7. Teeny
CHAPTER SEVEN
Teeny
NOW
My mouth feels like the Sahara. It’s dry and cracked and sandy. Ugh, and disgusting. And my neck. It feels like someone glued my ear to my shoulder, causing a serious—and a little worrying—knot to form right where my neck and shoulder connects. I don’t remember the last time I’d slept this uncomfortably. It was probably during a weekend getaway to Grace’s grandparents’ cabin in Big Bear back in college when I was left sleeping in a recliner while Grace dozed off on an inflatable bed. My head feels like it’s been squeezed and wrung out with sunlight and dehydration.
This is exactly why I don’t drink hard liquor.
“Ughh…”
“Good morning.”
I bolt from my prone position, pushing my hand into the cushion to sit upright. When I look over my shoulder to the kitchen where the deep, velvety voice came from, I see Everett.
“What are you doing here?”
He lifts a mug that says “World’s Best Dad” in dark bold print to his lips, taking a loud, obnoxious slurp. “Having some coffee,” he answers casually. “You want some?”
I stumble off the couch, smoothing out my shirt that’s ridden up my torso, and stomp toward him. “I mean, why are you still here? Why didn’t you go home last night?” I hiss.
He casually shrugs. “I drove your car.”
“And you couldn’t just Uber back to your hotel?”
“Actually, my car’s at Josh’s,” he explains, looking too relaxed for my liking. “So, I was wondering if you could drop me off.” He takes another long sip and the rattling of the coffee slurping through his lips drives me near insanity.
“Absolutely not,” I answer. “You need to call Josh to come pick you up or order an Uber or something.”
“Is this how you treat your guests?”
“Everett,” I argue, taking the cup from him and gently placing it on the counter. “Now. You need to leave now.” I round to his back and start shoving him toward the door.
“I can’t even finish my coffee?”
“No!”
“Teeny!” His voice comes out all high-pitched and whiny, and I’d probably find it a little amusing if it weren’t for the situation at hand.
“Seriously, Everett. You need to go. Sadie’s going to be home soon from her friend’s house, and you cannot be here when she gets home.”
He swipes my phone off the counter as he walks by it and shows me the screen. “She texted ten minutes ago. She mentioned something about a movie? Said she’s going to be home in the afternoon.”
I take my phone from him. “Are you going through my phone?”
“The message just popped up when I was making coffee.”
I glare at him before I unlock my phone and look at Sadie’s message. Sure enough, she texted me exactly twelve minutes ago to tell me she and Lauren are watching the newest Timothée Chalamet movie with a couple of other kids from school. I tap out a quick response letting her know I got her message and set my phone down.
“You still need to leave, Everett.” My voice has lost the urgency and panic it had a second ago, but I don’t sound any less vexed.
“Come on, Teen,” he urges in his most calm voice. It’s the exact same voice he used when he wanted me to stay an extra hour at his house, pushing the boundaries of my rarely bendable curfew, or when he gave me the sweetest set of puppy eyes asking me to forgo the last round of reviews for our French final. “You want to grab some breakfast?”
“What.” It’s a question, like saying “excuse me” or “pardon me,” but it comes out so flat it doesn’t sound like a question at all.
“Breakfast,” he repeats. “We can go to the little diner with the hazelnut waffles.”
“Why?” That one sounded more like a question. Because why ? Why does he want to have breakfast with me? What could he possibly want that requires food and an hour forced into a booth with nowhere to go besides another public bathroom that smells like bleach and the overpowering stench of toilet water?
He shrugs. “Call it repayment for watching you throw up your insides.”
“You didn’t see that.”
“I saw enough,” he answers. “But then again, I’ve seen you do that plenty of times.” He smirks this time. The jerk smirks like he’s remembering all the times he had to support the weight of my alcohol infused body while we left another party, and he let me sleep it off in the passenger seat of his BMW. And for some reason, it makes my scowl falter, leaving behind a somber pang in my chest I can’t seem to ignore.
“So?” he asks again. “You can drop me off at Josh’s after.”
“Fine.”
* * *
An hour later, after I’ve showered and dressed in something clean and wasn’t a reminder of the night I had, we’re sitting in the small booth at Marie’s. It’s a small mom-and-pop diner in Del Mar Heights with a wide view of Pacific Coast Highway that’s been around for forty years. I used to come here as a kid, and after I brought Everett here for late night hazelnut waffles and Coke floats, it became our regular spot. We spent many nights pouring over homework and hours of comfortable silence or stories that ran on unorganized tangents and laughter.
“We’ll have the hazelnut waffles and two Coke floats,” Everett tells the waitress with two closed menus sitting between us.
“Can you actually make one of those a coffee please?” I add.
The waitress nods, not even bothering to jot our order down on a small notepad.
“Too cool for Coke floats?”
I shake my head. “I just…” I pause, looking at the table to avoid his eyes. “I’m in the mood for coffee.” I chance a glance in his direction, and I immediately regret it, worried he can see through my lie. Like the reason I stay away from Coke floats is because it reminds me too much of Everett. Because the last time I had one is a memory I hate to revisit. And recalling all the subsequent Coke floats I had before that last memory would make me want to throw every caution sign to the wind just so we can rehash our past right here, right now.
“You always got them, Teeny,” he states matter-of-factly, the raspiness of his voice making him sound vulnerable. It’s there, plaited between those five words, whispered through a gravelly thickness with a realization that hits him in the face.
“I’m not the same girl you knew twenty years ago, Everett.” For a moment, the anger that had balled up inside my chest dissolves. I’m so tired. I’m tired of being angry at Leo, at Everett. I’m tired of being angry at love when all I wanted to do was cherish it. I wanted to love someone and be happy. But now, I’m realizing that the only time I did cherish love was when I didn’t know any better. When I thought Everett loved me as much as I loved him.
Everett looks at me, and I look at him. And we stay quiet. As if we’re giving our teenage love a moment of silence so we can grieve its loss. We never had that. At least, I never did. I spent the last twenty years being so resentful, I never gave myself this moment to let go of something that gave me life. But I’m here, waiting for the moment for me to say goodbye to my past. To let it drift off into the calm waters while I watch it peacefully sink into an abyss. And I’m still not ready to let it go.
“Everett, why are you here?” I ask abruptly.
His brow scrunches into a confused scowl. “I told you. Josh?—”
“No, I get that. But why?”
“What do you mean ‘why?’”
“You and Josh haven’t seen each other in twenty years,” I elaborate. “And out of the blue, he decides he wants you to be in his wedding?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know why he asked.”
“And why did you say yes?”
That confused scowl returns with silence.
“You could’ve told Josh you couldn’t. You could’ve made up any old excuse, and Josh wouldn’t have questioned it. So why did you come here?”
“I guess…” He peers at the silverware sitting next to his right hand. The pads of his fingertips start to run over the metal handles of the fork and knife like he’s stalling. “I wanted to come back home. I miss being here. I miss Josh and your family.”
But not me. I nod. My throat starts to feel tight and painful. “Well, you know, those sandy beaches are hard to forget.”
“Teeny—”
“Ohmigod, Christine!”
I look up at the excitedly squealed sound of my name to find one of the last people I expect to see here: Erica Davis.
“Erica!” I awkwardly call in the direction of my husband’s colleague’s wife. “Hi.”
I stand from my seat at the same time Erica reaches my side. We hold each other in the quickest of embraces before we part, and her eyes immediately fall on Everett.
“How are you?” she asks, running a hand down my arm. “I feel like we haven’t seen you in ages.”
“I’m good. Just getting ready to send Sadie out to summer camp this week.”
“Right, she signed up for that music camp out in LA,” she says. Her eyes shift to Everett again while I do everything I can to avoid introductions. “You’re going to have a lot of time on your hands.”
I laugh awkwardly. “I’m taking on more clients,” I tell her, though it’s really none of her business what I do with all of this supposed “free time.” “I think I’ll have my hands full for the summer.”
Erica laughs too, though her over-exaggerated chortle sounds arrogantly forced. “You working moms,” she comments as if us “working moms” were some exotic breed. “I don’t get how you do it. I couldn’t stand to be away from my babies.”
“Heh,” I huff, laughing to fill the uncomfortable silence with politeness instead of with something cheeky and just as backhanded as her comment.
“Well,” she adds, breathing a sigh with subtle undertones of annoyance. “I’ve got to run. I’ll tell Marcus we’ll set something up soon. I’m sure Nikki and Sadie would love to have a little girls’ day at the pool.” She throws another look at Everett before pulling me into a goodbye hug, one that feels more like a cold shoulder with the phony sideways peck against my cheek.
“Bye, Erica.”
“Too-da-loo!”
I slink back into the booth seat and look at Everett. “What in the real housewives of San Diego was that?”
I hold back the laugh at his sarcasm with an irked shake of my head. “She’s the wife of Leo’s colleague.”
“So does that make you one of those Stepford wives?”
I tsk. “With my cooking skills? Never.”
That draws a loose chuckle out of him.
“I just have to…play the part. Be the happy wife with the beautiful family and home.”
“Are you—I mean, were you happy? Before you found out…”
“You mean before I found out my husband had a side piece a speed dial away?”
Everett grimaces, but he quickly tucks wherever that expression came from and looks at me with those sad puppy dog eyes I can’t stand.
“I was,” I finally answer, looking away. “When we got married, and when we had Sadie, I was. But we haven’t been happy for a long time.”
We’re interrupted by the arrival of our order. The waitress slides the steamy cup of coffee in front of me, and by the time the plate of waffles sits between us, I realize what I’ve just told Everett.
We don’t touch anything. We don’t lift a single silverware or napkin. Instead, we just sit in silence.
“I’m sorry, Teeny.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I only ever wanted for you to be happy, Teen. I didn’t think?—”
“You know, we should eat before the waffles get cold,” I interrupt him. I can’t do this. I can’t rehash our past like I need another reminder of how many things were left unsaid between us. I don’t need to remember how heartbroken I was twenty years ago or how the fall of my marriage was a result of so many things I couldn’t let go from my past. Because I couldn’t open up to Leo like I did with Everett, and my own husband never got to have the part of me I wanted to give him because I’d guarded my heart too tightly.
I start stabbing into the waffle at the same time Everett warily picks up his fork. I poke at the food, moving it around silently, while Everett stops the waitress for a glass of water, leaving his Coke float untouched. He pushes it to the side, under the glaring heat of the sunlight streaming in from the window beside us, where it falls into a messy, irreparable heap of ice cream and our past. And I can’t help but think how irreparable our hearts have become in the last twenty years. We’d merely placed crappy pieces of Scotch tape over the cracks of our hearts, enough so we could ignore the ache seeping through those breaks and fissures. Maybe we can just swirl everything together, wipe around the frosty glass, and make it look presentable. Enough so that we can look at it and think about how much we loved each other. So we can finally say goodbye to those kids who unexpectedly fell in love.
* * *
The drive to Josh’s is quiet. The buzz of lazy weekend traffic drifting around us, mingling with the strong ocean breeze and late morning sun, masks the words Everett and I are holding down.
The thing with heartbreak is that you believe time will heal. The days, weeks, months, and years pass, and the pain starts to lessen. They become dull and numb and something much more manageable. But what about the pivotal moments that lead to heartbreak? The ones that change you. Right down to the neurons firing inside your brain, lighting up every time something crosses your path, reminding you how you’ll never be that person again. I started to measure moments in my life before and after Everett. When I got my driver’s license? That was B.E. Before Everett. When I had Sadie. That was After. When I withstood thirty-six hours of labor and a C-section, and I couldn’t tell him about it. I didn’t have the choice to call him and tell him about the happiest day of my life, and how holding Sadie while I nursed her and shushed her to sleep only drudged up the memory of him.
“Thanks for dropping me off.”
I turn to face Everett, nervously eyeing Josh’s front door, when he reaches for my hand resting on the armrest between us. I should pull away, draw back from his touch, if only to remind myself that I’m still angry at this man. That I’m still hurt and sad and resentful of the past twenty years. But am I? Was I really ever mad at him? Maybe I was just hurt. And the pain seeped into a territory I didn’t know how to navigate. So being angry at him felt easier. Something I was able to sit and live with.
“Sure,” I answer. I finally pull away from him, feeling like the space in the car is growing smaller and smaller. And it has nothing to do with Everett’s large six-foot-two-inch frame filling the seat next to me. “Look, Everett?—”
We’re interrupted by the front door opening and Josh’s sudden looming presence. He stands there, one hand on his hip and another shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Take care,” I finish. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”
Under the scrutiny of my older brother a few feet away, Everett doesn’t push his luck. Instead, he opens my car door and steps out, leaving this emptiness in my chest I haven’t felt in twenty years.