“True,” I acknowledge before I can bite my tongue. She laughs.
“They also loved your mom. And miss her. And I’m sure this wedding stirs up a lot of emotion,” she adds. There’s no self-pity in her voice. “I have to try to remember that.”
I never thought about how hard it must be for Harlow to live in Mom’s shadow. This will be her first wedding, but it’s Dad’s second. It must be a strange feeling. Harlow always seems so perfect, with heaps of self-confidence to spare, but it can’t be easy to live up to someone’s memory. Especially when Mom fit so seamlessly into Dad’s family.
“So,” she says, fishing a fry from the bottom of her carton, “how are things with the boy?”
I should lie. My mouth is primed to spit out the word “fine.” Conversation over. Instead I blurt out, “Confusing.”
Whyyyy? Why am I inviting questions about my fake relationship?
Harlow, of course, latches on to this. “Confusing how?”
“Well,” I start. Stop talking. Close your mouth. “I’m not sure Seb is all that into me.”
There I go again. Practically begging to be interrogated. Since when do I spill my thoughts so openly? To Harlow, of all people? She’s just so sad right now, with her chewed soda straw and salty fingers. It’s making me careless.
“Can I tell you what I see?” Harlow asks.
I shrug.
“I see a guy who chooses to spend his free Saturday doing yoga in your living room.”
“He was extra bored that day,” I reply.
“And takes your little sister along to the beach.”
“It would have been rude not to,” I mumble.
“And stares at you when you’re not looking.”
“Probably taking inventory of what’s wrong with me.”
“No,” Harlow says. “It’s definitely a good stare. Like the kind your dad gave me when he started taking my yoga class.”
I shudder. “Okay, Harlow. TMI.”
She laughs again. “Want me to demonstrate?”
“I really don’t,” I say, but I can’t help the tiny half smile curling on my lips.
“I’m Seb,” she says, rolling her shoulders back. She looks down at the table, then slides her gaze up to my face, her mouth stretching into a goofy grin.
“Oh my God, he does not look at me like that!” I say, and laugh. I will never be the recipient of a look like that. That one’s reserved for the Chloes and Harlows.
“I witnessed it firsthand,” she maintains.
I don’t believe her, but it’s nice to think about. I mean, I hope one day a guy actually does look at me like that. I just don’t see it happening, is all.
I wonder how Dad would look at Harlow right now if he saw her. I’ve never liked her more than I do in this moment, open and honest, licking the salt from the corners of her lips, her wispy hair sticking up like someone rubbed a balloon on her head.
“What?” she asks when she catches me staring. She raises her hand to smooth down her hair.
“You should leave it,” I say.
“You’re kidding.”
“Why not? Be messy. No one will see it except me anyway. None of your online followers would ever set foot in a McDonald’s.”
Harlow considers this, lowers her hand. “That’s a good point.”
“Even if they did,” I reason, “they might like it, seeing you look less than perfect.”
“Oh, they see that all the time,” Harlow says.
“Really? I never have. Everything you do is perfect. You’re pretty much perfect.” I’ve never been so comfortable telling Harlow what I think. Maybe seeing her at her lowest has given me a newfound burst of courage.
“Analee, I’m nowhere near perfect.”
I roll my eyes. Here comes the part where she tries to be relatable. Like she’s not a tall, leggy, blond goddess deigning us mere mortals her presence.
“I’m serious,” Harlow presses. “I have a long list of insecurities just like everyone else.”
“Such as?”
“Such as . . . well, where do I start? I wish my hair were thicker, like yours. I wish I weren’t so skinny. I wish my boobs were bigger. I wish I didn’t have man hands.”
At the last one I burst out laughing.
“I’m serious!” Harlow says, but she’s laughing too. “Look at them!”
She dangles both hands in front of me, and if I’m being brutally honest, they are a tad oversize compared to the rest of Harlow’s tiny form.
“The point is,” Harlow says, lowering her hands, “that I don’t dwell on the flaws. I even try to love them, on a good day.”
“I don’t see myself loving all this”—I gesture down at myself— “anytime soon.”
“I’m not saying it’s easy. I work at it every day.”
I thought being Harlow meant loving yourself effortlessly. She’s undoubtedly beautiful, but it’s like my rose-colored glasses have been shattered and I can see her clearly for the first time. She isn’t perfect. I’ve just been blind to her flaws and hyper-focused on my own. My mind wanders to Chloe, another goddess in the making. I remember what Seb mentioned about her trying to achieve the ideal, carefully cultivated image to post online. I wonder what her list of insecurities would be. Nothing comes to mind, but then again I never would have expected Harlow to take issue with her own appearance.
“Can I give you a piece of advice?” Harlow asks.
“Okay . . .”
“Life is not about perfection. It’s about acceptance.”
What a very yogi thing to say. I try not to roll my eyes again, because I know she’s trying to help. It’s just that, to me, some things are easier to accept than others.
“It’s ironic,” Harlow goes on, “but the more you accept yourself and stop caring about what other people see, the more those people will see how amazing you are.”
“That sounds nice, but how do I actually do it? I mean, how do I stop caring?” The questions pop out before I can stop myself. I hate giving Harlow the satisfaction of knowing that her words are having an impact on me, but I have a dark, twisted need to know her secrets.
“It’s a process,” she admits. “I’m still learning. Positive thinking helps. I also stopped forcing my body into what it should look like, because it shouldn’t look like anything other than what it is. And most important . . .” She pauses to slurp up the remains of her soda, then says simply, “When I’m not feeling confident, I fake it.”
I’m baffled by this. Harlow is always preaching self-love to her followers. Is it nothing more than a ruse?
“Doesn’t that mean you’re just . . . lying?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” Harlow reasons. “The more you fake it, the easier it is to believe it. It’s not technically a lie if you believe it, right?”
Oh my God, what is happening to me? Is Harlow actually making sense? Could her power-of-positive-thinking shtick actually work?
“Ready to go?” she asks. She piles all of our crumpled napkins onto her tray because Harlow is nothing if not clean.
I nod, and she dumps our trash out, then walks in step with me out to the parking lot. We’re both carrying ourselves more lightly, despite consuming all that sugar and fried food.
“Harlow?” I say when the car is in sight.
“Yes?”
“I like your mushroom stew,” I say. “But, with all due respect, I don’t think you should call it ropa vieja. It’s just not right.”
She looks at me in surprise. “Is it bad that I did?”
“It’s not a punishable offense or anything,” I reply. “I would just call it what it is, though. Mushroom stew. Don’t try to Cubanize it.”
I have never spoken to Harlow like this. I wonder if she’ll snap, the way she did with Dad today. She doesn’t say anything as she unlocks the car doors and we slip inside.
The car is so hot that my skin prickles. We sit there for a minute, and Harlow doesn’t start the car.
“I was t
rying to relate,” she says, and her voice goes up as if she’s asking a question. She stares at a spot on the windshield. “It gets complicated, being the non-Cuban.”
Harlow and I were finally getting to a somewhat good place, and then I had to open my mouth. Since when am I the guardian of Cuban culture? Who cares if Harlow wants to substitute mushrooms in a stew? I’m a crappy excuse for a Cuban anyway. My Spanish is awful. I don’t know proper vocab, only slang words that would get me laughed out of actual Spanish-speaking countries.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I say.
“Of course you should have said something,” Harlow says. “I need someone to call me out on this stuff.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I promise, Analee. You should always say what you feel.”
I feel guilty when I say what I feel. Because who cares about what I have to say? What if people think it’s stupid, or pathetic, or unimportant? Harlow seems to care, for some reason. She studies me now, intently, and I wish she would start the car so we could get home.
Finally she inserts her key, the engine turns, and she backs out of her parking spot. I stare at the feathers dangling from her keychain.
“What if we call it Mushroom Surprise?” she asks.
I wrinkle my nose. “Do people want to be surprised when they eat?”
“Surprised by the excellence of it.”
“What about,” I say, “Magical Mushroom Medley?”
“Ooo, I like the alliteration,” Harlow says. “Although . . .”
“What? There’s an ‘although’? It’s perfect!”
“ ‘Magical’ makes me think of psychedelics.” Harlow checks the rearview mirror before switching lanes.
“Okay, so not ‘magical,’ ” I say. “Magnificent?”
“Better. Or marvelous?”
“Harlow’s Marvelous Mushroom Medley,” I say out loud. I can already see Harlow narrating the recipe video, complete with jaunty stock music and bubbly fonts listing the ingredients.
“Analee,” Harlow says, fully serious. “I think we have something here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DAD AND HARLOW STILL AREN’T speaking to each other. Both are acting like this is a normal way to behave with someone you’re marrying in a month. Even weirder? Dad hasn’t said one word to me about the condoms. I expected him to march into my room and relay his list of rules all over again, but . . . there’s only been crickets.
He’s talking to me, at least, which is more effort than he’s giving Harlow. But our conversations skim the surface, both of us carefully avoiding anything close to the topic of sex or boyfriends or Trojans of any kind. It’s as if the box of condoms mysteriously disappeared from our existence and his memory. Not that Dad and I ever shared deep philosophical discussions in the past. But lately our conversations have been more deficient than usual.
Like this morning, he comes in from a run while I’m eating breakfast and says, “Woo. It’s hot out there today.” He says it in this voice, like he’s the dad on one of those gross heartwarming family-friendly shows. And I’m thinking, Uh, yeah, Dad. We live in freaking Florida. What else is new? But his fakeness makes me act fake too. So instead I say, “Yeah. Florida, right?” Then he lets out another “woo,” grabs a juice from the fridge, and hauls ass out of the kitchen.
I hate small talk enough. It’s worse when I have to make it with my own father.
People never just come out and say what they mean. It’s exhausting. You have to sift through words upon words of bullshit in order to get to the tiniest morsel of truth. I guess I’m no better. I keep all my truth sealed inside me. Some of it slips out in impromptu rants, usually to Seb, for some reason, or Harris. But for the most part I swallow my thoughts and feelings down to avoid making waves out there. Not even a ripple from me.
Dad does it again the next day, when it’s raining.
“Woo. It’s really coming down,” he says.
And I just snap. Maybe it’s because the only time my dad talks to me is when he’s delivering a daily weather report.
When he grabs his juice and turns to leave, I hear myself say, “You shouldn’t be mad at Harlow.”
He pauses. Then, “I’m not.”
I hate when he does this. He always acts like everything’s fine when it isn’t.
“She was trying to help,” I go on. I don’t add what I’m thinking: Since you didn’t bother. My dad’s preferred method of dealing with things is to not. Just let go and hope everything will work out okay. Maybe yes, Harlow overstepped, but only because he’s eternally standing still.
“I’m not mad at her,” he says again. He hesitates at the door, like he wants to say something else, but then he leaves without another word.
Harris: hey
On the night Harris resumes talking to me, the stars shine a little more brightly. I want to answer him solely in exclamation points and the happiest emojis I can find: rainbows, hands clapping, smiley faces, party favors. Because it’s Harris. And he’s not going to stop talking to me forever even though I had an online thing with a boy who wasn’t him.
I don’t want to scare him off, though, so I allow myself a lonely exclamation point.
Me: Hey!
Do I bring Seb up? Do I apologize? Do I act like Dad and pretend nothing ever happened?
Me: So . . . haven’t talked to you in a while
Long pause. No answer. I look away from my computer, count to ten, and snap back to the screen. Still nothing. I close my eyes and hum the chorus of a Beatles song. When I open my eyes, he has responded.
Harris: you’ve been busy
There it is. The passive-aggressive morsel of truth.
Me: Yeah
I have so much to say to him, but my fingers don’t move. I don’t know where to begin. Part of me is tempted to tell him everything. Part of me is curious about playing the game and taking Seb’s advice. I drum my fingers on the keyboard and wait.
Harris: i’ve missed talking to you
Is it possible for your fingers to melt in relief? Mine do. They practically ooze onto the keys.
Me: I’ve missed talking to you too. Like, a lot.
Harris: i’m not gonna lie . . . i was kinda upset when you blew me off to go online with some dude
Me: Ugh, I’m so sorry
Me: I suck
Me: I wasn’t even going to go online, but he told me that he was going to try the game, and I guess I got excited to introduce someone new to that world
Harris: it’s ok. i get it.
Me: I’m a turd. A gigantic, epic, post-McDonald’s poop
Harris: has anyone told you you’re kind of obsessed with mcdonald’s?
Me: We have a love-hate relationship
Harris: so
Harris: who was that guy?
Me: Who?
What a stupid, transparent thing to type. Like we weren’t just talking about this.
Harris: the guy who couldn’t kill a boar
Me: He’s just this guy from school
Harris: the soccer-star lab partner?
Me: Yes
Harris: so are you guys . . . a thing?
The little Seb on my shoulder keeps plotting away. Play the game, Analee. Make him jealous. Tell him about making out in the broom closet. I mentally flick little Seb away. I’m sick of playing games. I’m sick of hiding how I really feel, all the time, twenty-four hours a day, until I’m numb with exhaustion.
Me: We’re definitely not a thing
Me: Just friends
Me: If that
There is no possible explanation for why I feel as guilty as I do right now. Seb and I aren’t a thing. We can barely handle this showmance, let alone an actual, committed, know-someone-better-than-you-know-yourself relationship.
Harris: good
Me: Good?
Harris: yes
Me: Why is that good?
This, I know, is the moment I’ve been waiting for. All those mushy letters to Harris in my
journal, filled with longing and vulnerability, have built to this. My heart feels like it could burst through my chest. This could very well happen. The boy I love might love me back.
Harris: it’s good because
Harris: i don’t know
Me: Okay . . .
Harris: it just bothers me to think about you dating this guy
Me: Why?
Oh God. Another unbearable pause. I stand up. My body feels like it’s hopped up on caffeine and sugar, like I’ve downed twenty nonfat vanilla lattes. But I shouldn’t think about nonfat vanilla lattes, because nonfat vanilla lattes make me think of Seb. I imagine him faithfully waiting by my locker every morning, holding one out to me, wearing his absurdly bright shoes.
Harris: it’s obvious, isn’t it?
Harris: i like you, Analee
Harris: i’ve liked you for a while
Harris: you had to have known
Harris: hello?
Harris: Analee?
Now my body won’t move, no matter how much I will it. Why. Am. I. So. Dysfunctional? This, right here, is what I wanted! It’s happening! This is the elusive happiness that everyone else seems to have, right here on this LCD screen, and all I have to do is take it. I sit back down. I take a few ujjayi breaths, as demonstrated by Harlow during yoga instruction. Finally I’m able to lay my fingers over the keys and type a response.
Me: Sorry
Me: I’m here
Harris: you’re weirded out, aren’t you
Me: No! Not at all
Harris: i know you don’t feel the same way about me
Harris: honestly, i’m used to that
Harris: the girls i’ve liked in the past don’t usually go for guys who spend all their free time gaming
Me: Harris
Me: I do feel the same way
Harris: wait. what?
Harris: are you messing with me?
Me: I swear I’m not
Harris: holy shit
Me: I echo that sentiment
Harris: so . . . what now?
That’s the big question, isn’t it? What now? My thoughts return to Seb. Do we end whatever it is we’ve been doing? Do Harris and I end up together in virtual bliss? I didn’t think this far ahead. Honestly? I never expected my showmance with Seb to actually work. I didn’t fully consider that, at some point, we could each get something we want. This is a good thing, what’s happening with me and Harris. I should be bouncing-off-the-walls excited, but my feelings are all swirled together and I can’t tell any of them apart.
Analee, in Real Life Page 22
