32. Heiligenhafen #2
Emmi felt terrible thinking of her mom having dinner alone in New York, no one to keep her company.
“Hey,” Jack said, stepping outside and sitting across from her. “I don’t want to keep asking if you’re okay, but… are you okay?”
“That was so weird,” she said.
“You showed restraint,” he said. “I was expecting some fireworks. You know, the Real Housewives of Heiligenhafen.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I don’t know what happened,” she said.
“I saw them, and I just realized it was over and no amount of shouting or crying was going to change that, and it would just be humiliating. And you know what else is weird? I realized they’re kind of perfect together.
” She felt sick saying it, but it was really true.
The three of them had spent so much time together in Freiburg, and Emmi wondered why she hadn’t seen it before.
“They just needed me to get out of the way.”
She leaned forward and passed her beer to him, and he took it, looking a little surprised.
He took a sip. “So what now?” he said. “I mean, what about Karl? Do you still…”
Jack pronounced “Karl” with a hard r , making her feel like he was talking about some other boy she’d never met.
She picked up her phone and moved to sit beside him on the couch. “I just broke up with him.” She showed him the message she’d sent while he was upstairs.
“I’ll need you to translate,” he said.
“It says it’s over, and I don’t want to talk about it or be friends.”
“Brutal,” Jack said, passing the beer back to her. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Very sure,” she said, putting her phone down. “But I don’t know what to do about Monika. Friends are harder to break up with.” She leaned back and put her feet up on the coffee table again. “Are you going to write to Sam?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “He may have ruined my life. How do you write an email about that?”
“Can I ask,” she said, gently bumping her leg against his, “why did you make that list?”
He tipped his head down, looking at his hands. “Because I’m an idiot. It was a way of quantifying my shortcomings.”
“What do you mean?”
“I created a linear regression model to determine how much money you would have to pay certain girls in our class to get them to invite me out. The math was real, but it was mostly just made-up data about me, like my lack of social skills. The nicer the girl, the less you would have to pay them.”
“So that’s why Nell was ‘worth’ so little?”
“Nell was always nice to me.”
“And what about Cynthia?”
“I don’t think I should talk about Cynthia.”
“She must have treated you pretty badly.” She took a breath before asking, “Were you guys together?”
He turned to her. “Why would you think that?”
“She said you were friends, but I got the feeling there was more to it.”
“I can’t talk about it,” he said, looking away.
“Why not?”
The wind picked up then, clouds passing low across the sky. She heard laughter coming from the beach.
“You can tell me,” she said.
“We weren’t, like, official or anything,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “We never told anyone.”
“Why not?”
Jack looked miserable. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Why not?” she said again.
“Because I was tutoring her, and she didn’t want anyone to find out when we… you know.”
“Okay,” Emmi said tentatively, wanting him to trust her, “but what about your friends?”
Jack shook his head.
“You didn’t tell them?” she said. “What about her friends?”
He shook his head more emphatically.
“Your family, no? For how long?”
“Seven months,” he said, shrugging as though he felt nothing. “Maybe eight?”
Emmi sat up then and faced him. “You two kept your relationship secret for eight months?”
“Cynthia didn’t want anyone to know,” he said, his hands gripping his knees, “and I promised.”
“But why?” Emmi could not wrap her head around it. “I don’t understand.”
He tried to laugh then, but it sounded forced. “She was embarrassed of me,” he said. “I’m not cool. I’m awkward, and I don’t play football—I mean, why would I want to get concussed? And I don’t pretend to be badass or talk like a bro—”
“Nobody likes American football around here anyway,” Emmi said, sitting back again, their shoulders touching.
“You’re a great brother. And you drove me to the very top of Germany, just as a favor.
And you’re spending your summer delivering tampons all over Berlin.
I think you’ve got a few things going for you. ”
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Is Emmi short for something?”
She smiled. “Emily,” she said.
He nodded. “I just wanted to know.” He sighed and touched a finger to the back of her hand, only for a second. She left her hand where it was, right next to his.
“I wish we didn’t have to go back tomorrow,” he said.
“Same,” she said. And she had so far to go. It was hard to imagine being back in New York. And even harder to imagine returning to Freiburg in the fall. She certainly couldn’t go back to the apartment she shared with Monika.
“You know what we should do?” Jack was staring out at the ocean and then he raised his arm and pointed straight out to sea.
She turned to see what he was looking at. “What?” she said. She hoped he wasn’t going to suggest a swim in the pitch dark; as much as she loved the ocean, that sounded more terrifying than exhilarating.
It was like he was calculating something in his head, and she wanted to snap him out of it, to bring his thoughts back to where they were, back to her.
She leaned into him, moved her hand to the back of his neck, and then she kissed him, knowing she’d wanted to do that ever since the night before, when he was going to sleep on a couch that was way too short for him.
Ever since he’d gotten behind the wheel of the VW.
Ever since he’d whisked her out of the restaurant and brought her home.
She succeeded in jolting him out of his reverie. He sat forward, wrapped his arm around her waist, and kissed her back.