Windfall

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “He’s Max,” Leo agrees. “But I don’t know if we can handle four more years of long distance. It’s the absolute worst.”

  I nod, but I’m also thinking that nearness can be awful too. Being so close to someone you love without them knowing it. Without them ever returning it. That’s another kind of terrible.

  “You’re lucky you know where you want to be next year,” Leo says. “I hate that it feels like I have to choose between Max and—” He gestures out the window, which I take to mean: Chicago, the Art Institute, his dreams. “It just kills me.”

  “You have to do what’s right for you.”

  He scowls. “What does that even mean? How am I supposed to know if I’m doing the right thing? All I do is worry I’m screwing everything up. And then I start worrying that all this worry is going to somehow jinx us, you know?”

  “That’s not how the world works,” I say. “That’s not how love works.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never been in love.”

  His words are unthinking, but they still have a bite to them, and once they’re out there they have a kind of volume too: for a few seconds they sit blaring like a siren on the table between us, so loud it feels like the whole restaurant must be staring at me.

  “Sorry,” Leo says. “That was mean.”

  “No, it was true,” I say, shaking my head. “Well, half-true.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks with a frown.

  I drop my head into my hands. “God, Leo. Don’t make me say it.”

  “What?” he asks, sounding genuinely confused.

  “You must’ve noticed. We’re always together, and—”

  “Teddy?” he says softly, and I brave a glance at him. When he sees my expression, he nods. “Aha.”

  I sit up straighter. “You don’t seem that surprised.”

  “I wasn’t totally sure,” he says. “But I had a feeling.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because it’s humiliating,” I say miserably. “To love someone who doesn’t love you back.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, actually. It came up during our fight the other night.”

  Leo’s eyes get big behind his glasses. “It did?”

  “Yeah, because we kissed—”

  “You did?”

  I laugh, but it comes out bitterly. “The morning we found out he won. But it didn’t mean anything. To him, anyway. He was pretty clear about that.”

  Leo reaches across the table and gives my hand a pat. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Would it make you feel any better if I listed some of the worst things about Teddy? I can do it chronologically or alphabetically. Your choice.”

  “Thanks,” I say, giving him a watery smile. “That means a lot. But I don’t think it would help.”

  He nods gravely. “It’s incurable, then?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” he says, and I nod. “I know you can’t choose who you love, but…”

  “What?”

  “Well, how can you have so much faith in someone—especially someone who lets you down as much as Teddy—when you have so little faith in the world?”

  I frown at him, and then without thinking I say, “How can you be so superstitious about everything when nothing bad has ever happened to you?”

  We blink at each other, both a little stunned. The jukebox switches over to a new song, and the waiter sets our plates down with a clatter, whisking off again without asking whether we still need anything, which is just as well, since it’s a question I have no idea how to answer right now. It could fill the room, what we still need right now. It could fill the city.

  Neither of us touches our food.

  “That’s why,” Leo says eventually, his voice choked. “That’s why I’m so superstitious. Because nothing bad has ever happened to me.”

  “Leo…”

  “I know you might find it hard to believe, but it’s totally nerve-racking, having everything in your life be fine. Especially when you know it’s not supposed to be like that. I’ve had it so much easier than you or Teddy….” He pauses, tipping his head back so that all I can see is his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “Hey,” I begin, but when he lowers his chin to look at me there’s something so bleak in his gaze that I stop again.

  “Maybe it’d be different if you guys weren’t in my life,” he says. “Maybe it’d be easier to ignore all the terrible things that can happen. But I can’t. Because none of it’s happened to me, and that means I’m overdue. It means the bottom’s gonna drop out at some point. It just is.”

  “That’s not necessarily true.”

  “Think about it,” he continues. “My life’s been pretty smooth sailing. The hardest thing probably should’ve been coming out, but even that wasn’t as dramatic as you’d expect.”

  I nod, remembering when he first told me. It was the summer before freshman year, though by then I’d already sort of guessed as much. We were eating ice cream in Lincoln Park, and I was talking about my blinding crush on Travis Reed, and he gave me a look of such genuine surprise that I lowered my spoon. “What?”

  “I like him too,” he admitted, and we stared at each other a second, then both burst out laughing.

  In the end it turned out Leo was more Travis’s type; not long after that, they had their first kiss in the school parking lot after the fall formal. And a couple months later Leo decided he was ready to come out to his parents too.

  “You’ll be fine,” I told him as he paced in front of me that morning, rehearsing what he planned to say. “Your parents love you. And they’re the best people I know. Plus, they’re Democrats, which means they’re practically required to be on board, right?”

  “Right,” he mumbled, though he didn’t sound convinced. Even with parents like his, there were no guarantees. But an hour later he returned with a dazed expression. And before I could even ask, he said with a look of immense relief, “It went…weirdly well.”

  Now, though, he looks almost disappointed by the ease of it all. “That was my one big obstacle, and it turned out fine. I mean, sure, it took me a while to get there, and freshman year was a little rough, but let’s be honest: it could’ve been so much worse.”

  “Well, there was that time your parents hung a poster of the U.S. men’s soccer team above your bed.”

  In spite of himself, Leo laughs. “That will never not be embarrassing.”

  “They were just trying to be there for you.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “That’s what I mean.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been really lucky. Too lucky. It can’t go on like this forever. Something bad is bound to happen.”

  “That’s not—”

  “You and Teddy are my two best friends,” he says, his brown eyes intent on mine. “And you guys have been through so much. Too much. It doesn’t seem fair. Especially with you. You were dealt the worst hand ever, and you deserve more luck than anyone, and it just makes me feel even more guilty that I—”

  “Leo,” I say gently. “I don’t think there’s a big tote board somewhere. I don’t think it has anything to do with keeping score.” I pause. “I don’t think the world is necessarily fair.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” he asks, leaning forward. “Look, Teddy got screwed in the dad department, right? Then he wins the lottery. Maybe that’s the universe making it up to him.”

  “I think you’re giving the universe way too much credit.”

  “But what if I’m not?”

  I give him a hard look. “Then what about me?”

  “Well, it would obviously mean you’re due something good,” he says, then adds, “something great.”

  “But that’s the thing,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “I kind of hope that would be true even if something horrible hadn’t happened to m
e. I hate to believe you have to pay for the good things with something bad.”

  “So you think it only works one way?”

  “I don’t think it works like that at all,” I say, exasperated. “If it was possible to store up enough good karma to save you from anything bad happening, then it wouldn’t be so hard to find volunteers at the nursing home on a Saturday night.”

  “Well, if there were bonus points for that,” Leo says, allowing a small smile, “you’d have enough stored up for a lifetime of good luck.”

  I roll my eyes. “Now you know the truth. I’m only in it for the karmic credit.”

  “No,” he says, picking up his water glass, “you’re in it because of your parents.”

  “And because of me,” I say quickly, automatically, thinking about how Teddy said this very same thing. Maybe that’s how it had started, with me trying to do what my parents no longer could. But it’s not about that anymore.

  At least I don’t think it is.

  At least not entirely.

  It’s not.

  I say this last part out loud: “It’s not.”

  “It’s not what?” Leo asks with a frown, and I blink at him.

  “It’s not only because of my parents. It’s about helping people, and doing something good, and making a difference.”

  He nods, but he doesn’t look quite convinced. He slides his fork back and forth on the table, his mouth twisting. “Anyway, I’m sorry about what I said before.”

  “What?”

  “That you don’t have faith in the world.”

  I consider this a moment. “It’s not that, exactly. It’s just…the world hasn’t done much for me lately. I guess I’m still waiting for it to impress me.”

  Leo gives me an odd look. “It should’ve been you.”

  “What?”

  “The ticket. The money. It should’ve been you.”

  “No, that’s not my dream,” I say. “That’s Teddy’s. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

  “So what’s yours?”

  I think of that night so long ago, standing outside the door to Leo’s room with my toothbrush in hand while he asked his mom if I was an orphan. She told him that I was, but that I would be other things too.

  Like what? he asked then.

  Like what? he’s asking again now.

  It’s been nine years, and I still don’t have an answer.

  I wonder if I ever will.

  “I don’t know yet,” I tell him, and then I pick up the lukewarm burger and take a bite before he can ask me anything else.

  Afterward we pass a newsstand outside the restaurant and Leo stops short. When he pulls a glossy magazine off the rack, I see that there’s a smiling picture of Teddy in the top right corner. Underneath it, in bold letters, it says THE BIG WINNER.

  Leo stares at it in astonishment, but I only shake my head.

  “The universe really outdid itself this time,” I say.

  It’s the second day of spring break and I’m up to my elbows in dirty dishwater.

  Beside me Sawyer is drying off cups with a checkered towel, but otherwise the kitchen is empty. They were light on volunteers this weekend, so the two of us offered to take cleanup duty, which wasn’t very popular tonight since the dishwasher was broken. But I didn’t mind. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

  I scrub hard at a patch of crusted cheese on one of the plates, gritting my teeth as I attempt to pry it off, and Sawyer looks at me sideways.

  “What did that poor plate ever do to you?”

  I drop it into the soapy water, stepping back to avoid the splash. He reaches over and hands me a scouring pad.

  “Here,” he says. “Try this.”

  “Thanks,” I say, blowing a strand of hair out of my eyes.

  “If you insist on going to battle with that thing, you might as well have a good weapon.”

  This makes me smile. “Sorry. I feel like I’m not great company tonight.”

  “You’re always good company,” he says. “Though the cutlery might not agree.”

  “I’ll go clear the rest,” I say, wiping my hands on my apron, then heading back out into the other room, where a few stragglers are still sitting at a table in the corner.

  “Hey, Alice,” says Trevor, a regular here ever since I started volunteering. He’s wearing the green woolen cap I got him for Christmas last year, pulled low over his eyes so that all I can see is his gray beard. Sometimes I run into him at the homeless shelter too, especially when the weather is bad. When he’s not there I worry about him, but his answer to my questions is always just “I get by.”

  Now he’s flipping through a newspaper as two of the other guys finish their bowls of vanilla pudding. When I walk over, I realize they’re looking at an article about Teddy. “Big winner,” Trevor says, studying the photo. “Just a kid too.”

  “I shoulda bought a ticket,” says Frank, one of the other men, and the third, Desmond, shakes his head.

  “I did.”

  Frank looks up. “Did you win?”

  “Don’t think he’d be eating this slop if he had,” Trevor says, then winks at me. “Sorry, Alice.”

  “It’s okay, I’m just on dishes tonight,” I tell them. “But I’ll see what I can do about some chocolate cake for this weekend.”

  Trevor grins at me. “I’d come here for that cake even if I was a millionaire.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I say, but as I carry a stack of dishes back into the kitchen I’m thinking about Teddy and that money, about how his mom has spent six years sleeping on a pullout couch in the living room of a tiny apartment in a crumbling building on a terrible block, and nobody could ever say they didn’t need it. But then to hear Trevor and Desmond and Frank joke about winning only reminds me there will always be others who need it even more.

  As soon as I drop the dirty dishes into the sink, my phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to see that Leo’s sent me a photo of Teddy from a gossip website. The headline reads LOTTERY HOTTIE MEETS PAPARAZZI.

  With a sigh I set it down on the counter and turn back to the sink. I can feel Sawyer’s eyes on me, but he doesn’t say anything as I begin to scour the dishes, scraping at dried noodles and hardened sauce until my elbow is sore.

  “So,” he says eventually. “You wanna talk about it?”

  I pass him a glass. “About what?”

  “Whatever it is that’s got you so fired up.” He wipes down the cup, then sets it on the counter beside the others. “There’s only so much dish-related brutality I can watch before intervening.”

  I stop what I’m doing and turn to him. The sponge in my hand is dripping into the sink, making fat splashes in the soapy water. Sawyer is watching me with those blue eyes of his, looking half-amused and half-nervous, and I find myself thinking about how different he is from Teddy.

  I’m about to shrug off his question, to say that there’s nothing wrong, to pretend everything is fine. But I’m suddenly desperate to talk to someone. Yesterday Leo left for Michigan, and Teddy is probably on his way to Mexico right now. Not that it matters, because how could he be the solution when he’s already the problem?

  I tip my head up to look at Sawyer, who is watching me closely.

  “My idiot friend,” I tell him, “has gone viral.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Teddy?”

  “Yes,” I say with a nod, relieved to finally say it out loud and surprised to discover that I’m dangerously close to crying. I bite my lip.

  Sawyer looks confused. “And that’s a problem because…?”

  “It’s not a problem. It’s just that…the guy does a couple of interviews and all of a sudden he’s like this Internet sensation?”

  “He won the lottery,” Sawyer says. “People are curious.”

  I shake my head. “He’s everywhere. There are clips of him all over the place. He’s even a GIF! And there are all sorts of fan sites already. I mean, it’s only been a couple days. How fast do these people work?”
/>   “It actually doesn’t take that long to build a—”

  “I don’t get it,” I say, cutting him off. “How can you have fans if you haven’t done anything? What are they fans of?”

  “Just one of those things,” Sawyer says. “You know how it is. People online get excited about really random stuff.”

  “But he’s not a cat eating a cheeseburger or a monkey making friends with a goat. He’s just a guy who had some good luck.”

  “Human interest story, I guess. Young, good-looking guy from a not-so-great neighborhood wins the lottery. It’s like a fairy tale.”

  I place both hands on the edge of the counter, leaning forward to watch the whorls of soap and grease in the water.

  Sawyer tosses the towel over his shoulder. “Are you and Teddy…?”

  I look over at him sharply. “What?”

  “Are you guys together?”

  “No,” I say without hesitating. The word comes out forcefully, echoing around the empty kitchen. I shake my head and say it again: “No.”

  Sawyer nods slowly, like he isn’t quite sure whether to believe me. “Okay.”

  “We’re not,” I say, blushing. “Really.”

  “Okay,” he says again.

  “We’re just friends. Or at least we were.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, waiting for me to continue.

  “This lottery thing has made everything kind of weird,” I admit. “We’ve always been…close. And then this huge thing happened, and now everything is different.”

  “And it feels like you’re losing him.”

  I go still. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “You sort of did.”

  When I turn to look at him he holds my gaze, and it should be weird, this moment between us, but for some reason it’s not.

  “Do you want to go out with me sometime?” he asks.

  “Like, for cocoa?”

  “Like, for dinner.”

  “Like, a date?”

  He grins. “Exactly like a date.”

  “How about tomorrow?” I say, and I realize I’m smiling too.