Chapter Eleven #2
Liam plunked a calculator in the cart. He rested his hand on Addison’s back, the bare part where her shirt rode up.
We weren’t the type of friends who talked about stuff like sex.
It didn’t mean we weren’t close. We were really close.
She knew everything about the real me and my real family, Mom and the restricting, Dad and the rage, how I felt so alone a lot of the time, and anxious, sometimes so much that I couldn’t even look at social media.
Sometimes so much that regular daily tasks seemed like climbing a mountain, not because I was too sad to do them, but too small against them.
And I knew her—her feelings about her dad, gone for work almost all the time; her mom, relying on her to be her “best friend.” The stress she felt to get good grades and seem perfect to everyone.
But we didn’t talk about that—sex, her boyfriend Mason, the one before Liam.
What either of us might have done or not done with guys.
It was private, I guess, even from each other.
I could see it now, though. Her and Liam.
Addison and I had grown up together, with field day, and her mom’s radiation that year in middle school, tormenting PE classes, and her and me and Priya making that film together when Priya briefly decided to be a film director.
There were the three years of Senora Rubio, and painful arguments, and pretending to forget that the sweatshirt was originally mine and the hoodie was hers.
Learning to bake, pans and batter drops and wooden spoons, fallen cakes, rising cakes, ugly frosting to not so bad, huh?
And we were still growing up together, it seemed.
“I got the TI-X304060,” Liam said. I may have gotten those numbers wrong. But that’s how he described it, numbers, blah, blah, blah. “That’ll be the best one for you, Add. Easy for you to use and a good price.”
I folded my eyebrows down in the direction of the spiral notepads so Addison wouldn’t catch my expression.
Right there, I just couldn’t envision you with us.
I couldn’t see you there in Fred Meyer with Liam.
You’d never calculator-splain. Sure, you boat-splained that day, but you knew more about boats than I did.
Addison had been in practically every AP math course there was by then, and Liam hadn’t.
And Addison hated being called Add. She didn’t mind Addy, but not Add.
The strange thing was, I couldn’t imagine you there with her, either, or with Priya.
I don’t know why exactly. Just picturing you in Fred Meyer with us, with your wild hair and thin body and Voyager obsession, I felt worried.
You seemed vulnerable. From a different planet, one they might not understand.
“She already has one,” I said. I tried to sound like I was on her side, but it just came out all unfriendly.
“It’s not working anymore?” Addison said.
“Add said that you’re so good at math, you barely even need a calculator,” Liam said.
“She did?”
“She said that you’re so good at everything. And so sweet, haha.” Like he doubted that part. Still. It made my heart fill, and I felt bad, too, that I was acting like such a shit.
“Sorry,” I said when we walked out to Addison’s car with our bulging plastic bags.
“Me too,” she said.
Best friends could go through stuff, but when it was real, it stayed.
“How’d you get this?” I asked Liam when we were in the car again.
I poked his big arm muscle. Addison was driving, but I could see her smile.
“Impressive.” I did it for her, but he went on and on about certain reps or whatever.
Some powdered stuff he drank. You and me—we made fun of those giant tubs of powder whenever we saw them in a store. Power powder, we said, cracking up.
When Addison dropped me off, we seemed okay again. I’d made him happy, so she was happy. I wondered if it would work the other way around.
“I’m beginning to think…” You looked worried. No, you looked sad. We had the first good day of no-smoke skies in a while, maybe because it was almost September and things were cooling off. I could feel fall approaching. I could practically smell the first changing leaves, I swear.
We sat on a blanket at Shilshole Beach. To our left was the marina, the boats all lined up in their spots, masts so diligently straight, and in front of us was the sound.
The horizon still looked odd, that hazy pink-gray, but we could breathe at least. We could go outside without getting ash in our hair.
Little kids were playing in the surf. A few gathered to look at something in the water before a mom shouted and ran, shooing them away, flinging the jellyfish far into the water.
“What?”
“Are you embarrassed of me, Margaret?”
Oh, no. “Are you kidding? Of course not! Why would you say that?”
You made a face, like, you know why. I did know why. We’d talked about this before, of course. Enough that I understood I was running out of time, or already had. “We’re always at my house. You’ve been around my mom tons. I haven’t even seen your room, let alone your family.”
I had been around his mom tons. Enough to see maroon flags and more maroon flags.
There was that brief period where she seemed to want to be my best friend, texting me about our plans, cornering me on the dock to ask me how you really were, after she gave me that serenity candle from Mystic Minerals.
But that had lasted about a week. Now she was cool toward me again, calling you in to dinner when she was home but not inviting me to stay.
Telling me you were going to be busy on a Saturday, helping her with various errands or home repairs.
But the thing was…if you came to my house, the flags wouldn’t be maroon, with the possibility of being marooned.
They’d be red, with the certainty of being burned.
“You have been around my family.”
“Maurice doesn’t count.”
“Maurice counts the most.”
“But you’ve also hung out with Sandrine, and Aunt Gwen, and my friends.” Chester, and Santiago and his son, Norton, and Lily, and Ben, and Rainey, and your other friends at the Center for Wooden Boats—Bao, who went to Roosevelt High, and Amelia, a junior who was homeschooled.
I’d told you already, again and again, that I was worried my people would wreck it.
Wreck us. All at once, though, I remembered something—what Mom and Dad used to say about me doing the deliveries.
That it wasn’t me they were worried about, it was the other people, the drivers, the customers, the everyone else.
It made me feel like they didn’t trust me, among other things, and right then I realized, really realized, how you’d been feeling.
“Okay, okay. Come over tomorrow night for dinner.”
My stomach twisted just saying it. Dread just filled me.
I dug my toes deep into the warm sand. I watched people playing and having fun and wished I could just do that, too, without worrying all the time.
How do you not worry all the time, just tell me, you know?
You didn’t know the rules, the rules of my father, and the first rule was to know the rules.
The outside world didn’t know them, so it was always a risk to bring people in.
I couldn’t really explain the rules, either.
You just had to know what might set him off.
You had to understand that you couldn’t disagree with him in any way, that to disagree meant he was being criticized, and criticism was the ultimate sin.
It was tricky, because criticism was a field of land mines you couldn’t see.
Not loving chicken when he loved chicken could be one.
Speaking up about not loving chicken after he’d just said he did—definitely.
Agreeing with everything was important, but some people understandably didn’t want to do that.
Who would? But I needed you to do that. To play by the rules of our family.
Like, maybe I should play you a record. It wouldn’t be golden, but it would tell you what we were like.
“Really? Okay?”
I was already regretting it. But you were right; it was getting silly, just hiding.
We had to live in the real world at some point, if we were going to stay together.
Stay together—it was part of this conversation, I was sure.
Because, how did you do it? We were starting school the next week—you at Seattle Central College, and me at Roosevelt.
How would this change us? The real world was coming at us, and we both knew it.
“Yes.”
“And it’s really going to happen?”
This made me irritated. But you weren’t wrong to accuse me.
I’d promised it again and again but didn’t follow through.
“Look. I’m texting now.” I was. Mom. I said something like, There’s someone I want you to meet.
Dinner tomorrow? It took her seconds, I swear, to reply.
She’d been waiting, I’m sure. OF COURSE.
Smiley face, smiley face, smiley face. “There, see?” I showed you my phone. “Done.”
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” you said.
I kissed you so we wouldn’t fight. It made me think it was happening already, my family coming between us, even if I was the one doing it.
“I just love you so much,” I said, and then you said, “I just love you so much,” and the kiss was good.
Good, turning to great. It was beautiful out, too, and the sun was a nice warm and not a terrible warm, the kind that makes want more wanting.
“Is your mom home?” I asked you. Her work schedule changed all the time, like, daily.
I wanted to go back to your room. You wanted to, too; that was obvious.
Us, now—it felt deep. People might make fun of me for saying this, our age, I mean, and that we’d only been together a few months, I get it.
But it felt permanent. Us in love did. Us together.
Say what you want; I know what I felt. It was how it should go.
We belonged. How it was to be loved by you—it wasn’t usual, and I might never find that again.
“Uh-uh. Let’s go.” You were already standing, and I rose, too, and you shook out the blanket, and I gathered our stuff.
We’d never make it to that dinner.