Текст книги "Finding Mr. Brightside"
Автор книги: Jay Clark
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26
Juliette
“WHEN’S THE LAST TIME you played?” Abram asks as we step out onto the court together.
“Can’t remember,” I say, like it’s the funniest thing. It’s not—I took a few mother-daughter tennis lessons a year and a half ago. Mom’s idea. Her bribing me with Adderall was mine. I spent most of my time on court making snarky comments under my breath about Mom’s sudden interest in the sport. I remember hitting exactly one forehand when we were playing doubles together—the ball only smacked the back of her arm, but in that particular moment of resentment, it felt like my first Wimbledon title.
“What about you?” I ask Abram.
He pops the lid off a can of tennis balls, tearing off the metal seal. “Here … last year,” he says, then bends over and starts tying his shoes. I recognize more and more of our surroundings from the picture on Abram’s refrigerator—the one of him and his father holding a trophy.
Maybe I should stretch a bone or two? I grab my phone, reach down, and touch my toes, letting the blood rush to my head as I send Heidi a text asking for some last-minute tips. Her immediate response of Get it!!! is not relevant, but it’s incredible how she keeps finding a way to use the phrase, regardless of the context. Do I have to give her props for that? Anyway, it was nice of her to let me re-borrow the Maria Sharapova dress I wore to her party. This time, though, I’m pairing it with Chris Evert’s frosty eye daggers. The look is vintage bitchy couture. As for Abram, he’s dressed in the same pocket T-shirt he probably would’ve worn if we’d just sat back at the house staring at each other, although the shorts he’s wearing are a bit shorter than his others, his legs looking tanner and therefore more muscular by the minute.
We walk back to our respective baselines, and this surface underneath my feet … Abram calls it “green clay,” but it’s basically a bunch of tiny rocks that hop up into the backs of my shoes whenever I take a step. Abram’s already sliding around like he’s rediscovering his childhood sandbox, which is exactly what he should be doing.
“Ready?” he calls out, his voice echoing off the tall backstop behind him.
“Yes. No, sorry, hang on.…” My grip feels weird, slippery. Need to get in my ready position, which is the same as my other ramrod stance only with a light swaying back and forth like I’m about to produce some tennis. I signal for Abram to bring it on. The ball pops off his racquet, spinning, spinning, landing a few inches in front of me and bouncing three feet higher than expected. My racquet connects with the ball, but I’m not even sure where I hit it.
Abram apologizes in spite of it actually being my fault, then sends another try my way.
ABRAM
ABOUT THREE RALLIES into the warm-up, Juliette complains of cold-wrist problems, which is a cover story for her being embarrassed about nailing her last shot straight past the baseline, into the backstop. She removes a sweatshirt from her purse and puts it on. She looks good in it. There’s something about a girl like her in my hoodie: It doesn’t fit, but it just fits.
She puts her tennis scowl back on and jogs to the baseline. I hit the next ball to her, and I can tell she’s relieved when it brushes across her strings and bounces right back to me. She forgets to follow through, so I start exaggerating the correct path of the racquet after I make contact, thinking maybe she’ll pick up on my technicalities. She does—in a sarcastic way that actually ends up improving her stroke—so mission accomplished. We rally for a few minutes longer until she starts walking up to the net with her hands on her hips. She might be defaulting. I trot up to join her.
“Everything okay?”
She rests her racquet on her hip, looking down at mine. “Are you really left-handed?”
“Nope, I’m fake left-handed,” I say with a smile, using one of her favorite words to call people out with. “I write with my right hand, play sports with my left. Could’ve gone either way, but Dad thought I should be a lefty.”
“Because he wanted you to have the ad-court advantage?” she asks. Not sure why I’m surprised she knows the game that well, given her close friendship with Heidi and formidable online research skills.
“Pretty much, yeah,” I say, hitting the clay off the bottoms of my shoes with the edge of my racquet, just like he used to do.
“That was … awesome of him,” she says, surprising herself. “Smart.”
“Yeah … it was.” For a second, I think about all the additional hours my dad must’ve spent teaching me to be left-handed. It frees me up to appreciate him and not feel guilty about it, or retroactively protective of my mom. “Thank you for saying that,” I tell Juliette.
We hit for the next hour, during which she keeps telling me to stop making her look better than she really is by placing the ball in her strike zone every time. I can only do so much, as the uncoordinated ladies at the country club back home, where I taught a few summers ago, can attest. Unlike them, Juliette has athletic ability when she lets it come naturally, when she’s just hitting the ball, letting her string tension do the work instead of the tension in her shoulders, and not analyzing her shot as it heads over the net. This is why tennis can be therapeutic for people sometimes: It requires you to problem-solve but doesn’t leave enough time to overthink.
“I’d recognize that lefty forehand from a mile away!” a booming voice calls down to the court.
I look up to find a couple of ghosts from my tennis past, staring down at me from the stands.
27
Juliette
ABRAM WAVES UP at our unexpected visitors, a mask of anxious politeness freezing over his face. Isn’t that the same mask I wore when cornered at Starbucks earlier? I’m going to need it back if he expects me to make a friendly impression on that Brawny-paper-towel-of-a-man who keeps pulling up his shorts. Incredible how the petite brunette seems to love him anyway—maybe forgiveness is easier to generate with a heart-shaped face like hers? The width of her smile certainly appears effortless.
“We’ll come up and say hi,” Abram tells them. He jogs around the net post to my side, takes my hand. “Terry and Linda McEvans,” he says into my ear. “Neighbors, love tennis, used to hang out with my parents.”
“Did they hang out with our parents?” I whisper.
“Not that I know of.”
As we walk up the stairs, I really want to blame him for us being in this situation. If only it weren’t my fault for making the reservation. When we reach the top, I take a small step in the opposite direction, hoping elsewhere is still an option. Abram calmly herds me back in tandem with him.
“I told Terry to wait till y’all were done,” the woman says as we approach them, “but the doctor said he can’t help it if he’s chronically obnoxious.”
“Doc’s right, I’m untreatable!” Terry says proudly, twitching his mustache. “And ’bout had myself a heart attack when I saw the name Abram Morgan on the court assignment calendar.” He looks at Abram with squinty-eyed amusement. “How you hitting ’em these days, champ? We has-beens want to know.”
“Infrequently,” Abram says too honestly, smiling. I would’ve gone with a lie/frown combo.
“That’s not what I like to hear,” Terry says good-naturedly, and he and Abram begin working their way through a complicated handshake-hug-handshake ritual. Linda shakes her sleek nightly-newscaster hair back and forth like she doesn’t understand it, either, before fixing her energetic brown eyes on me.
“Hi, I’m Linda McEvans. Terry and I live just down the road from the Morgans.” She has the kind of duskily feminine voice that cracks at all the right times, with just a hint of southern twang.
“Your neighborhood is very nice,” I say, in the voice of an alien who doesn’t vacation on Earth very often. “I’m Juliette.”
Terry extends his furry paw and introduces himself to me, saying, “The pleasure is all mine, Juliette.” Indeed, but I like how his grip is loose and unassuming; firm handshakes are overrated.
Terry stands back and picks up Abram’s racquet, takes a few imaginary practice swings. “I know I don’t look like much now,” he says to anyone who’ll listen, “but I used to play a lot of competitive tennis in my day. And you know who forced me into my third or fourth retirement?” He points to Abram. “Last year’s version of this guy.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, I retired pretty much right after that tournament myself,” Abram says.
Terry McEvans has more restraint than my snap judgment gave him credit for, because he doesn’t ask why, just reaches out and pats Abram’s shoulder like he’s been there, quit that.
“You mind if I take his forehand for a spin?” Terry asks me. “Five minutes is my max these days, promise.”
“By all means,” I say, awfully. What’s next? Be my guest? Spin away? I hand Abram the racquet he let me borrow.
Terry whispers something into Abram’s ear, making sure I hear the part about me being a “keeper.” I like the honest part where he mumbles “If you’ve got the energy to keep catching her” better. Linda smacks him on the arm for it before they head back down to the court, leaving us ladies to a few minutes of small talk followed by a lifetime of never seeing each other again.
Linda sits down on the bleachers and pats the spot next to her. What if I acted like it was already taken? I sit down and wait for the questions to begin as she removes a huge canister of sunscreen from an elephantine purse that rivals mine in size. I want to ask where one can purchase such a tote monster, but I don’t, because now we’re unspoken purse rivals.
“I’m paranoid about sunscreen,” she says, speaking my language, and then proceeds to lambaste herself with the coconut-scented spray. She passes the bottle to me casually, as she might to a friend she’s been sharing with for years. I give my arms another thin coat.
“Do you mind if I use this on my legs, too?” I ask Linda.
“Of course not.”
No wonder I’m so pale.
We watch as Terry feeds the first ball to Abram, who then hits it back a million times harder than when playing me. Abram glides into each of his shots, totally balanced, timing each movement perfectly, popping the ball right back to the same annoying location above Terry’s head every time as a thwooomp sound echoes around the court.
“So much talent,” Linda says, but not like it’s a shame he’s been wasting it—as if she, too, is mesmerized by what Abram can produce with an easygoing smile on his face. Linda McEvans could’ve been a model in a past life, provided she was about a foot taller in that one. She takes care of herself, too. I bet her bathroom is full of expensive face creams and firming serums I’d have a hard time not slipping into my purse. I’d bet she’s like a Heidi, someone who gets prettier and prettier the more you get to know her, while I do the opposite.
She also has something on her mind. She’s less obvious about what’s eating her than Starbucks Janette, but it’s in there somewhere, throbbing inside her temples, wanting me to acknowledge it.
ABRAM
JULIETTE SEEMS TO BE getting along okay up there with Linda. Then again her expression hasn’t changed yet, so Terry’s guess is as good as mine, and he’s too busy having fun. His enjoyment is making it hard to wrap things up in five minutes. He laughs as my latest return lands right on the baseline, takes a bad bounce, and whizzes past him. Excuse my French, but it feels good to be hitting le shit out of his serve again. I’m surprised to find myself feeling this way, but I doubt Juliette is. She’s known all along tennis is in my blood. My dad’s way of communicating with me.
When we’re done, Terry puts his beefy arm around my neck and says, nonchalantly, “I’ll make a comeback if you do, champ.”
“Maybe. Let’s see how lame we pull up in the morning.”
The two of us sit down on the bench. Terry pours a cup of water over his head and turns to me, forehead dripping. “You know your mom told us to check in on you, right?”
“I figured she might.”
“Suzy loved watching you and Ian play tennis, Abram. I don’t get the sense it’s gonna bring back bad memories for her, should you someday decide to start kickin’ everybody’s ass again. But, hey, what do I know?” He yells up at Linda and asks her the same question. She rolls her eyes and asks if he needs any ibuprofen.
“One more game?” Terry asks, nodding his head yes for me.
Juliette
ABRAM AND TERRY are shaking hands, having just finished a game called Butt’s Up that they asked our permission to play. Now Terry’s going back to the service line, bending over, and sticking his butt into the air. “Give me what I deserve!” he shouts. Linda groans and then laughs as Abram runs back to the baseline, prepares to take aim. He deliberately skims the ball just past Terry, who proceeds to fall down like he’s been hit anyway.
“Did Abram’s father ever bring another woman around?” I ask Linda quietly.
Linda turns to me, and she may be the definition of an unflappable Southern woman who’s either been through it all herself or heard it all before, but her smile doesn’t show as seamlessly this time.
“You mean your mother, hon?”
My fingers tighten around the edge of my seat. “So you met her?”
“We saw them here playing tennis a few times, had dinner with them once,” she admits guiltily. “She was enchanting, your mother. The life of the party. Terry and I tried not to judge—we’re certainly no angels ourselves—but of course it was hard not to think of Suzy and … everyone else involved.”
Before I can apologize, Linda goes on to eulogize how sorry she is for my loss. The words don’t sound quite as depressing in her southern accent, but I still feel like I’m attending another funeral. When she’s not paying attention, I shoot Abram a look like we should really be going soon.
ABRAM
ON OUR WAY OUT of the club, Terry and Linda offer to give us a ride home in their pimped-out golf cart. Juliette’s fingers find their way to the skin on the back of my arm, pinching a no into it. I wonder if I’ll ever learn what her yes signal feels like. Terry tries to make it happen by touting the cart’s satellite radio and playing us a sample song, but all he gets me is pinched in the exact same spot.
“They’re pretty nice, eh?” I say to her, when their golf cart has buzzed far enough away.
“Yes,” Juliette says, “but I never want to see them again.”
She’s said this about a lot of people, of course—me, that happy family at the beach this morning, old teachers we pass in the hallway who’d love to keep in touch. She always means it, but this time she’s got some extra oomph behind it.
28
Juliette
“EVER NOTICED HOW TIRED being at the beach makes you?” Abram asked me earlier tonight. “Not really,” I said, then he called his mom, I started e-mailing my dad, and he passed out on our couch bed twenty minutes later, the end.
Now not only am I alone with my thoughts again—they’re telling me it’s my own fault for “going there” with Linda—I’m sore from tennis and starving. This popcorn isn’t cutting it; not when I’m craving—can’t believe I’m admitting this to myself—a Doritos Locos Supreme.
There’s hope.
His eyelids are twitching.
“Abram.”
No response.
“Taco Bell?”
Nothing.
I move my laptop station closer to him, lean over until my face is nearly touching his. It’s warmer down here by his mouth, just as I suspected, maybe even anticipated on my worst days. I should’ve made it easier for him to kiss me in the ocean last night. His lips look firm, a little on the chapped side but in an intriguing way that makes sense for a boy; otherwise, I’d just make out with Heidi every once in a while and call it a phase. Bizarre that his breath hasn’t offended me once since we met—must be his candy-flavored toothpaste. His lids twitch again, but he still doesn’t open his eyes. His lashes are even longer from this close up. That’s sort of interesting. Eventually, I manage to pull myself away from him. I don’t go far.
ABRAM
I OPEN MY EYES, relieved to see Juliette hasn’t fled to jog off her insomnia yet; in fact, she’s maybe a little closer to my side of the bed than when I started dozing.
“Hi,” she says softly, and I can see she’s still typing the same e-mail to her dad on my laptop. So far, she’s written Hello, Dad: How’s the new novel? Have you gotten up from your swivel chair since I left? Are you and the Keurig getting along?
“Hey there.”
She minimizes the e-mail, turns toward me, and everything about her is more exotic and hypnotic than it’s ever been. I think this pretty much every time she makes eye contact with me, but today her face seems a bit fuller and healthier than it’s been this past year, possibly due to her increased exposure to my snacks. To this point, there’s an open bag of popcorn beside her. I’m pleased that she a) helped herself to my stash, b) hasn’t apologized for it yet, and c) curtailed the Adderall enough today to allow hunger to resume its rightful spot in her empty stomach.
Emboldened by my sleepy state, I reach over and pull her closer to me, against me, and she doesn’t object or eject herself from the bed. In fact, she gets under the covers, finds the perfect position for almost every part of her body to connect with mine as I loop my arms around her and find her hands. Just like that, there’s no such thing as a problem in my world.
“I brought up my mom to Linda. Mistake.”
“What did she say?”
“That they hung out with our parents once, and she felt bad for your mom. I thought I could handle it, but it just … made me feel guilty by association. Which is ridiculous because I barely associated with my mom, especially toward the end; she was like a roommate I drank coffee with occasionally, a shady friend who gave me Adderall and disappeared all day, and I wish I was making sense.”
“You’re making a lot of sense,” I say.
“It’s been over a year, and I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to be dealing with this, and I’m sick of taking Adderall but too tired to figure out how not to, and … I want a Doritos Locos Supreme but I can’t even drive myself to Taco Bell.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
She’s shaking now. I roll her over to face me. Instead of trying to hide the tears in her eyes, she lets them do their thing right in front of me. I resist the urge to kiss them from her skin, because she probably wouldn’t hate anything more. Instead, I graze her cheek with the side of my fingertip and slide them away, nonchalantly, as if only so she won’t have to worry about clogged pores.
“Sorry,” she says, sniffling, “I’m the world’s ugliest crier.”
“Or its reigning prettiest,” I suggest as an alternative, which makes her cry harder for some reason. Time to rely on something other than words—take the action I’ve been meaning to take since CVS. I realize it’s not a solution to anything, but it’s the only thing I know will keep me from shedding a few tears myself, and then we’d really have ourselves a legitimate dude contender for the world’s-ugliest-crier competition. And no one wants that.
29
Juliette
MY CRYING HAS SLOWED, thankfully, but the ugly won’t be evacuating my face anytime soon. What’s with the strange look of determination coming across Abram’s? It’s not going anywhere, either. Haven’t seen an eyebrow furrow of this magnitude since his last beer-pong rematch.
ABRAM
NOT EVEN A WHALE jumping out of the ocean and swallowing the house could stop me from kissing her. Still don’t want to take any chances, though, so now I’m rushing in a little faster than I would if I had a reciprocation guarantee. I slow down as I reach the very edge of her lips, and then finally, after all this time that seems longer than it’s probably been, I close the deal. Our lips are touching, we’re kissing, and I get to feel what she really feels like. So far she seems relaxed, eyes closed, not open and wondering how she landed herself in such a bind. I make every second count, not by overdoing it, by just experiencing her as much as possible—the softness of her lips, the smoothness of her other exposed areas when they brush up against me accidentally—without preconceived notions of how this miracle of all miracles should be unfolding.
Two peas in a couch bed. That’s what we are.
Juliette
HIS LIPS STILL GRAZING MINE, Abram opens his eyes to make sure I’m okay with all this. I pull myself closer to him, careful not to respond with a mixed signal. His mouth presses down against mine more firmly, finding the perfect spot between my lips, our tongues touching briefly, shyly, before retreating to their respective corners. They don’t stay away long. We repeat these movements in a slightly different way that feels entirely new every time. Then, unexpectedly, his face drifts down toward my neck. His lips know where to find the most sensitive part, the best possible area they can linger, and he kisses me there, intense and focused, channeling all his energy into this small, insignificant part of me. I give up on trying to keep his wavy hair out of his face and close my eyes, my breathing encouraging him to stay there as long as he feels like it or until I get weird. I lose track of everything, the sounds we’re making, how long we’ve been doing this, where I’m positioning my legs and arms … until I accidentally touch his butt region.
ABRAM
HELLO THERE, was that a butt touch? Probably an accident. This is lasting about forty times longer than expected, which is great, no need to ever stop on my account. Might be time to mix it up again, keep her engaged. I pull away from her neck just long enough to make her wonder, and then move back in toward her lips, at a different angle, before she can figure me out.
This might be too bold, but I lift myself up and maneuver around until I’m on top of her, still supporting my weight on my elbows. Managing to do this without my lips leaving hers. I hope she doesn’t think I’m expecting to jump immediately from kissing to bootytown; I just really needed to move my hip off the spring from the couch bed that’s been digging into it.
Juliette
ON TOP OF MY BODY is certainly not where I thought he was going with this. The situation still doesn’t seem out of hand, the claustrophobia yet to kick in. He’s not making any pained expressions about my hipbones stabbing into his kidneys, either, so that’s considerate of him. Should I rub his back so he doesn’t suspect I’m a closet butt fetishist? I never know what to do with my hands in these physical-intimacy scenarios, maybe because they never occur, and, yes, Heidi, this includes when I’m alone. Get it! she calls out from a jail cell in my mind. I’ll probably kiss and tell her about this, and when I do, I’ll say Abram’s a great kisser and then I’ll resist answering her animated follow-up questions that will center around length and girth. Or is all of the above not the point of anything?
Eventually, against all odds, I really start to relax, not just fake relax, and there’s a marked shift in the way my lips operate. They’re more confident in their throbbing pursuit of Abram’s. Throbbing is a gross word, but that’s what they’re doing, like they’ve been starving for this all along, and now that they’ve gotten a taste, they can’t get enough. I put my hand on his lightly stubbled face, wondering how I’m going to force myself to stop. Then my body makes the decision for me.
“Can we go to Taco Bell in five minutes?” I ask.
Abram smiles. “I’m so happy your stomach growled that up again.”
An hour later, Abram thinks I should try driving in the Taco Bell parking lot.
“Bad idea,” I say, grimacing like I wish it’d been a good one.
He shakes his head, undeterred. “It’s just like riding a bike.”
“I hate bikers.”
“Ah, that’s right—bad example. Just do a loop around here. You don’t have to go on the main road.” He gestures toward the sea of empty parking spaces. (Behind us, hungry patrons form a desperate horseshoe of cars around the twenty-four-hour drive-thru lane.)
“You should’ve asked me before that happened,” I say, pointing to the bag full of empty Doritos Locos Supreme wrappers.
“Tacos can only help matters. Look at me, I eat a lot of them, and I’m a pretty good driver, no?”
He’s a great driver, actually, but that has nothing to do with me getting out of this. Or here’s a crazy thought: I could just do it, say yes, try something new again. What’s so hard about trading Abram spots, taking the wheel, and parking right next to the space we’re in?
I unlock the door and step out into a small swarm of no-see-ums, which really are worse than mosquitoes, it’s not just some boring thing people say to hear themselves sounding fascinated about nature. Anyway, bad omen. I slam the door and run around toward Abram’s side. I tell him to get back in through his side, and he does, sliding over into the passenger seat as I shut the door behind me. In full teammate mode, Abram makes a fist-bump request with his balled hand outstretched, and for some reason I bump it. It makes me feel dumber, but better.
It’s actually not overwhelming in the driver’s seat, especially in park, in Abram’s tank of an SUV. I like that I’m up high, that if I accidentally accelerated directly into a car like that Hyundai Elantra over there it wouldn’t result in my vehicle losing control and plummeting down a steep ravine. Because, wouldn’t you know, there’s always a steep ravine nearby when I get into hypothetical car accidents.
I adjust the rearview mirror, then check it to see if I’ve grown at all as a person. Not yet. Abram wisely buckles up and points to the widget that I’m supposed to shift from P to D. It’s not responding. Something’s off.
Abram reminds me, without judgment, that I may want to push down on the brake first. I laugh and try reversing again. Watch out, America. I circle the parking lot over and over again, Abram saying “Maybe you don’t want to get that close” after I graze the edge of a bush, and “You’re speeding up when someone pulls into the drive-thru as a joke, right?” he asks, as I fail to realize that’s what I’m doing. He’s the only kind of teacher I can learn from. I’m still a danger to myself and anything in my path—e.g., the empty soda cup I just ran over—but I feel my world expanding by just the slightest of margins.
