The House of Now and Then

Chapter One

I have never seen Jaws. Not because I have anything against the movie. I just don’t care about sharks. Or boats. Or sharks trying to get on boats.

I never really thought of this as a problem before. Sure, every summer Jackson would make a pitch for why we should finally

watch it together—it was the original big summer blockbuster, the effects hold up great, it’s a classic—but I always hemmed and hawed until we ended up picking something else, and he always let it go.

Now, however, halfway across the Sagamore Bridge with the windows down and the wind buffeting my eardrums, I’m beginning to

think the shark-size hole in my movie knowledge might be an issue. Rika is deep in a Wikipedia hole and showing no signs of

emerging anytime soon.

“Wait, this says they filmed on Martha’s Vineyard.” She frowns at her phone, still scrolling. “Why did I think they filmed

on the Cape?”

I sneak a quick glance out the driver’s window at the deep blue of the water below us. There’s a sailboat down there—the kind

that fits only a few people, its single, triangular sail billowed out in the wind. “I don’t know. Do they look similar?”

“Probably,” Yasmin says from the back seat, where they’re stuffed in with my boxes of books and my suitcases. “Beaches and lighthouses and shit.”

Rika lets her breath out like this revelation about Martha’s Vineyard has personally wounded her. “I really thought it was

the Cape.”

“Why’s it matter where they filmed Jaws?” I ask.

“Vibes, Harlowe.” Rika gives me a look over her aviator sunglasses, as though this should be obvious. “We’re heading to Cape

Cod, that movie looks like Cape Cod . . .” She scrolls on her phone. “Okay, there’s a whole section on scholarly criticism

here and literally nobody is mentioning the obvious queer reading. What’s wrong with people?”

Yasmin and I share a knowing look in the rearview mirror. Rika may have a PhD in biostatistics and a job in a lab at Mass

General doing things I don’t remotely understand, but her real passion is queer readings of straight media. She claims it’s

because she couldn’t find any actual queer media when she was growing up in rural western Washington, so she had to get inventive.

I’ve heard her talk at length about everything from Sherlock Holmes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She’s been mourning

the death of The Toast website and its Femslash Fridays feature for a decade.

In other words, there’s no dodging this bullet.

“Okay,” I say, because I might as well indulge her. “Hit me. What’s the queer reading of Jaws? The shark is gay?”

“I think all sharks have big bisexual energy,” Yasmin says, perfectly seriously.

“The queer reading is that all three dudes are gay,” Rika says to me. “The unresolved sexual tension is crackling. Plus, in

my opinion, the whole film is far more enjoyable to watch if you also pretend that Hooper is a trans man.”

“Reeks,” I say, “I’m not going to watch a movie just because I’m trans and you’ve decided there’s a decent trans reading in

there.”

In the rearview mirror, Yasmin looks thoughtful. “She has a point, though. I mean . . . Hooper’s a short king, he’s an academic nerd, and he basically owns your exact wardrobe . . .”

This is why Yasmin is the perfect partner for Rika. On paper, the two of them look like they shouldn’t work, except they’ve

been together for almost ten years and are disgustingly cute. Practically the only thing they seem to have in common is science.

Yasmin is currently in the second year of their OB-GYN residency, also at Mass General hospital. They’re taller than me, with

short, neatly combed wavy dark hair and a septum piercing, while Rika is a four-foot-eleven Japanese American lesbian who

wears her long black hair twirled up in messy buns and has a penchant for very long earrings. Yasmin does things like iron

their button-down shirts before they go to their shift at the hospital. Rika has shown up at my door with no idea her shirt

is on backward and inside out. She’s the sort of person who seems more like she should be flinging paint at a canvas or making

sculptures out of trash than staring through microscopes while wearing a lab coat.

But somehow, Yasmin never seems to mind that it takes Rika approximately three times as long as anyone else to get anywhere.

Yasmin could listen to Rika’s queer media theories all day, and seems to buy most of her arguments.

I shift in my seat, tugging on my denim cutoff shorts with one hand. My little Honda doesn’t exactly have plush padding, and

we’ve been driving for an hour and a half. “There’s no such thing as a trans wardrobe,” I say defensively.

“I’m just saying,” Rika says, “you’re moving to Cape Cod for the summer. You’re living on an actual beach. You need a thematically

appropriate movie to kick things off.”

“And the only thematically appropriate movie is the one about a shark literally eating people?”

“It’s a classic!”

My stomach knots, and I tighten my fingers around the steering wheel. “Yeah. I’ve heard that.”

There’s an awkward silence, except for the wind roaring in through the open car windows.

“Sorry.” Rika turns her phone over in her hands, clearing her throat. “I didn’t mean . . . that.”

We all know what that is. That is quoting Jackson, or bringing up Jackson, or acknowledging the giant elephant that’s squashed into the car with us. The

elephant, of course, is the fact that Jackson and I—eight years after we met, seven after we started dating, six after we

moved in together—broke up.

Which is why Rika and Yasmin are in the car with me in the first place. They’re helping me haul my stuff to Cape Cod—or at

least, the stuff I kept—because I’m renting a cottage there for the summer.

Because I need to get the hell out of Boston. At least for a while.

We’ve been talking around Jackson for weeks, ever since he and I finally officially broke up, because Rika and Yasmin are

his friends too. Turns out when you date somebody for seven years, and you met at the same university where you also met all

of your other friends, you end up sharing all the same friends.

Which was great, until now. Now “horribly awkward” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“It’s fine,” I say, which is a bald-faced lie, but at this point, I’ve said it so many times that it barely even registers.

The words leave my mouth and I feel nothing. “I know what you meant.”

Rika glances into the rearview mirror, and I know she’s exchanging a look with Yasmin in the back. I can guess what look it

is too, because they’ve exchanged it a lot, when they think I’m not paying attention. It’s a look that says Careful, Harlowe is fragile.

And maybe also Careful, we can’t get involved.

It works its way under my skin, that look, no matter how hard I try to ignore it.

From the back seat, Yasmin clears their throat. “So how long have we got left?”

Right. Subject change. I rub my forehead, glancing at my phone, propped in one of the cupholders. “Google Maps is saying an

hour.”

“Nice.” Yasmin looks out the window. “Maybe we really beat the traffic, then.”

It’s early Friday afternoon, the last weekend of May, which means we’re past Memorial Day. And that means—as Dina, the owner

and manager of the cottage, told me—it’s officially summer tourist season and the traffic gets gnarly on the weekends. The

listed check-in time for the cottage I’m renting is 3:00 p.m., but Dina said I could arrive earlier if I wanted. She didn’t

care.

So Rika and Yasmin and I left Boston shortly before noon, after spending almost an hour wrangling my boxes and suitcases into

my car like we were playing an incredibly frustrating game of Tetris. The problem was more the Honda’s diminutive trunk than an overwhelming amount of stuff. I got rid of as much as I could,

and Jackson is keeping our apartment, along with all of the furniture, the dishes, the sheets and towels, the beaded throw

pillows we found at a stoop sale on our third anniversary, even the stupidly fancy gooseneck kettle that could heat water

to any temperature you wanted.

It just seemed easier than fighting about any of it. I got my half of the security deposit back. I told myself that was all

I really needed.

My phone buzzes in the cupholder, so loudly that it makes me jump. I glance down at it, at the same time Rika says, “It’s

your dad.”

Shit. I tighten my fingers around the wheel again. Of course this had to happen now. “I’ll get back to him.”

“I can answer it if you want,” Rika offers. “Or text him we’re driving or something.”

“No, no, it’s okay. I . . . I haven’t actually told him yet and I don’t really want to get into it right now.”

The buzzing stops. Rika glances at my phone, and then at me. “Haven’t told him like . . . you haven’t told him you’re moving to the Cape? Or you haven’t told him you broke up with Jackson?”

I force myself to unclench my hands. This is straying dangerously close to everything we’ve been avoiding for weeks. “I haven’t

told him about any of it. It’s complicated.”

“You’ve told your mom, right?” Yasmin asks.

“Yeah, of course.” I called her the night of the breakup. I don’t really know if my mom and I are close—it’s not like I call her every week, and when I do, we maybe talk for an hour at most. I hadn’t told her about anything before

I broke up with Jackson—about the simmering under my skin, the vaguely suffocating feeling, like if I didn’t finally do something, I was going to drown. Or explode.

But when we actually broke up, I had to call her. There’s something about going through the experience of your dad leaving

your mom—of answering that phone call where your mom tells you in a choked voice that he’s just gone—that bonds the two of you.

Even if we weren’t close about everything, she was always the person I was going to call first.

Rika glances into the mirror again, and when I look up, I see Yasmin looking back at her. Now I feel vaguely annoyed. They’ve