“I’m not telling our kids that our first kiss was in Hook, Line, and Sinker. Not happening.”
I swatted his arm. “We’re not having kids, psycho. For heaven’s sake, this is a one-time thing.”
He handed me a cold beer dripping with condensation, then leaned over and grazed my ear with his lips. “Oh, we’ll see about that.”
As he pulled away, my eyes met his for a second too long. Andrew grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd to the door. He looked down at my bare feet, handed me his beer, and scooped me up into his arms as he took off for the beach. I was laughing again, and, right before the shoreline, the moon illuminating the peaceful ocean, he tumbled dramatically, but softly enough that the landing didn’t hurt either of us. The cool sand felt heavenly on my feet, which were sore from dancing in heels.
Andrew brushed back my hair, which was in a state of total disarray from the dancing, singing, and general sweat-inducing bar drinking. “You know what, pretty girl?”
I smiled. “What?”
“I like you.”
I took a sip of my beer. “Maybe it’s this talking”—I held up my bottle—“but I think I like you too.”
With our faces only a couple of inches apart, Andrew leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t even think, as I thought I would,I’m kissing a twenty-six-year-old. It just felt good to have a man, or, well, almost a man, as it were, wrap his arms around me.
I giggled, a sound that hadn’t come out of my mouth in years, and he said, “See? Now, there’s a first-kiss story for our kids. Beach. Moonshine. Light breeze.”
I rolled my eyes.
“So what do you want to do now?”
I shrugged. Then I leaned over and whispered in his ear, like he’d done to me a few minutes ago: “I want to win that karaoke contest.”
Andrew’s face became serious. “Oh, Gray. We’re going to dominate. That booze cruise gift certificate is as good as ours.”
We both laughed, and I had to admit that I hadn’t had this much fun in quite some time. It gave me the slightest pang for my mother, a woman who always used to say that fun was the point of it all, that every woman wants to feel like her life is a great adventure. I’d always thought that adventurer gene must have skipped a generation, or that my sister got it all.
As Andrew took my hand again and led me up the beach, I realized that, at least for the moment, all of my reservations about Andrew and tonight and maybe even what my future held were gone. So I did what my mother would have done. Ilet go of his hand, ran up ahead, and did my best cartwheel. And I realized that, in the grandest of ironies, this year, the year I lost my mother, I might just have found a little bit of her too.
diana: mud on a cow’s hind parts
It was my first—and, God willing, only—weekend before I would get my apartment. I was tired from barely sleeping the last few nights and anxious about keeping it together all weekend, and my gratitude at coming to work for Gray had been replaced by the irritation that her life was moving forward and mine wasn’t. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And I was so damn tired of being the one getting the short end of the stick.
I had splurged on a burger, fries, and a soda from the dollar menu, and I was sitting in my car finishing it up late. That’s the secret—you have to wait as long as you can to eat because then you’re still full in the morning, and you don’t need breakfast. I’d learned that as a kid. During the week I got free breakfast and lunch at school, but after that it was every kid for herself at some of the foster houses. I think people outside the system assume someone’s keeping track of whether or not kids are being fed, but that isn’t always true. And sometimes it’s the ones you don’t suspect too. Like, the ones who can’t keep house and seem kind of rude take the best care of you, and the ones that seem all perfect and holy leave you to starve while they’re throwing a bunch of table scraps to the obese dog.
I climbed in the backseat and pulled some red polish out of my bag to get my toes looking presentable again when I saw a couple kids on the beach. It made me think of Frank and me back when I was young and things were good. I knew what they were feeling just by looking at them because I’d been there too. They’re all madly in love, and they think they’re going to be together forever. It takes you back and makes you feel warm and optimistic. But tonight I didn’t feel anywhere near optimistic. I was pissed off at everyone, even the teenagers canoodling on the beach. Might have been the lack of nicotine. I couldn’t really say.
Stupid kids, I thought.Don’t have one damn clue about the real world.I watched that young buck moseying up the beach toward the lot where I was parked, his arm slung around the shoulders of some tiny girl in a dress so tight I could see her kidneys. I wanted to rewind time, find a good man, be young and in love. Or, more like, I wanted to rewind to the time when Iwasyoung and in love and have that same man I’d wanted deep in my heart for all these years. But since that wasn’t ever going to happen, I just went on about my business of hating these damn loud kids interrupting my rest.
I was watching them pass by from the backseat where I was lying, when that girl stopped. She smashed her darn face right up in my window, and then she gasped.
It took me until right then to notice that that wasn’t a girl. It was Gray. Now my heart started racing. She would find out I was sleeping in my car. She’d fire me. Then I’d be back at square one, back to nowhere to go, looking for another job. I could feel the money I’d saved for my deposit floating away.
She opened the door like it was her car, slid into the front seat, and said, “Diana, what in the hell are you doing? Are yousleepingout here?”
I could tell she was kind of tipsy by the way the words came out real lazy.
“Well… um…” I didn’t know what to say, but I was out of excuses. “I’m sure as hell not crammed in this backseat for my health.”
She shook her head. “Nope. You’re coming to my house.”
I rolled my eyes. “I can’t go to your house, Gray. We don’t even know each other that well.”
I wasn’t sure why I was arguing. Going to her house sounded like the best thing I could think of, like jumping into the cool ocean when you’ve been sweating waiting outdoor tables all day in a hundred degrees and full sun.
“Oh, we don’t?” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “We sure know each other well enough that you felt the need to say I was mad at my poor dead mother.”
