It’s a little after eleven by the time I get to the store, but Alex has already finished almost all of the cleanup from the party. On the counter are two clamshells of the house special lo mein from Wang’s Palace (the yummy trifecta: baby shrimp, green onions, and red cabbage), and an episode of Golden Girls is frozen on the ancient TV screen, even though the back-to-back block doesn’t start until the afternoon.
Seeing my confusion, Alex smiles and points to the TV. “So it turns out the VCR on this thing actually still works, and I’ve been recording some of our favorite episodes for a while. I figured we could use some today.”
He pushes himself up so he’s seated on the counter and pats the spot next to him for me to join.
I do.
And for a little while I forget that we couldn’t save this place, and that Alex is with my sister, even if he did take my hand last night. I forget about the kiss with Dr. B., and V running down the stairs. Forget that everyone is leaving, that everyone except for me has grand plans to take over the world.
We’re watching the one where Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose are arrested for prostitution the night they’re supposed to see Burt Reynolds’s show, when Charlie jogs in, punching the air in his kickboxing clothes.
Both Alex and I hop off the counter, though at this point I don’t think either one of us is remotely concerned about being caught doing anything. What’s he going to do, fire us?
“You didn’t come last night,” Alex says, not even accusatory, a simple statement of fact.
Charlie offers a look as blank as grade-school paste, and then nods, seeming to remember. “Oh yeah, the big bash. Sorry about that; something came up.”
He doesn’t bother asking if we raised the money or how things went, which I suppose is fine, considering. Neither Alex nor I offer up details of our groan-worthy gala.
“I’ve got some news for the two of you, and I think it’s ultimately good.” He makes this open-palmed gesture like someone in an old-timey movie trying to sell you something. “I know that I told you that we’d stay open for the rest of the summer, but the new owners want to get started on renovations as soon as possible. So your last day is going to be Wednesday.”
“But that’s . . . ,” I start.
“Just four days away,” Alex finishes.
“That’s the good part for you guys! The new owners asked if they’d be displacing employees, yada, yada, yada, and I told them I’d promised everyone that we’d stay open through the summer. I really fought for you.”
This seems extremely unlikely.
“So,” he continues, “they offered to pay your wages for the next three weeks as a severance package.”
Alex and I don’t say anything. Canned laughter from the TV expands to fill the whole sales floor as Sophia refuses to bail the other girls out of jail unless one of them agrees to let Sophia go in her place to see Burt. I’m not even looking at the screen, but I’ve seen this episode so many times that I know exactly what’s happening. Can even remember the purple-and-teal dress Blanche is wearing; it looks a little like some of the pastel butterflyfish we have.
Alex and I continue to stare at Charlie.
“Oh, come on.” Charlie is annoyed we’re not thrilled with this arrangement. “What kids in retail get a severance package? Isn’t that the dream, getting paid for not working? You’re welcome.”
“That’s very generous,” Alex says flatly. “Thanks for looking out for us.”
I don’t say anything, because I’m floating above everything again.
Alex and I don’t say much the rest of the day. We watch more of the taped episodes and then the ones that play on the Hallmark Channel in the afternoon. Ironically, one of the shows the network plays is the Burt Reynolds one, but we watch it anyway, despite having literally just seen it. We laugh even harder at the end when Burt himself makes a special guest appearance. The following episode is this weird sad one where Blanche’s late husband comes back and explains that he had faked his death because he’d been framed by his business partner. Blanche is furious at him for leaving her, but eventually she comes around and forgives him, simply grateful that he’s still alive and back in her life. Of course it turns out the whole thing is a dream.
I think about my own dream with Dad at the aquarium, wonder how my mom would react if he reappeared in our lives. I know I’d forgive Dad for sure.
I don’t remember falling asleep on the counter, but I wake up forty minutes before we close, Alex nowhere in sight, his hoodie tucked under my head like a pillow.
Heart in my throat, I jump off the counter. FishTopia is ending, and I’ve missed nearly two of our last hours!
“Alex! Alex, where are you?” I race through the rows of displays, past the starfish and the yellow tangs, the sea horses with their curled tails and eyelashes.
Finally I find him in the back watching a tank of tropical fish. He’s just studying them, his hand lightly on the glass like he’s a little kid.
“You’re awake.” He smiles.
“Why’d you let me sleep so long?”
“You seemed tired.” He shrugs.
We make our way back to the front of the store.
“Well, at least we’ve got time for one more episode,” I say, but Alex shakes his head.
“If it’s okay with you, I’m gonna cut out of here a little early. Don’t worry. I already cleaned all the tanks and took out the garbage—”
“Oh.” Seriously, he’s leaving early during one of our last days ever at FishTopia? “Hot date?” I ask, trying to sound casual and not turned inside-out.
Alex looks at the linoleum flooring as if it might contain all the secrets of getting into a top tier college.
“Look.” I sigh. “You’ve got to stop acting like such a total freak about it if you’re gonna keep dating my sister, and you should prob—”
“What? I’m not—”
“. . . ably not hold my hand like you did last—”
“. . . dating Veronica,” Alex finishes.
It takes a minute to sink in.
“Wait, you’re not?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “She’s been going out with Chris since June. How do you not know that?”
All at once I’ve got this movie-flashback ability to perfectly recall the fight V and I had the night she told me to kill myself so everyone would be better off. Now you only care because you think I’m dating him. I guess she never technically said that they were dating, but it was pretty damn implied.
And what about Alex? He didn’t exactly deny that they were hanging out either. I don’t want you to think that we were talking about you. Okay, so maybe I could have let him explain things. Maybe I should have listened to what V was saying outside my door or read her note, but the whole thing is still really weird.
And how could I not know that my sister has had a boyfriend all this time? We used to know everything about each other. She used to come to me crying when someone hurt her feelings. How could Veronica hide her first real relationship from me? I’m the worst big sister in the history of time. . . .
No, no, I’m not.
“If you’re not dating, then why were you at the movies with her that Friday night?” I’m all revved up again. Going to a movie together on a Friday night is the datiest thing of all time. The first time that Dr. B. got to second base was when he went to see Say Anything . . . at the theater with Lizzie Mapleton. “Just the two of you. Elle and I saw.”
Letting out a long breath, Alex tilts his head. “First of all, it wasn’t just the two of us. Chris works there and he kept sneaking down from the projection room. At one point the whole film stopped because it got stuck and he had to run back up and fix it.”
Maybe what V and Alex were laughing about?
“Oh,” I say.
“But I told you, we have been hanging out occasionally.” Alex looks at the ground again. “Ronnie has been crazy worried about you and just wanted someone to talk to about it.”
“
Oh.”
“And if you really want to know the truth, I did feel shitty about that at first, and I made it totally clear to her that I didn’t want to talk about you behind your back. But then I realized she was really just looking for someone to tell her that you’re gonna be okay.”
“Oh.” The SAT is going to be awesome, since this is now apparently the only word I know.
In my defense this is all a lot to take in. Alex and Veronica not dating. All this time V has just been worried about me? Then why is she always so yell-y and hostile? What’s with all that pent-up anger Dr. B. keeps saying she has against me? There’s definitely something huge that I’m missing. Again, I wish I’d read her note, but it was gone this morning. She must have gotten it last night after catching Dr. B. and me.
Alex presses his lips together in this frustrated smile. “So, what? For a week you’ve been pissed at me because you thought V and I were kicking it behind your back, and yet it never once occurred to you to just ask me about it? That’s pretty screwed up, Molly.”
It is.
I’m pretty screwed up, but that isn’t exactly breaking news. I’m just the screwed-up girl who ran away from the divisionals meet and got the team disqualified. The screwed-up girl who couldn’t even keep a hermit crab alive.
The floor is really interesting. One of the Goldfish crackers from the party must have made it downstairs and missed our broom efforts; there are orange crumbs on the floor under the counter. Also a few teeny tiny drips of the blue-green paint (the paint Alex said reminded him of my eyes), which must have landed outside the range of our tarp.
“Molly?”
When I finally look up, Alex is grinning at me as if I weren’t the world’s most stubborn idiot.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be. I’m pretty stoked you were so upset when you thought I was seeing someone. At least it means I haven’t been that off base about us.”
He puts his hand on top of mine on the counter, and I’m too confused to move it. The minute Alex explained he wasn’t dating V, this almost ecstatic sense of relief flooded me. I used to get really bottled up before a race during swim meets, but then when I would hit the touch pad at the end and pull off my goggles, it was the most amazing release to look up at the board and see a time that didn’t suck, and to know I’d survived. That’s exactly how it feels to know that Alex and V aren’t together, like all that worrying was for nothing.
But now we’re right back where we were two months ago, when Alex asked me out and I blew him off. When I wasn’t sure if I could live up to being Alex’s Molly. Nothing has changed. The thought of him pulling a T. J. Cranston still wrecks me.
And I can say anything to Dr. B., and he’ll still like me; he promised (and he didn’t not kiss back!).
“Molly,” Alex is saying. “You have to know how I feel about you, and I think that you feel the same way. So can we please stop pussyfooting around and give us a shot?”
My heart is racing; panic flooding my throat, making it difficult to breathe.
You’re a great girl, Molly. You’re just kind of different from what I thought before I got to know you.
“I don’t—”
“If you’re worried about blowing up our friendship, I hate to break it to you, but the fact that I’m in love with you has been blowing up our friendship for a long time now.”
“What?”
He’s in love with me? How is it possible to be so dizzyingly excited about something and still filled with enough dread to sink an ocean liner?
“Molly.” He leans in, his hand still on mine. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t want to kiss me that day we were painting, or last night in the car.”
“I . . .”
So close. The slight oily smell from the house special lo mein on his breath. There are these little tan freckles on his forehead that I never noticed before, the slightest fuzz on his cheeks.
No, no, no. This will ruin everything.
“I can’t.” I back away, and he lets go of my hand.
“Why?”
“I’m not good enough for you. You won’t like me.”
“What does that even mean? I’m telling you I like you.” He sounds so frustrated. Already I am fucking up everything!
“I just . . . can’t.”
“So it’s not okay for me to date someone else, but you don’t want to date me.”
“No. I mean . . . Alex . . . I just—” The words catch in my throat.
“Fine, if that’s the way you want it, I’m done.” Redder and angrier than I’ve ever seen him, Alex grabs his bag from behind the register, knocking over this old margarine container where Charlie keeps thumbtacks and spare pennies. Everything splashes onto the ground, creating a mildly dangerous obstacle course.
He starts for the door, but I reach for his arm.
“Alex, wait.”
“Wait for what? Huh, Molly? Until you get jealous because you think I’m dating someone else again? Is that what I should wait for?”
“Alex, stop. . . . I . . .” I can hardly breathe, everything all circular and twisty in my head.
“Look, Molly, I know that you’ve got problems, and that has never once been an issue for me. I dig all of you. But that doesn’t give you the green light to jerk me around like this, to give me just enough hope to keep me hanging around.”
“I . . .”
“So you can go play mind games with some other guy, because I’m through letting my heart break.”
“Stop,” I beg.
“You know, I’m glad this place is closing, because it means I won’t have to waste one more second of my life on you!”
Then he’s gone, the bell on the door chiming behind him.
I want to run after him, but I can’t move, the spilled thumbtacks somehow pinning me to the floor.
Gasping for breath, like I finished the two-hundred-meter butterfly and I can’t get enough oxygen. Everything is a slurry of lights and sounds and suck. Alex’s face bunched with anger. T.J. calmly telling me I wasn’t like he thought I would be. My mom and her perfectly adorable baking skills. V telling me to make life easier for everyone else by pulling the plug on myself.
Dr. B.
He can make this better. He’ll make this better.
This has to qualify as an emergency.
Hands shaking, I pull his card out of my wallet and punch his cell number into my phone.
He picks up on the third ring. “Molly, I’m so sorry. I meant to call you today.”
I try to calm down as I explain that I need to see him, that there’s no way I can wait until our Monday afternoon appointment.
With that same soothing voice from last night, he tries to talk me down, calls me “sweetheart” again. Almost immediately I feel a little better.
“Where are you now?” he asks. When I tell him FishTopia, he sighs. “I’d pick you up and take you to the office, but I’ve had a few drinks, and I probably shouldn’t be driving anywhere. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” My heart drops to my sneakers, and the panic starts again. My breathing kicks up like when characters on sitcoms start hyperventilating and have to breathe into a paper bag. I need to see him. “Maybe I could come to your place? I have my bike.”
Even as I ask, I know that I’m being totally inappropriate. He’s my doctor, not my boyfriend, not my dad. But I have to.
“I guess you could do that.” He doesn’t sound at all convinced that this is a good plan, but after a pause he warms up to the prospect. “Yeah, sure. I’m near the old downtown in that strip of condos on Otter Bay Drive. Pretty close to you.”
I don’t even bother locking up the store. I’m out the door and unlocking Old Montee before he even finishes giving me the address.
Knowing that I’m going to see him, I start to get excited in a good way, not the panicky can’t-get-oxygen way. Dr. B. really is so much better than the Xanax from Dr. Calvin.
It’s only a ten-minute bike ride down the ro
ad to a row of old attached brick buildings with new, cheery paint jobs. There aren’t a lot of apartments or condos in Coral Cove—mostly single-family homes—so this is where everyone’s dad temporarily moves after a divorce. Elle’s father made a stop here before going to Jacksonville; so did Mom’s dad before he went out West. If Dr. B.’s fiancée does decide she’s done with him, he’s all set.
Finding the right unit, I lock my bike to a NO PARKING sign.
I’m heading in, but then I realize I must look awful. Why didn’t I take a second to do something with my hair or make sure that I wasn’t all snotty before charging over? Fishing through my backpack, I find a hair thingie and twist my frizz up into a sloppy topknot; Mom says it “shows off my pretty face.” I put on some tinted ChapStick and wish I’d thought to bring some of the makeup I wore last night.
Dr. B. opens the door, looking more casual than I’ve ever seen. He’s wearing worn jeans and an old Penn T-shirt. It’s clear he hasn’t shaved since yesterday, and his red eyes make me wonder if he’s slept at all. For added weirdness, he’s got a wad of bloody gauze wrapped haphazardly around his right hand, and a tumbler of something amber and alcohol-y in the other.
“Welcome to my humble abode, Molly Byrne,” he says, and lets me in.
The condo isn’t at all what I was expecting. It looks like Shabby Chic threw up on a Pottery Barn. Pale blue slipcovered couch and wing chair with vintage floral throw pillows, antique-looking wicker tables, a fireplace with a lavender vase on the mantel . . . and a heap of broken ceramic-and-glass-type stuff on the white stones of the outer hearth and scattered on the surrounding floorboards.
“I’m sorry,” he says when he notices me staring. “I was trying to straighten up. I didn’t realize you’d get here so quickly. I . . . uh, had a little accident.”
“Is that how you hurt your hand?”
“Something like that,” he says, and I follow his eyes to a fist-size depression in the wall, chunks of plaster on the floor underneath it.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. “Did you talk with your fiancée again?”
100 Days of Cake Page 17
