Something Borrowed

by Catherine Hapka

  “Right,” I said blankly. Oh, well. So much for more of those great make-out sessions.

  But I did my best to shrug off the twinges of disappointment. This wasn’t about me. Besides, it was really no big deal. In fact, in a lot of ways a hot gay date was even better than the alternative. He was sure to arrive perfectly groomed and look great in the pictures, plus I wouldn’t have to worry at all about hurting his feelings by flirting with other guys.

  Realizing that Rocco was still staring at me with concern, I smiled reassuringly. “I’m glad you told me,” I said, taking my turn at hugging him. “I know it must have been hard for you. But don’t worry, you’re such a great guy—I’m sure everyone will be really supportive when you tell them.”

  “I hope so.” He looked relieved. “Thanks for being so understanding, Ava.”

  “No problem,” I said, stepping back and sitting down again. “Just let me know if you want me to keep quiet about it for now or what. You know, on Saturday.”

  “Saturday?” The look of worry returned. “Oh—but I thought you understood. I can’t go to the wedding with you.”

  “What?” I’d been reaching for my water glass, but now my hand froze in midair. “What do you mean, you can’t go?”

  He’d sat down again too, but now he stood up, gazing down at me from his full height. His face was sorrowful. “That’s why I didn’t want to wait to tell you. I hate to disappoint you, Ava, especially after you’ve been so good to me. But I can’t go to that wedding with you.” He put a hand to his heart dramatically. “Now that I finally know who I am, it would be like purposely living a lie!”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” I argued, feeling desperate. “Anyway, it would only be living a lie for two more days.”

  “I’m sorry, Ava,” he rumbled. “I can’t do it for two more days. I couldn’t even do it for two more seconds! I’m really sorry. I’ll leave you guys alone now.”

  He turned and rushed off. “Rocco, wait!” I called.

  But it was no use. He was gone.

  I turned to stare at Teresa. “The wedding is the day after tomorrow,” I exclaimed. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

  Fourteen

  I was tempted to call Rocco after he left and beg him to change his mind about going to the wedding. But Teresa quickly talked me out of it.

  “He’s going through a rough thing right now,” she reminded me as we left the sushi place and sat down on a bench in the mall aisle. “This is bigger than some stupid wedding date. Leave him alone.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I sighed. “Okay, then help me figure out who else is left to call.”

  “You could just—”

  “Don’t say it!” I interrupted warningly. “I know I could go stag. But I don’t want to, okay?”

  She shrugged. I could tell she thought I was being ridiculous, but she was friend enough not to say so.

  To be honest I wasn’t even sure why I was being so stubborn about it. Maybe it was pride. It would be one thing if I’d decided to go alone on purpose. But at this point it would be more like giving up. And I didn’t do that easily.

  We talked it over as we headed outside to wait for Jason to pick us up. But it was hopeless. Every guy we knew already had a date.

  “There’s not even enough time to try to pick up someone new like I did with Zoom and Oliver,” I moaned, flopping down on the sun-warmed curb.

  “Besides, with your luck lately, whoever you found would probably get diagnosed with the bubonic plague twenty minutes before the wedding,” Teresa commented.

  I squinted up at her. “You’re not helping.”

  “Sorry.” She shrugged, setting down her shopping bags and checking her watch. “Jason should be here soon. Maybe he’ll have some ideas.” She smiled. “After all, he wants every other guy in a ten-mile radius to be at that wedding so he’ll have Burrito Moe’s all to himself, remember?”

  “Yeah, right.” I knew she was just trying to cheer me up. But I certainly wasn’t going to leave my social fate in Jason’s hands, especially after his behavior earlier. “Hey, speak of the devil,” I added as I saw a blue Prius heading our way.

  “Hi,” he said to Teresa as we climbed in. “What’s with her?”

  I guess my gloomy face had given me away. “None of your business,” I said at the same time as Teresa replied, “Rocco’s gay.”

  “Huh?” Jason said.

  Despite my protests, Teresa quickly filled him in. She made him promise not to tell anybody else, though I’m not sure why, considering it was already old news to an entire restaurant full of people. “So now Ava’s dateless again,” she finished.

  I waited for the joke, but Jason just shrugged. “Bummer,” he muttered.

  We didn’t talk much on the ride to Teresa’s father’s office in Radnor. Jason was dropping her off there to meet her dad for a few more errands, then driving me home afterward. I wasn’t relishing the thought of being alone with him again, but I forgot all about that as we arrived in the parking lot of the office complex and Teresa got out of the car. This was good-bye—I knew she and Jason had dinner plans that evening, and then she was leaving early the next morning to be at the airport in time for her connecting flight to New York.

  I hopped out of the car, all thoughts of Jason, the wedding, and everything else seeming inconsequential for the moment. “I can’t believe you’re really leaving!” I cried, throwing my arms around her.

  She hugged me back tightly. “I know,” she said, her voice muffled by my hair. “It’s crazy, right? Me—in Germany.”

  “You’ll do great.” I pulled back, keeping my hands on her arms as I gazed at her fondly. “But I’m going to miss you like crazy. E-mail me every day, okay? And send lots of postcards!”

  “I promise.” She hugged me again. “See you when I get home.”

  “You can count on it.” After one last squeeze I reluctantly let her go. Jason was still in the car, his arm resting on the frame of the open window. He waved at Teresa. “I’ll pick you up later,” he called to her. Then he glanced at me. “All aboard. This train is leaving the station.”

  “I’m coming.” Blowing one last kiss to Teresa, I got back into the backseat.

  “You could sit up front, you know,” he said, sounding almost hostile.

  “No, thanks. This is fine.” In truth I’d climbed into the back automatically. If he’d turned it into a joke and called me a ditz, I probably would have laughed it off and switched to the front. But if he was going to be a jerk about it, two could play that game.

  “Whatever,” he muttered, jamming the car back into drive and pulling away.

  As we sped along toward home I slumped in my seat, running over my options—or lack thereof—in my head. There just didn’t seem to be a good solution, unless I wanted to try trolling the local under-fourteen crowd for a date. Which I didn’t.

  Why did Lance have to do this to me? I thought. I wish I’d told him off when he came to the store the other day.

  I blinked and sat up so fast that my seat belt almost cut off circulation in my stomach. “Hey, wait,” I blurted out. “That’s it!”

  I smiled, suddenly sure that I’d found the perfect solution at last. Maybe I hadn’t fully appreciated what I’d had with Lance. But if he was willing to seek me out to talk about it, maybe there was still a chance for us.

  “What’s it?” Jason glanced at me in the rearview. He still sounded kind of gruff and unfriendly, but I hardly noticed.

  “Listen, Jason.” I leaned forward and grabbed his shoulder. “Can you do me a huge favor? Drive me over to McNeilly’s Garage.”

  “You mean now? Why?”

  “I’ve got to talk to Lance, and it can’t wait.” I was talking fast now, certain that I’d finally found the answer. “See, he came to the store the other day while I was working. And he showed up at the pool party alone too. Why else would he do that if he wasn’t hoping to rekindle things with me?”

  “Wait, you want to talk to that Lance j
erk?” Jason sounded a little more like his normal self. “Ava, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a great idea,” I insisted. “He probably regrets breaking up with me. And if he does, he’d probably be thrilled if I told him we could still go to the wedding together!”

  I could already imagine the delicious look of surprise on Lance’s face when I turned up at his work just like he’d turned up at mine. And that surprise would turn to joy when he realized why I was there. . . .

  Jason glanced back at me, biting his lip. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “That Lance guy was never good enough for you anyway.”

  “Look, are you willing to help me out or not?” I was practically bouncing up and down by now. “Because if you’re not, just take me home and I’ll find another ride.”

  He sighed. “No, it’s okay. I’ll take you.”

  I kept busy for the rest of the short ride practicing in my head what I was going to say. When Jason pulled into the parking lot of the garage, I spotted Lance immediately. He was standing at the edge of one of the bays, in front of a car raised a few feet up on a lift, talking to the pair of overall-clad legs sticking out from beneath it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Jason. Then I got out and tiptoed over to Lance. His back was to me. The mechanic under the car was clanking and banging on something down there, and a radio was blasting reggae from the office nearby, so he didn’t hear me coming. I reached out and clapped my hands over his eyes.

  “Hey!” he cried.

  “Surprise!” I sang out as he spun around. “Guess who?”

  “Oh. Ava,” he said uncertainly. Lance was never too quick on the uptake, so I figured it would take him a while to puzzle out why I was there.

  I decided to take mercy on him and end the suspense without any playing around. After all, he was always most comfortable with the straightforward and obvious. That was one of his best qualities—no games.

  “I need to talk to you, Lance,” I said, raising my voice a little to make sure he could hear me above the reggae. So what if his buddy under the car overheard? At this point I didn’t care if the entire Main Line heard what I had to say to him. “I’ve been thinking about us. You know—how things ended. It really seems like a shame to throw away three great months just like that.”

  “Ava, I—” he began.

  I reached out and touched a finger to his lips. “Wait,” I cut him off. “Just let me say this, okay? I think you and I were really great together.” I smiled. “So what do you say? Do you think we should give it another try?”

  He gulped, and a weird expression came over his face, sort of like a fish gasping for air. Before I could figure that one out, the mechanic under the car slid out.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  Right. She. Those overall-clad legs turned out to belong to a dark-haired girl with bad fuchsia lipstick and a pair of enormous breasts that threatened to escape from her grimy white tank at any second and pop out over the top of her overalls.

  “Um, Ava, this is Charlene,” Lance said weakly. “My, uh, new girlfriend.”

  “Not that new.” Charlene stood up and crossed her arms over her enormous knockers. “We’ve been going out for two months.”

  She stared at me, as if challenging me to disagree. Which, of course, I did.

  “What are you talking about?” I said, wondering if those boobs had sucked all the math skills out of her brain. “Lance and I broke up less than two weeks ago.”

  “Right.” She smirked. “And like I said, Lance and I hooked up two months ago.”

  As what she was saying sank in, I looked over at Lance. He was staring at his feet, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else. That told me all I needed to know. I could feel my cheeks burning.

  There wasn’t much left to say. I wasn’t the type to start a rumble in the parking lot of a garage, though Charlene looked as if she’d be up for it.

  “Okay,” I said weakly, so humiliated I couldn’t even work up any real anger at the rotten, cheating two-timer in front of me. “I guess this was a big mistake. Good-bye, Lance.”

  I turned and walked away with as much dignity as I could muster, which wasn’t much. Without looking back at them, I crawled back into the car—the front seat this time. Why not give Jason a clear shot at me? With his windows open and the nearly silent idling of that Prius engine, he had to have heard the entire thing. And this time I probably deserved all his teasing and more. Besides, he couldn’t possibly make me feel any worse than I already felt. Still, I didn’t dare meet his eye as I pulled the door shut and put on my seat belt.

  He didn’t say anything for a few minutes as he drove out of the parking lot. I figured he was gathering his thoughts for the onslaught.

  Finally he cleared his throat. I braced myself.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said conversationally. “Have you ever been to that little Middle Eastern place in Wynnewood? Because that’s where I was planning to go with Teresa tonight, only I’ve never tried it.”

  I shot him a cautious look. “Um . . . no. I’ve never been there. But my dad went once and said it was good.”

  “Cool. Your dad seems like a dude with good taste.” Jason smiled. “Hummus and kebabs it is, then.”

  I didn’t get it. Was this some meta way of teasing me by not teasing me? Before I could figure it out, my phone rang. I groaned when I saw the number. I was so not in the mood to deal with Camille at the moment.

  But I punched the button anyway, figuring my day had nowhere to go but even farther down. “Hello?” I said wearily.

  “Ava! Listen, the idiot caterers forgot to include the cake forks when they sent the tablewear over to the hall, and I have like no time to drive over there and pick them up, and I can’t reach the wedding planner, and they’re saying there’s not enough time to get a delivery guy to . . . ,” she babbled, barely pausing for breath.

  She was so loud that her voice echoed through the car. “Camille crisis, huh?” Jason held out his hand. “Give me the phone; I’ll deal with it.”

  Wordlessly, I handed it over. He put the phone to his face with one hand while steering the car with the other.

  “Camille? This is Jason,” he said. “Did you say forks? Are they at that catering warehouse in West Chester where I drove Ava and Teresa a few weeks ago?” He listened for a moment and nodded. “Okay, don’t freak out. I’ll go get them as soon as I drop Ava off at home.”

  Fifteen

  I’d thought I’d been desperate before. But I hadn’t even known what true desperation was until I hit on my latest plan sometime in the wee hours that night.

  I’d spent several hours before that tossing and turning, trying to convince myself that I really would be okay going alone as Teresa kept suggesting. But I just couldn’t stop imagining the other bridesmaids whispering to one another and shooting me pitying looks. Or how I would react to Lance walking in with that girl Charlene, knowing he’d cheated on me with her. Or even how it would feel when the bride and groom had their first dance, and then everyone was invited out onto the floor, and I was stuck watching from the sidelines with my widowed great-aunt Millie and a bunch of little kids.

  Desperate? More like crazy. I paused on the rose-draped doorstep of the Sanchez house on Friday morning, wondering if I really wanted to do this. Then I pictured Charlene’s smirk and squared my shoulders. I had to do this. It was the only way.

  Teresa looked surprised when she answered the door with her cell phone in one hand and a map in the other. “Ava!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  I hadn’t called to tell her about the ugly scene with Lance, not wanting to bum her out right before her big romantic dinner with Jason. Besides, I’d figured Jason would fill her in. He might have been able to resist kicking me when I was down yesterday, but I was sure he wouldn’t be able to resist telling that kind of juicy story, especially at my expense.

  “Hi,” I said, stepping into the spacious foyer.
Teresa’s suitcases were stacked just inside the door, and a mess of tickets, money, and her passport was on the narrow divan by the stairs. “Good, I guess Jason’s not here yet.”

  “Jason? Why would he be here?” She was looking more confused by the second.

  “Oh.” I blinked, surprised. “I just assumed he was driving you to the airport.”

  “No. My dad’s taking me.” Teresa checked her watch. “We’re leaving in, like, ten minutes. Why? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

  She seemed distracted, and no wonder. Here I was, barging in on her just moments before she left for a month in another country. I knew that was stretching the bounds of best-friend-dom, and I was about to stretch it even further.

  “This will only take a second,” I said, plunging on before I lost my nerve. “I just need to talk to you about something. Actually, I need to ask you the hugest favor in the world.”

  “Okay.” She leaned over and flipped open one of the suitcases, sticking the map inside. “What is it?”

  I could tell she still wasn’t paying full attention to me. But that changed with my next words: “Can I borrow Jason to take to the wedding?”

  She stood up so fast I was surprised she didn’t tip over backward. “What?”

  It takes a lot to shock Teresa. But I could tell she was shocked now.

  “Please, just hear me out,” I said quickly, not wanting to let her say no without thinking about it—though of course I wouldn’t have blamed her. It was a pretty crazy request. “Obviously, we would totally be going as totally platonic friends. Totally. But that way I don’t have to walk in alone, and he would look good in the photos and stuff. And he’d get a nice free meal out of it—much better than tacos at Moe’s.” I took a quick breath, not quite daring to meet her eye just yet. “And since it won’t be a romantic thing for either of us, I’ll be free to flirt with Andy or Kwan or whoever . . .”

  Finally running out of words, I glanced at her nervously. Her expression was weird—sort of blank. Then she shrugged.