“How should I…” My voice trails off when I see the line she’s pointing at. A charge from In Good Company.
“I asked your sisters and they both said they didn’t know what it was from.” When I don’t speak, she takes this as an admission of guilt. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I’ll refund you from my pay.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” she says. “I googled it, and I don’t know what you’re doing or who you’re doing it with….”
Great. She thinks this is a kinky sex thing.
“I’m taking your credit card. It was supposed to be for emergencies only and now you’re using it for God knows what. I didn’t think this was you, Eden. I really didn’t.”
“Jesus, Mom. It’s nothing!”
As if she’s in any position to lecture me on what I’m doing or who I’m doing it with.
“Don’t talk to me that way,” she says, her voice rising. “What’s happening between your dad and me is just between the two of us. It doesn’t give you the right to talk to me however you like.”
I give a rough laugh. “Really? Because I thought finding you fucking some guy who is not my father kind of gave me a pass.”
“You did not see us…” She won’t use the word.
“Fucking,” I repeat for her, enunciating every syllable. If she can do it, she better be able to say it. “I saw everything I needed to.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is suddenly breaking. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I couldn’t,” I say. “I just wanted it to go away. I wanted to have imagined the whole thing.”
Even as I say it, I half wish she would tell me now that it was a figment of my imagination.
“I’m sorry, Eden,” she says, and she’s crying, reaching her hand out to touch my face. “I’m so sorry. What happened was a mistake. It started just a few weeks before your father got sick and we ended it almost immediately after.”
I take a step back, so her hand hangs in between us for a second.
“But I saw Serg at your office the week I stopped working for Dad. I saw him…touching you.”
Her face crumples even more. “Serg just came to check on me that day. I didn’t ask him to and I told him to leave. I swear it, Eden. I swear it. That’s all it was.”
“Do you love him?” I spit.
It’s the question I’ve been afraid to know the answer to for so long. And I don’t even know who him is. Dad? Serg?
“I love your father,” she says. “I always have. I always will.”
“Then why would you do something like this? Dad loves you more than anything. He would never do something like this to you and…Why would you do this?” And now I am crying too.
I wait and wait for her answer, but it never comes. She looks surprised, like even she doesn’t know why she did it.
“It was a mistake,” she says again, but I’ve heard enough. I’m already moving past her, hurrying down the stairs.
I find my keys, apparently Oliver told Sam they’d be in the mailbox, and drive to Avery Park, even though I’m in my sweats. I call Will on the way.
We sit and, like creeps, watch little kids playing for hours, and I wish I could go back to the days when everything was simple, when everything was in its place.
* * *
—
“This one time when I was seven, I ran away with Oliver.
“Lace and I had been playing outside in her yard when Oliver burst out of the house and came running toward us. He had on this little backpack that he used to carry around everywhere, and he told us he was running away.”
“Why?” Will asks.
“I don’t remember. It probably had something to do with the puppy he and Lacey had been begging for for months. He asked Lacey to come with him, but she said no because her dance recital was the next day.”
“Very forward-thinking for a seven-year-old,” Will says.
I laugh. “Too bad that side of her was gone by the time we hit ten. Anyway, Lacey burst into tears because she was sure she was never going to see her brother again. And then he started crying, and between the two of them, they just looked so sad that I couldn’t stand it. Next thing I knew, I was offering to go with him. I don’t know what the rationale was. Maybe I figured that Lacey still had her parents or that Oliver needed me more than she did, but for whatever reason, we did it.
“I grabbed his hand and we left, both of us crying the entire two blocks we got before Lacey told her mom and they came and got us. It didn’t occur to us that we could just, you know, not run away.
“Our plan was to go to Avery Park, but I’m pretty sure we weren’t even going in the right direction.”
“How come you didn’t stay friends?” Will asks.
“We’re friends,” I say, but the truth is that I don’t really know why Oliver and I stopped hanging out. All of a sudden, I miss him. I miss talking to him the way I did that night outside Juno’s. I miss the simplicity of who we used to be.
I wonder if there’s any of the old Eden and the old Oliver still in us.
ON SUNDAY, I wake up still thinking of Oliver, and the thoughts continue throughout the day.
I think of him before. Of his and Lacey’s joint birthday parties, of arguing over the TV when I was at their place. I think of him now. Bringing me home on Friday night, watching me make a fool of myself.
Thanks for the other night. I owe you, I write just after dinner, then wait for his response.
I grip my phone in my palm and check it five, six times, even though it’s on vibrate. There’s no response.
Maybe he’s pissed at me. If not about Friday night itself, then about waiting so long to text and say thank you.
I check again.
Nothing.
Will always texts me right back.
I’m not used to waiting so long.
I’m halfway through a movie I put on just to have something playing when my phone vibrates.
You’re welcome. How are you feeling?
Mortified, I write back.
It takes about a minute before his response comes back.
Did Sam tell you to drink lots of water? I hear that helps with the mortification.
I smile at his response.
Ha. In that case I’m going to need about a gallon’s worth.
And now I’m thinking of what Will asked me. Why did we stop being friends?
I hesitate before writing the text. Then before sending it.
But I have to know something.
If Oliver and I can still be friends. If Lacey was all we ever had in common.
Meet me somewhere tonight?
It’s about five minutes before he responds, and during those minutes, I wonder if maybe that sounded weird. That sentence could be totally misconstrued.
Should I send more details?
I should send more details.
And rephrase it completely.
Or take it back completely.
As I start to craft another text, this one far more carefully worded than the last, my phone vibrates in my hand and his response shows up on my screen.
Yes.
One word.
No questions, no hesitation. Just yes.
I erase the rewording/explanation text.
Dress warm, wear socks. Bring snacks if you want, I text.
A minute later, he responds: OK. Where are we meeting?
I know he has to be thinking I’m completely insane, because it’s July and still well over eighty degrees outside right now.
The ice rink. In 30 minutes?
A few moments, then he texts back: Sounds good. See you soon.
I pull out socks, mittens, a beanie I haven’t worn in ages. Thirty minutes is not a lot of time.
I stu
ff everything I need into my messenger bag, then hurry as quietly as I can down the stairs, swing into the kitchen for a couple of snacks and then manage to extract my car keys out of the bowl of doom with surprising ease. It takes longer to find the second pair of keys I’m searching for in there, but when I do, I quietly slip out the front door.
Once I’m out, I call Will.
“Come somewhere with me?”
“Always,” he says, that familiar grin in his voice.
I get to the rink in thirteen minutes and pull into a space in the parking lot. There are no other cars in the lot.
“I wonder if he’s running late. Or if he’s lost,” I tell Will.
I start walking and decide to check the front lot because there are a few parking spots there too. Most regular skaters and their families use the back lot, so it didn’t occur to me to tell Oliver which one to come to.
Sure enough, as I round the corner of the building and start to approach the west wing, I see him leaning against his car, waiting.
“He’s here,” I tell Will.
Oliver smiles at me from across the distance and I feel a weird twinge in my chest. A sudden memory comes back from Friday night. Me, wondering what Oliver’s lips taste like.
My face feels warm at the thought.
“Sorry, I completely forgot there are two parking lots,” I tell him, trying to look anywhere but at his lips. “Back there is where parents of students are meant to park and this one is the visitors’ lot.”
Oliver shakes his head, unbothered. “Don’t worry about it.”
I stick my phone in my hoodie pocket, retrieve the second set of keys I got from the key bowl before I left home and try to open the lock.
“You got permission to get in?”
“Define permission,” I say, jostling the lock before trying another key. “I mean, the manager-slash-head-teacher-slash-home-wrecker gave my mom keys so she could get in and Sam could practice after hours.”
“Is that normal?”
“Probably not,” I say. “But now it all makes sense.”
Finally the lock gives and the huge doors creak open. It is freakishly dark in there, even with the blast of light coming in from outside with us. And I don’t want to leave the doors open for too long because someone might see us entering, and who even knows what alarm systems are set up in here.
So I shut the door behind us, leaving us completely in the dark.
Alone.
Our breathing suddenly sounds incredibly loud, and it’s only this sound that allows me to locate Oliver beside me.
I squeeze Will in my palm, a reminder that he’s here too.
I move along the walls, trying to find the first set of lights that I can, and crash into a couple of trash cans.
“Whoa, careful. You okay?” Oliver asks, and I try to hide the embarrassment in my voice when I say that I am.
As I continue along, I hear him also patting the walls, looking for the lights. Finally I land on a pair of switches, and when I flick one of them on, the section where we’re standing, near some public bathrooms and behind a set of bleachers, lights up. Something like nine-tenths of the rink is still dark, but it still takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light.
And realize how close behind me Oliver is.
“Oh,” he says, blinking. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You’re not going to make me skate, are you?” Oliver asks.
I laugh. “What do you think we came to an ice rink to do?”
Following me as I walk around turning on lights, Oliver says, “Well, I thought perhaps we would come and not skate. Observe some people skating, maybe? I don’t know.” Then, with something that is a cross between a groan and a laugh, he says, “You know I’m terrible at skating.” When I turn around, he’s tugging on a curl at the back of his head, and he looks embarrassed. There is something oddly adorable about seeing him look this out of place. It makes him seem younger, makes me feel like we’re making up for lost time. “I’m going to be on the floor the whole time.”
“I’ll teach you,” I say cheerfully. “As a thank-you for Friday night.”
Oliver laughs. “Believe me when I say you don’t need to do that.”
I ignore his pessimism. “Should we go find some blades? What size are you?”
We go into the reserve room and pull out some skates for both of us. The shoes are admittedly kind of gross and smelly.
“Aren’t you glad we brought socks?” I ask Oliver, and he laughs.
We put our bags down in the kiss and cry, because why not feel like we’re competitors? And then we walk toward the entrance of the ice.
“Oh boy,” Oliver says as he approaches it, following me. He manages to get onto the ice without incident. I slide forward a little bit, hold my hand out for him to reach me, and he very, very tentatively follows.
“See? Not so bad, right?” I say, and then I realize that we are holding hands. Oliver doesn’t seem to have noticed this yet, or he doesn’t think it’s as big a deal as I do. But his hand is warm and smooth and…A second later, he goes tumbling down, almost taking me out too. I feel guilty because my distraction was clearly part of the problem.
“Are you okay?” I ask as he tries to right himself.
“Oh yeah. This is already my most successful venture onto the ice,” he says.
I laugh but he gives me a look. “I’m not kidding.”
And though I shouldn’t, I laugh harder.
I grab his hands again as soon as he’s up. Then I’m skating backward, facing him, bringing him along. Without thinking about it, I’m going through the motions I haven’t done in years. Bend my knees and turn my feet outward, then pick up one foot, and repeat, and repeat.
“Look at you,” he says, grinning at me. “You’re still awesome.”
“No offense, but you only think that because you’re…um…”
“Barely vertical?” he offers, and I laugh.
“That’s not fair, though,” he continues. “You were awesome while we were in that Tots skating class, and Lacey was okay but not great. So I’m not just grading on a curve or out of ignorance here.”
“You need to come watch Sam and Ty sometime,” I tell him.
“Is that an invitation?” He’s giving me a lopsided grin and it makes my face warm and I don’t know what to say back, so I don’t acknowledge it.
“Okay, I’m going to give you a lesson. You want to be on the inside edges of your skates—the blades, specifically. Your knees have to be bent a little bit. Perfect.”
I show him how to push off with his toes and then glide toward me, and after a few attempts, he’s actually doing pretty well. We manage to make it around the rink with only one slip, and then another time with none.
“You’re good at this,” I say as we skate hand in hand after a few minutes.
“You’re a good teacher,” he says.
Then we get cocky and try to pull out some ice dance moves. They are pretty hokey, but Oliver manages to twirl me a couple of times. Feeling confident, he decides to try to dip me, which is when I go flying backward and land on my ass, and he almost cuts me with his blades in his attempt to right himself.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Eden, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
My tailbone stings a little bit but I’m laughing.
He’s kneeling beside me, my face in his hands. “I’m a danger to society.”
My breath hitches in my throat from the warmth of his hands and the intensity of his eyes. Finally I speak. “Maybe we should stick to just gliding. Nothing fancy?”
Laughing, he lets go of my face and pulls me up to a standing position.
I hold out my hand for him again.
“Sure? You might be going down with a sinking ship.”
I shrug and he t
hreads his fingers between mine, then we’re doing another circle around the rink.
After about fifteen minutes of this, Oliver heads over to grab our stuff from the kiss and cry, and instead of standing around, I attempt some moves I used to do in my sleep. First forward crossovers, then backward. Forward crossovers have always been easier for me, and as I glide on the ice, I remember how much fun this was for a while. Coming for lessons, hearing my mom cheer from the stands. Ice skating feels a little bit like flying. If you’re a natural at it, you feel like you’re one with the air, with everything around you. If you’re watching it, it can be beautiful and touching and elegant, and I get why Mom tried to get us all into it.
By the time I circle back to Oliver, he’s got a bunch of things laid out on the ice, with his sweatshirt acting as a picnic blanket. M&M’s and a bag of chips. I sheepishly dig out my contribution—popcorn and gluten-free cookies, the best I could do at my house on such short notice.
“I see we were both going for high-class tonight,” Oliver jokes. “I like it.”
He sits on the ice, close to the wall, and I take off my first sweater (for once, I was wise enough to wear several layers) and sit on it, cross-legged, directly across from him.
“So,” he says after a moment, a small smile on his face. “This is fun.”
“Why did we ever stop being friends?” I blurt it out without warning.
Oliver looks surprised, then thoughtful. “God, I don’t know. I think, first, girls got cooties. Second, anyone you talked to was your girlfriend. Third, you were Lacey’s.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, frustrated.
“You were her friend, and that meant you weren’t anybody else’s. She made that very clear. But I’m not sure you wanted anyone else. You were inseparable, a two-for-one deal.”
His words from that night outside Juno’s suddenly pop into my mind. “Off-limits?”
“That too,” he says with a small smile, and I’m stunned by his words. Not the fact that Lacey might have told him to stay away from me, but the fact that for all these years, my friendship with Lacey has cost me this. A friendship with Oliver. An anything with Oliver.
Suddenly it becomes imperative for me to ask one question. “Was it true? What Lacey said all those years ago?”
No One Here Is Lonely Page 24
