Five. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot? Yes
Five
SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT? YES
Two donuts later, I’m driving to the Hill Crest Commons to get something for Brian.
I was thinking gift card but might as well stretch the errand as long as it can go by seeing what else is out there.
But as I’m waiting to make the left turn into the parking lot, I see the spaces outside Macy’s are packed all the way to the street, and the idea of trudging through all that snow just to search for a gift in a hot, crowded department store makes me wilt with despair.
After seeing Corey, there’s something else, too.
I don’t want to bump into another old classmate wheeling around their baby and smugly acting like there’s nowhere they’d rather be than a congested mall, buying thoughtful Christmas gifts.
Not that that will necessarily happen. I could just as likely run into a harried woman who remembers me from third-period study hall and who will confess she can’t wait to get home to her favorite wineglass.
Which, quite honestly, sounds pretty good, even if my favorite wineglass is a reusable thirty-two-ounce plastic cup from Del Taco.
I drive four miles down Ninety-Fifth Street to make sure I’m well out of the Powell Park borders and pull into the parking lot of a massive CVS that’s diagonal from a massive Walgreens.
No, I won’t find the world’s most thoughtful gift for Brian here, but it’s not as if he’s ever given me a gift that spoke to my soul.
What’s important here is that bypassing the many Powell Park CVSes for this CVS guarantees anonymity.
Plus, a self-checkout. Hiding Out in Her Hometown —there’s definite Heartfelt potential there, but my stealth is coming from a deeply misanthropic place.
Stray shopping carts from the neighboring Jewel are lodged in the odd heaps of slush that add dimension to the flat expanse of parking lot. In my sugar-high speed walk sidestepping a particularly beige pile of old snow, I slide on a patch of ice and stumble right into Santa Claus.
No, check that. This guy has a ratty beard about the same color as the dirty snow, and the aroma he’s emitting is far more malt liquor than sugar cookie.
He’s holding a sign that says I’ll scratch your Christmas itch if you scratch mine .
All the s ’s are dollar signs. “Sorry,” I blurt. “I didn’t see you there.”
He catches my eyes with his, and—maybe it’s his drunkenness—I note his pupils have a charming twinkle. “It’s okay, m’dear. Some of us have more to see than others.” He winks jovially, and I swear I can almost hear the tinkle of bells.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know if I…” I reach into the pockets of the coat and find a dollar and some change from SweetHart’s.
“Oh, wait! Here you go.” As I extend my arm to hand him the money, his chapped hand clasps around mine and he squeezes.
I’m startled for a minute, but something in his eyes is so kind.
Like he’s the one begging for change but I’m the object of pity.
He drops my hand to sort through what I’ve given him.
“Hmm.” The bakery receipt is wrapped in the dollar and he hands it back to me.
“Your sweet tooth will serve you well.” He brushes the edge of his knit beanie and nods his head.
“Thank you?” I say, even though I handed him money.
“Until next time,” he says somewhat cryptically.
Unnerved by his comment, I make my way through the automated doors of CVS in a daze, only coming to when an animatronic Santa stationed near the lotto machine bellows an utterly terrifying “HO! HO! HO!” I reflexively cock my fist back, and a man standing to the side rubbing a coin across his lotto ticket glances up and says, “Looks like someone’s getting coal.
” I don’t have time for more conversations with Powell Park’s finest characters, so I offer him a tight smile and plunge into the center of the drugstore as a terrible version of “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” plays overhead.
CVS is predictably full of other half-assed holiday shoppers like me, and I make a note that middle-aged dads commit some horrible gift offenses.
One sixtysomething in a Bears windbreaker is on FaceTime and holding a Santa Claus that dances to a rock version of “Holly Jolly Christmas” when you press his belly.
“Do you think Mom will like this?” he asks a woman who must be his daughter. Wow, romance.
I venture down the holiday aisle at the center of the store, bypassing more singing Santas and wood-look holiday décor from the Heartfelt line (if you look closely at the background of many of their movies, you’re sure to see at least some of these products).
The gift area is sparse—there’s only one Chia Pet left, and the box is dented, foiling my original plan for Brian’s replacement gift, but I find a mini pool table that will work.
Inspired, I decide to get him a little bottle of Maker’s Mark to go with it. He’ll like that more than a sweater.
The store is warm and noisy and working some kind of capitalist magic on me because I’m actually humming along with the piped-in version of “Jingle Bells” now playing on the speakers as I head to the liquor aisle.
I take out my phone to send a quick text to my mom to see if she needs me to pick up anything else.
I have my head bent over my phone and the billiards set tucked under my arm as I reach for one of the bottles of Maker’s Mark from the cardboard display next to the endcap.
My hand closes around what I think is going to be the neck of the bottle but is instead another person’s hand.
“There’s plenty for everyone.” The voice belongs to the person that I chose this CVS specifically to avoid.
I look up. Grant. Grant Heath, my ex, looking far better in this weather than I do.
He’s a good head taller than me and as lean as ever.
His fleece-lined bomber jacket is open at the throat like an invitation to stare up at his chiseled jawline.
When we were dating, I always felt like I’d done something particularly benevolent in a past life to be allowed access to Grant’s jaw. I drop my hand from over his.
“Oh, uh, hi. You can have that one,” I say.
I may be a student of Nora Ephron-esque dialogue on the page, but when encountering my former flame in the flesh, the words I come up with are hardly those of a spunky heroine.
Still, I’m lucky to utter any words at all.
Seeing Grant again has knocked the wind out of me.
I want to scream, What the fuck happened? or cry or kiss him or all three.
“Jill. Um, it’s okay; you take it,” Grant says. At least he sounds like a lower life form, too. We both take a step away from each other.
“No, you had it first. I’ll get my own,” I say. I gesture to the shelves of liquor as if to make sure he sees I have plenty of options. I wish.
He chooses a different bottle and hoists it up, like he’s toasting me. “Nice seeing you.” He shuffles backward a few more steps, and my mouth goes dry at the idea he’s leaving already.
“How’s your dad doing?” Fuck. Why did I ask that? Oh yeah, because trading two seconds of awkward chitchat with the man I loved and then parting ways without further engaging is too damn easy.
“Dad’s good. Well, apart from the replacement hip,” he says.
He takes a few steps back in my direction and my stomach flips, my body remembering all the times he’d slowly amble in for a kiss by closing in on me before surrounding me with his rangy frame.
“He’s gotten really into swimming at the Y. And WNBA games.”
“He might be the only man in Powell Park willing to admit that,” I say.
“Well, he’s still a masochistic stalwart for the Bears, so he fits right in,” Grant jokes ruefully.
“If only we could all be so committed,” I say, not sure if I mean it as a double entendre, even though from Grant’s raised brow, he takes it as one. “I’m sorry about his hip. But say hello for me. I really loved your dad.”
Grant’s jaw clenches, and I know it’s because I used the word “loved,” past tense.
Now he shakes the bottle. “This is a gift for the delivery guy. It looks nicer if I don’t just pull it out of the order.”
He reaches a hand toward me, and I catch his scent.
Like Corey, Grant smells like butter, but he’s not butter and sugar; he’s butter and char, more dangerous than sweet.
I take a step backward. But he only pulls Brian’s gift out from under my arm and studies the box.
“Why are you here? You couldn’t get a crappy plastic pool table in Santa Monica?
” He’s smirking as if happy to have something to lightly tease me about.
Though maybe I should be flattered he thinks I can afford to live near Santa Monica.
“It’s not crappy,” I say. I jut out my chin and yank the box away from him. Its contents rattle in a way that suggests many plastic pieces that will assemble to be something very definitely crappy. “It’s for my brother.”
“Oh, and how is Brian? Besides about to be woefully disappointed by your gift?”
“Not everyone has time to hunt down a copy of Rodney Dangerfield’s cookbook,” I say, just a little defensive.
Early in our dating, before our first Christmas together, Grant had found the cookbook for my brother on the North Side after calling around all the used bookstores in a twenty-mile radius.
Brian, a total comedy nerd, had loved it, and Grant had given me all the credit.
Our second Christmas hadn’t been quite so sweet.
Grant nods, more than taking the hit in stride, as he says, “I liked helping you shop.” “Liked,” past tense.
I see how it stings. He looks like he’s about to go.
I don’t want him to, even if I also don’t want to continue this painful conversation.
Was it possible we really used to finish each other’s sentences?
“Seriously, though, what are you doing home?” he asks.
“I’m around every holiday. I’ve never seen you in town before.
I always figured you must have been on deadline or vacationing wherever big-deal screenwriters do that.
” I’m trying to wrap my head around Grant’s belief that it’s my success keeping me away, when he adds, “Though I guess I shouldn’t discount you might be here in Powell Park by force of your mom’s sweet-but-firm will? ”
I’m annoyed that he’s right. “Actually, I wanted to come. This is sort of a dead period for studios. The whole industry pretty much shuts down until about mid-January.” It’s the truth, even if the only deals I’m making are imaginary ones with the devil in hopes that I’ll get a text from Lacey that says, OOPS!
I meant to tell you I signed you to a multipicture deal with Warner Bros . Then I remember her ultimatum.
“Good for you,” he says. It sounds sincere. “You’re doing everything you wanted.”
No. I’m not doing everything I wanted. I’m barely doing even any one thing I wanted.
Grant’s looking right at me, and I feel shame knock the feeling out of my legs, like he knows I’m lying by omission.
Like he knows two days ago I was fired from a high-end arcade.
Like he knows that the agent who had high hopes for me two years ago is over me.
Like he knows that seeing him made me instantly think of how many times I watched him sleep and dreamt of what our babies would look like.
The only thing more forced than my smile is my gaze, which keeps going to the little hint of chest hair peeking from the soft collar of Grant’s T-shirt. “Yeah, life is great.”
I want to ask him if his life is great. If New York is amazing.
If he’s glad I didn’t go with him, just like I imagine he is.
If he still talks to Fiona. The idea of that one smarts.
I’d always thought Grant belonged with someone more like her than me.
When Grant was working at the restaurant downtown, Fiona had been a hostess nonpareil.
Imagine the opposite of the hostess at your local Olive Garden, who’s probably cheery and accommodating.
Fiona was exclusive, fine dining all the way: just a little bit aloof, a little bit bitchy, and a lot bit the kind of person that you worked to make like you.
When I went for a seating at the restaurant and said I was Grant’s girlfriend, she’d given me a look that said, How unfortunate for Grant .
And I’d suspected she was right. Grant could do better.
Now I want to ask him if he realized I was wrong for him all along.
But I stand there with my great-life lie and my unanswered questions floating between us.
“I’m glad,” Grant says. The sincere tone of his voice has finality to it. It’s the dialogue I’d write for a character who was definitely over his ex and wanted to say, I’m glad we broke up .
“Well, I really need to go. Wrap gifts. Make cookies. Play with the kids.” I pick up the bottle of whiskey for my brother, then notice the endcap next to the display features cheap red wine.
“Need a couple of these,” I say. “For kicking back.” I struggle to arrange my collection of bottles and the pool table set in my hands so I can carry everything.
I spin around and see oversized gift bags hanging from a hook in the holiday section a few aisles over.
I awkwardly totter toward it—feeling Grant follow me.
Why does he have to follow me? With my hands full, I try to nudge one of the gift bags off the hook using my elbow.
“Here, let me,” Grant says, and before I know what’s happening, he’s close, really close, as he leans past me, but it’s only for the second it takes to grab one of the bags for me. He stands and shakes the bag open, holding it out so I can fill it with my cumbersome assortment.
“Thanks,” I say, dazed by the brief contact, a brush of his sleeve against my thick coat.
He nods. “Okay.” He cocks his head to the side so that his thick hair lopes down over his eye. He looks like he’s thinking of some significant parting words, but then he gives me an odd little wave with the bottle of Maker’s Mark in his hand. “Have a good new year. Take care.”
There might be more to say. There always was, with Grant.
But “take care” has enough finality to it that I stand in the holiday aisle, pretending to contemplate different bags of bows, giving Grant enough time to check out and leave before I head to the cashiers. No one needs a new year more than me.