“My little brothers. You want to meet them?”
I shrug. “Sure,” I say, feeling nervous for some reason. I follow him over to the table. He puts the wad of paper napkins down on the wet table and his mom wipes up the water. “Aidan’s six, Alex is almost five. This is Pippa. Say hi,” he commands gruffly, which makes me laugh. “Hi Pippa,” they sing-song in unison. “And my mom. Mom, this is Pippa. Her mom is the one who works at the vet clinic.”
“Oh! Is she here? I’d love to meet her and thank her personally.”
“She’s in the car.” I thumb toward the door. “I can tell her to come in.”
“If she wouldn’t mind! We just ordered—do you want to eat with us?”
“I can ask, I guess,” I say.
For a split second I consider standing in the heated foyer, then telling Ben’s mom that my mom says we can’t stay. But truthfully, it would be kind of nice to sit inside and eat with Ben’s family. I think both Mom and I could use a break from the house.
“Everything OK?” Mom says when I approach the car.
“Mrs. Baxter wants to say hi.” I realize as I say it that her last name might not be Baxter anymore, if she’s remarried. “Ben’s mom? The one with Catniss the cat?”
“Oh, Veronica! I’d love to meet her. Is she inside?”I nod, and Mom follows me back inside. Soon Ben’s mom is reiterating the offer to eat with them. Mom glances at me, I smile and she says, “That sounds lovely.”
Veronica tells Ben to find two more chairs in the busy restaurant, and then she flags down a waiter and we order drinks.
“Jukebox?” Ben suggests after returning with the chairs, and I follow him over, winding our way through the tables. Even though it’s a Tuesday, Pete’s is packed. It always is, with people of all ages, but especially in winter when the patio is closed.
“How’s ski club?”
“Awesome. I haven’t seen this much new powder, consistently, in years.”
“I hadn’t even really noticed,” I say, realizing what a bubble I’ve been living in.
“Yeah, you’ve been pretty MIA. Even from photo club. You OK?”
I nod. “I think this is the beginning of the end of my funk. At least, I can get back to the alumni project. Sorry I abandoned you and Gemma on it.”
He shrugs. “Break-ups suck. Have you heard from Dylan at all?”
I shake my head. “I think he’s dating this girl Muse.”
“Bangs? Black hair?” Ben asks.
I nod.
“I saw him with that girl the other day. At the movies.”
I bite my lip to hold back the tears. It doesn’t work.
Ben pulls a napkin from a dispenser on the nearest table and passes it to me. I dab my eyes with it and take a deep breath.
“I heard this theory,” I tell him. “That it takes a quarter of the time you were with someone to get over them.”
“Really,” Ben says evenly.
“Yeah, well,” I say. “It doesn’t appear to apply to Dylan McCutter.”
I wonder what Dylan’s doing right now. Without realizing it, I feel almost as though, when I was inside working on the photo albums, my life was on hold—or life, in general, was on hold. But now that I’m out in the world, seeing people laughing and eating pizza on a Tuesday, it feels like I can’t pretend. Dylan hasn’t been waiting outside my door for me. He’s living his life. He’s moved on.
“It’s weird,” I say. “I broke up with him. Isn’t the person who does the breaking up—the breaker-upper—supposed to be OK? Like, I wanted to break up with him otherwise I wouldn’t have broken up with him, so why am I so sad?”
“There’s this theory about manufactured foods,” Ben says, and I raise my eyebrows. He holds up a hand. “Hear me out. We like foods that have an identifiable strong flavor, but we tire of them quickly. Salt ’n’ vinegar chips, chocolate, root beer. It’s exciting at first, and then it fizzles out. But Coke … Coke is different. Apparently it’s perfectly engineered so that you don’t tire of it.”
“The point, Baxter. The point.”
“Maybe our dating instincts are like our tastebuds. Why so many people hook up for a night but never again. Or go out for a month and then break up. It’s why it takes so long to find someone to be with forever, I guess.”
“So you think Dylan’s not Coke.”
“I don’t mean to make him sound like a simple can of soda.”
“Dace also has a theory about soda. And that Coke boys are the best. The whole package. But they’re kept that way because Pepsis are always close behind, vying to be the favorite.”
“Where does that leave Orange Crush?” Ben asks.
“Somewhere between cream soda and root beer, I guess.”
“Better than ginger ale.”
I run my fingers over the jukebox keys. “I was so sure that we were meant to be together.” The jukebox has this ornamental feature around the display, illuminated fluid-filled tubes through which bubbles rise. I watch one speed toward the top, where it breaks to join the surface air. “Anyway, can we talk about something else?”
“Taylor Swift’s new hairstyle. Love or hate?”
I laugh. “Love, obvs. So the project. How’s it coming along?”
He shrugs. “I’ve gotten a lot of quotes from alumni and students about their memories—that Facebook page was brilliant, if I can take all the credit, but the taking of pictures … well, I was hoping you’d resurface in time to get at it?”
Oh crap, I think.
“Oh crap,” I say. “Gemma didn’t shoot anything?”
“Gemma’s kind of not on the project anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Well—we broke up.”
“You broke up?” I say. “I really was living under a rock. Sorry.”
“We weren’t each other’s Cokes.” He punches a quarter into the jukebox and picks a song from the ’80s. “One of my mom’s favorites,” he explains. “I actually brought my camera tonight. I remembered you saying this place has been a hangout for Spalding students for years.”
“Decades.”
“Great, I’ll just grab my camera.”
I watch him, his easy strides, and a funny feeling emerges inside me. I realize I’m really happy to see him. Or maybe I’m just super hungry?
“So, what’s inherently Pete’s?” Ben asks once he’s jukebox-adjacent once more.
“Well, I mean, the pizza, but that’s pretty obvious. What about this jukebox?”
“Duh,” Ben says. “Could it have been any more obvious?”
“Let’s do a close-up on one of the buttons,” I say, and Ben hands over his camera.
“You shoot it.”
I take the camera and lean close, focusing on the K. I snap a few frames, then hold the camera out so we can both see. “Hmm. I don’t love it.”
“What about focusing in on the P. For Pete’s?”
“Better idea,” I say, then refocus. I snap a few more, changing the angle of view to get the flipbook of song titles into the shot.
“Wow, that’s great,” Ben says when I show him.
“Hey, so ski club—is there room for one more? Asking for a friend.”
“Tell your friend yes. She’ll love it.”
• • •
“You still thinking about Tisch for college?” We’re in Ben’s car. After convincing his mom and my mom to go out to celebrate Veronica’s birthday, they took a cab and left Mom’s car at Pete’s, and Ben’s driving me home. The boys are in the backseat.
“Definitely,” I say, my finger on the seat-warmer button. “I miss it. It’s crazy how two weeks changes everything.”
“Yeah,” he says, and I feel guilty.
“I probably owe you an apology for that. You would’ve gone away snowboarding all winter and instead yo
u’re stuck at Spalding. Like, who am I to tell you what to do?”
His expression is unreadable in the short glance he throws my way before he turns his attention back to the road.
“Actually, I was going to thank you for that,” Ben says. “It felt—nice. To have someone making me feel wanted, or like I belong somewhere, you know? Especially with my dad not caring. And my mom—well, she’s great, but between the problems we’ve had with my ‘acting out’ and the boys and her work … and her obsession with decorating our home …”
I laugh. And Ben laughs. “You think I’m kidding but she has a real obsession. You’ll see.”
“How will I see?”
“Oh yeah, right. That was in my head.”
“What was?”
“When I asked if you wanted to come over and check out my record player. Which, wow, that sounds like a line. But it’s not. The NADINATOR will change your life. Come on. Unless you really want to get home.”
“Yeah, I’m dying to get home after being out of the house doing something other than school for the first time in, like, 17 days.”
He turns left at the light and then right on the first side street, then pulls into the driveway of a large, two-story brick home. Ben’s house is in Spalding Heights. It’s not anything like Luis and Juan Juarez’s or some of the other sprawling homes in the area, but it’s still really nice. It’s dark brick, and all the windows have white edging around them. The front door is massive with one of those brass lion knockers.
“Upstairs, and into your PJs,” Ben instructs the boys when we get inside. They kick off their boots and drop their hats, mitts and coats inside the front door and race up the stairs.
“Wow,” I say once we’re inside. The hall foyer is open up to the second floor, with a massive crystal chandelier that hangs down from the second-story ceiling. The walls of the hallway are lined in mirrors, making it feel like we’re in the palace of Versailles. Or at least, how I imagine it from seeing pictures in my history textbook. “This is a beautiful house.”
“That’s one way to describe it,” Ben says, then gestures to the floor. “White carpets! Who puts in white carpets?” He nods at the mat by the door. “Which is why we must take our shoes off here.”
“Sure.” Instead of kicking off my boots the way I do at home, I bend over and gingerly remove them, then stand them up on the mat.
He leads me up the stairs to his room and pushes open the door. The room is square with a large window that overlooks the backyard. His bed is trunk-style, with worn-looking dark wood drawers that pull out under the mattress and what looks like faux-vintage baseball striped bedding. There’s a large framed bulletin board with ticket stubs on one wall and on the other wall is a huge map of the world, one of those novelty maps that you can scratch off the places you’ve been.
“You’ve traveled a lot.”
He nods. “Yeah, before Dad left, we used to travel with him.”
Over his bed is a red star lit by tiny clear bulbs. The shelves are cage-like, and at the end of his bed there’s a trunk filled with old LPs.
“This could be in a magazine,” I say, looking around.
He nods. “Or a catalog, right?” He walks over to his desk, which is dark wood and has one of those rolling desk chairs. He grabs a Restoration Hardware catalog—and opens it to a spread of his room.
The only difference is the cast-iron letter on the bookshelf—a B instead of an E.
“Wow,” I laugh.
“She’s already planning what she’s going to do with it when I move out.”
“What are you going to do after high school?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” he says. “But the answer, you’re going to have to wait for. I’ve got to go read the boys bedtime stories. You want to come?”
“Sure,” I say nervously, following him down the hall. His brothers have an equally exquisitely decorated room.
“Page 34,” Ben explains. He pulls over two beanbag chairs, giving me a navy one that says Aidan in red letters and plopping himself down in a red one that says Alex in navy letters.
“OK, five pages of your choice, then five pages of mine,” he says, and the boys scream, “Captain Underpants!” in unison.
“Surprising,” Ben says sarcastically as Aidan drops the book over the top bunk. Ben catches it and opens it to the folded page. He reads, holding up the book to show both kids the pictures every few seconds. A few minutes later he folds the corner of the page and puts the book aside, then grabs another from the dresser behind him, holding it up for me to see. “Hardy Boys. My pick. Who wants to fill Pippa in on where we left off?” Aidan explains that the boys have just run after a bad guy who went to the train station.
Ben reads and I close my eyes, listening to the story.
When he finishes he stands, then holds his hand out to me to pull me out of the beanbag. He climbs up the bunk to kiss Aidan and then lowers himself to Alex’s bunk. He joins me in the hall and we walk back to his room.
“OK, what would you like to listen to?” Ben goes over to the shelf beside his bed and lifts the lid on his record player.
“Something I don’t know.” I sit down on his plush carpet, my back against the wall.
Ben rifles through his albums and I look around the room, scanning the shelves. The entire Hardy Boys collection, the old-fashioned hardcover books, line the top shelf of his room, above his desk. On his dresser are a bunch of different bottles—aftershave and cologne and hair gel and deodorant.
He slips an LP out of its sleeve and onto the turntable. “This band’s pretty obscure, but they’ve got this one song. My dad used to listen to this album when I was little. This line—” He turns the volume up. “It’s about a relationship but it makes me think of my dad now.”
“Like closure?” I ask, but he shakes his head.
“That’s the thing, I guess I was looking for closure, but maybe not everything in life gets it, you know? Some stuff just is. I don’t know. Maybe that’s my way of resigning myself to what happened with him.”
“I’m sorry about the way things turned out,” I say, stretching my legs out in front of me. Ben risked a lot to go to New York to find his dad, because to him, it was worth it. Only the reason his mother had banned him from making contact turned out to be for his own good—his dad just didn’t want Ben in his life. Simple and sad as that.
“Me too,” Ben says, turning the LP jacket over in his hands. “But in a way it’s better just to know. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking about Dylan. How being without him sucks, but maybe it’s better to know how he feels, to know where I stand. To have made the choice to be apart, even if that clears the way for Muse and Dylan to get together. I instinctively reach for my phone. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe I do need an Instagram break. “Limbo. It sucks.”
“Exactly. That’s how I felt all these years too. And yeah, it sucks to not be wanted by my dad, but at the same time, it’s somehow brought me closer to my mom. It made me realize that being a parent, being a good parent, it’s a choice.”
He gets up and grabs two pillows off his bed, then hands me one and puts the other against the wall, and then he stretches out so he’s lying down on his back, looking up at the ceiling, his head on the pillow. I pull my knees to my chin, hugging the pillow between my legs and chest.
“I told David I know.”
Ben lets out a whistle and looks over at me. “How’d that go?”
“Fine, as boring as that sounds. Now we all know. I guess that’s why my mom wanted me to do it. It actually does feel like a relief.” I stretch out and tuck the pillow under my head, staring up at the ceiling too, Ben an arm’s length away.
“I guess both our moms had methods to their madness. And I’m happy to still be at Spalding. I’ve got ski club, and my classes aren’t bad this term. And—” H
e stops. Whatever he was about to say, he decides against it.
For a while, we lie on the carpet, listening to the music. The record ends and we still lie there—the sound of the turntable, Ben’s breathing and mine. It’s the calmest I’ve felt in weeks. At some point, Veronica comes home and upstairs; she pokes her head around Ben’s open bedroom door. “Rise and shine, you crazy kids. It’s late and a school night.” Ben’s just as dopey as I am, and I wonder if he fell asleep.
Ben drives me home and we’re quiet in the car. He pulls into my driveway and puts the car in park. And then there’s the awkward how-will-we-say-goodnight moment. But Ben breaks it. “I’ll text you about the alumni photos.”
“Cool. Thanks for the ride.”
I get out and walk up to the front door. Ben waits in the driveway until I’m inside, and there’s only a moment that I wish it had been Dylan I had spent my night with.
CHAPTER 18: ONE WEEK UNTIL I’M OVER HIM
Ski club members get out of class 20 minutes early on Friday, and by the time I get to the coach bus out front, Dace is already on board and has saved me a seat beside her, behind Gemma and Emma. “Always sitting behind twins, huh?” Ben says as he passes me.
“What’s he talking about?” Dace asks, but I just roll my eyes and laugh.
Everyone’s talking and laughing, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m really part of something, in a way I haven’t felt since Tisch Camp.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Dace says, squeezing my arm. “Even if it had to come at the loss of The McCuter.”
“Let’s talk about something else, kay?”
“Done. The dance. We haven’t even discussed wardrobe!”
“Yeah,” I say, disheartened. Of course I’m still going to go—how can I not, given I’m doing the mural—but it feels hard to get excited about going when I’d pictured Dylan and me going to our first high school dance together.
“We should probably shop for dresses together,” Dace is saying. “To make sure we’re not matchy-matchy, but we’re also not clashy-clashy.” She purses her lips and bats her eyelashes at me.
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