26
I climbed the four flights up to the top of Wentworth and tried to figure out my plan. I would quickly shower, make myself look presentable, and then track down Kyle. It was a Sunday, so unless he was in Boston visiting Annie, he would probably be in his apartment or in the library grading papers or reading. Once I found him, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to say, but maybe I wouldn’t have to say much. I might just be able to get away with kissing him, at least as a conversation starter. The very thought of Kyle’s lips against mine made me happy and anxious at the same time. What if that wasn’t what he wanted anymore? I hoped I wasn’t too late.
I turned the key and opened my door, hearing a clang as the door hit something inside my foyer. I walked in and bent down, finding a clear square case on the floor. I picked it up and discovered it was a CD. What is this? Could it be … the CD? I glanced around, not knowing what to do.
I heard knocking on the window above the fire escape. I ran into the kitchen, CD in hand, and saw Kyle perched on the landing, bundled in his down jacket and wool hat. I unlatched the window and threw it open, grabbing his hand to pull him into the kitchen. We stood in my kitchen, staring at each other, cold air billowing into the room from the outside, until I finally held up the CD and searched Kyle’s face for the answer I hoped I would get.
“You know,” he said. “In case you’re still considering us.”
“Considering us—you say that a lot,” I said, swallowing hard, trying to keep my composure despite my shaking voice. “You say a lot of things a lot.”
Kyle reached behind him and shut my window. Then he put both of his hands on the sides of my face and looked into my eyes while gently stroking my cheekbones with his thumbs, almost like he was checking to make sure all of this was okay. We had been through so much, and maybe now the time was right. I placed the CD case on the kitchen counter and wrapped my arms around his waist. “It’s not too late for us, right?” I asked.
“It’s not too late,” he said, and finally, after all our mishaps and mixed connections, we kissed. It wasn’t the kiss of two young adults who barely knew each other from almost sixteen years earlier or the confused kiss by the pond that had been interrupted by Ryland’s students earlier in the fall. It was soft and deep and slow. It was everything I had been hoping for once I realized this was exactly what I wanted. Kyle was the one.
“I have a question,” I whispered, pulling back slowly. “How did you get the CD? I thought it was in Connecticut at your parents’ house.”
“It was,” he said, pushing me gently against the kitchen counter and sliding his hands around to my lower back. He was still wearing his jacket. I would have to do something about that. “I drove down there after I talked to you last night.”
“You drove to Connecticut after midnight,” I said. “Let me help you take off the jacket.” I unzipped it and slid it off his shoulders.
“You can remove anything you’d like, Dev,” he said. “Yes, I got there at around three-thirty in the morning. I decided not to scare the shit out of them, so I slept in my car in front of their house, which seemed like a reasonable plan at the time, until that scared the shit out of their next-door neighbor, who called the police. So, I was awoken at five by a Mystic police officer and my mother in her bathrobe.”
I cracked up. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It was. And then I had to explain that I was there to dig through some bins for a CD and would be leaving immediately after I found it. My parents were really worried about me after Cora left, but now I think they’ve given up completely on any hopes for normalcy.”
“And you found it.”
“Normalcy? I’m working on that.”
“No, I mean the CD.”
“Yeah, I got scared I wouldn’t, but here it is. I listened to it in the car on the way back up here. Good thing my car is old and still has a player in it.”
“The Jeep still has one, too. I haven’t used it in years.” I picked the case up again. “I want to listen to it.” Kyle kissed me again, this time with more urgency, and I felt the blood rush through my body. “We can go listen to it later in the car. Plenty of other things we can do before then,” I said, feeling his body against mine.
“What do you want to do?” he murmured, and I knew what I had to say.
“I really need a shower,” I said. “I’m sure I just killed the mood or something, but I have been traveling for so long. It was like something out of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. ”
“Is that a movie? I love your movie references.”
“John Candy? Steve Martin? Seriously, Kyle. It’s a John Hughes film, for God’s sake.”
“I have a lot of movie-catching-up to do,” he admitted. “Don’t you have some amazing clawfoot tub in that bathroom of yours? Am I just imagining this? You know you’ve got the best apartment on campus.”
“I do have a clawfoot tub. Are you suggesting we use it? I’ve never gone in there with anyone else before. You think there’ll be enough room?”
“It’s worth a try,” he said. “It’s Sunday afternoon, and we have nowhere else to be. What do you say?”
I opened the cabinet above my head. “Whiskey sours?”
“This bath is sounding better all the time.”
...
A few hours later, we were in the Jeep headed west to Norwell. Neither of us had been there in years, despite Kyle living so close for so long. We needed to drive somewhere to listen to the CD, which still sounded pretty good after years of sitting in a Rubbermaid bin in the Hollings’ basement.
“This is a really amazing piece of our history, despite the circumstances in which it was made,” I said.
“Oh, you mean that it was abandoned because I met a British woman who turned out to be a complete waste of time, and how I should have told her I was busy and kept making the CD? And sent you the blasted thing?”
“I still don’t know if our timing would’ve been right that fall,” I said, turning into the campus. “What would it have been like for us to reunite right here in late August 2007? What do you think would’ve happened?”
“Oh, I have a good idea what would have happened,” he said. “Something like what happened a couple of hours ago.”
I laughed. “Probably. But would that have been enough in the long run? I wonder. Maybe we needed to go through all the experiences we’ve had to get to this point.” I pulled into a visitor parking space. “And there’s one very important person we’re forgetting.”
“Annie,” he said quietly. “I can’t wait for you to spend more time with her. She’s going to love you.”
“I’m excited, too. Do you think she’ll like baking cookies and stuff like that? I’m not very theatrical, but we can watch all the movies. And I already know she likes ice cream.”
“She does. I know it’s freezing out, but I miss Georgy Porgy’s. May is way too far away.”
“It is. You know I don’t enjoy this weather.” I pulled on my hat and gloves. “You ready to walk around the Loch again?”
As we had in January 2007 on a much warmer night, we walked around the body of water that was so small that calling it a lake was a stretch. Hand in hand, we told each other stories of our classes, parties we had attended, and people we knew. We mused about sending in a class note to our alumni magazine about our reuniting to give our classmates a shock. We stopped and kissed at the point where we were almost positive we had done the same years earlier. It was all very sweet and nostalgic and very, very cold.
“I can’t feel my toes or my nose,” I said. “I was in LA this time yesterday. I think I’ve confused my body. Plus, it thinks I don’t sleep anymore.”
“I only sleep in driveways now,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We walked across the quad as students were heading to the dining hall for dinner, and it seemed so strange to be at Norwell watching the same kind of scene we were a part of almost every evening at Rockwood, just with younger people. We stopped and sat on a bench and watched them shuffle past us, laughing and talking, some couples holding hands, a few smoking cigarettes, many with big backpacks, clearly heading to the library as soon as dinner was over.
“They’ve got finals soon, I bet,” I said, leaning into Kyle as we observed the Norwell world unnoticed.
“I wonder how many of our professors are still here,” he pondered. “Most of them seemed so old. They were probably our age.”
“We’re only thirty-five, goofy,” I said. “Were any college professors later presidents?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I figured I should learn something since we’re back at college.”
“Well,” he began, taking my hand and pulling me up to stand. “John Quincy Adams taught at Harvard and Brown. Taft taught at Yale Law School after he lost reelection and before he became a Supreme Court justice.”
“He was a justice after he was president?”
“Yep, the only one in our history. He didn’t really want to be president. Teddy Roosevelt talked him into it. And then ran against him four years later.”
“That’s right. That’s how Wilson was elected. It’s all coming back to me now.”
“You got it. After he was president of Princeton,” he said as we got to the Jeep. “Ice cream near me,” he said, speaking into his cell phone.
“You really want some? It’s maybe thirty degrees out.”
“For you, anything. You still on a toffee kick? Not sure if this place has it,” he said, scrolling through the results.
“No more Heath for me,” I answered. “What looks good?”
“Caramel Oreo Swirl? I bet you would like that one.”
“Oh, definitely.” My stomach growled as if by suggestion.
“Did you know that Barack and Michelle Obama had their first kiss while getting ice cream?” he asked.
“You didn’t read that in a history book.” I laughed, imagining Kyle pouring over presidential romance stories.
“No, it was an interview with Oprah.”
“Even better.”