“Mia,” Coach calls from the side of the pool. Eyes wide, she mouths Focus to me, and I look down in time to see Abby returning from her lap.
The second her fingers touch the wall, I dive over her, slipping into the water the way a needle would. I push past everyone from the first leg finishing their laps, their limbs kicking and pulling in the quiet around me. When I surface, I take a deep breath and throw myself into the butterfly stroke. Every time I come up, I try to glimpse Ben and Michelle. My stomach twists when I see four figures making their way down the bleacher steps. When I turn over to swim back, I keep watching—glimpse by glimpse—as they all walk to the doors.
I fan out my arms, slipping under the surface. Something catches around my wrist. My reflex is to pull free, but I’m met with resistance. I try to pull through the stroke, yanking my arm toward myself, but I feel plastic twisting and pressing in on my wrist. I push up out of the water and try to free my arm, only to realize I’m caught in the lane divider. It’s wrapped around my wrist, and the separated plastic bubbles are squeezing me in place, ensuring my loss of the relay.
I look at Abby, standing behind the diving block. She stops calling my name when our eyes meet, because even though my face is covered in droplets of water, she can probably make out my tears.
* * *
I feel guilty when I finally crash on my bed at the end of the night. My parents were fine letting me celebrate with my friends after the meet, under the condition that I go to Sam’s bachelorette party on Saturday.
I press my hands against my face, savoring how cold they are from being outside. After the meet, I didn’t even wait to see who placed in the top five. I just went to the locker room, changed, and left. I sat in my car outside November Always, waiting until my friends texted me that they were on their way. Without them to distract me, it was impossible not to replay that moment over and over in my head. Michelle sitting down. All of them standing up. My wrist getting caught, me feeling like all of me was tangled in the lane divider right then. Feeling like I was being held in one unbearable place, stuck. It was a nightmare.
Gavin’s harsh words managed to seep through while I was sitting in the parking lot. Maybe he’s right. I mean, Ben wasn’t really interested in me before I started talking about the wedding and all of Sam’s plans. And who wouldn’t be excited about an invitation to a wedding, especially one as extravagant and detailed as hers?
No matter how much I tried to rationalize Ben’s actions, I couldn’t completely convince myself that Gavin is wrong. It’s especially hard since Ben didn’t return any of my calls or texts. I felt bad because as Grace was talking about Amy, a senior at Gavin’s school, I barely heard anything she was trying to tell us about her. I gleaned that Amy is nice. She’s smart and funny, and she and Grace will go see a lot of Broadway musicals together. I figure Sam’s reception isn’t the worst place for me to try to make more of an effort to get to know Amy, since Grace decided to bring her to the wedding instead of her cousin.
And that’s just it. Sam’s reception. Sam’s wedding. Where have the past couple of months gone? She and Geoffrey have their bachelorette and bachelor parties this weekend. And then next weekend is it.
And what then? I wonder. The thought is haunting and awakening. Do I go back to being the girl who gets good grades, swims fast, and knows her way around a polynomial? This whole semester has been about finding a date to Sam’s wedding, and it’s pushed me to go outside my comfort zone—do more than just study on the weekends and practice after school. But what happens when the wedding happens and all the pressure, the necessity to find someone, goes away? I feel like I do want something more than just a date at the end of this, though I’m beginning to doubt that’s going to happen with Ben. Do I ask my friends to continue the meet-cute project? Do I keep trying to put myself out there, and what does that look like without the added pressure of Sam’s meddling?
I remember what Ritchie said to me this morning, that I’ve been so caught up in my own world, I haven’t fully seen what’s been going on around me. I remember what Grace said about me blaming Sam when everything is really my fault. Maybe they’re right. I’ve been running around trying to find a date for Sam’s wedding, when really, I want to find a date for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
You don’t really want to go bowling,” I prod, slipping down from the sectional armrest and onto the couch cushion next to my cousin Lucas. Geoffrey invited him to the bachelor party, since he’s the only young male relative that Sam and I have. We don’t get to see him often because he lives with most of Mom’s side of the family in Wisconsin.
His lips move as he traces the line he’s on in his book. He stops when he reaches the end and pins his finger to the page before looking up at me.
“I do want to go bowling, Mia,” he says, smiling at me. “It’s you who doesn’t want to take a party bus downtown for ice-skating and a ‘girls’ dinner.’ ” He bobs his eyebrows up and down.
I roll my eyes and push myself up off the couch. After sifting through my family’s movie collection, I pull out Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and hold it with the cover facing Lucas. I do a little dance, but even I know it’s not convincing.
“Don’t you want to say, Aunt Beth, please, please don’t make Mia go on a stupid party bus. Let her stay home so we can do family bonding and experience the nostalgia of our favorite childhood movie?”
Lucas watches me over the top edge of his glasses.
“Mia, it’s not going to be that bad. Plus, we can do family bonding, nostalgic movie night, once the wedding is over. We could have a sleepover. You could come to the cabin in Wisconsin when the semester ends,” he says, getting progressively more excited about his idea.
There’s no denying the allure of the Baker—Mom’s maiden name—Wisconsin cabin, but it doesn’t solve my immediate problem.
I already tried explaining to my mom how unfair it is that I have to go and she doesn’t. Her response was a cryptic foretelling of my future wedding and how we will do a special “other” activity then as well. Again, highly unhelpful.
“Plus,” Lucas says as I walk around the couch on my way out of the den, “I like bowling, like, a lot.”
“Ugh!”
The silver lining is that Sam isn’t like other girls. She traded a night out on the town with embarrassing glittery feathery props for a quiet dinner at her favorite restaurant in Little Italy and ice-skating. Part of me wishes she had gone the more traditional route, because then I would for sure be excused from the festivities.
On my way upstairs, admitting defeat, I hear the front door open, and in with the ice queen comes a gust of December chill so strong that I can feel it like a hand on my back.
“Why are you not dressed yet?” Sam asks, passing me on the stairs.
“Because I was busy,” I tell her, though I don’t explain that I was busy trying to get out of tonight.
“Yeah, right,” she huffs, charging down the hall to her room. “Just get dressed,” she shouts from behind her closed door.
To my right I hear my parents’ door open, and Mom appears in the doorway with a mug in her hand and a book tucked under her arm. While I have to get dressed up, she’s dressed down in her snowman-print pajamas and fuzzy slippers.
“If you need my help picking out an outfit, just let me know,” she says, winking at me before heading downstairs. Most likely she’s going to get another cup of hot chocolate and fold herself into the corner of the sectional in the den. With Dad upstairs watching the national aquarium tour on the nature channel, Mom will practically have the house to herself.
Sam turns her music all the way up. From the hallway the R&B sounds like it’s underwater, but once I’m inside my room, someone could easily mistake me for the one with such poor taste in music.
I quickly sift through my closet and decide on thick tights, my green-and-tan floral-print shirtdress, and a pair of calf-high boots. Since my hair has been up in braids for the past week because of s
wim practice and my lack of interest in doing anything after the meet, I let it down and out. I push and pull my fingers through my hair until it’s evenly around my shoulders in waves.
When I open my door to go to the bathroom, I hear voices downstairs. Brooke’s stands out, but I can tell that more of Sam’s friends have started to arrive. Someone’s going on about how they never met Lucas and can’t believe he’s only a senior in high school. Part of me knows I could go down there and save him. I’ve been dealing with Sam’s friends ever since I was a baby that they all wanted to hold. But a bigger part of me wants to hide for as long as I can.
“Are you almost ready?” Sam whispers from her doorway.
I turn around and whisper back, “Yeah. I just have to use the bathroom.”
“Promise not to jump out the window.” She tilts her head to the side to put on one of her hoops. I’ve never been able to put on earrings without a mirror, and it still baffles me how she does it.
“Why are we whispering?” I ask, taking in her navy-blue long-sleeve A-line dress. She’s wearing the same kind of tights as me.
“Because I wouldn’t put it past Brooke to come drag us down the stairs.”
We both hold back laughs.
“You shouldn’t wear solid navy-blue tights with a navy-blue dress,” I tell her. “Nor should you wear stilettos. You will never forgive yourself when you put them on after ice-skating.”
She slips in her other earring and looks down at her feet.
“Good catch,” she mumbles, retreating into her room.
In the bathroom I wonder whether or not Sam was joking about the window. She didn’t sound like she was trying to be mean or make fun. If anything, it felt like she was telling me not to abandon her.
When I open the bathroom door, Sam is standing in her doorway checking the skirt of her dress for any creases. She’s changed into sheer blue tights and a pair of ankle booties. I give her a thumbs-up, and we both grab our jackets and purses before heading downstairs. We suffer through the initial scream and giggle about the upcoming wedding and all of Sam’s friends telling her how cute her little sister is, even though I’m standing right here. Then we make our way outside. Thankfully, the party bus is already running, so when the doors close behind me, I’m enveloped in the warmth, scented with black-ice-freshened air.
During the ride, Sam’s friends interrogate her.
“What flowers did you choose?”
“How big is the venue?”
“How old is Geoffrey’s younger brother?”
“Are they really releasing another new flavor so soon just to commemorate the wedding?”
“What are the boys doing tonight?”
“What does your ring look like?”
“Did you decide how you’ll do your hair?”
And on and on.
One by one I answer every question in my head. I’m surprised that Sam’s closest friends—her bridesmaids—don’t know this information. Yes, I realize that knowing that the venue is approximately 1500 square feet, not including the dance floor, isn’t necessarily the kind of thing everyone involved in the wedding has to know. But did none of them hear about the flower emergency a few months ago? That she compromised on the tulips and decided on an arrangement of deep-pink carnations, white roses, and dusty miller? I mean, how was Brooke supposed to coordinate her jewelry with her bouquet if she doesn’t even know what’s going to be in the bouquet?
“And after a long perilous journey…,” Sam says, laughing with her friends. She rests her hand on my knee and glances back at me, as I sink farther into the corner seat of the bus. “Someone finally found a date.”
I want to ask why she said it like that, like everything I’ve gone through to meet her ridiculous demand is some huge amazing joke for her to tell her friends. But I don’t, not yet at least.
“OMG, mini-Sam has a boyfriend?” Brooke asks, beaming at me.
Before I can speak, Sam answers for me. “No, not a boyfriend. He’s just escorting her to the wedding.”
“What’s he like?” Armao, Sam’s friend from college, asks.
“He’s cool. We know each other from math club, and he recently found out that he got into Vanderbilt.” I feel a sense of pride when all the girls lean back a little.
“So, a senior boy, huh?” Cheryl, one of Sam’s high school field hockey friends asks suggestively.
“Yeah,” I say, blushing a little.
“A nerdy romance,” Sam says dryly, probably bored that the conversation has drifted so far from her favorite topic, herself.
I answer a few more Ben questions before happily leaning back in my seat and slipping into nonexistence. We go to Valerio’s first. It’s a cute little ristorante tucked under a redbrick building downtown. There are seven of us total. Me, Sam, Brooke, Cheryl, Armao, Stamica, and Colleen. Stamica and Sam met in one of Sam’s first design classes, and Colleen is another one of Sam’s field hockey teammates from high school. Since there’s an odd number of us, and the restaurant primarily specializes in tiny intimate two-person tables, they have to push four tables together, leaving me sitting on the end at a table by myself. But I don’t mind. Being in exile minimizes my chances of being roped into a boring conversation about Sam’s glory days on the field hockey team or how college was so, so fun. I tune in and out of their honeymoon banter, checking my phone under the table and enjoying my linguini alle vongole and blood orange Italian soda in peace.
I do, however, note the second and third bottle of cabernet sauvignon circulating around the table, and Sam’s evenly timed—progressively louder—laugh. Everything becomes funny, from the way Geoffrey folds his underwear to the uneven shaping of our server’s beard. It’s annoying. Definitely not white-tablecloth behavior, and not the Sam I know.
I wonder how any of them are going to manage ice-skating. Once they stumble off the bus at the rink by the Bean and everybody laces up, I find out. All of them cling to the railing, holding on to each other and giggling like idiots. I take my opportunity and skate away, over to the center of the rink.
Ice-skating alone makes me feel so lonely. On the ice you have your droves of middle schoolers clustered in separate boy and girl groups, pointing to each other across the rink. Then you have couples who hold each other’s hands like couple skating is the only way to exist on ice. And then there are families, moms and dads taking their knobby-kneed fawn-like children onto the ice for the first time.
I reach into my coat pockets as my fingers begin to go numb. My gloves are wadded together in my left pocket, but I feel something in my right. I put my gloves on and pull a piece of paper out of my right pocket. When I unfold the faded yellow lined paper, I quickly remember what it is. Gavin and I still haven’t talked since our fight, and remembering the awkwardness at the Pie and Leftovers festival makes me want to cringe. This paper is the list Gavin put together of the things to ask my mom to get. More burlap sacks, some seeds for Swiss chard, and a thermometer for the irrigation pipes. I fold the paper and push away the silent wish that Gavin were here, that we could talk about how weird tonight is, how it’s making me miss Sam a little, even though she’s just across the ice.
I skate around, hiding in the trees, until a couple of boys zipping through nearly knock me over. I figure I should quit while I’m ahead, and I return to the large oval of skaters making their way around the rink. Even though I find Sam and her friends clinging to the railing in a new spot, I skate past them using the layers of skaters between us as a wall.
Skating is like swimming in some ways. Especially when the Zamboni smooths the surface of the ice and there aren’t so many scratches making it choppy. In the same way that there’s this weightlessness when I’m in water, when I’m skating on ice, it’s like I’m flying. And I can skate faster than I can swim. I glide around the rink, savoring the chilled air, the scent of pine trees, maple glazed doughnuts, and freshly roasted walnuts. Maybe I can slip away from the rink for some hot chocolate before we head home.
&n
bsp; On my third lap, I skate up alongside Sam and her friends, who are finally getting their footing.
“This wasn’t your best idea,” Brooke says, laughing a little as she clings to Armao.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sam says, laughing. Her eyes look glassy, illuminated by the blinking fairy lights wrapped around the railing lining the rink.
“Well, I’m having fun,” Cheryl says, confidently pushing herself away from the edge. She tentatively takes a step forward, and her foot hits the ice wrong. Her foot slides out in front of her, dropping her into a split.
I skate forward to help her up, officially exposing myself to the group.
“Mia’s back!” Cheryl smiles, grateful for my timely return.
“Where did you disappear to?” Stamica asks, sounding soberer than the others.
I point over to the trees at the center of the rink, where there is a small group of three girls posing for a selfie in front of one of the trees.
“I can barely make it two feet away from the railing, and here you are skating circles around us,” Cheryl slurs, amused.
She clings to the railing again, and I skate close by in case she needs me.
“Mia is great at skating,” Sam says, a little too loud.
“You are too, with fewer glasses of wine.”
Even though I’m just joking, Sam glares at me. No one else sees. What I mean is that Sam is usually a good skater too. We were both forced to get up early every Saturday for lessons. We started going when I was four and Sam was fourteen. I remember thinking it was fun, and being confused as to why Sam always made such a big fuss about getting up early. Nevertheless, once we were there, both of us were focused. Sometimes we’d be competitive, though I think Sam would let me win to make me think we were up against each other. Other times Sam would correct my form and show me the right way to land out of a jump and twist. I liked how when we’d fall over and go to help each other, we’d always pull the other person down. And, no matter how many times we did it, it was always a surprise. That feels like a different universe now, as Sam breathes heavily, holding on to the railing for dear life.
The Meet-Cute Project Page 21
