I just wish, sometimes, I could be the one she loves more.
But I never say this. I paste a smile on my face, and I ask Meret, “What did Dad get you?”
Before she can answer, Brian interrupts. “I almost forgot. I bought tickets for a thing Saturday at MIT. Guest lecturer in zoology who’s going to talk about the time she was bitten by a vampire bat and chased by a gorilla. Rumor has it she’s bringing a live octopus.”
“Sounds cool,” Meret says.
“But you were invited to Sarah’s.” I try to catch Brian’s eye, to silently urge him to not push; to realize that spending time with another teenage girl is a lot more important than meeting a cephalopod.
“I never said I wasgoing.” Meret glares at me. “She wants to hang out at her pool.”
It is ninety degrees out, and humid. “That sounds perfect.” I look meaningfully at Brian. “Doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, I’m sure we can watch the lecture online.”
“I’m. Not. Going.”
“But, Meret—”
She swings around, her fists balled at her sides. “If I go to her pool, I have to take off my shirt. And I don’t want to take off my shirt.”
“She won’t make fun of you—”
“Right. She’ll pity me. And that’s worse.” Meret folds her arms across her chest like they are wings, like she can disappear behind them. “You don’t understandanything,” she says, and she runs upstairs.
I scrub my hands over my face. “Jesus.”
Brian follows me into the kitchen. “It was just an octopus.”
“You didn’t know.”
I take the chicken breast out of the oven, cut it into thirds, and separate it onto plates. Then I spoon rice on each, and a few slices of tomato and mozzarella. We both look up the stairs. “You want to call her down?” I ask.
Brian shakes his head. “Not for a million bucks.”
I cover the plate with foil. “I’ll bring it up in a little bit.”
He dances around me to the cabinet, a choreographed routine, pulling glasses and silverware as I carry the food to the kitchen table. There’s a beauty in the way we revolve around each other in that tight space, a moon around a sun. I am just not sure which of us is which.
Without Meret as a buffer between us, the air becomes tinder, and any rogue word might make it combust.
“How was your day?” Brian asks. Neutral. Safe.
“Good.” I swallow a bite. “How wasyourday?”
“I talked to the people who organized the conference. They asked me to present in October instead.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
I look up to find Brian watching me. “When did this all get so hard?” he asks softly. He has the grace to blush. “Not just this,” he says, gesturing between us. “But all of it.” He glances up the staircase.
I settle my fork against my plate. I’ve lost my appetite. Maybe I will tell this to Meret. The best diet plan is waking up one day and wondering how the hell you got here. “Can I ask you something? How many tickets did you buy for that MIT lecture?”
Brian tilts his head. “Is this a trick question?”
“No. Just curiosity.”
