On an impulse, I take my phone out and scroll through my contacts, looking for a specific name. I worry for a moment that I deleted it, but I didn’t. It’s there, as if waiting for me.
I take a breath and call the number. She picks up after two rings.
“Sara?”
“Meg. Hi. Um. Look,” I say, forcing my voice not to tremble, “I know this is coming out of nowhere, but I’d really like to see you.”
Silence. My heart flutters. I’ve waited too long. I waited too long and she’s moved on and she —
“Really?” Meg says.
“Yes. Really. Really.”
I can hear the smile in her voice.
“When?”
2.
I’m in the kitchen prepping snacks for our movie night when I hear Carrie come in. Christina’s out for the evening with Ben, so tonight it’ll be just us girls, Oklahoma!, and a ton of junk food. Good times — but honestly, anything else that happens tonight is all gravy.
“Carrie!” I say, rushing into the living room. My body is still tingling, and I have so much energy I could run the Boston Marathon a hundred times over. “Carrie, guess what!”
Oh.
“I was going to say the same thing,” Carrie says.
Missy stands next to her, hands wringing together, her eyes wide and scared. “Um. Hi,” she says in a tiny voice.
“Hi,” I say, and we stand there not speaking and not moving until Carrie gently nudges Missy toward me. She approaches one small step at a time, until she’s close enough I could touch her. We haven’t been this close in months.
“I. Um,” she says. Her face goes through a series of expressions I can’t identify as belonging to any specific emotion, then she says, simply, “I don’t want to be mad at you anymore.”
Next thing I know, Missy’s arms are wrapped around my ribcage, crushing me. She says she’s sorry for shutting me out. I say I’m sorry for hurting her. She’s crying, I’m crying, of course Carrie — big sentimental softie she is — she’s crying. We lose a chunk of movie night purging our grief, but this was long overdue. Everything else can wait.
Once we hug it out — and cry it out, and talk it out — Missy stays for movie night, but we barely watch the movie. We instead spend the night talking, the three of us, catching up on — well, lost friend time I guess you could say. We pause once, when Hugh Jackman shows up on screen wearing nothing but pants and a pair of suspenders. Obviously, that’s only of interest to a select audience.
It’s pushing midnight by the time the movie ends, and past midnight by the time Missy and I finish our second round of hugging and crying and apologizing.
“Not the evening I’d expected,” Carrie says, wiping tears off her cheeks.
“Me either,” I say, “but I’m not complaining.”
“Yeah.” We head upstairs yawning, the day at last catching up to us. “Time for our beauty sleep. Not that we need it...”
“I’d rather play it safe. I want to look my best tomorrow.”
“Why, what’s tomorrow?”
“Nothing much,” I say, breaking out into a huge, stupid smile. “Just my first date with Meg.”
Carrie helps me pick an ensemble for my big night out. I’ve managed to develop a fashion sense of my own over the past few months, but my brain is so all over the place I can barely string two words together, much less assemble a date-appropriate outfit.
“Here we go. This blouse,” Carrie says, handing me a loose, light blue shirt, “this vest, and this skirt.”
“You sure?” I say. “I’m not going to look overdressed, am I?”
“Only if Meg shows up wearing a garbage bag, and I think I can say with complete confidence that she’ll be dressed to the nines.”
“Dressed to the nines?” I say with a giggle.
“Meg favors a retro style, so I chose to employ a retro description. Twenty-three skidoo.”
That gets a big laugh, which I suspect was the point. Carrie’s trying to put me at ease, keep my mind off the night ahead.
“I don’t want to screw this up,” I say.
“You won’t,” Carrie says. Coming from her, it’s not just an empty reassurance; it’s a statement of fact. I let out a long sigh that takes with it all my anxiety, all my worries.
I wanted this. I said I was ready for it.
I can do this.
Carrie is with me throughout the pre-date prep process, reassuring me that yes, the outfit looks great; no, I am not wearing too much makeup; yes, my plans for the night are solid and Meg will love every minute of it. She’ll love it because she’ll be with me.
I’m ready to go twenty minutes before Meg’s scheduled to pick me up, which means I have twenty excruciating minutes to obsess over everything that could possibly go wrong. I could spill food on her at dinner or knock my drink into her lap. I could blurt out something stupid. I could go overboard complimenting her and drive her away because I’m coming off as clingy and obsessive.
“You could fall into a waiter as he’s serving cherries jubilee and end up burning down the restaurant,” Carrie says. “You could let it slip that you miss the grand old sport of foxhunting, or that you enjoy the music of Nickelback.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“So are you.”
My entire body goes instantly rigid when the doorbell rings. Carrie grabs my hands, pulls me to my feet, and gives me a reassuring smile — a reminder to me that a smile is the perfect finishing touch to any ensemble, but my face won’t respond.
“You’re about to go on a date with a girl who’s been crushing on you for months,” Carrie says. “A girl who visited you in the hospital every week, and sat there and talked to you and held your hand, and kicked herself constantly because she thought she missed the chance to be with you.”
There it goes.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Got to watch out for my girl,” Carrie says.
Carrie opens the door and somehow does so with a flourish, like she’s one of those game show models and she’s drawing a curtain open to present the amazing prize hidden hiding behind it. It’s a fair analogy because Meg is on the other side.
Meg loves vintage clothing, and she can rock the retro look without it coming off as forced or fakey. Tonight she’s in a blue cocktail dress from the 1940s or maybe the 1950s, a pair of black pumps with chunky heels and fat bows on the front, and her hair is done up in what I think is called a victory roll with the bangs sweeping back over her head in curling waves. She looks so beautiful.
We lock eyes and trade stunned expressions. She smiles at me, looking as anxious and excited as I feel. I take a breath to calm the fluttering in my chest, but it doesn’t help.
“Hi,” Meg says, her voice cracking slightly. She clears her throat and laughs to cover her embarrassment. “Sorry. Hi.”
“Hi,” I say. Should I hug her? Would that be too much? No, why would it? I’ve hugged her before, lots of times...when we were just friends. Now we’re...um. Whatever we are now.
Carrie jumps to my rescue — again. “All right, young lady,” she says to Meg. “Curfew is eleven. If you’re running late for any reason, you call to let me know.”
“I will, ma’am,” Meg says.
“Excuse me, I believe that’s my job,” Christina says, emerging from the kitchen. Meg snaps to attention. Stuff just got real. “Hello again, Meg.”
“Ms. Hauser,” Meg says.
“Christina,” she corrects. She takes us both in and smiles approvingly. “Don’t you two look lovely?”
“Stunning, I’d say,” Carrie says, slipping me a wink.
“Well, as Carrie said, curfew is eleven, call if you’re running late,” Christina says to Meg, who nods respectfully. “What are the plans for this evening?”
“I don’t know,” Meg says, looking my way, “what are the plans for this evening?”
“Uh, well, I thought we’d hit the Country Kettle for dinner. Carrie said it’s a nice place,” I say, “and then..
.well, I wanted to save it as a surprise...”
Christina holds up her hands. “Say no more. Go on. Have a good night,” she says, giving me a hug. “You deserve it,” she adds in a whisper.
And with that, we’re off.
3.
The Country Kettle is something of an institution in Kingsport. It’s been around forever and, I’m told, hasn’t changed much since it first opened its doors. It’s fancy enough aesthetically to feel like it’s someplace special, but the menu is all reasonably priced comfort food and pub grub. It also boasts an extensive senior citizens’ menu, a strong hint at its regular clientele. Meg and I are the youngest people in here by a few decades — not counting one fussy toddler who is ruining his parents’ Friday night out.
“Tell me Farley is better behaved than that,” I say.
“Farley’s better behaved in public than Kilroy is,” Meg says.
“I don’t doubt that.”
This is the kind of small talk that’s dominated the evening so far. We’ve both come close to saying something important, something of substance, but backed off at the last minute. We’re tiptoeing instead of talking.
This isn’t why I asked her out.
“Meg,” I begin, but she waves me silent.
“We have a lot to say to each other,” she says. She reaches across the table to take my hand, which sends a charge running through me that has nothing to do with her powers. “Let’s not do it here. For now, let’s have fun.”
“Yeah. Okay,” I say, and we slide back into the small talk, but simply agreeing to shelve the heavy heart-to-heart stuff, at least temporarily, is enough to loosen us up.
Meg comes alive when I ask her how college is going. Long story short, she’s having the time of her life. She’s made a ton of new friends; she loves her classes; and she’s already in a new band, a blues ensemble that is currently debating names. The frontrunner is The Snoveling Show — Meg’s suggestion, an in-joke I’m not in on — though the lead singer is pushing hard for the much less imaginative Dirty Water, even though there are apparently a dozen bands in Boston with that name.
Outside of my involvement with the LGBTQ club, I don’t have anything terribly interesting to report. Life hasn’t been very thrilling, but it has been stable, which is more than I’ve been able to say for a long while. I’m happy with where I am, I tell Meg.
“Good,” she says, taking my hand again. “Good.”
After dinner and dessert — a shared slice of triple-layer chocolate mousse cake so delicious it makes my toes curl — I give Meg directions to my big surprise.
Curmudgeon’s is a small, out-of-the-way tavern just outside the center of town. From the outside it doesn’t look all that impressive, and at a glance, you’d never realize it’s a business. A sign sits at the edge of the property, right along the side of the road, but it’s small and old and faded. It’s as if the owner doesn’t actually want people to discover the place.
It’s a favorite after-work hangout for the Coffee Experience crew, and Jill the Goddess of Caffeine was the one who told me about the Saturday night all-ages concerts held in the back room — a well-kept secret within a well-kept secret. The space is tiny. The stage is large enough to accommodate a comfortable trio or a snug quartet. Tonight’s featured band, a four-man ensemble by the name of the Kingsport Connection, plays swing and upbeat, dance-worthy blues and jazz. The back room is a little larger than Carrie’s — my living room, so there isn’t a lot of space for dancing, but once the music starts up, there’s no way Meg and I are going to stand still. Mostly we dance in place, but once in a while, the audience thins out enough to give us room to spin and twirl. Soon enough I forget there are other people there. All I hear is the music, and all I see is Meg, smiling and happy and radiant.
The set only lasts an hour, so we still have plenty of evening left ahead of us. We stick around long enough to grab something cold to drink then head out to our next destination: Kingsport Heights Beach. In the off-season, the parking lots are left open so the locals can enjoy the scenery. We pull into the lot near the beach and sit on the hood of Meg’s car to watch the ocean lazily roll in. The waves are normally pretty wild this time of year, the wind stiffer and biting, but tonight the ocean is calm, the breeze gentle.
Gentle but still cold. I shiver and pull my jacket tight around me. Meg presses against my side and wraps an arm around my waist. I smile at her. She smiles at me.
“This is nice,” I say.
“Yeah.” She pauses. “I missed you.”
“Missed you.” I let the moment linger, savoring it, then say, “I’m sorry I kept you away for so long.”
“It’s okay. I get it. You needed to get back into a good headspace.”
“Still...”
“No apologies. I get it. You did what you needed to do.” She chews on her bottom lip, lost in thought. “I was getting worried you were never going to call me.”
“I was worried you’d forgotten about me and moved on.”
Meg doesn’t speak, but I can see it in her eyes, in her smile; that wasn’t going to happen.
Tell her. You wanted this opportunity. Don’t waste it. Tell her.
“I want to be with you,” I say.
Meg starts, surprised, and then she smiles again, but it’s an expression of pride rather than affection. “What happened to that shy girl I met ten months ago?”
“Oh, she’s still here, believe me. She’s a work in progress.”
“You’ll get there. I did.”
I do a double take. “You? I have a hard time believing you were ever shy.”
“Believe it. I was not always the bold, brassy broad you see before you,” Meg says with a little gesture of presentation.
“Get out.”
“It’s true. If you’d met me a few years ago, you’d have met a totally different Meg Quentin. When I was younger, I was...” She hesitates. “I spent most of my childhood being teased and bullied. Having famous misfits of science for parents gave kids a lot of material to work with.” She chuckles to herself, but there’s no humor behind it. “Kilroy got into a lot of fights on my behalf. He can be a righteous douche sometimes, but he’s always had my back.”
My opinion of Kilroy goes up a couple of notches.
“Things only got worse for me when I realized I was a lesbian,” she says. “I already felt like a freak because of my parents and my powers...there were days I was convinced the entire world was out to get me.”
“What changed?” I ask. Meg’s smile wavers, and what she says next utterly floors me.
“I fell into an abusive relationship.”
Meg was a high school freshman when she met Kim — she utters her name like a mild curse — an older girl who recognized Meg for what she was: a young, naïve black hole of self-worth who was desperate for acceptance. Kim got her hooks into Meg and manipulated her emotionally to get whatever she wanted. She used Meg’s fear of abandonment to keep her in line, threatening to dump her whenever she showed any hint of a backbone.
Dr. Quentin figured out pretty quickly what was going on, but she didn’t say anything at first, fearful that any attempt to separate the girls would only drive Meg further into Kim’s arms. Her greater fear — that the abuse would escalate to something physical — eventually won, but Dr. Quentin wisely didn’t order Meg to break up with Kim.
“She sat me down and talked to me, explained why Kim was bad for me, why I deserved better, but she didn’t tell me to dump her,” Meg says. “She said it was my decision, and she’d respect whatever I chose to do. Mom let me have the power. It was the first time I felt like I had control over my own life.”
“So you broke up with Kim,” I assume — wrongly, it turns out.
“Of course I didn’t. I was a teenage girl in the grip of first love. I tried to salvage the relationship. I went to Kim and I told her she had to start treating me better,” Meg says, striking a self-assured pose, as if reliving her moment of personal triumph. “I told her I
wasn’t going to stand for her belittling me or threatening me anymore, and if she couldn’t treat me like I deserved to be treated, we were done.”
I almost break out in applause.
“I was so proud of myself,” Meg says, “but honestly? It was all a bluff. I don’t think I would have pulled the plug for real, but I was convinced I wouldn’t have to. I thought my impassioned speech would make Kim see the light and everything from that point on would be all puppies and rainbows.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “What happened?”
“She dumped me.”
My jaw drops. “She what?!”
“Yep. She gave me a look that could curdle milk, called me an ungrateful bitch, and told me to get to stepping because we were through.”
“Oh my God, are you serious? After everything she put you through, she dumped you?! I can’t believe her!”
“Oh, I could. That was Kim all over; manipulative to the end — and that was the end of it. See, she thought by dumping me, I’d cave. A week later, when I still hadn’t come crawling back on hands and knees, begging her to take me back, she called me and said, ‘If you apologize, I’ll consider getting back together with you.’”
“Please tell me you chewed her out so hard her hair fell out,” I say, but Meg shakes her head.
“I hung up on her without saying a word. That girl had taken enough of my life already. I wasn’t going to let her take any more.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, which feels pathetically inadequate, but I don’t know what else to say.
“I didn’t tell you all that to get sympathy. I wanted you to know that I understand what you’ve been dealing with. I know what it’s like to reinvent yourself after hitting rock bottom. It’s a process. I’m still going through it.” She shrugs. “I imagine I always will be. The reason I’ve made it this far is because I have people who love me and are there when I need them. I want to be there for you.” She swallows hard and adds in a choked whisper, “Even if it’s only as a friend.”
My hand finds hers. “I think you missed the part where I said I want to be with you.”
Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups Page 25
