Now and Again

by Jennifer Ellision

  I'm missing something about all of this… but what?

  ∞

  Back in Mom's car, I crank my key in the ignition as it makes a noise like an upset cat.

  "Shit," I hiss.

  It continues to snarl and spit at me, impervious to the threat in my tone.

  "God damn it, just start," I beg. "Please. I'll do anything. I'll get you an oil change. A wax. I'll get you detailed if you'll just—" The engine sputters and hope flares.

  But both hope and the engine die in my next breath. "—Start," I finish lamely, and let my head thunk down onto the steering wheel. Can nothing go my way?

  A tapping comes on my window and I turn to see Cole's curious face lowers into view. One eyebrow quirks at the hank of frazzled hair that falls into my eyes.

  God, I hate my life.

  I prop open the car door. "Can I help you?"

  "Shouldn't I be asking you that?" He nods to the ignition.

  "Do you have jumper cables?"

  "No," he admits, twisting his mouth and tilting his head to the side.

  "Then you can't help me." I try to close the door, but he catches it.

  "What happened to 'We aren't going to do this?'" he challenges. "Be normal with me for five minutes. Please."

  I hesitate, and cave. "Fine. Can you give me a ride?"

  ∞

  Cole's car is horrible.

  I'd noticed that he drove the same beat-up old Jeep he'd driven when we were in college, but sitting in it is different. I haven't been in this seat in years.

  And it may not have been washed in years either. A film of bugs splatters the windshield and front bumper. Dust may have been present in other, drier states, but this is Florida, where the air is heavy and wet. It's not as though you can etch a "Wash Me" reminder between the bugs.

  When Cole unlocks it to drive me back to Mom's for dinner, I settle gingerly on the edge of the Jeep's seat. It smells like cardboard and cherries; not altogether an unpleasant combination. The interior has been maintained better than the outside. The leather is oiled. The dashboard, free of dust.

  "So, tell me something," Cole says, starting the engine.

  "Yes," I answer promptly, pretending he's asked me what I think of the Jeep. "Your car is the filthiest one I've seen in a while."

  He flicks his eyes over to me. "You know what I mean. Tell me something."

  I stare at him and he glances at me again, trying to keep both eyes on the road. "Oh, come on," he says. He shifts in his seat, hand relaxed on the steering wheel. "It's the easiest question in the world. And the silence in here is practically stifling."

  "Silence," I inform him, "is golden."

  "You've been eating too many fortune cookies."

  "Silence—" I continue over him, voice strident. "—can be comfortable." I shift where I sit, not liking how easily he gets under my skin. He can't possibly know how my most recent fortune still bothers me.

  He laughs—that same bark of a laugh I'd always thought meant he doesn't see any real humor in the situation. "Get serious for a second, Em," he tells me. "This is you and me we're talking about here. The silence between us is rarely comfortable."

  Well, at least we can agree on that.

  "You don't want to talk about how I feel about you? Fine. You don't want me to touch you or kiss you? Fine. I think you know where I stand no matter what I do. But we can talk," he says. When I still don't volunteer anything, he sighs heavily. "Fine, I'll tell you something." He punches the radio on and fiddles with the buttons until he finds the song he's looking for.

  "I've got you under my skin," the speakers croon. Goosebumps prickle at my arms. It would be a Sinatra song.

  "I have just discovered Sinatra," Cole says seriously. He turns away from the road to look at me. "No, really. I went back in time and made him the man he became."

  I can't even muster a smile at the bad joke, staying silent as the Rat Pack sings with feeling about a love deep in their hearts and how they've tried to resist acting on it. Finally, I can't take listening anymore. My hand darts out for the power button and silences them.

  Cole drops the jokes, voice strained. "I'm trying here, Em." No longer relaxed, his fists are tight around the steering wheel.

  I look out the window at the passing cars. Most of them are shiny, without tiny bug carcasses littering the windows, and have most likely been washed sometime in the last year. Into the silence and sound of whirring tires over pavement, I exhale and decide that I can try too.

  "I hate Devin Quick as a person," I say in one breath.

  "The thirteen-year-old pop star?" Cole looks at me approvingly. "Now, we're getting somewhere. Tell me more about how you hate a child." He turned back to the road, a small smile playing about his lips.

  "Hate was too strong a word," I admit. "But his songs are so… whiny. And every time I catch any mention of him in the news, he's been bratty, immature, and obnoxious again."

  "Wow, how do you really feel?" Cole fiddles through the radio stations until he lands on one of Quick's ballads and my teeth grind at the sound of the kid's voice. He swats my hands away when I try to change the station.

  "My car, my music," he says cheerfully.

  "You are not making me like you again this way."

  "Gee, and I had such high hopes of frolicking through a meadow with you, doo-wopping to a Barney song. Don't get your panties in a bunch." He flips on a CD. "We can just listen to The Rat Pack."

  "What a charming bunch." But, so long as I don't hear "I've Got You Under My Skin" again, I accept the compromise, settling back into my seat.

  "Em, I've met your mother. I know you know who The Rat Pack are."

  "Of course I do, but I prefer Sinatra as an individual, not in a group." He pulls into my mom's driveway and the song changes, the tenor of Sinatra's voice filling the car in a solo act as the strains of "It Had to Be You" swell from the speakers. I swallow hard, flicking a glance at Cole. "I think he was better that way."

  He comes to a stop and I pop the door open to hop out. I wobble when one of the heels I put on after the beach catches in the driveway's cobblestones.

  Cole snorts and mutters something under his breath. I have a feeling it wasn't complimentary.

  "Hey," he says suddenly, as though remembering something. His head lifts. "Don't forget we have that wedding next weekend." He ducks to look out of the window and into my eyes from his seat in the car. "You still in?"

  The damn shoe won't come loose. "When do I ever back down from a challenge?" I ask, distracted.

  When I look up, Cole's eyes flick deliberately to my mouth in an answer.

  My face heats and I point a warning finger at him. "Don't answer that."

  Bending, I tug at my ankle until my foot is free. But my shoe is not. Flushing, I grab it with both hands before he thinks I'm trying to pull some sort of absurd Cinderella move on him.

  He hides a smile with a twinkling in his eye that tells me he knows exactly what which train my thoughts are riding. But he chooses not to prod me about the misstep, for which I'm grateful.

  I hesitate. "I don't have a car, remember?"

  "So I'll pick you up." He shrugs in response, nonchalant. Like it's no big deal.

  And maybe it isn't—for him.

  I'm sure my pause isn't doing anything to hide my weighing of the pros and cons. But putting Cole off has been getting me absolutely nothing—barring nagging phone calls from Nikki. "Okay. Text me any details I need."

  He smiles and I catch my breath. "I'll see you in a week, then."

  THIRTEEN

  EM

  ∞ Then ∞

  Junior Year

  I hated the way Cole looked at me after Dad passed away. Like he was just waiting for me to fall apart the way Mom had. Expecting it. As though, after mother fell, daughter would have to follow. Everyone knew the saying: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

  The worst part was, I was afraid he was right.

  I imagined a bubble around me, like
the kid on that old show. People could see me. They could even talk to me. But I couldn't let them touch me.

  In the hospital, after the doctors told us Dad was gone, I thanked them for their efforts and then excused myself to the bathroom, where Cole couldn't follow me.

  Safely ensconced in a vacant stall, I let the sobs tear free, hands wrapped around myself as I sank to the ground. I gasped for air between sobs and tears blazed a hot, wet trail down my cheeks. When my well of emotion ran dry, I washed my face, scrubbing it with a rough paper towel, and returned to Cole and my mother.

  I knew my eyes were red, but I pretended they weren't.

  If I'd let Cole wrap his arms around me… if I let him be my wall against the outside world, instead of being that for myself, I was afraid I would fall apart like Mom. That when I wasn't crying, I'd stare vacantly into space with dark-rimmed eyes.

  Mom and Dad had been together for over twenty years. When Mom was in her thirties and Dad in his forties, they'd met in Vegas and married in a whirl of drunken passion. It had taken them so long to find each other, they'd said, that they hadn't wanted to waste any more time. They'd been from different cities and chosen to live in neither of their hometowns, opting for a fresh start somewhere new.

  Mom was the whirlwind, impulsive type. Grandma always said she wasn't surprised by a Vegas wedding.

  Dad, on the other hand, was usually stable and predictable. His mother had fainted when he brought a wife home from Vegas.

  It shouldn't have stuck… but it did. Their compatibility had defied the odds and, when I popped up a year into their marriage, we'd all been happy. We'd had a good life together.

  The night after Dad passed, I woke to the strains of "It Had to Be You" drifting from the living room.

  I caught my breath. It was so familiar that I forgot, for a minute, that Dad was gone. The reality came too quickly and took my breath away, upending my world.

  My next thought was that I was dreaming. Because I couldn't imagine that the anyone would be cruel enough to force the memories on us like this. Mom and Dad had a thing about dancing, particularly to Sinatra. As a kid, music had woken me on more than one occasion.

  I'd hear it start up in the living room and toss the covers aside to pad out of bed and down the stairs.

  My parents would be in each other's arms, slow-dancing around the living room. Dad held Mom close, smiling with a twinkle in his eyes as he sang softly into her ear. Mom smiled with her eyes closed, a peaceful, calm look on her face that was so rarely present around anyone else. She was always on the move, but with Dad, she settled. Her nose nestled into his neck as she inhaled his scent and focused on his arms around her.

  They used to laugh when they caught me peering at them from around the wall. "Go back to bed, Emily," Dad would whisper.

  I'd giggle as he hoisted me over his shoulder to drop me back in bed before returning to Mom.

  They'd leaned against each other for so long that I wasn't sure Mom knew how to live without him anymore.

  It was a miracle Cole slept through the music, I thought now as I stepped out of my room, knotting a robe over my pajamas. He was usually a light sleeper and the music from the kitchen wafted out into the living room where he slept.

  Thoughts of him disappeared when I found my mother sitting in the kitchen with the radio on and in her pajamas: white, washed out things with a faded floral print. Her hair was wet and matted to her head. Cast in shadows, the kitchen was dim, the table's overhead lamp the only lighting.

  "Mom?" I asked uncertainly.

  She closed her eyes as though in pain. "Em. Please," she said. It was a barely whispered plea. "Go back to bed."

  ∞

  Cole took to hovering around me—looming over me, a hulking shadow. If I stepped near him or Nikki at Dad's service, I was flanked by them on each side.

  Nikki tried to grab my hand. I turned to speak to a distant relative, feigning obliviousness.

  Cole tried to give me a hug. I dodged and made an excuse about messing up my hair. I patted my chignon with a laugh that sounded hollow even to my ears.

  I was glad when the service was over and everyone left so I could use the excuse to send the two of them back to school.

  "I'll be fine," I assured them. "I've still got some stuff to take care of here." Stuff that mostly involved Mom. "Don't worry about me. I'll be back soon."

  "Okay," Nikki said. Her voice was uncharacteristically soft and she looked so odd to me, sedately dressed, speech devoid of her trademark exclamations and hand claps. "If you're sure."

  Cole was harder to put off somehow. He agreed to leave, but he called me every day. Every day.

  I still answered the phone. After all of Mom's repeated attempts to contact me on Halloween, I wasn't sure I'd ever ignore a call again, but our conversations never lasted long. I didn't really feel like talking.

  I withdrew from my classes for the rest of the semester—as it turns out, when you lose a parent, they're pretty lenient about letting you retake a course the next semester. Instead, I stayed home to take care of Mom. I dealt with her bills. I boxed up some of Dad's things. I made her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all the while ignoring the lump in my throat.

  Things were so different now. I'd never been allowed to cook in our house before. Mom was a self-declared gourmand and in the past, she'd shooed me from her kitchen when I tried.

  And then, early in December, I walked into the wallpapered kitchen one morning and saw her standing at the stove, fully dressed, spatula in hand. Plates of Belgian waffles, bacon, sausage links, beignets, pancakes, eggs, and crepes lined the counter.

  I blinked at the sight, one hand frozen on its way to cover a yawn.

  "Good morning!" Mom chirped.

  "I—Good morning," I stammered in return, still recovering from my shock.

  "I made breakfast." She slid another pancake onto the plate beside her.

  I dropped into a chair at the table, scanning the mountain of food on the counter. "I see that. You're not expecting me to eat all of it, are you?" I asked.

  "You can take some with you. For Cole and Nikki." Mom left her post at the stove and sank into the seat across from me. She threaded her fingers, rested her chin on top, and her pinned her gaze on me. "You're going home."

  "I am home," I said slowly. I forced down something that felt an awful lot like panic. I couldn't go back to school yet. I didn't want to have to pretend that there wasn't a gaping hole in my heart. "Mom, I can't just leave like nothing's wrong."

  She reached across the table to grab my hand, and I swallowed. She'd looked so normal at the stove, but sitting there, for a minute, she looked like a shell of herself again. The circles under her eyes hadn't disappeared yet and looked almost sunken in.

  I gripped her hands as if the force of my will could make her whole again.

  She closed her eyes and I thought she might be praying. "Honey," she said, opening them. "Everything's wrong. Your father, he's—" She shook herself. "He's gone," she forced herself to say. Her voice was hoarse as she tried to keep the tears at bay.

  I couldn't do the same. Tears pricked at my eyes.

  "But I can't have you here trying to take care of me," she continued, taking a breath to compose herself. "If anything, I should be taking care of you. First though, I need to remember how to take care of myself."

  She swallowed and clung to her coffee mug for support. "I need to remember that I have to wake myself up after I turn the alarm clock off in the morning. I need to remember that no one else will get the paper for me in the morning. And apparently," she added, shooting a wry look at the stove, "I need to learn how to cook for one."

  ∞

  I went back to school, walking into our apartment and surprising Nikki, Ron, and Cole in the middle of their Chinese take-out. They were laughing at their fortune cookies, adding "in bed" to the ends of each one. I paused in the doorway, in the midst of dragging a bag in behind me.

  They froze when they saw me. God, I hated
that. Like I'd collapse at the wrong word. Frustration slammed into me, sudden and edging into anger. I was fine and I'd prove it.

  I perched on the arm of the couch and grabbed a cookie from the pile, breaking it in half for its fortune. "An end is just the start of something new," I read out loud with great solemnity. Sorrow twinged. An ending. Dad.

  Quickly, to cover that unexpected land mine, I popped the split cookie into my mouth and crunched down on it. "In bed," I added.

  Cole and Nikki laughed, swarming me with relieved hugs and I let it happen, smiling at them without teeth. Time had given me enough strength to hug them back without crumbling, but I couldn't maintain the facade for long. Feeling the strain of pretending, I gave them some weak-ass excuse about being tired from the drive and headed for my bedroom to collapse against the door.

  I didn't know how I was going to keep up the act.

  FOURTEEN

  EM

  ∞ Now ∞

  "Hi!" Nikki's smile blinds me when she walks into Mom's shop just before closing, arms loaded with card stock and calligraphy pens.

  I raise an eyebrow. "Hi?" I check my watch. Five minutes to our official closing time. Close enough, I decide, and flip the sign to "Bad timing."

  Nikki leads the way upstairs and upends the box over the chest that doubles as my coffee table.

  "What is all this?"

  "Place cards!" She neatens the mess, separating pens from cards." I've got to get them all done by the end of the week and I thought, 'Well, who better to help me than my best friend, maid of honor, and wedding planner?'"

  What the hell is going on? She doesn't need the place cards done anytime soon. We haven't even found her a venue. She hasn't even sent save-the-dates or finalized a guest list. I haven't missed the strange, reedy note in her voice either.

  This is Nikki, though. All I need to do is wait and she'll come out with it. I gesture to the daybed.

  She relaxes minutely when I accept the spur-of-the-moment activity, showing me the stencil she wants on the edge of the cards while she pens her guests' names. I start up some idle chitchat while we work, hoping to distract her from whatever she's worried about.