“No,” I lie, tucking the chain under my shirt. “Fake.” I don’t know why I say this. By now I’ve figured out that Quin doesn’t steal things because they are worth money; she steals things because they are worth something to somebody else.
Melinda pops back downstairs. “Go ahead and run up there, Greer.” She blocks Quin from following me.
I was already nervous, and now my brain is split in half trying to figure out if I want him to be wearing just a towel when I get up the stairs or not. Really, though, what would I do with towelly Jackson? Shake his hand? Tell him that my mom’s binder has a Men’s Apparel section? Drool?
Jeans and a washed-out T-shirt. Wet hair, bare feet, and he smells like the shower. “Hey,” he says and smiles. He hasn’t shaved. The sun pouring through his bedroom window lights up the tiniest bit of stubble and seems completely wrong for this moment. It is aggressively bright when it should be wallowing behind a stratus cloud. “What’s up?”
“Yeah, I’m, ah, just here checking on your water pressure.”
He laughs, then cocks his head toward the bathroom. “You want to check it out? Let’s go.”
I blush hard. Damn, he’s good.
“Sir, I’m from the Greater Chicago Water Conservation Bureau. We never shower.” Point Greer for deflecting the flirt. “Do you know that the water from one shower could be used to brew hundreds of lattes?”
He laughs again, and he is too bright for this moment, too. Sooner or later I’m going to have to tell him why I’m here, but I don’t want to. I’ve practiced: I’m going to look him straight in the eye and tell him that I changed my mind about the formal, that I hope we can still be friends, but that I think it would be better if he asked someone else. That’s my plan. I will be frank and matter-of-fact, and he won’t ask any questions—he’ll probably be relieved—and we will go our separate ways, and I won’t make up fantasies about his towel falling off anymore and he can get on with his life as a normal person and go to the fancy things with Angela Merkel from German class.
“Aha! I thought I recognized you. You’re from Starbucks.”
My face is hot again, thinking about the day I met him, thinking about how I’ve been thinking about him every day since then. Thinking how it was so good, when it was just that, but I wanted more than that, and now I am stuck here. “Ja, und du are ein German business fellow.” It comes out too quiet and sad.
He can hear it, too. He tips his head and says nothing.
“Willst du Kartoffelsalat?” I try. He texted that one day when I was at practice and had said I was starving. It means “Do you want potato salad?” and was one of the first phrases he learned. I liked it so we sent back and forth pictures and recipes of potato salad until the assistant coach told me to go put my phone in the locker room. Why does Kartoffelsalat make me want to cry now?
“What’s up, Greer?” That obnoxious, glaring sun lights up the pink shiny line on his forehead where his stitches were, caught in a wrinkle while he waits for me to answer.
It’s now or never, and since never isn’t an option, it’s now. “I wanted to talk—” I can’t look at him, because he is bright and kind and curious and then I will not be able to pretend this isn’t killing me. So, I look above his head and that’s when I notice that there is something new in the line of things on top of the bookshelf. There’s Batman in Lego boat, Beanie iguana, Aquarium cup, tennis trophy, all the usuals, and right on the end, a mug with a picture of a dog, a car, and a briefcase orbiting around a coffee. The one from Cupernicus. What is that doing here?
“About anything in particular?” he prompts.
I’m tempted to ask about the mug but I’ve started down this path that I don’t want to be on, plus I’m not sure I want to know anyway. “Yeah. Sorry. I wanted to talk about the formal.”
“Okay.” He waits, and when I don’t say anything he adds, “I was thinking we could Uber from your house.”
“Yeah,” I say, still distracted by that mug. Why does he have that? He has like four things. “That’s not what I mean. I, um, I’m not going to go.”
“You’re not going to go?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I thought I could, but I can’t.” Why isn’t it in the kitchen? Why is it with an iguana and a Batman?
“You have other plans or something?”
“No. I mean, not exactly.” What makes those things a set?
“Oh. All right.” I couldn’t have imagined it was possible, but Jackson looks self-conscious. Maybe even embarrassed. He looks like I probably look every time I see one of my parents’ friends who hasn’t seen me in a while. (“Wow, you’ve really gotten . . . taller.”)
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I rush. My practice run was for nothing. That stupid mug keeps making me think about Schnucks and Cupernicus and how I felt that day—goofy and happy and hopeful—and how I thought maybe the formal could be like that, too. But you can’t wear a sweatshirt to a formal, and I can’t be goofy and happy and hopeful wearing a wedding dress made for someone eight months pregnant. I can’t figure out what to say here.
“It’s all right, Greer. I get it.”
“No, you don’t,” I say. He doesn’t get it at all. He thinks I don’t want to go with him, but he is wrong. I would go anywhere with him—Starbucks or Cupernicus or the grocery store or Cleveland—if only I didn’t have to bring the rest of myself along. I look at the tiny dog circling the tiny coffee on the mug. Copernicus was an idiot. He thought the universe revolved around the sun. Not to me. To me it revolves around my boobs. “I just,” I stutter, “I just don’t know what I would wear.”
He looks up suddenly. “What?”
I shift between my feet. “I can’t really . . . there’s not really a dress . . .”
“You’re saying you don’t want to go because you can’t find a dress?”
It’s obvious that he thinks it’s stupid, and I feel myself getting defensive. Like now, after all this time, he’s going to think I’m some flaky, ridiculous girl who is being snobby about clothes. Give me some credit.
“You want to wear a suit and I’ll wear a dress?” I can’t tell if he’s kidding. I don’t think he is.
“You don’t understand.” You couldn’t understand. You can just slide into anything—into anywhere—and feel like yourself.
This is going very, very wrong, and I don’t know how to stop it. I should have stuck with the bar mitzvah excuse, but eventually it was going to come to this anyway. I feel like I’m going to cry way too much lately. I didn’t used to. I never cried when life was just school and Maggie and baking shows.