Chapter III
III
Lucy
After we turn in our bowling shoes, we realize how hungry we are. The greasy food options at the alley sound disgusting, but somehow the equally greasy menu at the twenty-four-hour diner down the block sounds amazing.
I sit in a booth across from James, a pair of Cokes between us, the backs of my knees sticking to burgundy vinyl, and I wonder how my day took this turn.
“Can I ask . . .” James takes a moment, sipping his soda before continuing. “My aunt mentioned your mom. Is she . . . ?”
I was hoping to avoid any sort of real talk with him.
I plaster on the sympathetic smile I’ve perfected over the last three years. The one that says, Yes, my mom is dead, but you don’t have to feel bad about it. “She died about a month before I started law school. Cervical cancer.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
I start to give my follow-up smile, the one that says, It’s cool. I’m appropriately sad. You’re appropriately sad. Let’s move on.
But there’s something in his tone that stops me. It’s a sincerity that manages to cut through my cynicism, right to my heart—which seems to be beating on the outside of my chest tonight.
“Thank you. I really missed her today.”
“Is that why you were crying during the ceremony?”
My eyes dart up to his. “You saw that?”
He winces a little, like he’s been caught. “You were next to Rebecca. I couldn’t tell who you were or anything. But yeah, I may have noticed a tear or two.”
I smirk. “I’m going to choose to find that cute rather than creepy.”
James chuckles. “What’s creepy about noticing that a fellow human is crying?”
“I don’t know, but something definitely is.” He laughs with soda in his mouth, struggling to hold it in. It softens me even further. “I was having a lot of big feelings, as Rebecca put it. And they only got bigger as the ceremony went on.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I fiddle with my menu, really not wanting to fall back into that emotional pit. “I basically had a full-on meltdown in the bathroom afterward. A couple minutes before you and I met, I was crying maybe the hardest I’ve ever cried in my life.” I sound more flippant than I intend to.
“Wow.”
He doesn’t seem quite sure what to say next, and it makes my heart clench. I’m not big on sharing my feelings, and definitely not on a first date. I attempt to take a super chill, deeply unaffected sip of my drink and shift the tone back to safe terrain. “Sorry, I don’t know why I told you that—”
“No.” He covers my hand with his as he says it, catching me off guard.
It’s like a reflex, as if he can’t help physically reaching out to me.
“I’m glad you did. I just . . . I don’t know, I was trying to imagine what not having your mom today—let alone the last few years—must have felt like.
” He pauses, his blue-gray eyes locked on mine. “I’m really sorry.”
How does he do that? There’s no irony in his words, no reservation.
His genuine care feels like a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders.
I’m still not sure if I should open up, but my heart acts faster than my head, pulling all the jumbled emotions from this afternoon to the forefront of my mind.
I couldn’t—or didn’t want to—find the words earlier with Rebecca, but they come tumbling out of me now.
“People have this habit of saying stuff like ‘It’ll get easier with time’ or ‘Time heals all wounds,’” I mumble.
“It’s bullshit. Time makes it harder, not easier.
” His gaze is consistent, all too easy to confide in.
“She’d been sick for a few years when she passed.
By the end she wasn’t able to walk on her own, barely able to talk.
I knew I needed to let her go. That she was gone before she actually died.
” I feel my grief like a knot in my chest, slowly rising up my throat.
“But now . . . it’s like, she’s missed so many things.
Birthdays and Christmases. Movie nights and long phone calls.
” Anger swells behind my eyes, and I resist the urge to cry.
“I’m mad I didn’t get to share today with her.
I’m mad she won’t be able to visit me in the Netherlands.
” Glimpses of future memories that will never happen—my mom and I scouring used bookstores, hiking the Hague Forest, inventing backstories for tourists on the beach—bring me a sort of tortured joy.
I have to grin as a tear escapes my eye. “We would have had so much fun.”
James offers me a melancholy smile. I wonder if he’s lost someone too. He seems to understand the mixture of nostalgia and heartbreak flowing through me. Or maybe he’s just that empathic. “It was just the two of you?” he asks gently.
I nod, feeling the grip of my emotions loosen, now that I’ve exposed them so flagrantly.
“Always. She wasn’t seeing anyone in particular when she got pregnant with me.
” I smirk. “I remember her telling me when I was six or seven that half a dozen guys could be my father, and she didn’t remember the names of any of them. ”
James chuckles. “That’s pretty badass.”
I like him more by the second.
“What was she like?” he asks.
“She was funny. Quick. Really kind, but also firm. She took no shit.” James scans my face, as if deciding which of these traits I’ve inherited. “She was a makeup artist,” I go on. “Like, a world-class one.”
“World-class, huh?”
I nod, pride overtaking me. “She would get booked for magazine shoots and fashion weeks all over the world, and she always brought me with her. We traveled to something like thirty-five countries together. I lost the exact count.”
“Holy shit, that’s amazing. But how’d that work with school and stuff?”
I grin. “Not very well. I had a combo of homeschooling and bad tutors. I’d go to the local schools whenever we had a few months at our home base—this crappy little apartment outside of Boston—but I managed.
Got my GED when I was sixteen, and then I traveled with her for another year before applying to college. ”
James raises a playful eyebrow. “And what was that like, being stuck in one place for four years?”
I laugh—he’s already got me figured out. “I did two different study abroad programs. One in Cairo, one in Munich.”
James shakes his head at me, delight painted in his eyes. “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy . . .”
“What?”
“You’re just . . . waaay too cool for me.”
I laugh so hard that a middle-aged couple bickering over their omelets turns and stares.
“Just, so far out of my league,” he adds, not letting up. “It’s comical, really.”
I shake my head. “I assure you, I’m not cool.”
“Lies.”
“I’m not!”
“Then tell me something uncool about yourself.”
I shift in my seat as I think, wondering what level of honest to be here.
“See, you can’t even think of anything,” he says.
“I’m broke?” I say it more like a question than a statement because I’m pretty sure he’s not the kind of guy to find this uncool.
James shakes his head again, that perfect freckle under his eye teasing me. “We’re in our twenties. Who isn’t broke? Besides, aren’t you about to become a very well-paid lawyer?”
“Not yet. The thing I’m leaving for in six weeks is a clerkship at the UN International Court of Justice.”
“That sounds legit.”
“It is. Very prestigious. But it’s also ten months of not getting paid.”
“Not even a stipend?”
“Nothing.” My head tilts involuntarily from side to side—as if trying to hold the anxiety at bay.
“Usually your law school covers the cost, but my school has no funding for it this year. I’m actually TA-ing an undergrad summer session—a poli-sci class—so I can earn some extra cash and hold on to my graduate housing until I leave.
The big thing I need, though, is this grant for young lawyers in international law.
It would cover all my expenses.” I lean in, fully giving up on hiding any of my feelings at this point.
“I’m honestly not sure what I’ll do if I don’t get it.
My advisor says I’m a shoo-in, but it’s still pretty fucking terrifying.
And on top of that, I’ve got to study for the bar.
” I lift up a hand to measure a level high above my head.
“My stress level is somewhere around . . . here.”
James eyes my hand, then lifts his own fingers to mine, as if to check my measurement. His polo sleeve slides up and reveals his bicep in the process. “I’ve seen worse.” We share a grin. “When do you find out if you got it?”
“I turn in my application in two weeks, should hear back in four.”
“Well,” James says, his voice dropping an octave as he picks up his half-empty Coke. “I will help by covering this extravagant dinner.”
I normally wouldn’t let a guy pay for the first date. I have a thing about it—feels like it sets up an uneven power dynamic. But somehow that’s nowhere close to a concern here. “I accept.” I pick up my glass and clink it with his.
“So that’s your field, international law? Or is this clerkship a résumé-building thing?”
“No, that’s the field, a thousand percent.
With the way I grew up, it’s hard to imagine a different kind of life.
” I pause, wary of coming across as overly ambitious or arrogant, but James grins at me with a magical, raw sincerity that erases any fear.
“I want to go on being a citizen of the world and hopefully leave some kind of positive mark. Maybe make this place a little more just, a little more open.”
His eyes catch on my lips before he responds. “Sounds like a good life.”
We’re both quiet for a moment, and my mind wanders back to our make-out session. Was that really only thirty minutes ago? The memory of his mouth on mine, his fingertips grazing the side of my breast . . .
As he turns his attention to the menu—the first time he’s looked over the options since we got here—I imagine taking his hand under the table, guiding it up my leg, under my dress, and pressing his palm against me.
I picture the look we’d share as he pushed my underwear to the side, both trying to keep straight faces, not calling attention to ourselves, as he brought me to a silent, lip-bitten climax.
Then a harried, no-nonsense waiter saunters up to our table, pouring cold water on my daydream.
The waiter doesn’t bother asking what we want but instead just stares at us, no pad or pen in sight. “Cheeseburger and fries, no pickle, please,” I say. Then I look to James, but he’s not looking at the waiter—he’s looking at me.
“What would your mom order?”
The question nearly knocks the wind out of me, and I feel my jaw go slack. But I know the answer instantly. “French dip. Extra au jus,” I manage to murmur.
James looks at the waiter. “Two of those, please.” Then he turns back to me. “Enough to share.”
Did he know how much that small gesture would mean? Could he possibly? I can almost feel my heart reach out to his. It’s frightening and electric, overwhelming and inevitable. I could really fall for—
No.
I stop short. Don’t even think it.