Chapter 13 Ordinary is Fine
ORDINARY IS FINE
“Zoey, I’m home.” I tossed the key in the dish we got during spring break in Mexico.
“You got a package. I set it on the counter,” Zoey called from her bedroom.
I assumed this was the box my mother spoke of in her voicemail.
She sent me samples from her newest cult and a few things she found when cleaning out my room.
After twelve years I was surprised there was anything left in my old room.
My mother loved to purge anything she found useless from her life.
I cut open the box and groaned.
“Hey,” Zoey said, walking into the kitchen, towel drying her short dark hair. “More tea?”
“Yep, but now we’ve got flavored powdered milk.” I pulled out one of the containers from the crumpled newspaper. “This one is…” I turned the plastic tub to read the flavor. “Cookies and cream. Great with nut milk, Greek yogurt, or water to help you cut calories,” I recited the claims.
“I have never been so thankful to be dairy-free.” Zoey opened the cupboard and pulled out two wine glasses. “White or red?”
“White. And a half glass. I have dinner with Ian tonight. We are comingling friends now.”
“Wow, big step. Does that mean Callie and I have to have dinner with him?” Zoey complained.
I pulled back a bit. I never thought my friends didn’t like Ian. He was nice. “Callie said the same thing. Do you both really not like him?”
“Not for you. He seems boring and a bit self-centered. Not to mention you only see him on the weekend and only if he doesn’t have anything else planned. I see my nail girl more than you see Ian.” Zoey took the bottle of wine out of the fridge.
“He’s busy. We both are. And he’s not boring. He likes…” I tried to put words to Ian’s likes. They were vanilla. No, they were… “Ordinary. He likes ordinary things.” I cringed at how terrible that sounded.
“I.e. boring.” Zoey rolled her eyes.
“I think I need better friends. Ones that want me to have a relationship with a nice guy who allows me my freedom.” I carried the two largest tubs of powder to the hall closet.
I had started a box with all my mother’s new diet fads.
Two months ago, it was supplements. Before that, an anti-aging cream and pills.
There had to be a place where people wanted this shit or a toxic waste dump.
“Do you really not like him?” I called from the hallway.
“Not for you. He’s bland, Ev. I don’t mean that in a mean way,” Zoey said, digging through the box. “Take Lyric. He was an ass, but he was passionate. Exciting. Sam was fucking hot.”
“Ian is nice-looking,” I said, walking back into the kitchen. Zoey was paging through some book my mother had sent. Probably one on how to live longer and love it.
“Yeah, Ian’s cute, but he’s not Evan material. You are, like, a ten, and Ian is, like, a six.”
“I’m a ten, huh?” I smiled at her. In high school I let myself believe that Anna and Chelsea were the beauty standard I had to fit into.
In college I learned they were average. I also learned that real friends didn’t put you down and never questioned what you wore.
Okay, there was one time I tried adding color to my normally gray wardrobe.
Unfortunately, I added all the colors. Zoey made me change back to gray.
“And there’s more to a relationship than looks.” I took a sip of wine. Ian wasn’t bad-looking. He had blond hair and blue eyes. He had a nice face; there was nothing remarkable about it. Meaning you wouldn’t remember him in a crowd of white, thirty-two-year-old men. But that was okay.
“Now this is the type of guy I can see you with.” Zoey held the book open to a black-and-white photo.
“What are you looking…?” My words died on my tongue. Zoey wasn’t looking at a self-help book; she was looking at my yearbook, and the photo was of Tristan.
I put it in the yearbook so he wouldn’t be forgotten.
In case the unthinkable happened, there would be proof he existed.
I took the photo for an art class our junior year.
I won an award for best portrait at the state art competition.
It wasn’t my skills that won. It was Tristan.
The black-and-white photo made every one of his sharp edges stand out.
His hair was a tangled mess of the curls he hated.
He had been working on his car when I called his name.
A half smile crossed that beautiful mouth.
The black eye James had given him the week before was almost healed.
One of the judges said they could see the desire in his eyes. Another said the subject looked broken.
“Who the hell is he?”
“That is Tristan Anderson.” I took the book and ran my fingers over the photo.
It took me months to not cry when I heard his name.
Every day in class, I’d have to hear it called.
A reminder of what I once had. I moved my books and shit into Anna’s locker so I wouldn’t have to see him.
It took another six months to realize I was never going to kiss him again.
Feel his body on top of mine. Hear the way he said my name.
It took college and a bunch of boys to forget the taste of his kisses.
And another couple years to mend my broken heart.
“Is this the guy we weren’t supposed to let you google? The one it took you all freshman year to get over?”
“It wasn’t all of freshman year.” It had been most. I kept thinking that Tristan would show up.
That he would see how stupid this all was and come back.
When he didn’t, I finally confessed to both Callie and Zoey I was scared to date.
Callie had told me the only way to get over a broken heart is to get back on the horse. She said “cock.” But she was right.
“Fuck. No wonder you only date blonds. I wonder what happened to him.”
I stared at the page, letting the memories wash over me.
“I don’t know. He’s in the past, and we leave the past in the past.” I closed the book and read the sticky note on the cover.
Found this when going through your room.
There was other stuff but I threw that away.
The fact she threw away my childhood didn’t surprise me; the fact she hadn’t thrown this away did.
Zoey took the book back and paged through it.
“Let’s see what eighteen-year-old Evan looked like.” Zoey paged through it. “Wow. Love the highlights.” She pointed to my senior photo. “Was standing against a brick wall standard for all girls graduating high school?”
“Shut up. I’d like to see your senior photo.
” I was leaning against a brick wall like the other girls on the page.
I had some stupid scarf on and what I thought was a smoky eye.
Or at least what Anna thought was a smoky eye.
I didn’t remember most of my senior year; it had been a blur of tears and heartache.
“Most likely to be best friends forever?” Zoey cocked her head. “That didn’t age well.”
“What?” I pulled the book away. It was a photo of Anna and me sitting on the low brick wall outside the school. Anna had her arm slung around me. She didn’t look seven months pregnant with Austin Larson’s baby.
“No, it didn’t.” Anna and I had lost contact after I went to college and she didn’t.
She had a baby to raise. Funny how she ended up pregnant and I didn’t.
I heard Austin went to a local community college.
He and Anna got married a couple years later and had two kids.
Austin worked at the bank, and Anna worked at the nursing home.
“This Austin guy isn’t too bad either.” She pointed to Austin’s football photo.
“He was an ass.” I took the yearbook and closed it, dropping it back in the box. The yearbook and memories could all go to the trash. I had cried enough tears over Tristan Anderson. “What do you have going on tonight? Dinner with Tyler?”
“No, dinner with my parents,” Zoey groaned, looking up at the ceiling.
“That sounds lovely. Would you like to bring them some tea?” I held up a box. “I have Shit Your Pants Peach. Or”—I plucked another box—“Trim that Fat Ass Pineapple.”
“Any Disappointed Parents Matcha?” She stood.
“Sorry. But I have about a million samples of cookies and cream you could bring them.” Zoey and I had the parent thing in common.
Not a dead father. But a very strained relationship.
Her parents weren’t happy with her current career as an interior designer.
They wanted her to be more like her older brother, Thomas, the doctor.
“They’re only having dinner with me because my brother is in town visiting the Mayo.
He’s a doctor.” Her parents were very conservative.
Zoey’s father had retired from the Taiwanese government, and her mother was a famous pianist. They had come to America so their children could attend a good college. Not waste time picking out pillows.
I smiled over my glass. “I know. He’s also single, or at least that’s what your mother told me the last time she called.”
“He’s also gay, but he won’t tell them. I should bring that up at dinner tonight. Break that glass pedestal they put him on.”
“As a person who counsels young adults struggling with this, I suggest you don’t.” I shoved the tea and the bottle of vitamins with a note telling me how my mother and Harold felt ten years younger after taking ViTaliTi back in the box.
Zoey looked up at me. “Don’t you wonder where Tristan is? If he’s still cute?”
For a long time, I did. Not what he looked like.
But if he was okay. Some nights I still dreamed about him, broken and bloody.
But in my dreams, he didn’t make it. He faded into the floor, and the feeling of heartbreak started all over again.
I probably should get help for what he and I survived all those years ago.
But first I’d have to get over him. “Nope.” I closed the box and set it by the door to be taken out with the trash.
There was nothing in there I wanted. “Speaking of high school, Callie’s bestest friend will be there tomorrow. ”
“Oh god, Stephanie is going to be there? She always tries to sell me beauty products. She said they even work on my skin.” Zoey rolled her eyes and walked into her bedroom. “So Callie’s on bailout detail tonight?”
“Yep.” I looked at the box and took the yearbook out. It wasn’t all about Tristan. I had other friends. I tucked it in the folds of his old hoodie, the one I kept on the top shelf of my closet as a reminder it had happened. We had happened.
I needed to get ready for my dinner date.
Ian’s friends were nice. They were lawyers, fellow CPAs, and had poli-sci degrees.
The couple that was hosting the dinner had just bought a house.
They were married and ready to start a family.
I think Ian was too, which was why he wanted me to come to this dinner.
He was thirty-two and ready to start the next chapter of his life.
The chapter with marriage and kids. I hadn’t had the “I don’t want kids” conversation with him yet. That much hadn’t changed about me.
I dressed in a pair of loose-fitting black pants and a silk cream button-up. This was my life. Not the mess of black ink in that book.
And not the sharp edges of Tristan Anderson.