Even the thought of it makes me smile as I shake newly proffered hands. Me, golf. “No, I’m afraid not.”
Her face falls dramatically, but not in a way that seems serious. It’s how all her expressions are—big and communicative, calculated for maximum effect. When we first arrived she’d gasped fully, mouth open and eyes wide, clasping her hands together before opening her arms, a practice perfect but somehow still authentic version of welcome and excitement. If there’d been one inscrutable moment from Susan, it’d been when she’d pulled back from her hug with Greer, her brow lowered as she scanned Greer’s face in question, an expression Greer had answered with a frownof disapproval.
“Michael once tried to teach me to play,” Susan says, gesturing her husband over. “Remember, darling? I wore those plaid short pants youliked so much.”
“Alex, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Michael begins, meaning that I’m about to be really uncomfortable, “but my wife in those short pants, she—”
“Hello, Hawthornes,” interrupts a new voice, and when I turn I’m greeted by a guy about my height, tan skin with close-cropped blond hair and a red polo shirt that looks like the twin of what Gary and Bob are wearing. Susan seems thrilled, her gasp only slightly less enthusiastic than the one she’d greeted me with.
“Oh, Josh! I didn’t know you’d come by tonight!” She leans in to give him kisses on either cheek, then backs away so Michael canshake his hand.
“How’sbusiness, son?”
The guy gives an orthodontia-commercial grin. “I’m getting by.” There’s something a little false in his humility. “Buyer’s market,and all that.”
“This is Alex,” Susan says, gesturing to me. “He’s a friend of Greer’s.”
Just like that, Josh’s ultrawhite, ultrastraight teeth go into hiding, a brief second where he blinks in something like shock. He extends his hand, and I take it, trying not to smirk when he squeezes extra hard. I don’t know what his problem is, but I’m not about to get into some kind of suburban dick-measuring contest with a guy who’s got a tiny sperm whale stitchedonto his shirt.
“Alex, Josh grew up next door,” Susan adds. That explains a lot, I guess. Talk about a person who looks natural to his environment. Five years and he’ll probably have a charcoal grill that matches Michael’s, a minivan full of toddlers with his same blond hair. He’ll save for their college funds and their braces at the same time. I shift on my feet, uneasy at my own pettiness—old, poor-kid wounds stinging theirway open again.
“Good to meet you,” I say, watching as his eyes scan the yard. When he looks back at me, there’s something flintier in his eyes. I guess he’ll be taking out his dick and a ruler, whether I’m participating or not.
“How do you know Greer?” His voice is still in that falsely humble, cheery “buyer’s market” register. Michael’s turned back to the grill, immune to this little sideshow, but I’m guessing Susan and Felipe and maybe even Gary and Bob are watching close. Maybe he’s an ex-boyfriend, maybe he’s got a crush on her, who the fuck knows, but I’ve got a feeling he thinks I belong here evenless than I do.
“I’m Kit’s brother.” I watch his face closely, see a flash of relief.
“Oh, right. That’s one of her friends in the city?”
That answer tells me enough about how well this guy knows Greer. Plus he says “in the city” like we’re talking about somewhere other than a place that takes twenty minutes to get to, as though that part of Greer’s life is entirely unreachable to him.
“Something like that.”
“Josh,” comes Greer’s voice from behind me, slightly breathless, and when I look down at her, her cheeks are pink. An ugly, small part of me hopes that Josh’s crush wasn’t ever reciprocated, not that it’s any of my business. “I didn’t knowyou’d be here.”
He shrugs casually, tucks his hands in his pockets, a move that strikes me as an effort at self-control. Hug, interrupted. “My parents are in Denver visiting Jennifer and the kids. I’m checking in at their place now and then. Thought I’d stop in.”
“That’s nice.” There’s something anxious in her voice. I look down at her, then back up at Josh, and I feel, rather than see, the weight of history between them. In spite of my determination to be detached from whatever he’s trying to do here, my fingers tighten around my sweaty glass, half-full of unsweetened tea. “Tell them I saidhi,” she adds.
“Graduation coming up soon,” Josh says to her, and Jesus, this guy’s teeth. They look photoshopped. “Are you getting excited?”
I shift on my feet again, irritated. Something about his tone, I don’t like. He sounds like he’s asking if she wants a cookie for her efforts.
Greer clears her throat. “Sure.” Judging from the way she dulls the sound of her voice, I’m guessing she’s noticed the tone too. She’s moved a fraction closer to me, a silent answer to the way Josh has subtly shifted his shoulders, blocking me out of the conversation. “Alex has been helping me with a photography course.”
Josh turns back to me, that edge back in his eyes. “Is that right? You know, I used to be something of a tutorto Greer too.”
“I’mnot her tutor.”
“Mom,” Greer says, looking toward Susan, eyes wide and nervous. I mean, all right, it’s tense, but I hope she doesn’t expect some kind of jousting situation here. It’s only a little male ego. “Don’t you think it’stime for cake?”
Susan blinks up from her conversation with Felipe, looks out to the yard, where a good number of the guests are still eating Michael’s burgers. “Hmm, maybe…”
“Greer missed so much school that I’d bring her assignments every day,” Josh says, and Greer stiffens beside me. I know what I should do right now. I know that whatever Josh is doing, Greer doesn’t want him to do it; I know this portion of the dick-measuring contest is about him showing me how much he knows about her that I don’t. What I should say is,Good for you, and then walk away, leave Greer to give him the scolding he’s due for.
But I don’t. I could talk myself into thinking I’m ten kinds of superior to a guy who looks like he doesn’t know other continents exist, but my feelings in the face of that colonial-blue door, this nice lawn, and these pots of flowers, are still right there at the surface. I don’t belong here, that’s for fucking sure, but not belonging here because I don’t know something important about Greer?
That’s a punch to the gut I don’t see coming.
