“You can go,” he said. “I’ll work on the project with Milo. Why don’t you come in, Gavin? Have a beer.”
“I gotta get back to my dad.” He pulled the tickets from his back pocket and said, “You know what? You guys take them. Milo can come and hang out with me and Frank... and Nurse Betty.” He looked at me and winked.
My husband took the tickets and said, “Fantastic. Thank you, Gavin. We could use a date night.”
I wanted to cry but instead I hugged him and said, “Thank you. Hang in there, buddy.”
He whispered in my ear, “You’ll be thinking about me when you fuck him tonight.”
I pushed him off me. “Stupid,” I said.
“I’m joking, lighten up. You’re starting to act like Jenn.” Milo was calling to my husband from upstairs, so he waved to us dismissively and walked away.
“Don’t do that, Gavin. He already thinks our friendship is weird. Couldn’t you tell he was pissed? And I can’t believe you gave him the tickets. You love The National.”
“He’ll get over it, right? Tell him I whispered you had bad breath or something. He couldn’t hear me. Anyway, I gave him the tickets because you like The National more, and I wanted you to see the show. So there. Don’t say I never do anything nice for you.”
He bent over quickly and kissed my cheek. “See ya, P.”
10.Fourteen Years Ago
GAVIN
She was going to be the death of me.
I stood behind her as she unlocked the door to her parents’ house. “Looks like no one’s home,” she said. “I think my mom took Kiki to some pageant bullshit. My dad must be working late. Come on in.”
“This is your younger sister?” I pointed to a picture on the mantel as we walked through the living room.
“Yep, that’s her.”
“How old is she? Ten going on twenty-nine?”
“I know, it’s ridiculous. My mother dresses her like that and makes her compete in beauty pageants. Kiki seems to like it, but I don’t think she knows any better. Poor kid. She’s sweet, though. Come back to my room.”
Come back to my room? Shit. Why did I tell her we could just be friends?I tried to recall the promises I’d made and wondered how many were reasonable to break.
Penny’s house was a standard three-bedroom postwar suburban home. The décor wasn’t what I would call gaudy, but it was definitely froofy. Kind of like a ten-year-old had been allowed to order anything she wanted from the Sears catalog.Everythinghad a damn ruffle on it. It didn’t suit my idea of Penny.
When we got to the doorway of her room, I noticed how dramatically different it was from the rest of the house. Her bed was covered in a simple black comforter, and everything projected a modern aesthetic—sharp angles, cold, and minimalist. “Do you live in here with a vampire?”
“Ha-ha, very funny. You can sit there and wait for me.” I sat at her glass desk in an office-style chair as she tossed clothes out of her bag and into a hamper. “Some of this furniture is from my dad’s old office, so it’s pretty sterile.”
“Seems like you have different tastes from the rest of your family. No ruffles and flowers?”
“I like flowers,” she said absently.
“What, like Venus flytraps?”
“If you grew up with all this frilly shit, you’d be over it, too. I mean, do you know any other families who still use doilies? Every surface is literally covered in them.” She grabbed a shirt and jeans and headed for the door. “I’m gonna jump in the shower. I’ll be out in three minutes.”
“Do you need any help?”
“Be out in a jiffy,” she sang as she danced out into the hallway. I waited a beat before getting up.
I snooped, okay? I’m not proud of it. I needed to know more about her. For instance: why was she so stubborn about not dating? Had someone broken her heart? This girl’s room was literally devoid of anything girly that would indicate she’d even had a boyfriend before. No heart-shaped candy boxes, no folded love notes. No doodles of a guy’s name written eight thousand times on the cover of a spiral notebook. All I saw were tights, toe shoes, and dance stuff; not a single ballerina music box, stuffed with all her best-kept secrets.
When I heard her coming down the hall, I bounced over to the glass desk and plopped back into her weird office chair. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and her long black hair was wet and draped over her bare shoulder. She sat at the edge of her bed to put on her socks and boots as she winced in pain.
