Alex, Approximately

by Jenn Bennett

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Where’s your player? Here? Let’s see, what do we have . . . Key Largo? Is that any good? Let me just put it back in the case. I don’t want to pull a Lana. Is everything—”

  “Porter!”

  “—set, or do I have to switch the input? Where’s your remote? If you’ve gotten your diseased crud on it, I’m not touching it. Scoot over. And don’t cough on me.” He’s peeling off his HOT STUFF jacket and motioning to let him sit next to me in the double bed.

  I’m suddenly well aware that my father is right downstairs. And wait—why do I care? I’m sick. And gross. And we’re not even together.

  Are we?

  “Porter—”

  “Scooch.”

  I scooch. He plops down next to me, long legs stretched out and ankles crossed on top of the covers. When he sees one of my snotty tissues next to his elbow, he makes a sour face.

  I angrily toss the tissue onto the floor. “I’m not watching a movie with you until you tell me why you stormed out of my house that night.”

  “I’m being completely real with you when I say it was the misunderstanding of the century. And it’s nothing you did wrong. I realize that now. Like I told you before, I needed some time to think about things, because it was . . . well, it doesn’t matter. But”—he crosses his arms over his chest when I start to protest, like he’s not budging—“let’s drop the whole thing.”

  “What? That’s—”

  “Look, it’s really nothing. It was stupid. I’m sorry for making you worry over nothing. Let’s just forget it. Hit play, will you?”

  I stare at him, flabbergasted. “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “I can’t accept that. I need to know what happened.”

  He leans back against the headboard and looks at me for a long time. A really long time. Now I’m uncomfortable, because he’s smiling at me—this strange, slow smile that’s hiding a secret. It makes me want to hide or hit him.

  “Maybe I’ll feel like talking after the movie starts,” he says. “What’s this flick about, anyway? I just picked something random.”

  Momentarily distracted, I glance at the menu on the screen. “The Philadelphia Story? You’ve never seen this?”

  He shakes his head slowly, still smiling that funny smile. “Tell me about it.”

  That’s weird, because it looked like he was choosing something particular on the shelf, but whatever. “It’s one of my favorite movies. Katharine Hepburn is a society woman, an heiress, you see, who learns to love the right man—that’s her pompous ex, Cary Grant, who she bickers with constantly—by kissing the wrong man, who’s Jimmy Stewart.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Your grandmother never watched it?” I ask.

  “Don’t remember this one. Do you think I’ll like it? Or should I pick out something else?” He throws a leg over the side of the bed. “Because if you want, I could go ask your dad for suggestions—”

  I clamp a hand around his arm. “Oh wait, it’s wonderful. So funny. Like, brilliantly funny. Let’s watch it.”

  “Hit play,” he says, sinking back into my pillows. “You can fill me in on trivia as it goes.”

  “And then you’ll tell me?” I insist.

  “Hit play, Mink.”

  I narrow my eyes at his use of my nickname, unsure if he’s making fun of me, but I’ll give him a pass. Because, hello! The Philadelphia Story. I could watch this a thousand times and never get weary of it. Watching with someone else who’s never seen it is so much better. With Porter? I can’t believe my luck. I hope he likes it.

  We start the movie, and for the moment, I’m not caring that I’m sick anymore. I’m just happy that Porter’s here with me, and that he’s laughing warmly at the right lines. It would be perfect, really, if he wouldn’t stop staring at me. He’s watching my face more than the screen, and every time I look at him quizzically, he doesn’t even glance away. He just smiles that same knowing smile. And that’s creeping me out.

  “What?” I finally whisper hotly.

  “This is . . . amazing,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say, brightening. “Just wait. The movie gets even better.”

  Slow smile.

  I pull the covers up to my chin.

  A quarter of the way through the movie, my dad comes up to remind me to take all my various cold medicines, at which point several jokes are made at my expense between the males in the room. They both think they’re comedians. We’ll see who’s laughing when Porter gets the lurgy after lounging on my bed.

  Halfway through, Porter suddenly asks, “What were your plans this summer?”

  “Huh?” I glance at him out of the corner of my eyes.

  “That time at work, you were telling Pangborn that you had other plans this summer, and that I wasn’t part of those plans. What were those plans?”

  My heart pounds as I try to think up some plausible excuse, but the cough syrup is slowing down my thought process. “I don’t remember.”

  His jaw tightens. “If you come clean about that, I’ll tell you the reason I left your house on game night. Deal?”

  Crap. No way am I confessing that I’ve been scoping out another guy half the summer—an anonymous guy who I’ve been chatting with online for months. That sounds . . . unstable. Psychotic. Porter would never understand. And it’s not like Alex and I acted on any feelings. We never proclaimed our love for each other or sent heart-filled, dirty poetry.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell Porter.

  Even through my buzzy haze, I can sense his disappointment, but I can’t make myself divulge my secrets about Alex.

  “Think hard,” Porter says in a quiet voice. Almost a plea. “You can tell me anything. You can trust me.”

  There it is again. The T word. My mind drifts back to our conversation in the back of the camper van. I need to be able to trust you.

  I know he wants me to tell him. I just . . . can’t.

  I’m not sure when it happened, but the last thing I remember is Jimmy Stewart kissing Katharine Hepburn. The next thing I know, I’m waking up dopey several hours later.

  Porter is long gone.

  • • •

  Two days later, Cavadini puts me back on the schedule, and I head into work. I don’t see Porter in cash-out. It’s just Grace and the new guard who replaced Pangborn. Porter is here today—I know, because I checked the schedule—so I search for him as we head out to the floor. That’s where I spot him, handling the changing of the guard. He’s letting the morning ticket takers out of the Hotbox—two stupid boys, Scott and Kenny. I step up to the back door before they can all walk away and hand Grace my cash drawer, motioning for her to go inside without me.

  “You left my house without saying good-bye,” I tell Porter.

  “You were pretty sick. I’m kind of busy right now, so—”

  “You also left without telling me about game night.”

  He glances at Scott and Kenny. “Maybe later,” he says.

  “That’s what you said before.”

  “And my offer still stands.” He leans closer and whispers, “Quid pro quo, Clarice.”

  Not that again. He’s not Silence of the Lambs–ing me into confessing about Alex. No way, no how. I try another tactic. “You go first, then I’ll consider telling you.”

  “Bailey,” he says again, like it’s some kind of coded warning I should understand. “You really don’t want to do this here.” He glances at the two boys.

  It hits me like a physical blow that he’s using evasion techniques against me. From the moment all of this happened on game night with the fake text message—because it was fake, wasn’t it?—to the distraction of The Philadelphia Story, until right now, when conveniently he is surrounded by people and therefore cannot discuss the matter.

  Is this what it feels like to be Artful Dodgered? Because it sucks, big-time.

  Porter clears his throat. “I’ve, uh, got to get t
hem to cash-out, but—”

  “No,” I say, cutting him off. I realize I sound unreasonable now, and I’m mildly embarrassed that I’m raising my voice in front of Tweedledee and Tweedledum—but I just can’t stop myself. “I need to know what happened on game night.”

  “Hey. We’ll talk later. Trust me, okay?”

  “Oh, are we on your schedule now? If Porter deigns to dole out a crumb? I’m just supposed to wait around for you like some well-behaved puppy dog?”

  His face darkens. “I never said that. I just asked you to trust me.”

  “Give me a reason to.”

  His head jerks back as if I’ve slapped him, and then his face turns stony. “I thought I already had.”

  My chest tightens, and I suddenly wish I could take it all back. I don’t want to fight with him. I just want things to go back to how they were before that night, when everything changed. As he walks off with the idiots, I hear Kenny say, “Damn, Roth. You’ve always got hot girls chasing after you. I need to start surfing.”

  “Yeah, but they’re always whiners, and who needs that drama?” Scott says. “Bitches are crazy.”

  Porter chuckles. Chuckles!

  Suddenly, I’m Alice in Wonderland, falling through a rabbit hole, watching the beautiful memories from the last couple of months pass me by as I descend into madness. And walking away from me is the old Porter Roth, the stupid surfer boy that I loathed. The one who humiliated me.

  I’m devastated.

  I pound on the Hotbox door. Grace swings it open, her face pinched with concern. I don’t have time to explain; the line is long, and she’s inserted my cash drawer, readying everything for me to start.

  Ugh. It’s already a million degrees in here. My chest is swelling with confusion and hurt, emotions rising with each passing second.

  “Two tickets.” Some stoner boy with shaggy blond hair is standing outside my window with some girl, giving me an I don’t have all day look. I stare back at him. I think I’ve forgotten how to use the computer. I’m beginning to go numb.

  “What the hell is going on?” Grace whispers, tapping me on the arm. “Are you still sick? Are you okay?”

  No, I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all. I can’t get enough air though my nostrils. Part of me blames Porter for making me feel this way. But once the shock of him laughing at that sexist comment wears off, I’m still left with the sinking feeling that the root of our fight is actually my fault, and I can’t figure out why.

  What did I do wrong on game night? He said it was just a misunderstanding, but that feels like a cover-up. Because something upset him, badly, and he blamed me for it that night. And now I feel so completely stupid, because I don’t know what I did, and he won’t tell me.

  It’s like I’m staring at a giant jigsaw puzzle and there’s one piece missing, and I’m scrambling to find it—looking in all the sofa cushions, under the table, under the rug, checking the empty box.

  WHERE IS THAT PUZZLE PIECE?!

  “Yo, I said two tickets,” the boy at the window enunciates, like I’m stupid. Is that a surf company logo on his T-shirt? Is this . . . one of the trashy creeps who was hanging out with Davy at the posole truck? Who was being all disgusting, harassing those girls in front of my dad and Wanda? Oh, wonderful. Just freaking terrific. “Anyone home in there? I’m not standing here for my health, babe.”

  Camel’s back, meet straw.

  I’m not quite sure what happens next.

  A strange heat rushes through my head—some sort of stress-induced overload, brought about through trying to determine what happened with Porter . . . heart hurting over our fight, over his reaction to Scott’s sexist comment. And all of it is topped off with the rotting cherry that is this jerk standing here now.

  Or maybe, just maybe, after a long summer, the Hotbox finally gets the better of me.

  All I know is that something breaks inside my brain.

  I switch on my microphone. “You want tickets? Here you go.”

  In a manic fit, I pop open the printer, rip out the folded pack of blank ticket paper, and begin feeding it through the slot—shove, shove, shove, shove! It waterfalls from the other side like the guy just won a million Skee-Ball tickets at an arcade.

  “Have all the tickets you want,” I say into the microphone. “Bitches are crazy.”

  Creeper dude looks stunned. But not as stunned as Mr. Cavadini, whose face appears next to his. Cavadini is holding his clipboard, doing his rounds. His gaze shifts from the pile of bent-up tickets on the ground to me, and he’s horrified. Customer service nightmare.

  To Davy’s friend, he says: “Let me take care of this, and comp your attendance today.” And he gestures for someone to let the guy’s party through and clean up the pile of blank tickets.

  To me, he says: “What in blazes is the matter with you, young lady? Have you lost your mind?” His nose is pressed against the Hotbox’s glass. His face is so red, his Cave tie looks like it might cut off circulation and strangle him.

  “I’m really sorry,” I whisper into the microphone, gripping it with both hands as ugly tears stream down my cheeks, “but I sort of have lost my mind.”

  “Well,” Mr. Cavadini says, unmoved by my pitiful display of emotion, “you’ll have plenty of time to find it in your free time, because you’re fired.”

  “I hate to shatter your ego, but this is not the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at me.”

  —Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction (1994)

  26

  * * *

  I don’t make a scene. I just clean out my locker, clock out, and leave while everyone gawks at me in silence. When Porter calls my name across the parking lot, I refuse to turn around. Helmet on. Kickstand up. Keys in ignition. I’m gone. The Cavern Palace is now a “was.” I no longer have a summer job.

  I consider not telling my dad about getting fired for about five minutes, but I’m tired of being a coward. Besides, he’d find out sooner or later. I wonder if the Pancake Shack is hiring.

  Grace comes over to my house after her shift and I tell her the whole thing, every bit of it and more. Before I know what I’m saying, I’m telling her about Greg Grumbacher and the CliffsNotes version of how I got shot. How Porter was the first person I really told, and now look—just look!—where that trust got me. And sure, I was talking to some guy online before I moved here, and yes, I had planned to meet him, but we don’t talk anymore, and NOTHING HAPPENED, and that’s none of Porter’s business. It’s no one’s business but mine.

  For a brief moment, I’m worried that I’ve freaked her out.

  But she says very seriously, “It’s a shame that I’m going to be forced to commit severe testicular trauma upon that boy.”

  After this, our shared appetite for vengeance quickly spirals out of control. She calls Porter a C word, which is apparently okay to do if you’re English. She then asks if I want her to talk to him (I don’t) or spread horrible rumors about him at work (I sort of do). When she starts getting creative about the rumor spreading, it just makes me sad, and I start crying again. My dad comes home from work in the middle of my sob session, and Grace gives him the lowdown. She should be a TV commentator. By the time she’s finished explaining, I’m done with the tears.

  My dad looks shell-shocked.

  “Bet you’re sorry you signed up for your teenage daughter to move in with you now, huh?” I say miserably. “Maybe this is why mom hasn’t called all summer. She’s probably thinking, Good riddance.”

  He looks momentarily confused, but quickly disregards that last remark, comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my shoulders, and squeezes. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss any of this for one single second. And if there’s one thing I know about, it’s how to get over breakups. Or potential ones. Whatever this is. Get your stuff, girls. We’re going out for lobster and laser tag.”

  • • •

  Porter starts texting me the next day. Nothing substantial, just several short texts.

  Text 1:
Hey.

  Text 2: I’m so sorry about work. I feel awful.

  Text 3: We need to talk.

  Text 4: Please, Bailey.

  Dad advises me to ignore all of those texts and let him simmer. After all, Porter did the same thing to me. Time apart is healthy. Dad also quizzes me, asking me if I’ve realized why Porter walked out on game night. “You’re a good detective, Mink. You can figure this out on your own.”

  Maybe I don’t want to anymore. I’ve pretty much given up trying.

  Besides, I have other things to think about, like looking for another job, one that doesn’t mind that I’ve been sacked from my last place of employment. Dad offers to ask around at the CPA office. I politely decline.

  When I’m looking through the classifieds in the local free paper we picked up during our million-dollar lobster feast the night before, Dad says, “What did you mean when you said your mother hasn’t called all summer?”

  “Just that. She hasn’t called. All summer. Or texted. Or e-mailed.”

  A long moment drags by. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

  “I thought you knew. Has she called you?”

  He rubs his hand over head. “Not since June. She said she’d be in touch with me later to see how we were doing, but she told me she’d mainly be communicating through you. I’m such an idiot. I should have checked in with you. I guess I was too busy being selfish about having you here with me that I let it slip. This is my fault, Bailey.”

  After a moment I say, “What if something’s wrong?”

  “I’m subscribed to her firm’s newsletter. She’s fine. She won a big court case last week.”

  “So . . .”

  He sighs. “You know how long it’s taking you to get over Greg Grumbacher? Well, it’s taking her just as long. Because it may have hurt and scared you, but not only did it do those things to her, too, she’s also living with the guilt that the whole thing is her fault. And she still hasn’t forgiven herself. I’m not sure she ever will completely. But the difference between the two of you is that you’re ready to try to move on, and she still isn’t.”

  I think about this. “Is she going to be okay?”