they were meant to be? Just one look across a bathroom fish tank was all it took? They knew it was a love worth dying for? Because they do know. They believe. I guess the difference is, in those times people got married so much younger than they do now. Realistically, till death do us part probably only meant, like, fifteen or twenty years, because people didn’t live as long back then.
But when their eyes meet across that fish tank . . . when Romeo goes to her balcony and professes his love . . . I can’t help it. I believe too. Even though, I know, they barely know each other, and their story is over before it even truly begins, and the real part would have been in the everyday, in the choosing to be with each other despite all the hardships. Still, I think they could have made it work, if they had only lived.
As the credits roll, tears roll down my cheeks and even Peter looks sad; but unsentimental, dry-eyed little Kitty just hops up and says she’s taking Jamie Fox-Pickle outside to pee. Off they go, and meanwhile I’m still lost in my emotions on the couch, wiping tears from my eyes. “They had such a good meet-cute,” I croak.
“What’s a meet-cute?” Peter’s lying on his side now, his head propped up on his elbow. He looks so adorable I could pinch his cheeks, but I refrain from saying so. His head is big enough as it is.
“A meet-cute is when the hero and heroine meet for the very first time, and it’s always in a charming way. It’s how you know they’re going to end up together. The cuter the better.”
“Like in Terminator, when Reese saves Sarah Connor from the Terminator and he says, ‘Come with me if you want to live.’ Freaking amazing line.”
“I mean, sure, I guess that’s technically a meet-cute. . . . I was thinking more like It Happened One Night. We should add that to our list.”
“Is that in color or black-and-white?”
“Black-and-white.”
Peter groans and falls back against the couch cushions.
“It’s too bad we don’t have a meet-cute,” I muse.
“You jumped me in the hallway at school. I think that’s pretty cute.”
“But we already knew each other, so it doesn’t really count.” I frown. “We don’t even remember how we met. How sad.”
“I remember meeting you for the first time.”
“Nuh-uh. Liar!”
“Hey just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean I don’t. I remember a lot of things.”
“Okay, so how did we meet?” I challenge. I’m sure that whatever comes out of his mouth next will be a lie.
Peter opens his mouth, then snaps it shut. “I’m not telling.”
“See! You just can’t think of anything.”
“No, you don’t deserve to know, because you don’t believe me.”
I roll my eyes. “So full of it.”
After I turn off the movie, Peter and I go sit on the front porch, drinking sweet tea I made the night before. It’s cool out; there’s still enough bite in the air to let you know it isn’t quite full-on spring yet, but soon. The dogwood tree in our front yard is just beginning to flower. There is a nice breeze. I think I could sit here all afternoon and watch the branches sway and bow and the leaves dance.
We still have a little time before he has to go help his mom. I would go with him, mind the register while he moves around furniture, but the last time Peter brought me, his mom frowned and said her store was a place of business, not a “teenage hangout.” Peter’s mom doesn’t outwardly dislike me, and I don’t even think she inwardly dislikes me—but she still hasn’t forgiven me for breaking up with Peter last year. She’s kind to me, but there’s this distrust, this wariness. It’s a let’s-wait-and-see kind of feeling—let’s wait and see when you hurt my son again. I’d always imagined I would have a great, Ina Garten–type relationship with my first boyfriend’s mom. The two of us cooking dinner together, sharing tea and sympathy, playing Scrabble on a rainy afternoon.
“What are you thinking about?” Peter asks me. “You’ve got that look.”
I chew on my lower lip. “I wish your mom liked me better.”
“She does like you.”
“Peter.” I give him a look.
“She does! If she didn’t like you, she wouldn’t invite you over for dinner.”
“She invites me over for dinner because she wants to see you, not me.”
“Untrue.” I can tell this thought has never occurred to him, but it has the ring of truth and he knows it.
“She wishes we’d break up before we leave for college,” I blurt out.
“So does your sister.”
I crow, “Ha! So you’re admitting your mom wants us to break up!” I don’t know what I’m being so triumphant about. The thought is depressing, even if I already suspected it.
“She thinks getting serious when you’re young is a bad idea. It has nothing to do with you. I told her, just because it didn’t work out with you and Dad, it doesn’t mean it’ll be like that for us. I’m nothing like my dad. And you’re nothing like my mom.”
Peter’s parents got divorced when he was in sixth grade. His dad lives about thirty minutes away, with his new wife and two young sons. When it comes to his dad, Peter doesn’t say much. It’s rare for him to even bring him up, but this year, out of the blue, his dad has been trying to reconnect with him—inviting him to a basketball game, over to his house for dinner. So far Peter’s been a stone wall.
“Does your dad look like you?” I ask. “I mean, do you look like him?”
Sullenly he says, “Yeah. That’s what people always say.”
I put my head on his shoulder. “Then he must be very handsome.”
“Back in the day, I guess,” he concedes. “I’m taller than him now.”
This is a thing that Peter and I have in common—he only has a mom and I only have a dad. He thinks I got the better end of the deal, losing a mom who loved me versus a dad who is alive but a dirtbag. His words, not mine. Part of me agrees with him, because I have so many good memories of Mommy, and he has hardly any of his dad.