Al and Ms Vaughn both groaned.
‘Ah! Don’t bother.’ He waved his hand and turned his attention to his coffee. ‘No one is worth that hassle.’
My heart shriveled, the last of my hope dying out. Al frowned at me over his coffee cup.
‘What? You thought I was going to tell you how to break them up and get him to go after you instead? Kid, that’s such a waste oftime. And if there’s one thing I know about time, you don’t get any of it back. You’re young, you’re going off to school next year, why put all that time into trying to get someone who likes someone else to like you instead?’
But Gabedoeslike me. He misses me, even.
To answer Al’s question ofWhy?: because it was Gabe. Because he was special and different and he had always been in the back of my mind. He was sweet and so quick to be my friend. Twice! I just knew that if he was single this time around – knowing what we know about ourselves now – things would be different. So if I could remove that one variable, the one thing keeping us from being together, I was sure it would be worth it.
‘Who could be so important that you spend weeks and months trying to break up their relationship so you maybe get a shot?’
I sighed. No point in hiding it, and Gabe wasn’t here anyway. ‘Gabe.’
Al’s eyes brightened. ‘MyGabe?’
I scoffed. ‘Okay, sure.’
‘So heisa friend of Dorothy, then.’
‘I … don’t know what that means.’
He blew a raspberry and rolled his eyes. ‘That’s because you kids all have the Grindr stuff, so you don’t have to cruise like we used to.’
‘Ew. And I donothave Grindr, and I’m kicking you out now. Go cruise your pillow or something.’
‘You’re so abusive to me.’ He stood, feigning offense. ‘I really oughta write management about your attitude.’
I lowered my voice. ‘You already did, you senile old bastard. And they gave me a raise.’
Ms Vaughn chuckled, and Al laughed hard until his laughter turned into a hoarse cough. I patted him gently on the back and he laughed some more.
‘Thanks for the card, Al.’
‘You’re not going to take my advice, are you?’ he asked, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye and getting serious again.
‘No, I will.’
‘Well,’ Ms Vaughn said, still seated at the table, ‘considering it’sAl, and advice from him should be taken with a grain of salt, I want to tell you a story.’
‘Oh, Willa’s got a story!’ Al sat back down and held his coffee cup up to me. I refilled it.
‘When I was in college, this was … gosh, 1968.’ She put a hand to her cheek, like she couldn’t believe how much time had passed, then waved away the thought. ‘I met a girl named Phyllis.’
‘Typical lesbian name.’
‘Al,’ I scolded. But inside, I was shaking with excitement.Lesbian!I knew it! Ms Vaughn was telling me about her personal life, and I don’t think I could have been more excited.
She stared daggers at him. ‘Would you mind keeping your mouth shut for five minutes?’
Al zipped it.
‘We grew close in the spring of sixty-nine, and I wrote her letters all summer while she was back home and I still lived in the city. But then fall rolled around and she didn’t come back to school. I later found out through a friend of hers that she had dropped out and gotten married.’
Ms Vaughn moved her water goblet, not drinking from it, before sitting up a little straighter. ‘Anyway, about seven years later, I’m at the supermarket with my girl at the time and there’s Phyl. Standing at the butcher counter buying roast for Easter dinner. It was as if …’ She shook her head. ‘The world imploded. She looked fantastic, and all those old emotions came flooding back – the ones I’d thought I’d dealt with. Turns outthatwas wrong.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked, needing to hear what happened next.
