That Night

by Amy Giles

  “Nikki’s pregnant,” she says. “I should’ve known something was going on. He’s been taking a lot of days off all of a sudden for doctor’s appointments. Then the other day he was on his phone out back. Sounded like he was setting up an interview. He found something else, full-time with health insurance.”

  I look back over at the couple canoodling like they’re the only people here. “They’re so young though.”

  “Twenty,” Reggie says. “Not like 16 and Pregnant young, at least. They’ve been together for a while. This just pushes Joe to get his shit together, you know? He can’t work at Enzo’s forever. Not like me.” She stares ahead at the black ocean. Whitecaps rushing the shore froth in the moonlight.

  I laugh under my breath, in case she’s joking. But I don’t think she is. “You don’t have to work at Enzo’s, do you?” I ask.

  She lifts a shoulder. “No.” Gazing down at her left hand, she twirls the engagement ring on her finger with her thumb. Maybe the act of removing it off her finger is something she’s not ready to do yet. Like my mom. “This was all supposed to be temporary. Just a little inconvenience. Then we were going to have our whole lives together.”

  Her eyes remain fixed on her ring, the whisper of a diamond swirling around and around.

  “Want to hear the saddest story?” Without giving me a chance to answer, she imitates me, “Sure, Reggie! I love sad stories!” She looks down at her lap, laughing bitterly to herself.

  “I’m listening,” I tell her.

  She tips the beer to her lips. “We were at a party, celebrating. Jason got into University of Alabama, with a really good scholarship. I mean, it doesn’t get any better than Crimson Tide, right? A fucking dream come true.”

  I nod, even though I have no clue what Crimson Tide means. I know Jason played football, so I guess it has something to do with that.

  “And theeeeen . . .” She smiles, the saddest smile yet. “I started thinking about him leaving me and the beer tears started flowing. How ever would I live without him?” She wiggles her fingers in the air dramatically. “I told him I didn’t want him to go. And Jason, being Jason . . .” She takes a shaky breath.

  Chatter and laughs mix together with the ocean’s roar, but in our little ditch in the sand, all I can hear is Reggie’s heartbreak.

  She leans her head back and stares up at the stars. “The next day I told him I didn’t mean it. But . . . he’d made up his mind.”

  “Probably because he really didn’t want to leave you either,” I offer.

  “I should’ve made him. You know? I could’ve. But I was being selfish. I couldn’t imagine living a year without him. And now . . .” She shakes her head against the sand and tips her beer back to her mouth.

  We sit together in silence. I stare up at the inky blackness of the sky, puncture holes in the tapestry allowing pinpricks of light to shine through. I read somewhere that when you look at the stars, you’re looking at the past. What we see with the naked eye is light from up to three thousand years ago. Even the stars that seem like fixed objects in the sky are illusions.

  A distant memory comes back to me. Fourth of July, when I was seven. My parents loaded Ethan and me in the car to see the fireworks at Coney Island. Dad bought us treats from the ice cream truck, Ethan a Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake bar, and a Bomb Pop for me because I wanted to taste the fireworks. Imagine my surprise when my ice pop tasted nothing like fireworks or red, white, and/or blue. It tasted like sugar water. Ethan reluctantly traded his ice cream for my Bomb Pop. He wasn’t even a whole year older than me, but he was always my big brother.

  Across the fire, Lucas turns away from a conversation with Pete at the same time I look across at him. He smiles and makes his way across the fire to join us.

  Reggie climbs out of her sand La-Z-Boy. “Just remembered, I have to ask Pete something. Lucas, you can take my seat!”

  She meanders around the fire.

  “Subtle as a sledgehammer,” Lucas mumbles, watching her walk away. Then he points to the seat next to me. “Plus, now I can’t ask, ‘Is this seat taken?’”

  “All yours,” I offer. He climbs in next to me, the confined space pressing us much closer together than when Reggie sat here.

  “Sorry. Am I crushing you?” he asks, trying to inch away, but there’s nowhere for him to go.

  I shake my head. “I don’t mind.”

  He looks over at my abandoned beer in the sand next to me.

  “Do you need another one?”

  “No.” I shake my head again. “I don’t really drink. I went to an Alateen meeting when my dad was in rehab a few years ago. Alcoholism runs in families. Red hair might not be the only thing I inherited from him, and I really don’t want to test it and find out.”

  He looks embarrassed. “Oh . . . sorry. I wouldn’t have shoved a beer at you if I knew.”

  “I’m okay,” I tell him, and he smiles.

  “Still better than staying home though, right?” he asks, cracking his knuckles with his thumb. He seems even more nervous than I am and my heart is trying to drill its way out of my chest.

  “Way better,” I tell him with a grateful smile. If I were home right now, I’d be reliving the past instead of making new memories.

  Lucas wipes the sand off his hand on his jeans, then reaches over to carefully take mine in his. His hand is warm, big, strong.

  He looks over at me and takes a nervous breath. “So . . . do you want to maybe hang out again, just the two of us?” He holds up our clasped hands.

  His hand is so much bigger than mine. This shouldn’t work. We shouldn’t fit. But my hand slides into place like it belongs there.

  I don’t need to be alone anymore. I don’t want to do this alone anymore.

  I squeeze his hand. “Definitely.”

  Someone is shooting off fireworks farther down the beach. It doesn’t matter that the Fourth of July is still months away. People love their fireworks, any excuse to set things on fire and watch them go boom. From here, I watch them ascend into the sky and waterfall down, bright and colorful.

  As we watch the fireworks, Lucas lets go of my hand and wraps his arm around my shoulders. I nestle in to his warmth. Getting stuck in the now isn’t so awful when the now is this good. But I allow my brain to unstick and fast-forward, imagining more times like this with Lucas. Days and nights that are more happy than unhappy.

  Reggie’s head darts up. She looks past us in alarm. “Guys, the cops are here.”

  “Shit.” Joe bolts into action, throwing beer bottles in the cooler to hide them. He grabs a bucket and heads to the shore to fill it with water to put the fire out. Kevin and Dominic each grab a handle of the cooler and take off into the night with it.

  “Party’s over,” Lucas says to me, reaching a hand to pull me out of the ditch.

  Pete sways over, hands in his pockets. His lids hang heavy like store awnings. “I need a ride home,” he slurs. “I’ll leave my car here tonight.”

  “Sure,” Lucas says.

  Everyone scatters like cockroaches. The night may have started crappy and ended too soon, but it was still pretty perfect.

  Jess

  Maybe my crappy job won’t be so crappy anymore now that Lucas and I are a “thing.” (Exactly what that thing IS is TBD, but still!)

  What base is holding hands? Negative first? Is that even dating?

  Kiss the girl already, man!

  Everyone at work the next day is weirdly chill, which makes me start to think maybe nothing really happened last night. Maybe it was all in my head.

  About an hour into my shift, Joe holds up a bottle of weed killer.

  “See if you can find more of these in the back.”

  When I get to the bay of shelves in the back of the warehouse that has all the lawn and weed supplies, I find Lucas grabbing a box of Roundup.

  “Joe asked me to get those,” I say, hands on hips.

  “He asked me too. I think he’s up to something,” Lucas answers, lifting the b
ox onto his shoulders.

  A little while later as I’m restocking light bulbs, Joe’s voice comes over the intercom.

  “Jess, Lucas, please report to the break room.”

  When Lucas and I both show up, there’s a tin of Altoids and a tube of ChapStick on the table. Joe’s phone is lying between them playing “Let’s Get It On,” by Marvin Gaye.

  Lucas pockets the Altoids. “Someone’s suddenly got too much time on his hands now that he gave his notice.”

  Pete comes in late, closer to noon. The only person who doesn’t know it’s because of his hangover is Enzo.

  I walk over to Pete and Lucas at the paint center. Pete’s sitting on the stool staring at the paint shaker like the vibrating can is the most riveting thing he’s ever seen.

  “This is about all I can handle today,” he admits, stopping the machine to take the can out. He takes his bottle of water from under the counter and chugs. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he says, “Hey, let’s go bowling tonight.”

  “You sure? You don’t look so hot,” I point out. He’s as white and waxy as the day he had that stomach bug.

  He scrunches up his face, dismissing my concern. “I’ll be fine by then.”

  Lucas turns to me. “You want to?”

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to hide my enthusiasm. “I haven’t bowled in a while though. Do they still have gutter guards?”

  “Yeah, for five-year-olds,” Pete answers. Propping his elbow on the counter to hold his head up, he adds, “Someone tell Reg. I’m not ready to move yet.” He closes his eyes and moans.

  Lucas’s hand grazes my back. “I’ll tell her,” he says. “So I’ll pick you up tonight?”

  I smile and nod. “Sure.”

  Lisa Loeb’s one hit from the nineties, “Stay,” plays through the speakers. A pregnant woman stops to collect paint chips, different shades of pink, murmuring the words to the song while holding a hand over her belly. A lump forms in my throat. I really don’t know why that song and those pink paint chips and that pregnant woman are making me choke up like this. It’s a mixed bag of sad and happy, all swirling together.

  For the first time in a while, I like being a cog in our neighborhood. I like belonging again.

  When I get home from work, Mom’s not sitting in her chair watching the Food Network. She’s not at the table, where there’s still a stack of bills. I check in her bedroom; she’s not in bed either. Panic threads through my veins. I’m about to run out the door to ask Mrs. Alvarez if she’s seen her today when I see a note on the kitchen table.

  Jess,

  I went out to run an errand.

  xo

  Mom

  I should be happy, but the thought of my mother out on her own fills me with panic. The last time she went out alone didn’t end well.

  “Everywhere I go, I see him,” she sobbed that day the neighbor brought her home after finding her crying on her front stoop.

  I understood what she meant. I see Ethan everywhere too, especially in the hallways at school. But my grief is different from my mother’s. Losing Ethan was like losing the best part of my memories, my database, every picture in my mental hard drive . . . gone. Losing a child is an entirely different beast.

  I channel my nervous energy into cleaning up while she’s out. Opening the windows, I take out the vacuum and run it around the house. Then I take a rag and wipe down the surfaces. When I get to the end table next to her chair, it’s what I don’t see that startles me.

  Her rings are gone.

  Searching on my hands and knees, I check under the couch. They must have rolled under, somewhere.

  Did they get sucked up in the vacuum?

  Minutes later, Mom comes home to me sprawled on the floor, my hand shoved deep into the open vacuum bag. The floors and I are covered in grit.

  She stares at me, mouth open.

  “Hi,” I say, forcing a smile.

  I can tell by her weary expression that the outing took its toll on her.

  “I’m going to lie down for a bit,” she says, heading for her bedroom, too exhausted to ask me what I’m doing elbow-deep in hairballs and dust.

  Her bedroom door shuts. I dump the bag upside down.

  No rings.

  It’s not until after I replace the vacuum bag and clean up the mess I made that I think maybe Mom just decided to put the rings back on. I could’ve saved myself a lot of mess by just waiting half an hour.

  I stop by Mom’s room to see if the rings are back on her finger. She’s curled on her side, her shoulders shivering under the blankets. I take a step closer.

  “Mom? Are you cold?”

  I hear her soft sob, a gasp, the crinkling of something clutched in her fist. I reach over and take the slip from her hand.

  It’s from a pawnshop, with my mother’s name, address, and items she pawned off.

  Rose-gold wedding band. Engraved: “My love, my life, my friend.”

  White-gold engagement ring, 0.40 carat.

  I crawl next to her on the bed, hugging her from behind. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s not like you needed them anymore.” I don’t even tell her what I really think, that she should have pawned them off as soon as he left us.

  She shakes her head, her hair rasping against her pillow. “It’s just one thing after another! I can’t do this anymore,” she cries.

  I’m not entirely sure what she means by that, but her words feel like ominous dark clouds. That sinking-in-quicksand feeling is back. It’s up to my eyeballs, suffocating me.

  Lucas

  My jaw works overtime to break down this rubbery steak; even the bottled marinade couldn’t save this meal. I’m secretly looking forward to a burger at the bowling alley later.

  Dinner as a family is more of a recent thing, especially on a Saturday night, when Jason and I both used to be out with our friends. But now we all try a little harder to find time together.

  Tonight, though, no one’s talking. It was easier when Jason was here. There was always something interesting going on in his life to talk about. When it gets this quiet, it’s as if I can hear my parents’ thoughts, hear Jason’s name rolling around in their heads. Maybe they don’t even notice how bad the food is because all they can think about is how empty our lives are without him.

  “So . . . I have news,” I say, sawing into my steak. “Ummm . . . so . . . there’s this girl . . .”

  Dad’s head jerks a little, surprised, but he keeps chewing with a smile on his face, waiting for me to go on. Unlike Mom.

  “Is that why you snuck out in such a hurry last night?” she asks, refilling her glass of iced tea from the pitcher.

  “I didn’t sneak out. I told you I was going out,” I remind her. She smiles at me, but it’s a smile that tells me that’s not how she chooses to remember it. Dad clears his throat. Clutching his fork tightly in his giant hand, he scoops peas and carrots and raises them to his mouth before they spill back on his plate.

  “What’s her name?” he asks.

  “Jess,” I say.

  “Jess?” Mom asks. “Jess who?”

  “Jess Nolan. You don’t know her,” I say. “She’s a junior.”

  “Oh.” Mom nods. “But . . . Nolan . . . wasn’t there a boy—?”

  “Yeah.” I cut off the unnecessary end of that sentence.

  Mom turns to my father, who’s busy cutting into his steak and avoiding her eyes.

  I pop a piece of meat in my mouth just as she turns to me. “I don’t know if this is a good idea, Lucas.”

  “Why not?” I manage to squeeze out the words around a mouthful of food.

  She shrugs and spears her steak. “I don’t know. To me, it sounds like it would be too painful, for both of you.”

  Dad turns to Mom, treading carefully. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing, hon. They could support each other.”

  Mom chews. Inhaling through her nostrils, she swallows and says, “Maybe. But I think we should ask Dr. Engel what he thinks.”

  Now I
’m pissed. “Not that it matters one way or another, but I already talked to Dr. Engel about this. I like Jess. I’m happy when I’m around her. I mean, that is what you guys want for me, right?”

  It’s silent again for the rest of the meal. Dad and Mom are shooting each other looks that only married couples understand. All I know is, I lost my appetite. This is Jason and Reggie all over again. Well, maybe a little less extreme since Jason and Reggie were engaged when things escalated with Mom and Dad. But still.

  “I’m done.” I turn to head upstairs, more done than they can imagine. I leave my MSG steak on the table, half-eaten.

  In my room, I shut the door. Slamming would be more satisfying, but the high pile of the wall-to-wall carpeting makes us a slam-free home. I grab Jason’s football and flop back on my bed, tossing the ball up in the air and catching it as their voices drift upstairs, still discussing me and my life as if I’m not old enough to move out right now if I wanted to.

  Their murmuring grows louder. My parents don’t have big blowout arguments, but I can hear the tightness in Mom’s voice, even if I can’t make out what she’s saying. My father usually backs down. But tonight, he’s flexing a muscle in his voice. Cabinets shut with force, the pots clang a little louder, but the fight is over.

  His muffled footsteps lumber upstairs, socks on carpeting. A smaller person might be able to sneak up the stairs. My dad, even without shoes, still rattles every floorboard.

  He knocks first, something I always appreciate about him.

  “Lucas?” He pops his head in. “Can I come in?” He fills my doorway, waiting for permission, as if he’s not the guy paying the mortgage on this house every month.

  I wave him in and he walks around the room, still in his wrinkled work pants and shirt, hands on his hips. Jason’s Corner is a magnet, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid staring at it. Especially Dad.

  “So, about Jess. You like her?” he asks, his back not quite to me, pulling an orphaned nail out of the wall with his fingers.

  My father is not the touchy-feely-talky type. We talk, but sometimes the only way he can get through a serious conversation is by distracting himself with some DIY project, or the knobs on the grill, or the nozzle of a gas pump. We had the sex talk while he changed the oil filter in the car.