A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  Celeste nodded and took a slow breath.

  Zach scooped ice cream into the bowls. “This one’s yours,” he said, pointing to the bowl with one scoop. He ladled hot fudge over the ice cream and squirted two reasonable towers of whipped cream. He sprinkled the pecans and added spoons. “What do you say we sit our shapely asses down on the sticky couch and eat our faces off?”

  “Sounds good,” Celeste said, and they carried their bowls into the living room.

  Zach took his bed pillow and tossed it onto the chair. The yellow blanket he shoved to the side. Instead of flicking on the TV, he angled toward her and dug into his sundae. He grinned and rolled his eyes up in his head. He lifted his T-shirt from where it covered the button of his jeans, revealing an innie belly button and a flat stomach with a bit of dark hair. She imagined laying her head on his stomach. She imagined his stomach solid and warm beneath her cheek. She imagined moving her head lower. “What do you know?” Zach asked. “Button’s still there.”

  Celeste could watch Zach eat all day. The way he licked his lips, sighed, and went back for more. She considered herself a kind of food voyeur.

  Zach took another bite, pointed his spoon in her direction. “Don’t waste it,” he said.

  Celeste slid her spoon in the side, made sure to take a sample of everything. A mini-sundae in one spoonful slid into her mouth. Sweet, light whipped cream. Thick, rich hot fudge. Cold, creamy coffee. And the salty crunch of pecans.

  “What’s the verdict?” Zach asked.

  “So good!” Her eyes really and truly rolled up in her head, and a shiver ran across her shoulders and down her thighs, as if she were having an orgasm.

  She wasn’t about to share that thought with Zach.

  Zach’s grin wrapped her like a hug. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he said. Without looking down, he dug into the sundae, not seeming to care whether he got equal amounts of ingredients in each bite. The spoon slid from his mouth with a smooth mound of ice cream.

  Celeste took another carefully planned bite.

  Zach considered his spoon, turned it over, slid it back into his mouth, and scraped the remaining ice cream off with his teeth. “Everyone in my family loves to eat. Even my mother. Especially my mother. But then she does this annoying girl thing.”

  “Excuse me,” Celeste said, her voice garbled, her mouth full of yum. “You’re generalizing my gender!”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. We’ll get done eating something awesome. She’ll seem like she’s enjoying herself. And then she goes and mumbles about how she’s going to regret what she’s eaten in the morning. It’s not even like she wants us to say anything to her. It’s like she needs to talk to herself, to make it okay she’s eaten.”

  Zach’s mother needed to alleviate her guilt.

  Zach took another bite, rubbed his belly, and put on a cartoon girly voice. “Boy, that sure was tasty. Not that I needed the extra calories.”

  The thing about stereotypes? Sometimes they were true.

  Celeste wasn’t going to share that thought with Zach either. “When I, uh, get worried about food, I’m supposed to talk to myself.”

  Zach stuffed his face, squinted at her sideways.

  “It’s called self-talk.” Celeste envisioned a female shrink’s office. She remembered curling up on the shrink’s stereotypical couch and the nonstereotypical shrink with the dyed red hair and henna tattoos telling her to fight back. “So, a long time ago, I went to a stress management psychiatric type person, and she said when I had thoughts about food that made me nervous, I should talk back to them. I could even call the wrong thoughts Ed.”

  “Ed?”

  “Um, yeah.” Celeste’s jeans pressed into her stomach, a sure sign the ice cream was going straight to her waist. Screw it. Why should Zach have all the fun? She took another bite and lowered her gaze to the sundae. “Ed stands for ‘eating disorder.’” Celeste made her face go dead serious and she tried imitating the voice of that long-ago shrink. “ ‘You know that’s not true. Celeste is not a big, fat pig.’” She was trying for the lightening lift of humor. Instead, her little comedy routine weighted her down.

  “How’s that working out?” Zach asked.

  “Decent,” she said. “As long as I remember to fight.” She looked at Zach. “Sometimes I get tired and I need a little help.”

  “Like someone who says”—Zach slipped back into his cartoon girly voice—“ ‘Celeste is not a big, fat pig. She’s a scorching hot babe. Not that she’s trying to impress Zach or anything.’”

  Celeste cracked up. “Sort of. I’m not sure about the female voice. You might want to stick with your own.”

  “Made you smile, though, didn’t I? And look how great you’re doing with that sundae.” Zach’s voice went high, naturally, the way you sounded when you were excited about another person’s success.

  Celeste scraped the bowl and licked the spoon, like when she was eight years old. Twelve. Fifteen. She wanted to throw her arms around Zach and bury his face in kisses. She wanted to give him more. “I know it’s wrong, but I think if only I can get to such and such weight, I’ll be happier. Or when I can fit back into jeans I haven’t worn in years, everything will be . . . more manageable. But when I’m, you know, not doing so well and I get to a certain weight, I change the goal. I can be what you’d call superambitious, when it comes to competing against myself.”

  “Why not just decide to be happy now?”

  “Because Ed’s superambitious, too?” she asked.

  Zach set his empty bowl on the coffee table and leaned closer. He smelled like coffee and cream and all kinds of yum. He smelled like Zach. “Tell Ed I said he should fuck off.”

  Celeste’s pulse delivered a solid punch to the center of her chest, as if her heart wanted to break through and embrace Zach, too. “I’ll do that,” she said, and her lips trembled into a smile. “With the exception of that one stress specialist person, I’ve never really discussed my . . . eating thing with anyone before.”

  Zach gave her a good, long stare. “What about Katherine?”

  Celeste made a pfft sound. “No way.” She thought about the conversation she’d had with Katherine last night and how close she’d come to revealing her latest screwup.

  At least Katherine and Barry seemed to be getting it together. First thing this morning, Barry had strolled into Lamontagne’s with a huge grin on his face, looking as if he were about to vault over the bakery counter and jump Katherine. When Celeste had asked if he wanted a cup of coffee, he’d said, “No thanks,” and hummed Squeeze’s “Black Coffee in Bed.”

  Katherine had whacked Barry over the head with a baguette.

  “Your best friend, Abby?” Zach asked.

  Celeste shook her head. She was a terrible friend. Despite the pinkie swear promise to call, she hadn’t spoken to Abby since the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival. Celeste couldn’t get herself to support the Abby-Charlie reunion.

  Even for Abby, Celeste couldn’t fake it.

  She could sympathize with the way Barry must’ve felt when a court had granted Katherine their divorce. She could imagine showing up on Abby’s doorstep every morning for a cup of coffee and a second chance.

  She couldn’t imagine that going over well with Charlie.

  “Abby helped me eat, but we more like talked around the eating disorder.” Celeste drew a circle in the air. “We never used the word anorexia.” When Zach met her gaze and his mouth fell slack, Celeste swallowed and blinked at the ceiling. She took a slow, deep breath, the way Zach had taught her.

  Zach sucked his lips into his mouth and shook his head. “I lied to you. I didn’t go for a beer run last night.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you bought beer,” Celeste said, her voice getting high and tight. Her mind flashed on the night her mother had told her she and her father were selling their house and moving to Florida. “But you love it here,” Celeste had said, as if anyone needed a
reminder of who, or what, they loved.

  Was Zach planning on leaving Hidden Harbor, too?

  Zach tried for a grin, but it looked more like an apology. “Drove to the state liquor store, after I stopped by Barry’s house.”

  “Why were you at Barry’s?”

  “I wanted to talk to Barry about how I could help you with your eating thing. The anorexia,” he said, getting way too comfortable with the term.

  Zach had sneaked off to hold a powwow with shrink Barry to try to figure out how to get her to stop making herself sick.

  Celeste kind of loved Zach for that. She kind of hated him for it, too.

  “Anything else you’ve lied to me about? Anything you’d like to get off your chest?”

  Zach crossed his ankle on his left thigh. He raised and lowered his left leg four times, thudding his heel against the rug. Zach gave his body a half rock. He scrunched up his mouth, as if he were working on another squirt of whipped cream. His gaze dropped to his sling and then came back to her eyes. “I’m somewhat color-blind.”

  “No way! Katherine’s color-blind, too. She’s the only woman—”

  “I think I’m Katherine’s biological son.”

  Celeste blinked. She tugged at her earlobe, as though to clear post-swim water. “Katherine doesn’t have a son. She and Barry tried for years. They went through three rounds of IVF. She had to give herself shots, but they never took. . . .” Twenty-four years ago, Katherine and Barry hadn’t even known each other. Katherine would’ve been new to town. She would’ve been Celeste’s age. She could’ve given away a son. That son could’ve been Zach.

  “Surely you can’t be serious,” Celeste said, but Zach wasn’t taking the classic movie bait. And he’d never looked more serious. “Why do you think Katherine is your mother?”

  Zach said something about a registry and nonidentifying information. He babbled about traveling from town to town and bakery to bakery and then chickening out on the follow-through. He told Celeste his birth date.

  Celeste thought about the way Zach and Katherine stared at each other and how she’d mistaken their odd familiarity for a May-September crush. Last night, she’d even sensed that Katherine didn’t want Barry and Zach getting too chummy.

  Could Katherine have given away a son and not told Barry? Could giving away a son have fueled her desperation for having a baby? She’d made herself into one stressed and obsessed pincushion. Trying to conceive, unsuccessfully, had put a strain on Katherine and Barry’s marriage and led to their divorce.

  “. . . so I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure Katherine is my birth mother.”

  “Do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do,” Celeste said.

  “Yeah. Twilight Zone, all the way.”

  Celeste set her bowl on the coffee table and edged closer to Zach. “Let me get this straight. You’ve never discussed this with Katherine? You ate your way clean across Casco Bay and managed to get Katherine to give you a job. But you’re too much of a fraidy cat to ask her if she’s ever given up a kid for adoption?”

  Zach’s hand fidgeted the cowlick that flopped across his forehead, a close cousin to the lock of hair that escaped the front of Katherine’s sculpted hairdos. Zach’s features were different from Katherine’s. His nose was broader where Katherine’s was straight and narrow. But they both had the high cheekbones, square jaw thing going for them.

  “We’ve sort of talked around the issue.” Zach drew a circle in the air. A joke, but his lips and eyes turned down.

  “That’s pathetic,” Celeste said, trying to tease out a smile.

  Zach blinked at her, but his expression didn’t change. “I know.”

  “Does anyone else know about you and Katherine? I mean, besides you and Katherine?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thank you for sharing your secret with me,” Celeste said. “Thank you for trusting me.” Thank you for trusting me with your heart.

  Zach leaned his left shoulder against the back of the couch, as if he needed to take a nap. “You’re welcome.”

  Celeste nodded. “Two pathetic people like us? We kind of, sort of deserve each other.” She cocked her head to the side, leaned forward, and pretended to pout. “Don’t you think?” She reached up and touched his hair, ran her finger along the dark, shiny wave.

  Zach went still, as if he were afraid to move.

  She rose up on her knees and kissed the tip of his nose. Then she dropped a kiss onto the warm pulse of his broad forehead. She ran her fingertips along his face—jawline to chin.

  Zach’s gaze flicked from her eyes to her lips, but he still held his ground.

  Celeste sat back down. “Don’t you want to kiss me?”

  “I want to do a lot more than that.”

  Celeste laughed. “So what’s the problem?”

  “As I recall, the last time we kissed, it didn’t go so good. I don’t want to hurt you,” Zach said.

  She frowned at him. Melodrama much? She’d had a panic attack, nothing life shattering. Nothing she hadn’t gotten over. She stroked his bottom lip, ran her fingertip along the center indentation. “What if we try again?”

  “Celeste,” Zach said, his tone pleading, as though urging her toward reason. But then his gaze softened.

  “Fraidy cat,” she said, into his face.

  Zach gave her hair a tug, like a little boy crushing. He leaned forward, met her in the middle, and took her challenge.

  His lips were ice creamy and sticky, sweet and soft against hers. Her pulse pounded, but her throat didn’t close. No panic clogged her airway, like a marshmallow in a straw. No pains compressed her chest as if she were going to die.

  Zach stroked her hair and he pulled away. “You okay?” he asked, and she answered him with a second kiss.

  Celeste rested her hand against his chest. Zach’s slow and steady kiss made her head feel heavy and light at the same time. She kind of loved Zach. She wanted to kiss him. She deserved a superhero. She deserved—

  Zach smacked his lips. “Still okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and a wacky ache zipped up and down both of her arms.

  “Mind if we get comfy?” he asked, and he kissed the word sure right from her lips.

  Zach leaned forward slowly, waiting for her to adjust and lean back, until she lay on the couch, with Zach on top of her.

  His chest pressed against hers, his cast in the sling between them. He swung his leg over her, and his pelvis dropped down against hers. A flush of heat washed over her, the kind you get when you’re about to get sick.

  Celeste stroked Zach’s hair. She fisted her hand around the back of his flannel shirt collar.

  Relax, it’s just Zach, your superhero. Your giver of sweet, soft kisses.

  Ever so slightly, her superhero ground his pelvis against hers, and everything went black.

  She woke up in a darkened room with a weight on top of her. A noise sounded above her, more of a growl than a man’s voice. The room spun like a merry-go-round.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Matt asked.

  They were in Matt’s dorm room. They were naked. His intentions loomed above her, a gross, pink, bobbing thing wrapped in a rubber.

  “Stop,” she said. “I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.” For the first time in ages, she thought of the white picket fence house she’d grown up in, and her bedroom with the ball fringe curtains. For the first time in ages, she wanted her mother.

  “Ex-fucking-cuse me?” Matt’s face took shape in the dark—his straight hair unleashed from its short ponytail and falling to his shoulders, and his narrow lips, but she didn’t recognize him. She didn’t know him at all.

  “I said no!” Her voice sounded wobbly and thin. She wriggled beneath him, her reaction time delayed, her limbs slow with alcohol. “Get off me. Get the hell off me!”

  Matt stared down at her, unmoving. “It’s a little late for no. It’s a little too late to change your mind.”

  How could she change her mind if she’d never mad
e a decision?

  Celeste’s adrenaline spiked, her body understanding what was happening, how little leverage she had, half a beat before her mind registered the urgency.

  “No!” Celeste’s fist connected with a satisfying, bone-cracking thwap.

  Celeste opened her eyes.

  She was in her apartment, breathing hard, sitting on her couch, and fully clothed. She squinted against the light. Her scream echoed in her head.

  Zach held his left hand to his face.

  Celeste’s mouth was cottony. Her words sounded like pieces of paper rubbing against each other. “What just happened?”

  Zach moved his hand from his face. The skin beneath his left eye glowed red with a fresh, angry bruise. But Zach, her superhero Zach, was apologizing to her. “I’m so sorry. I am so sorry,” he said, his voice thick and hushed. His gaze met hers, both eyes glassy. Both eyes were wet with tears, for her. He held out his hand.

  Celeste shook her head and pulled back. “Oh, no.”

  “Let me help you,” Zach said.

  A current of tremors traveled from her stomach and up her chest and down both arms. Her fingers quivered. Her jaw ached, her teeth chattering as though she’d plunged into the October-chill waters of the Atlantic.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Zach said.

  “Oh, no.” Celeste stood up. She had to get out of here. She had to run somewhere, anywhere. Other girls picked up strangers at bars and got into bad situations. Other girls took shortcuts home, alone, through city alleyways and got jumped by lowlife scumbags.

  Zach stood up, his hand outstretched between them. He tried to give her an encouraging smile, but his lips quivered, downturned and telling the truth.

  “Oh, no,” Celeste said.

  Other girls got raped.

  CHAPTER 18

  When you realized the girl you loved had left you, you searched for her in all the obvious places first. When you realized you were in love, you never let go.

  At two in the morning, Zach woke up on the sticky couch, with his legs wrapped around Celeste’s two yellow blankets but no Celeste. His wrist ached from holding Celeste against him while she’d trembled. His eye socket throbbed from the punch she’d landed. His head tingled from sleep deprivation.