Heather sat next to me and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. She was drunk enough or high enough, or both, to wrap the blanket around me and scoot close. Our thighs touched. When she leaned in real close to my face, I could smell the alcohol on her breath.
“New Year’s resolution,” she said, turning toward the bathroom door along with me. “Let them go.”
Something sharpened in my stomach. All along, I’d thought Brad losing his virginity to Heather meant they had some kind of special connection, when maybe it was just proximity that pushed us together. I wasn’t sure exactly how Heather felt, or in what capacity she would be letting them go. I just knew I’d misjudged her.
PJ’s voice was so beautiful. I kept imagining her on Broadway, which made me sad, because she’d already turned in her application to beauty school.
I tightened the blanket around us—Heather and me—and I almost started crying, but I didn’t.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said.
It’s funny how people think a holiday can erase everything—that you can make a resolution and it will matter.
This would be the first year since kindergarten that Susan wasn’t my friend.
The smile left Heather’s face, and she looked at me with rare seriousness. She touched my cheek, gently turning my head around to face her.
“You still have me,” she said.
The Frisbee
On Valentine’s Day, I was sitting on the seawall at Humming Rock when I saw Stinky Lewis, Brad’s wiry little mutt, running across the beach with a tangle of seaweed hanging out of his mouth.
Then I saw why he was carrying it—a present for Brad, who stood there holding a Frisbee that Stinky Lewis seemed to have forgotten about.
My first instinct was to hide, but Stinky Lewis saw me and bolted, shifting his direction completely, coming straight for me.
His tiny head bumped my ankle, and I reached down to pet his chin. I loved his beard, his underbite. He had an air of confidence that no human possessed, and given how funny-looking he was, this confidence was endearing.
Brad jogged up, stopping six or seven feet from me, like I had a disease. Which I did, I guess. But it wasn’t like he didn’t have it too.
“No Frisbee?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
Brad shrugged.
“He likes things that are alive.”
We looked at each other awkwardly for what felt like seventeen million hours, while Stinky Lewis rubbed against my calf.
“How is she?” I finally asked.
Brad shrugged again.
“She’s not great,” he said, which answered none of my questions. I couldn’t tell if he knew what Susan and I had done in the fort, or if he was referring only to her dead father. Susan could have lied to him about why we weren’t speaking—why she wasn’t speaking to me—but Brad’s face didn’t give anything away.
“I miss her,” I said, still searching his face for some kind of clue.
He looked out at the choppy water, then let his arm fall to his side.
“Well,” I said. “Take care of her.”
Brad nodded. “I will.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
A wave crashed against the shore and broke, pulling rocks back with it. I loved that sound. Actually, that’s why the beach was called Humming Rock—because of that sound.
“Taylor?”
“Yeah?”
“She misses you too,” he offered.
“Well,” I said again. “I’m right here.”
Brad considered this, then shot me a look of disappointment.
There is a power people get when they tell you they love you. It’s a thing that can’t be unsaid, a thing that forces you to consider them. You would think it would be the opposite, that the one on the receiving end had the power, but I was beginning to understand that it didn’t necessarily work that way.
He leaned over, struggling with Stinky Lewis’s leash.
“He wants to stay with you,” he said to his shoes.
Stinky Lewis jumped up on my thigh, stretching his skinny legs against me. He made a noise that was halfway between a cry and a sneeze, then barked.
“I wanted to love you,” I said to Brad.
“I know,” he said.
Without completely giving it away, I think this was his way of indicating that he knew about me—of letting me off the hook. I didn’t know if I deserved that.
“You’re going to see her now?” I asked. Probably, he was bringing her chocolates.
This question hurt, but I had a morbid need to ask. I imagined it felt the same for Brad when we stood in the hallway the day we broke up, when he asked me if I loved him.
He didn’t answer.
“Brad?” I owed him the truth.
“Yeah?”
“It’s not that you’re not perfect, because you are. It’s just that I’m . . .”
His eyes widened. He looked both scared and frustrated, which reminded me of how I felt about him the night he jizzed on my leg.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said, holding up his free hand, “but you don’t have to say it.”
I stood there staring at him, squeezing my fist into a ball to keep the tears in my eyes from spilling over.
“See you around,” he said, pulling Stinky Lewis toward the parking lot.
As he walked away, I thought he looked so small, and in the wet, salty air, the smear of his red coat was like a painting.
The Horseshoe Crabs
It really seemed like she wanted me to kiss her,” I said to Corvis. I was driving us to Provincetown. Spring break, and we were both stuck in Hopuonk, just like everyone else except Heather, who was in the Bahamas.
Corvis had her feet propped on the dashboard. Her parents were away at a conference, so she wasn’t worried about taking the day off.
“Well,” she said, “of course she did.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Curiosity,” said Corvis. “It’s really common.”
“I think my heart is broken.”
Corvis stretched her arm out of the open window and flicked her cigarette.
“I would say more like painfully chipped,” she said.
It had been more than three months since the night in the fort, and Susan still wouldn’t answer my calls. I called less often than before, but only out of embarrassment. At least three times a day, I dialed almost all of her number, then hung up.