Sea-glass eyes and a sad smile. A broad back carrying a beat-up rucksack, walking out the door.
“The chair of the department, I mean,” she says. “Try that as your way in, if you’re looking to get in his good graces.”
“Right.” For a second, I’m frozen stock still there, a living embodiment ofyou can’t leave, even though my phone pings with three more messages. On any other day I’d say it was only my mother who’d have such persistence, but today I’m guessing it’s my fellow maid of honor, because I’m supposed to be at a pedicure across town in ten minutes and there’s about three thousand other errands to run before my best friend gets married tomorrow.
But standing across from Not-Bad-Luck Necklace and clutching my stack of Bad Luck Paperwork, I can only think about one thing.
I knowa photographer.
And this weekend, I’m going to see him for the first timein a long time.
* * * *
He breezes in the same way he’d donetwo years ago.
He’s windblown and stubbled along his jaw, sporting a sheepish grin as he ducks through the front door of Betty’s restaurant, closed down for the night in honor of Kit and Ben’s rehearsal dinner. “Oh, thankGod,” Zoe says, nudging me as though I haven’t noticed him come in, as though I didn’t sense a change in the air even before that door opened. Across the room, where she’s standing with Ben, Kit says, “Finally!,” but there’s a laugh in her voice. She crosses the room to her brother, holding out her arms for a hug that I drop my eyes to avoid seeing.
I’m not going to forgivehim so easily.
His first call had come mid-pedicure, while all three of us had had our feet soaking in warm, bubbling water and while I’d been doing a bang-up job of not revealing a thing about my impending graduation crisis. I’d shown up to that nail salon with a sunny disposition and a can-do attitude, and I’d intended to keep it that way. When Kit disconnected the call she’d shrugged and said, “Weather out of LaGuardia,” and I’d been ready to fully engage my sunny disposition to explain how we were going to can-do this rehearsal even if her brotherdidn’t show up.
But Kit had surprised me, barely batting an eye at either of the next two calls—one when we were checking into the Crestwood Hotel for our pre-wedding girls’ sleepover, the other when we were driving to the rehearsal itself.
“He’ll get here,” Kit had said, confident in Alex’s eventual arrival or else so blissed out by her impending wedding and three-week honeymoon trip through Europe that she hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility that the man who’d basically raised her might not make it. I’d felt the tension that’d been gathering in my neck since this afternoon ratchet up to nearpainful levels.
Alex has moved further inside the warm, wainscoted interior of the main dining room, usually full of Betty’s diverse crowd of bearded or barrel-roll-hair hipsters, young professionals, and the few old-timers who still remember when her bar was a smoke-filled fish and chips place and who grudgingly allow her food is better. He and Ben are shaking hands, one of Alex’s coming up to clutch Ben’s elbow in a gesture of casual affection and approval that suggests he knows the groom is forgiving too. Zoe’s already crossed the room, leaving me behind the bar where I’m checking the Sterno cans under the chafing dishes like I work here. From the other side of the bar Betty gives me a skeptical look, and I pretend not to see her making a shooing motion at me.
Why wouldn’t he have flown in earlier,I’m thinking,to avoid exactly this kind of thing? Why wouldn’t he have made Kit’s wedding his top priority? Why wouldn’t he have put her needs, her special day, first in his mindand his plans?
That’s whatI’mdoing,after all.
“Greer, look who’s here,” says Kit, interrupting my very intense self-congratulatory monologue, and I nearly burn my hands on a dish of garlic-parmesan green beans. When I look up I see Kit and Alex, arms linked in the same way they would’ve been had Alex actually showed up for his part in the rehearsal, Kit a full two heads shorter than her brother and wearing a smile of relief and pride.
As for Alex? Up close he’s more handsome than I remember, even if he’s grossly underdressed in a faded black T-shirt and wrinkled, army-green chinos and beat-up hiking boots. He runs a hand through his hair, slightly longer than it’d been last time he was here, and smiles as though the last words we exchanged weren’t harsh ones. He looks like he’s never been felled by a piece of paperwork in his whole life. The casual nomad with no permanent address. Reckless and strong and no strings attached.
Over his shoulder I see the familiar strap of his bag.
“Good of you to stop by.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, my own eyes are widening in shock at the same time as Kit’s, and at the same time as Zoe’s, who’s returned just in time to see me act like a jerk.
One question about my reunion with Alex is answered, then: his face is still a wire cutter for my brain-mouth synapse. I open it again, trying to rally my sunny disposition, but I’m interrupted by Betty, who probably caught the scent of awkward.
“Alex, welcome. Can I put your bag behind the bar?” She gives me another pointed look, one that saysThis is why I work here, and you don’t. I back away from the chafing dishes and away from the gaze Alex hasleveled at me.
He’s still watching me when he answers Betty. “I’m going to make a stop in your restroom and change my clothes.”
Betty and Kit usher him away, Kit giving me a brief, puzzled glance over her shoulder, and Zoe looks at me. “Everything all right?”
I sink onto the stool behind me, try for a casual wave of the hand, a self-deprecating eye roll. “I guess I’m being a bit intense about our maid ofhonor duties.”
The look I get in return tells me Zoe’s not buying what I’m selling. “You’ve been a little off today.” I know her well enough to know she won’t leave me alone about it. She’ll cross-examine me until I’ve spilled it, and then she’ll probably take out her phone and call the registrar’s office at the university and leave a legalese-packed voice mail that’d make the statement necklace rattle right off the bureaucrat’s neck.
I look over my shoulder, make sure Kit’s nowhere nearby. For all my self-congratulation, I guess I haven’t done a great job setting my worries aside if Zoe and I are having this conversation, and the least I can do is keep Kit far away from it today of all days. “There’s a problem withmy graduation.”
Zoe’s gold-brown eyes immediately sharpen, her posture lengthening. “What kind of problem?” In spite of the fact that I don’t want to be doing this here, I love the way Zoe knows already—that this is serious, that I’d be freaked out about it. She and Kit have had tickets reserved for the graduation ceremony since February. They want to wear T-shirts with my face printed on them.
I tell her a short version—a missing fine arts credit, an appeal I have to make to the chair of the department to see if I can get an exception. “I’ll get it taken care of Monday,” I say, trying to project all the confidence I don’t feel.
“How? Like, what’s the plan?”
