“What could possibly make you think that?” I ask as Gavin points to a couple of seats on the end of a row. I’m relieved that we get to sit on the end. Part of me wonders if Gloria planned it that way. She seems like an end-of-the-row kind of person. All my friends like to sit in the middle, but if we sit on the end, then we don’t have to step over a bunch of people when we have to go to the bathroom, and we don’t have to wait for anyone to move if there’s an emergency.
We’re in the middle section of the balcony, third row from the front. I think, in a theater like this, with high ceilings, that balcony seats are the best. We can see perfectly, and we’ll hear the music right as it bounces off the wall.
When I peel my eyes away from the ceiling, I find Gavin staring at me, smiling.
“Good seats?” he asks, even though I think he already knows the answer. When I nod, he goes back to my previous question. “Well, there’s the fact that she brings me coffee on days when you’re not there. She always asks me about school, and I ask her about retired life. Honestly? I think she’s in love with me.”
We both can’t help but laugh at the thought.
“What does she say, though? About being retired.”
“I feel like I’d be breaking girl code if I tell you Beth’s inner thoughts,” Gavin admits.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not a girl.”
“Touché,” he says, having to yell a little as the theater fills up. “But she asks about you. She asks if you mention what’s going on in your life. She’s worried she isn’t connecting with you.”
Not what I was expecting.
“And what do you tell her?” I try to sound like I’m not panicking on the inside about the possibility that my mom has been getting fed crumbs about my ongoing boy crisis.
“I tell her that school is a normal continuous pressure, and that you’re excited and nervous about the wedding.”
I let out a sigh. “Good.”
“She told me about Sam making you find a date to the wedding, and how she overheard you and your friends making a plan where they set you up on dates,” he says as the lights go down.
I turn to him, probably looking like he just told me his dad is the Zodiac Killer, but as the openers take the stage, I lose my chance to respond. The theater erupts into cheers and applause. Even though I have a million questions, one being to ask when—exactly—my mom clued him in about my embarrassing quest, I stay calm. Gavin stands and starts clapping and shouting into the chaos, so I do too. Instead of being stressed and freaked out, I release everything I can into the abyss of noise. When RKS finally takes the stage, I fold myself into the familiar drumbeat and bass guitar that have put me to sleep, carried me to the community pool at dawn, given me a lifted heart, or held me when I was down.
I can’t believe I’m in the same room as Rainbow Kitten Surprise. I can’t believe they sing my favorite songs better live than on the recordings. When they play “First Class,” Gavin and I turn to each other, our voices lost in the chorus, but our mouths clearly capturing each word. It’s unreal, too fairy-tale-like, to get to have this experience.
By the time we reach Gavin’s truck a couple of hours later, the ringing is fading and my hearing starts to come back. I look up at the sky from the street where we parked and can see the stars, a rarity in the city. He opens the passenger door for me and then runs around to the driver’s side. We sit in silence for a few minutes to let the car warm up. I close my eyes and imagine myself back inside the concert hall. The memory is so fresh, and it’s still a memory I can’t believe I get to have.
“Safe to say that was amazing,” Gavin huffs, pulling out of the parking space. “Do you want to pick the music on the way back?”
“Sure,” I say, connecting my phone to his transmitter.
I can’t help myself. I ask Gavin if we can listen to more RKS, as long as he isn’t tired of them yet. He says that would be impossible, so I line up some of their best songs from tonight, some of which were songs I’d forgotten they had. At a low volume, I replay our amazing night, and let my eyes trace the cityscape out my passenger window. With the dashboard vents blowing hot air at me, it’s hard not to let my eyes drift closed.
Time enters this warped state, and I feel like maybe I black out for part of the ride home, because suddenly I see the familiar shape of my house come into view. I look at the windows lit up in the kitchen and in my parents’ room. Sam’s car is still parked behind mine in the driveway. I turn back to look at the clock and see that it’s only 10:37 p.m.
“Is it okay if we keep listening to music for a bit?” I ask, feeling a little nervous. “I just don’t want tonight to end. I know that once I get out of the car, I go back to being a grounded girl whose sister is getting married in a couple days.”
“And inside the car, you’re a girl who just saw her favorite band in concert,” Gavin says, understanding me.
We slip back into a comfortable silence as “Lady Lie” oozes from the speakers.
After a couple of songs, Gavin turns the music back down and asks, “So, after everything—like, Ben, Darth Vader… and Ben—did you end up finding someone to go to the wedding with?”
I laugh a little. “No,” I say. “There were more guys than just them. I mean, my friends came up with this plan where they would set me up to meet guys—which, I almost forgot, my mom told you about. But, yeah, the whole point was for my friends to orchestrate the moment when I would meet the guy—you know, the ‘meet-cute’ moment—so that it was like the meet-cutes in their favorite movies.” I watch for his reaction. He’s surprised, maybe a little confused. “It was a nice idea, but I think it failed, because when it came to the stuff that mattered, I didn’t really have anything in common with them.”
“And, what stuff matters?” he asks, looking at me in a way that makes me feel exposed, like he can see the parts of me he’s been wanting to see.
I try to think, remembering what Harold said about allowing yourself to see more than what you think you need to see. “The ability to hold a good conversation, honesty, attention to detail, good taste in music, a good sense of self, some common interest that isn’t forced.”
“Forced?”
“Like, math, flirting with guys I barely know, pretending to understand anything about dogs—”
“Gardening?”
“No,” I say quickly.
“But didn’t your mom make you volunteer?”
“Yes,” I say, trying to choose my words carefully. “But I didn’t feel like I was being forced into it, not after we really started fixing the greenhouse.”
Gavin nods but doesn’t say anything. I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if I made my feelings obvious or if I made things weird, or maybe if everything is in my head. The silence makes me feel awkward.
“First Class” comes on, so I reach for the volume knob, and accidentally bump Gavin’s hand. I look up at him, ready to apologize, but when I find his eyes already staring into mine, I freeze. The air between us feels like strings being pulled tighter. It’s like his face has its own force of gravity, or maybe my face has its own gravity. I just feel close to him, and I feel myself being pulled closer to him. His mouth opens slightly, and I find myself anticipating the words I hope come out. I want him to say he wants what I want—
“Mia!”
My muffled name startles me. I turn around in my seat to see Sam tapping on my window. She’s wearing gingerbread-men pajamas and has a Sherpa blanket pulled tight around her shoulders. She points at the ground, her breath beginning to fog up the glass. Gavin presses the button to open the passenger window, letting a gust of cold air prickle my face.
“Hi,” I say, trying not to sound too obviously annoyed.
“It’s almost curfew,” she huffs. “You don’t want to get in more trouble. Come on.”
I look at the clock, and she’s right. I have two minutes to be inside the house.
“Thanks for tonight,” I say, looking back at Gavin. I feel g
uilty and sorry knowing that he has a girlfriend even though nothing happened.
Sam pulls the door open for me, and when she shuts it after I’ve gotten out, she leans through the window and asks, “So, are you taking Mia to my wedding?”
Every hair on the back of my neck stands up. The urge to run up the front lawn and disappear into the house is strong, so strong, but I resist. When I turn around and see Gavin looking like he just saw a ghost, I have to interfere.
“Sam, no,” I hiss. “He has a girlfriend.”
“Oh?” She looks back and forth between us.
“Bye, Gavin,” I say, pulling Sam up the lawn before she can say something else.
I drag her by her Sherpa blanket and wait until we are inside with the door locked and the porch light off. Then I turn to her and say, “That was totally on purpose.”
“I swear it wasn’t,” she says, holding her hands up in surrender.
“I don’t need you asking boys out for me, Sam.”
“Mia, I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was. I thought you were on a date.”
“And what could possibly make you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mia,” she says sarcastically. “Maybe because the last time you asked me to do your hair and makeup, and you cared what I thought about your outfits, was when you were into—what’s his name, Billy Sorg?”
She watches me, waiting for my comeback. I don’t have one, though, because she’s right. After Billy, I swore off boys, romance, and the entire notion of making yourself vulnerable to the mere possibility of heartbreak. Billy Sorg was my Harley, only Billy didn’t just leave me for someone else. He kept me hidden. I was the shameful dirt-colored smudge on his otherwise-perfect white life. We “dated” in secret, though I don’t know if that’s what I would really call it. Starting in seventh grade, Valentine’s Day became a big deal. Some of the older people in our grade were thirteen, and being an official teenager meant their parents thought it was more okay for them to date. So relationships started popping up here and there, and Valentine’s Day was a day to go public with gifts, cards, and flowers. It was almost a month into—what I thought was—our relationship. He said he didn’t want to tell anyone right away because his parents weren’t okay with him dating until he was thirteen.
Since he turned thirteen at the beginning of February, I thought Valentine’s Day was the perfect time to finally go public. I brought a card that I’d made myself, and a baseball cap that I’d gotten from the mall with the Bears logo on it. He was sitting at a lunch table before school with his friends, and when I gave him the gift, ready for everyone to finally know about us, he laughed at me. He wrapped his arm around Camille Ford’s shoulders, twirling a piece of her blond hair around his finger, and said I was delusional. That my crush on him was cute.
After all this time, I’ve finally found a good—nice—guy who I don’t think would ever do something like that. He has good hair, good taste in shoes and music, and the rare ability to hold an interesting conversation. So Sam is right to think I was on a date, because deep down I wanted it to be one. Only, Gavin is taken.
“Oh, goodie,” Mom says, coming downstairs. “I thought I heard you both down here.”
“She was home on time,” Sam says, holding my gaze before looking at Mom.
“How was it?”
“Amazing,” I say, because it was, and because I wish I could have more nights like this with Gavin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
On Saturday, the eve of the wedding, I watch Lake Michigan under the setting sun as we drive to the Butterfly Bed & Breakfast for the rehearsal dinner. Sitting in the back seat of Mom’s car while she and Dad talk quietly in the front feels weird because I’ve gotten so used to Sam being around and ushering us to tastings and selection meetings. Heading to the rehearsal without her reviewing every step along the way feels off. I feel like a piece is missing. I always felt that way when she left for college and I had to get used to family time meaning three people instead of four. But I started getting used to her being around again, nagging in that familiar way that isn’t always annoying. Sometimes it’s just a reminder that she’s there, with us.
The music playing from the speakers covers my parents’ conversation like a light dusting of snow. Through the window, I see the houseboat lights, their colors twinkling on the water. I try to take a video to send to Gavin, but it comes out too blurry. Instead I text him that “Gypsy” by Fleetwood Mac is playing on the radio. He replies, calling it a classic.
I wonder what our song would be. What would it be like if “First Class” played at prom and I rested my arms over Gavin’s shoulders, stood with my chest against his chest, my forehead tilted up to meet his tilted down. Sam told me that she and Geoffrey have a playlist of songs from different moments in their lives. She said that their song is “Jupiter Love” by Trey Songz, but that’s inappropriate to play for their first dance at a wedding. I was surprised when she told me they’d chosen “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Billie Holiday. That’s a true classic, tasteful. That’s probably the only detail of Sam’s wedding that I’m jealous of.
The rehearsal itself is small. Mom and Dad sit off to the side while Sam directs me and her bridesmaids with Geoffrey and his groomsmen about how to walk down the aisle. We practice until we get it perfectly timed to the orchestral music she chose for her procession.
When Abby and Victor show up, they wave to me from the back of the heated tent and unfold some of the chairs waiting to be set up tomorrow. Soon Sloane and Grace trickle in, and I feel more excited with them there. Originally Sam didn’t invite them to the rehearsal, but she changed her mind after deciding to let me go to the wedding without a date.
Even though the reception is going to be inside the precious temperature-controlled tent, Sam arranged for the rehearsal dinner to be inside the dining room of the inn. I sit at a table with my friends that ends up pushed close to the table my parents, Sam, Geoffrey, and his parents are all sitting at. Cheryl, Armao, and a few groomsmen push another table up against ours, and we end up with a long banquet-style-feast setting. It feels cozy and close as conversations float up and down the table the way a ripple flows through a slinky.
Eventually I tell my friends about how embarrassing it was when Sam asked Gavin if he was taking me to the wedding.
“I thought they were on a date,” she says defensively. “I really wasn’t trying to cause trouble.”
“He probably didn’t care, to be honest,” I say, secretly wondering what he thought. Does the idea of him taking me to the wedding resonate at all in his imagination the way it does in mine?
“You guys have been talking a lot, though,” Grace says before eating another spoonful of cake.
“What do you talk about?” Sloane asks.
“Music, mostly. We talk about the garden, school, the wedding—you know, normal stuff.”
Sam sits back in her chair and looks between me and my friends. When she just stares, it makes me feel uncomfortable.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says, flashing me a familiar mischievous smile.
I roll my eyes, wondering what price I would have to pay to know her thoughts right now.
Sam reviews the plans for tomorrow with everyone, pointedly telling my friends to arrive early with the wedding party to help out, before we all head our separate ways for the night. Sam follows us home in her car because she and Geoffrey want the first time they see each other tomorrow to be when Sam comes down the aisle.
Once we’re all back at the house, Sam kicks off her stilettos in the entryway and leans against the wall. Mom tells us to change into our pajamas and meet her in the den. Mom comes down sometimes in the middle of the night when Dad snores too loud. Sam used to crash on the sofa when she’d sneak midnight snacks after staying up doing homework or reading. Sometimes they’d run into each other, and when I’d hear them talking, I would sneak to the bottom of the stairs and listen. One time, when I was eight, I fell asleep and Mom
carried me back to my room and told me that the only person not invited to the secret girls’ club is Dad and that I should come to the next secret meeting.
So sometimes we’d all end up in the den at one or two in the morning. Mom would make us hot milk and get Oreos out of the cabinet, and as I got older, I realized it was a twilight time of the night when Sam and I felt safe confiding in Mom the things we couldn’t say during the day. Sam would mostly talk about boys; I would talk about my friends. After Sam moved away to college, whenever she was home for break, I wouldn’t sleep at night. I would lie awake, specifically waiting to hear a door open or a floorboard creek. I didn’t want to miss a chance to hear about her life far away from here, to know what she was doing.
Now by the time I get down there, Mom and Sam are tucked under blankets on opposite sides of the couch. They’re each holding a mug of cocoa with whipped cream, marshmallows, and chocolate syrup. I grab my mug off the coffee table before sitting down in the middle and pulling the ends of their blankets over my legs.
“By the time we got to the wedding, your father and I couldn’t have cared less. We wanted it to just be over so we could get to the part where we could spend our lives together. All we could think about was falling asleep together and being able to wake up and the first thing we saw be each other.”
“Aww,” Sam says, looking down at her cocoa, somewhere in her own thoughts.
“How did you know that Dad was the one?” I ask.
Mom smiles a big goofy smile, the kind of smile you can’t control. You can’t help yourself when you feel so happy that you smile like that.
“Oh, Mia,” she says, though something in her voice makes it seem like she’s saying it more to herself or to her memory. “Out of everyone I had ever dated, he just… I felt like I was returning to a place that I had once been a long time ago. Like everything I was missing was all there in him. And for him, all those missing pieces were with me. And together we created a whole that felt like home.”
“I feel like that’s how Geoffrey and I are,” Sam says, chewing on a marshmallow. “He balances out my special brand of crazy.”
The Meet-Cute Project Page 27
