by Katie Heaney
As I approached the booth he made a big show of checking his watch. “You’re late.”
“Two minutes doesn’t count as late.”
I slid onto the weirdly hard red vinyl seat across from him and took a calming sip of water from the glass waiting for me, peering at my father over the rim. He looked old, I thought. His eyebrows had an ombré effect, fading into white at the outer edges, and I could tell from his sunglasses-shaped tan line that he wasn’t wearing sunscreen like I told him to. His belly pressed up against the edge of the table, so I assumed he hadn’t cut back on his beer drinking, either. Maybe I should get granola and lead by example, I thought. But food wasn’t really his problem, and no one went to Mantequilla for their granola.
“Three minutes, and yes it does,” my dad sighed. “Thirty seconds counts.”
“Maybe for old people.”
A sly grin spread under my dad’s mustache. This was one of the good things about him: he took shit as well as he gave it. With me, at least. My mom probably didn’t see it that way.
Sara, the college-aged granddaughter of the cafe’s owner, breezed by our booth, sliding two laminated menus onto the table without slowing down. Neither my dad nor I touched them: our orders never varied.
“So how’s things?” he said, taking a big gulp of coffee.
“Good,” I said. “Fine. You know.”
“What’s the status on UNC?”
I flushed. I’d emailed their recruiter, a woman named Paula, a few days earlier in a late-night existential panic, despite my promise to wait for them to come to me. I’d mentioned my recent two-goal club game, and asked if they were still sending out offers, and if I might expect to get one. She had written back the next morning, congratulating me on the win. They were still sending out offers, yes. As to whether I might receive one, she couldn’t yet say. They were still making final decisions. It wasn’t the worst news she could have sent, but it was far from the best. In some far, desolate corner of my brain there was a tiny pragmatist trying to manage my expectations, telling me that if UNC really, really wanted me, I would know by now. Most people knew before senior year started. Ronni had accepted her offer from Stanford last May. But I wouldn’t give up until I got a definitive yes, or a definitive no.
In the meantime, I was on the wait list at UCLA, placed in purgatory while the players who’d been offered spots decided whether to accept them. I’d also gotten a full-ride scholarship offer from Baylor, a Baptist school in Texas that obviously hadn’t gotten the memo that I was a full-blown queer, or—maybe worse—that was benevolently willing to overlook my queerness for the sake of their soccer rankings. When I’d first looked them up online I learned they’d only removed their policy banning “homosexual acts” in 2016. So that was going to be a no from me, thanks.
“Yeah,” I said. “They’re still finalizing offers. But UCLA looks good.”
“Well, that’s a decent backup.”
This stung a little, though I thought of it that way myself. UCLA was just two hours north of where I lived. At least twenty kids from my school would go there too. And anyway, I was wait-listed. They weren’t sure they wanted me, either.
I was saved by Sara, who reappeared with notebook in hand. “What can I get you?” she asked.
“I’ll have the apple-cinnamon pancakes with a side of bacon, and she’ll have the chocolate chip with a side of home fries and a small orange juice.”
For some reason the thought of all that melted chocolate sticking to the roof of my mouth made me nauseous. “Actually, can I make that blueberry?” I interjected. It was the first other pancake variety I could think of.
My dad looked at me like I’d asked for, well, the granola. I shrugged.
“How’s work?” I asked pointedly.
He didn’t seem to notice, and launched into his latest grievances about the various “dumbasses” in his department. He ranted for nearly ten minutes straight, making two or three comments about his female coworkers’ perceived intelligence. Jamie would have found what he said sexist, and maybe it was, though I maintained he thought every man and woman he worked with was stupid.
When Sara returned with our steaming pancakes and sides and he still hadn’t mentioned moving home, I just about screamed. I glared at the mound of oozing blue-tinted pancakes in front of me, instantly full of regret. There should have been chocolate where those berries were.
“Want some of mine?” my dad asked.
“No, it’s okay.” I cut into the stack and ate a bite three layers high. “Dad,” I started, hoping the pancake in my mouth would make me seem less invested in the answer to my question. “You have a job interview? Here?”
My dad’s shoulders wilted, the ends of the fork and knife in his hands slumping until they tapped the table. “Your mom told you that?”
“Dad, you cannot be mad at her. You have had so much time to tell me.”
“I was getting there.”
“So when is it? Tomorrow?”
He speared a piece of bacon and held it aloft, examining the edges. “Yep. Nine-thirty.”
“Do you want it?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he said, so agonizingly casual and slow. As if this changed nothing, like I’d told my mom it would. “Depends on the offer. If they even make one.”
For a minute or two we chewed in silence, staring over each other’s shoulders.
“What about me?” I said finally.
My dad sighed and brushed his mustache with his knuckles. When he spoke he addressed his plate. “I know. This is not part of the plan. But it might not happen.”
“What if it does?”
Finally he looked at me. “I’m gonna watch you play for UNC no matter what.”
But I play now, too, I thought, and you don’t.
He watched me take another bite, struggle to chew, and swallow.
“I won’t take it if you don’t want me to,” he said.
I knew he thought this was the generous thing to say, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“Let me know how it goes,” I said. “I want you to try.”
He smiled and took another bite. “Deal.”
Mouth still full of pancake, he changed the subject. “How’s Jamie?”
Oh yeah, I thought. He didn’t know. I tried to avoid talking about girls with my father, which was easy enough to do over text. In person, though, I felt I had no choice.
“She’s good, I think. We broke up, though.”
“Really? What happened?”
I shrugged, like no big deal. “It just stopped working.” I could feel my dad’s eyes on me as I cut deeper into my pancakes. I couldn’t tell him I’d been dumped. I just couldn’t. I prayed to anyone listening that for once he would take my discomfort as a sign to stop asking questions.
“That happens,” he said slowly. “You still friendly?”
“Yeah, mostly.”
“Good. She’s a smart girl.”
I felt proud of her, even now. My dad did not hand that word out easily. I had to stop him before he said anything else good about her.
“I’ve sort of been talking to this other girl lately. Ruby.”
My dad nodded, evaluating the name. “What’s her deal?” he asked, by which I knew he meant: Is she like you?
“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “But she’s cool. She’s in a band.”
“Good student?” My father was not impressed by extracurriculars and/or hobbies that did not directly lead to scholarships. Like rock bands.
“I think so, yeah. I don’t have her transcript with me.”
He gave me a look and took another bite, evaluating her as he chewed.
“Is she good-looking?”
Here we go, I thought. I knew, on some level, that his question was kind of (okay, fully) a creepy one. B
ut I also knew to expect it. For him, good-looking and smart were the qualities that mattered in a woman. Though he’d never said so explicitly, I suspected he thought I could do better than Jamie—who, though striking, wasn’t the kind of pretty everyone agreed on. I knew he thought he was looking out for me; I knew he believed people wouldn’t give me as hard a time about dating girls if they were knockout beautiful, and popular, and decent students. And the thing was, I couldn’t really say he was wrong. People probably would treat me better if I dated Ruby. So I answered honestly.
“She is very pretty, yes.”
He grinned. “Good for you.”
I felt proud and sick and sad and happy at the same time. My stomach felt heavy with feelings, or else the lesser, non-chocolate pancakes. It was hard to be sure.
I gave my dad the rest of the bullet-point Quinn report: my soccer record so far, my grades so far, my best and worst teachers. He didn’t ask any more about Mom, but I told him anyway that she was doing great. I didn’t know if that was especially accurate, but I felt it was my duty to say it regardless. He accepted this information neutrally, like I was his doctor giving him his blood pressure reading. Not that he ever went to the doctor, now that Mom couldn’t make him. How was his blood pressure? I wondered.
My dad put his card on the bill Sara dropped at our table, and then he pulled four twenties from his wallet and gave them to me. I pocketed them eagerly, already thinking of things I could use the money for. Homecoming, I realized, was a little under a month away. Was there a world in which Ruby went with me, and I spent this money on flowers for her wrist?
“Thank you,” I said. He waved it off and signed the receipt, leaving his usual two-dollar tip on our twenty-four-dollar bill. When he got up to use the restroom, I removed a crumpled five from my pocket and tucked it under my plate. I met him at the front of the cafe, where we each took a crusty peppermint from the bowl on the register stand and popped them in our mouths.
“All right, Quinnie,” he said. The candy clacked between his teeth.
“Thanks for breakfast. And the cash.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So I’ll see you…?” In a week? A month? And how often, after that? I thought. I decided not to overwhelm him and left my question unfinished.
“Soon, I think,” he said. He opened his arms to hug me, and I stepped in. He still smelled so good to me: the generic-brand woodsy body wash and the dryer sheets my mom wouldn’t buy and Purell on his hands, applied religiously before and after every meal. We clapped each other on the back, and he squeezed me tighter before letting me go.
I vowed, when I got home, to go into the coming week with a renewed sense of purpose. I would ask Ruby to hang out, just the two of us, without homework or Sweets as a cover. I would catch up on my reading. I would even clean my room, maybe. And next Saturday, when our club team faced Albion, I would play the best soccer of my life, so good UNC would call me over the weekend to offer me a spot. Oh—there was an idea. I would invite Ruby to my soccer game. In my experience, watching me play soccer was the fastest way a girl could fall for me. At least, it had worked on Jamie, and she didn’t even like sports. Once after a game she even told me I looked sexy (!). So yeah. That was my whole brilliant plan.
I showed up for Wednesday night’s practice having yet to ask Ruby to come to Saturday’s game. Clearly, there was something wrong with me. But in my defense, I was in a real catch-22 (a term I only knew because Jamie had once explained it to me). The longer I waited, the less likely it was for Ruby to even be available to consider saying yes to something as dorkily mainstream as attending a sports function on a Saturday night, but it would also be uncool to ask her too many days in advance. I figured that formula worked out to make Thursday my best option. If Ruby already had plans, maybe she’d tell me she’d come to the next one. Even in the grand scheme of my triumphant, redemptive senior-year tour, I told myself, I could afford to delay the Ruby-seduction timeline by one week.
Until I couldn’t.
At our halftime water break, Ronni appeared at my left elbow, taking a seat on the bleachers behind me. I watched in confusion as she patted the spot next to her, the metal clanging a little beneath the gold rings I’d never seen her without on her forefinger. My heart rate picked up speed. Ronni was not the type to “goof off,” as our club-team coach would call it, during practice. Believe me, I had tried. When the whistle blew she ran off the field, drank water, and ran back out, not-so-subtly encouraging the rest of us to follow her, no matter how many water-break minutes we technically had left. She did not just casually sit down. So I stayed standing, hoping I might freeze in place whatever bad news she wanted to give me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Again she patted the bench.
“Okay, stop doing that. You have the worst poker face on earth and I know you have something bad to tell me and me sitting down isn’t going to make it any better.”
“It’s not bad, necessarily,” she said unconvincingly.
“Just tell me.”
She took a deep breath, and the worst sentence I’d ever heard rushed out of her mouth, too fast and way too loud. “Alexis-told-me-that-Jamie-and-Natalie-Reid-are-talking.”
“Shhh!” I sat down. I felt like I might throw up.
Normally Ronni would have reminded me she’d told me to sit in the first place, but I must have looked upset, because she stayed quiet. I felt her examining me, and I sank my head into my hands to give my face some privacy. But that only made me look more upset, and soon I felt Ronni’s hand on my back, so I leapt up again. I noticed our teammate Kate watching us over the lip of her water bottle, but when we made eye contact she looked away.
“Why couldn’t you have told me this after practice?” I hissed.
Ronni gave me a patient, patronizing look. “If I’d told you after practice, you would have asked me why I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She was right, so I was silent. For a second.
“What kind of ‘talking’ are we talking about?”
Ronni looked away. “She didn’t say.”
“Alexis? I find that hard to believe.”
Ronni glanced at me apologetically. “There may have been a suggestive tone.”
That was the problem with talking: it could mean anything, or everything. I had spent a portion of every day since the Sweets show hoping and praying that what I’d seen was all there was to see. I kept telling myself they hadn’t left together, and now that seemed idiotic, even puritanical. They were both single. They were both drinking. They were both, apparently, into girls. Of course something happened.
“When?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Ronni.
“But something definitely happened?”
“I don’t know.”
I had seventy more follow-up questions, at least, but Coach Tara blew the whistle before I could ask any of them. Ronni stood, and I stood, and she gave me a supportive smack on the butt.
“It’ll all work out, Q.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, thinking: How could anyone possibly know that?
All I wanted was more information. But I knew there was something else I had to do first. So I ran to my bag and dug out my phone, ignoring my coach’s increasingly irritated whistle blowing. When she saw my phone she dropped the whistle and barked my name, which meant I was about ten seconds from getting the lecture of a lifetime. “One sec!” I yelled, texting Ruby to ask her to the game on Saturday. I hit send, threw my phone back in my bag, and ran out to join my team. “Family stuff,” I explained to Coach, the lie rolling easily off my tongue. She gave me a curt nod, and to make up for letting her down I played the best scrimmage of my life.
* * *
—
There was a reason I was especially mad about the prospect of Jamie talking to Natalie Reid. Beyond how much
Natalie Reid sucked, I mean. And that reason had to do with what Jamie had told me when she dumped me.
She’d biked over on a weeknight, after texting me to ask if she could stop by. I had no idea something was wrong until I kissed her in the doorway and she pulled away. After that, it was like watching someone else being dumped in slow motion—like I was floating above us, powerless to help the me below. I watched myself sit down and Jamie hover, then sit as far down at the other end of the couch as possible. I watched myself tilt my head, then pull my legs in to my chest. I could barely hear what she was saying to me, and at the time I wasn’t sure how much it mattered. The gist was that it was all too much too fast, and she thought it better if we went back to being friends. Anyway, the end result was obvious. It was clear her mind was made up, and nobody convinces Jamie to change her mind.
But I remembered one thing she’d said with perfect clarity, now. I could hear her voice, her exact delivery: “I don’t think anyone makes it through their freshman year together, and I don’t want that to be us.” The implication was that we would break up once college started, so we might as well break up now and save ourselves the time. The implication was that senior year was about friendship, about being single and unattached and free, savoring the easiest versions of everything and everyone you loved before you left them.
