I jerk back at the sound of a text message, in stereo, both of our phones lighting up on the table surface. In that second, all the suspended reality is gone—it’s the same restaurant it always is, the smell of cheese and fried bread, the indistinct folk-rock playing tinnily from the speakers, the white cast from the pendant lights hanging over every table.
From where I sit I can see the name at the topof the message.
Alex clears his throat. “It’s my sister.” He moves his arm from where it’d been behind me, and both of us lean forward to look at our screens. I read the message at the same time I feel Alex’s body turn tense beside me, his breath catching and then quickening. It’s not quite like that night in the alley—but it’s not all that different either.
Funny,Kit has written.He looks like hebelongs there.
Chapter 8
Alex
It’s not the first time my sister has interrupted aprivate moment.
The summer I turned fifteen, I had a job doing grunt work for an electrician who was rewiring a local grocery chain’s bakery headquarters, the place where they made doughy, pre-sliced bread in bulk. It was a good gig—I got paid under the table and could take damaged goods home with me, loaves that didn’t get sliced right or that had too-dark spots on the crust. Plus there was a sixteen-year-old line worker named Tara who flirted with me on lunch break, where she’d eat something her mother had packed for her and I’d eat a Hostess fruit pie from the break room vending machine. Then she’d smoke a cigarette and I’d try to work up the courage to kiss her.
It went on like that for two weeks before Tara found out my address from my boss and showed up at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night. The initial humiliation had been pretty bad, since at that particular time we’d been living in a basement apartment with one bedroom that Kit and I shared, my dad taking the couch on the rare nights he was home. But at least Kit had already gone to bed, so I’d let Tara in, for once letting my adolescent brain—or dick, I guess—do the decision-making. Within ten minutes we were making out on the couch, Tara—smelling faintly of cheap beer in addition to the cigarettes—halfway in my lap while I shoved a hand up her shirt, and I didn’t even hear the bedroom door open. I didn’t hear anything until my sister said, “Alex?” in a small, confused voice. I’d practically dumped Tara on the shoved-together milk crates we used fora coffee table.
It wasn’t just that I’d been setting a terrible example, or that I was opening the door to conversations with Kit I wasn’t ready to have, conversations that I eventually stumbled through with help from a set of parenting books in the public library. It was that in the moments following, when Tara was smoothing down her clothes and grabbing her cheap, quilted pleather bag with a gold chain shoulder strap, Kit had looked up at her with hopeful excitement. “I like your purse,” she’d said, and in that single sentence I’d heard a whole world of longing from my sister. Starved as she was of women in her life, barely able to make friends for all the times we had to move, Tara had looked to her like a store full of knowledge I could never offer.
That might’ve been all right had I thought there’d be any chance of our sticking around. Sure, Tara smoked like a chimney and snuck beer from her dad’s garage refrigerator, but she was kind and she had a good sense of humor, and she probably could’ve talked to Kit about all sorts of things that made me feel clumsy and unsure. But there wasn’t any chance of that; there never was, and it’d do Kit no good to get attached to any girl I’d bring around.
After that, I’d taken my fumbling efforts elsewhere.
Now, I push myself up a steep, brick-paved hill that’s about a half mile from Kit’s place, lungs and quads burning, sweat dripping from the edges of my hair and down the center of my back. Usually this’d be the time I’d feel the adrenaline of being almost through it—I’ve been out here for a good hour, and running’s always been a head clearer for me, especially after a long day of shooting. On a bad day, when it feels like all I’ve seen and shot is the garbage of human life, poverty and fear and despair, a hard run can make me feel like I’m shaking images out of my brain, onestep at a time.
I haven’t been able to shake Greer, though. Haven’t been able to shake those last few minutes we spent together before I’d bolted.
Maybe I hadn’t dumped her on a set of milk crates, but what I had done wasn’t much better. I’d leaned back from her as if our phones had electrocuted me, shoved a hand in my pocket for a stick of gum that did nothing to stop my churning gut, and asked if she’d mind taking our food to go. The flush of embarrassment that bloomed on her face made me feel about as ashamed as I’ve ever felt in my whole fucking life. Worse than the basement apartment, that’s for sure.
A grunt of fatigue or frustration escapes me as I reach the top of the hill, the row houses on this street bigger, more elaborate than the ones on Kit’s, all of them redone and polished to a high shine, whereas the house three doors down from my sister’s has a sheet of plywood covering one of the upper windows. Up ahead there’s a car coming toward me, slowing as it gets closer, the driver rolling down his window when I’m about to cross the planeof his bumper.
“Excuse me, sir,” he calls, and I let out another grunt when I slow down. My legs are so tired that starting up again willfeel like hell.
From my spot along the curb, I swipe my sweat-soaked hair from my face and set my hands low on my hips, panting out the worst of that hill. I hope this guy doesn’t want to have a conversation, because my lung capacity is fucked. I lift my chin in his direction, a nod ofacknowledgment.
“Sorry to interrupt you. But my GPS seems to have stopped working, and these one-way streets are giving me a heck of a time. Can you tell me where to find Bronwen Avenue?”
It’s right on the tip of my tongue to say what I’m thinking:I don’t live here. But even I don’t need Patricia to tell me what the fuck that’s all about, same as I didn’t need Patricia to tell me why I’ve been finding reasons to get out of Kit’s house since I’d gotten back there Friday evening, a greasy bag of food in my hand and her text message flashing in my brain likea traffic sign.
He looks like hebelongs there.
I take as deep a breath as my tight chest will allow. “Two streets over.” My voice sounds like it’s being operated by a rusty old crank in my back. “Stop sign at the bottom of the hill.Take a right.”
He looks ahead, nods, and waves his thanks before driving away, and I resist the urge to call out after him:I only know because I’ve been running these streets for days!
I watch until he makes a right at the sign, then turn my back and walk the rest of the way to Kit’s, taking in the sounds of a Sunday afternoon in this neighborhood—kids on bikes, someone mowing a small patch of grass in their postage stamp front yard, the faint whir of traffic on the main road Kit walks to get to work, the same road I walkedto meet Greer.
Another image of her face comes into my mind—this time, the way she’d looked at the picture she’d taken—her eyes wide and excited, her lips parted and flushed a darker pink than usual. When she’d turned to me, everything around me had gone soft focus, my eye in macro mode. I’d thought, with startling, sharp clarity:I could look at this face forever.
On the porch I fumble with the key I’ve tied in the waistband drawstring of my shorts, wonder whether I ought to try calling or texting her again. But she’s already got such a great picture for class next week—that ladybug had been a stunner—so there’s no real point for another of our lessons yet. And the apology I’d sent her—short but sincere—she’d brushed off as though nothing had happened.No reason to apologize at all. Busy this weekend, but will bein touch soon.
I should be glad about it. I should be thinking that this is the one time my fucked-up brain has done me a favor by keeping me from making what would have to be massive, reckless mistake. Even setting aside that she’s my sister’s best friend, that Kit’d have us married off in her mind and being her next-door neighbors if we so much as kissed—what about the fact that she affects me like an anchor, making me feel pleasantly, rockingly tethered in this place that sometimes feels like a vast, unpredictable sea? What about the fact that I think about her when I’m supposed to be writing in my goddamned journal for my goddamned therapy; what about the fact that I can’t sit on the fucking couch without thinking of her sweet, soft weight beside me?
I should be glad about it, but I’m not.
So maybe that’s why I nearly trip over the threshold when I open the door and hear my phone ringing, maybe that’s why I make for the dining room table with all the speed I thought I’d used up on my run. I pick it up without even looking at the screen; I’m too afraid of how many rings I’vealready missed.
“Aleksandr!”
