She slams her palm against her forehead. “Oh my God, Lucas! We didn’t meet in that class. We met at the freaking museum. We were both looking at a Jackson Pollock, and we had a long and detailed conversation about whether abstract art could truly represent a real thing.” She crosses her arms in conversational victory. “Don’t try to deny it. We talked about Pollock’s work and the other expressionists and the whole idea of representation. And later we discussed it constantly over study sessions, over lunch in the cafeteria, over coffee, and so on.”
I hold up a finger to make a point, enjoying this trek down memory lane. “I remember meeting you at our favorite café, ordering a black coffee for you, with one packet of sugar. And I vividly recall those torturous study sessions when we had to prep for the brutal exams in our business principles class.”
“I had to poke you to keep you awake in the lounge as we studied,” she says, stretching across the table and stabbing her unpolished fingernail against my arm. The lack of polish shouldn’t affect me one way or the other, but I’ve always liked that Lola’s a low-maintenance kind of gal. She doesn’t doll herself up to an unrecognizable degree.
“I still have the flesh wounds from your efforts.”
“You have the passing grade from my efforts, mister. I saved your ass in business principles, Lucas Xavier,” she says, narrowing her eyes, though her tone is full of jest, full of friendship. Like she was before that weekend. Before I fucked things up. Before I said things I shouldn’t have and didn’t say the things I should.
If I’d been more honest with her the weekend I went away, things might have been different. But when you spend a weekend with a bunch of college guys, you aren’t always thinking straight about how to communicate all the crazy feelings you have for a woman.
And at twenty-one, I hardly knew what to say. Honest affection, open communication—those weren’t classes my parents taught. Hiding, avoiding, denying—that was what I grew up seeing.
That had been familiar, and I’m not sure I’m much better at communication now.
But at least one thing is different nearly ten years later. Even though we’re arguing, we’re having fun as we do it.
And hell, do I ever miss this.
This is what I’ve missed most since our friendship did a Humpty Dumpty all that time ago. There was no putting it back together again, so we splintered into enemy factions, weapons always drawn.
Tonight though? We’re friends again. It’s a one night stand-in, and I’ll take it.
“Fine, you saved my sorry ass,” I concede. “But my point, woman, is this.” I slap a hand on the table for emphasis. “We met in class, but you insisted on arguing about whether we actually met at the museum. It was this long, ongoing thing.”
“Because we met at the museum,” she says, laughing. “You yourself acknowledged we met there.”
I shake my head, digging in like the stubborn bastard I am. “Nope. We never exchanged names at the Pollock. Therefore, it was not an official meeting.”
She tosses her hands in the air. “See? You are exasperating. Why does it need to be official? We talked for ten minutes before your lacrosse buddy—the guy with red hair, Jimmy or whoever he was—rolled his eyes and pulled you away with an art is boring line or whatever.”
“Jimmy was the boring one. Which explains why I never stayed in touch with him. Anyway, Boring Jimmy pulled me aside before we exchanged names, which means that you and I didn’t officially meet till the graphic design class.”
She shakes her head, but she’s clearly amused. “It’s a wonder we were ever friends at all.”
What I wonder more about is what would have happened if we hadn’t fallen out of friendship.
But that’s the past, and it ought to stay where it is, since my present is just fine, thank you very much.
“Fine, we’ll agree to disagree over our first meeting. Just like we did back then,” I say with a smile as the waiter brings our drinks. We thank him, and then I clink my glass to hers, the sound drowned out by a ball toppling all ten pins somewhere nearby. When it quiets, I say, “To agreeing to disagree.”
“I’ll drink to that. Besides, I suspect if Harrison heard us arguing over where we met, he’d throw out our stuff too.”
“He’d definitely have grounds to,” I say, chuckling. “For a split second this morning, I did wonder whether this was all some big practical joke staged by Rowan.”
Her brow creases. “Like a setup for some reason? Or a prank?”
“Yes. But that thought lasted all of ten seconds. He’s not a prankster.”
“I thought the same thing for about the same amount of time. But Luna’s not like that either. It’s too much work.”
“Agreed. Rowan would never play that sort of joke, and if he was trying to get us to talk to each other . . .”
I trail off. Because if Rowan wanted me to reconnect with Lola for some reason, he’d just tell me to. He saves his energy for songwriting, Luna, and his volunteer work. Not for games. At least, not beyond Monopoly. I swing the conversation in another direction. “I wonder . . . if Harrison had thrown out our stuff—would Luna and Rowan have gone hunting for our things?”
Lola smiles, and it’s a knowing kind of grin. “Ah, that raises another question, though, doesn’t it?”
I know what she’s getting at. “Why do we both look after our brother and sister like they’re our kids?”
She taps her nose. “Yes, that one indeed.”
Because for all the bonding we did over the misery of our required business classes, for all our wonderfully meandering conversations about the meaning of art, the thing that connected us most was our shared background.
Or rather, the sense of responsibility we each came away with.
Different reasons. Same result. We look out for our younger siblings.
I take another drink of the beer, then set it down. “I guess some things never change, do they?”
Sighing, she shakes her head. “I wish they did, but I don’t know if they will. I don’t know how not to look out for Luna,” she says, and there are no barbs in her voice now. She doesn’t have to add the details I already know well.
When she was sixteen and Luna was twelve, her parents separated, headed straight for a split. But then they decided to go to therapy, and somehow they worked through their troubles. Except once they got back together, they became laissez-faire parents, ignoring their kids.
“You know what happened,” Lola continues. “My parents were all about themselves as a couple. Like, they could justify ignoring Luna because they needed to reconnect or have another mommy-daddy vacation. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be the one who was there for her, since they weren’t.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” I get it completely. I get her. My parents moved here from Brazil when I was five because my father landed a finance job in New York. He became a workaholic, and so did my mom. That drove them apart, splintering their marriage. And they didn’t stop. They both worked so damn much post divorce they didn’t have time for their kids. I was older and handled it better. But Rowan was always the more sensitive one, more needy. His heart was easily wounded. He was younger too, still moldable clay. And I couldn’t stand by and watch them ignore him with their work obsessions, so I became a de facto parent to him. “I hated that they didn’t have time for him, and I wasn’t going to do the same thing.”