“She’s a writer,” Penny chimes in. “She wants to put up a bookstore for kids and teens. Isn’t that the cutest thing?”
“Yeah,” Bro agrees, his gaze fixed on Mandy. “Very cute.”
“That’s our Mandy!” Penny coos. “Always busy being so artsy and idealistic and role model-y.”
“Role model-y,” Mandy repeats dryly, and Bro takes this as a question and nods, like he knows her enough to be reassuring her that yes, she is in fact very role model-y.
Penny flips her hair and rests a hand on Bro’s knee. “I bet Mandy here has never been a bad girl, ever,” she says, laughing like being a bad girl is the status quo, like not being a bad girl is something downright ridiculous.
Bro turns to her, finally. “Why, babe, when have you been a bad girl?”
“I can’t answer that,” Penny says in a silky voice, “I’m always a bad girl.”
Bro raises his eyebrows at Mandy like he is expecting her to step up the game and come up with a sluttier response, like he is a competition both girls are dead set on dominating. But Mandy just shrugs, and Bro chooses to take the easier target and starts stroking Penny’s thigh. Mandy wants to throw up, this time for real, and excuses herself to go to the bathroom. Penny calls out after her, “Oh, honey, there’s no need to be upset!” Bro takes this as a joke and laughs.
In the bathroom, Mandy inspects her reflection. Despite the harsh fluorescent lighting, she thinks she looks more than okay, and she should, because she actually spent time wrestling with her hairbrush and blush brush earlier tonight. Her hair is shiny, and her cheeks have a healthy flush to them. Meanwhile, when you look at Penny—really look at her—she’s actually not that pretty. Mandy feels bad for thinking this, but it’s true: Penny’s eyes are too far apart, and her nose is too big for her face, and she lacks that characteristic, confident glow only happy girls give off. Yet boys flock to her because she wants them to, and because she lets them, and Mandy is glad she doesn’t need that much attention. She wonders how much effort it takes to be Penny. Then she feels guilty for thinking all these judgmental thoughts and decides she should go back out to check on her friends.
4
Lucas is, when you get right down to it, a romantic. He used to be the active type—one who passionately pursued the object of his affection, one who believed in the power of persistence, one who had an arsenal of grand gestures such as driving three hours to see someone for ten minutes, and bringing someone breakfast at five AM every day, and organizing a surprise party for someone he had just met. But then he had his heart broken, and all these grand gestures suddenly seemed rather silly. So he retreated into his shell, and although he remained a romantic, transformed into the other type, the passive type. All that trying turned into hoping, and all that doing turned into wishing. He couldn’t see the point of putting himself out there anymore, so he decided he’d wait for someone to come and find the point for him, or simply to come and find him. These days, he feels like he is always waiting for someone or something to sweep him off his feet and change his life. But perhaps he has been waiting for too long that every time someone or something comes along, he is suspicious: Does that girl really like him? Is she just being polite? Is he assuming too much? Worse, he is reluctant to prove himself wrong, so he embraces his suspicions, clinging to them tightly, obsessively, because it is the only way he knows how to hold on to himself—if he expects very little and doesn’t risk too much, maybe it will be harder for the world to hurt him. These days, he is content writing his stories, where nothing is perfect but at least everything makes sense; every rejection fits into the bigger picture and every heartbreak builds up to the greater scheme of things. These days, he is content admiring someone from afar, the way he did years ago in high school, when everything still felt brand new. He is content imagining various scenarios in which they would meet, various twists and turns that could lead to a sort of happy ending. He is content writing, and admiring, and imagining—anything more than that seemed superfluous. Lucas is, when you get right down to it, a romantic. But these days, he would rather have the innocent futility of a baseless crush than the fragile balance of the real deal.
He does not want people to feel sorry for him. He keeps himself occupied, and on the best and busiest of days, he does not even have time to feel alone. He has become quite adept at keeping the loneliness at bay, but sometimes, it manages to sneak up on him. The loneliness finds him in idle moments like this one when he is driving home alone (Franco has gone off to a party with the college freshman and her friends), when he realizes that he is always working on weekdays and writing on weekends, but has nobody to share the success or the stories with. He thinks the heartaches may have hardened him into someone who is more comfortable going through life on his own, and he knows this is not something to be proud of. He thinks he may have given up on too many things, including himself, and he wants so badly to be wrong about this.
He checks his watch: eleven PM, much too early to head home, change into his pajamas, turn off the lights, and climb into bed, even by his standards. He is only a few blocks away from his house now, and although he is tempted to go straight, he makes a detour. Home can wait; he knows exactly where he wants to go first.
5
Mandy is sitting beside Gio in the backseat of Diane’s car. The driver has not switched on the radio, and nobody is speaking, so they are left listening to the humming of the air-conditioner, the whirring of the engine, and Diane lightly snoring in the passenger seat. They have just dropped off Penny (who was not so happy about having to say goodbye to Dude and Bro after Diane downed three shots of tequila and almost passed out), and are on their way to Gio’s house. They stay silent until the car pulls to a stop.
“Are you sorry you ever dated Penny?” Mandy asks. She has to know—she has to know if girls like Penny linger in guys’ minds long after they should, if the fact that they are all over the place means things are never really over between them.
“Sometimes,” Gio admits. “The thing is, I kind of wish it has always been Yas. I know this is hard for you to believe because it’s only been weeks, but we’re serious about each other. She gets me. But I don’t like having to explain to her that I was a completely different person before I met her.”
Mandy is surprised to hear this, and because she and Gio have never really talked about their feelings, she tries to cover up the awkwardness. “Completely different person meaning asshole, right?”
Gio laughs. “Hey, at least I’m trying to be a better guy now.”
Mandy laughs too. “Yeah, you were pretty awesome back there, protecting Diane when Dude and Bro were insisting on bringing her home. I think you may have even stood up for Penny at some point.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t interfere sooner,” Gio says.
“Yeah, well, you did when you had to,” Mandy tells him.
They say goodnight, and Mandy is left alone in the backseat. She wonders how it’s possible for Gio to be nearing his happy ending while she is stuck somewhere in the middle of her story. She doesn’t need much. She doesn’t need someone to change for her, the way Yas does, or someone to challenge her, the way Penny does. She doesn’t even need someone to take care of her, the way Diane does—she can very well take care of herself. It’s the little things she needs someone for, like someone to hold her hand at the end of a long day, or someone to watch stupid comedies with, or someone to curl up with on the couch on a lazy Sunday morning as she reads the newspaper and eats her cereal. Which probably means she doesn’t “need” someone in the strictest sense, although at the end of a long day, or while watching a stupid comedy, or on a lazy Sunday morning, having someone would be very much appreciated.
A few minutes later, the driver parks the car in Diane’s driveway, and Mandy has to get out, fish Diane’s keys from her bag, get her into bed, place a glass of water and some aspirin on her bedside table, and make sure she’ll be okay. She thinks she hears Diane say thank you before she closes the do
or, but she can’t be certain. By the time Mandy is sitting in the car again, she is exhausted and a bit resentful: tonight did not turn out to be a good night, and she feels cheated. She checks her watch. There is still time, and maybe there is still hope. The driver asks where she wants to be dropped off. “Ma’am, maaga pa,” he says, and Mandy can’t tell whether he’s being sarcastic or sympathetic. Then she remembers—there is a small coffee shop nearby, the one in between the Korean grocery and the appliance service center. Whatever remains of the night, she can spend there.
6
Lucas sits alone, as usual. He has grown so accustomed to being alone that perhaps his loneliness suits him, fitting into his life the way hustle and bustle fit into other people’s. He’d like to believe he can be alone and not look like it’s the last thing in the world he wants to be. He’d like to believe he can be alone and look as if he belongs somewhere, like the girl who just walked into the café.
He thinks she looks familiar, but he can barely place how or why. And then she takes a seat near the counter, brings out a book from her bag, and starts reading, and he remembers. She used to be here all the time, absorbed in a novel whose title he was never near enough to see, her eyebrows knitted in concentration as she flipped page after page. That was more than a year ago. She would lose herself in the story (sometimes, he’d even catch her smiling), until the door opened and disrupted her peace. Every time someone entered the café, she would glance up, and her forehead would wrinkle with disappointment almost immediately after. When there have been too many interruptions, she would stop reading altogether. He used to watch her watch the door every single day—whoever she was expecting never came. He wonders if she’s still waiting.
He is inexplicably, inadvertently smitten with this girl now, as he was more than a year ago.
7
The café isn’t quite deserted tonight, Mandy notices. There is a couple at the table beside her: the girl has poster paint splotches and cheese stains on her white blouse, and the boy is teasing her affectionately—something about a blind date and Jagermeister shots and a guy named Jack. The girl makes a face and slaps his shoulder, and they both laugh. Near the entrance, there are two guys and two girls. One girl is showing off her wedding ring and talking about a honeymoon weekend in Greece while her husband keeps a hand behind her back and sips his iced latte and smiles. The other girl and the other boy seem shy and a bit guarded around each other, like they aren’t officially together yet, or like they were officially together once upon a time and are just on the verge of being officially together again. And then there’s that boy by the window—Mandy thinks, Okay, I guess he’s sort of cute—who beat her to her favorite spot where she used to stay and wait for her ex-boyfriend, Tristan. The seat across from him is empty.
The café isn’t quite deserted tonight, and Mandy wonders what story each person in the room has to tell. She wonders how different these stories are from each other, and she wonders if these stories happen to intersect at any point. The couple at the table beside her and the group near the entrance, they all seem to have found something raw and real and right in one another. At this moment, Mandy can’t help feeling alone. She thinks, How many people find each other every day? There are a thousand possibilities, a thousand ways that could have led her to someone. A thousand chances for her to meet a good guy, to clear up some space for him in her life, and maybe fall in love with him. Mandy wonders how many she’s missed.
8
Lucas catches Mandy looking at him. She instantly drops her gaze and blushes a full-on blush, the kind that probably went all the way up to her scalp and down to the tips of her toes. He feels sorry for her, but he can’t help it—he laughs. He laughs because he understands what he can do and what he will do; it seems so simple yet so daunting. He laughs because it might just help him feel brave. The seat across from him is empty. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore.
Is he ready? No, probably not. But his readiness is irrelevant, because action and inaction are posing equal risks. Everything hinges on this moment. It might not come again any time soon.
9
Mandy should probably get back to her novel, but she is anxious and embarrassed and can’t seem to focus. This boy is a distraction, and she’s not used to being distracted. She is always attempting to be productive, whether she’s finishing her reading or picking out books for her shop or driving somewhere or talking to clients on the phone or checking things off lists or figuring out how to make the people in her life get along. She’s not used to being distracted, but it actually feels kind of nice. Maybe this is what really matters: that she fills her days with a steady stream of productivity so that when the quiet, tender moments come in between, she can learn to pause, and feel, and be grateful that they exist. She rarely has moments like these, and perhaps she should breathe them in.
Everything hinges on these moments, these moments that might not come again any time soon. Mandy checks her watch. It is almost midnight.
10
When you think about it, everything is fleeting. Every second of every minute of every hour. The race and the rush and the choices and the chances. The love that grazed your fingertips, possibilities that brushed past you on your way out to work or play or save the world, a happy ending you may have believed in with a faith beyond anything you could have imagined you were capable of. We shove each other for space, we lament the loss of time as we scatter it throughout the vast landscape of our lives. When we count the broken pieces, we realize that we will not be here forever, so we chase after these moments, seize them, and try to make them last and last and last. But maybe the best we can do is to understand that there is one thing in particular that should always come first.
Lucas stands and walks towards Mandy. He stops. She smiles. They are catching fragments of their stories one by one, fragments that may have escaped in the distant and not-too-distant moments behind them. It is time to take these fragments and string them together. It doesn’t matter how many possibilities they’ve missed—thousands, millions, billions—what matters is this possibility, right here and right now. A new day begins with purpose, and with promise.
About the Author
Marla is always trying: Trying to read more books, trying to cook dinner, trying to paint her tiny toenails (sometimes while cooking dinner), trying to learn better time management (so she doesn’t paint her toenails while cooking dinner), trying not to eat Cheetos late at night (hence the cooking), trying not to be a Mean Girl, and trying to make fetch happen. She also tries not to quote random movie lines all the time. But some things come naturally, like third-wheeling on her parents’ dates, guzzling coffee (her brother Timo makes the best lattes), guzzling…water with her fierce friend Ed, being an awesome Ate to Marcy and Macu, walking hand in hand with her nephew Cisco, and staying young (sort of) by writing for Candy magazine’s lifestyle and entertainment pages every day. She lives on Earth with her fellow Earthling.
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