A Year Straight (17 page)

“Did anyone find a phone out at the pool?” Theo asked. I had forgotten all about my phone. I was too busy imagining what our kids would look like.

“Yes, along with a pair of socks,” his twelve-year-old cousin said, getting up to retrieve the goods from a shelf above the fireplace.

“Those aren't mine,” I said defensively, feeling self-conscious. “They must be Sal's.”

Once outside, I asked the best possible question for courting a chef.

“Are you hungry?”

“Always,” Theo said, breaking into a big smile.

I drove us to town, to a spot Theo had heard of.

“They say the burgers are good.”

“Say no more.”

Then something odd happened. We drove in complete silence for ten whole minutes, and it wasn't odd at all. There's a lot to be said for that. When two people can enjoy the sweetness of no sound, not needing to fill the space with words, it can feel more intimate than talking. The sky turned pink and then purple as we wove through hillsides dotted with cows and sheep. Now and then, on a hill high enough, we could spot the ocean in the distance.

“Want to split a burger?” I asked, perusing the menu.

“Sure, and a couple of apps?”

“Perfect.” Not everyone will split food with me, which is my preferred way to order. It's not that I want less of my meal. It's that I want some of everything else, too.

Theo ordered generously, opting for the mussels and
risotto cakes to start, and to follow, the burger cooked medium-rare, my favorite. Once we both had some food in us, we picked up where we'd left off the night before, discussing our shared experience of growing up with two cultures. Though his mom is Nicaraguan and my dad is Italian, there were many similarities. We were both sent to school with lunches made up of things no one had ever seen before. Theo's rice and beans weren't as valuable a trade as my Nutella sandwiches. It was one of those conversations where I had to force myself to stop talking and take a breath to take a bite of my burger. It takes a very compelling distraction to keep me from my food.

“I saw a sign for ice cream at the mini-golf place we passed on the way here,” I said.

Theo snatched up the bill. I dove toward it to no success.

“Okay, I'll let you pay,” I surrendered, “but only if you let me treat you to a round of mini-golf.”

“If you really want to end this nice night by having your ass whipped.”

“Listen, buddy, I grew up in the suburbs. I'm quite skilled in mini-golf, bowling, and
Street Fighter II.”

We made it to mini-golf just in time for one round. The teenage summer staff didn't even give us attitude for showing up right before closing time. It was proceeding to be a perfect day.

“I wonder if they have our favorite flavors,” Theo said, squinting in the floodlight at the ice cream menu. “They do!
We'll have a large cup, please. Half cookie dough and half mint chocolate chip.”

We took our ice cream and golf clubs to the first hole. I took a bite of ice cream, set my pink ball down, and gave it a whack with just enough force to get it over the hump but not out of the green felt course. We laughed our way from the windmill to the dinosaur, Theo teasing me at every putt. Mini-golf reminds me of middle school, as did the way he made me feel. I could have been thirty or thirteen, though I was grateful for the self-assurance that comes with age. At thirteen, I didn't know where to put my arms, the way they dangled, so long and lanky, seemingly out of proportion with the rest of my body. With Theo, I joked and pranced around, feet planted firmly on the ground, my arms leading the way. And I was winning.

We continued to exchange snapshots of our childhoods. My Connecticut upbringing was predictably comprised of sequined jazz dancing, horseback riding lessons, and a BMX bike obsession, thanks to the movie
Rad.
Theo, having spent the first five years of his life in Nicaragua, had some more unusual anecdotes.

“We played baseball with a sock wrapped in tape and made slingshots from strips of old tires.”

“What did you shoot at?” I asked, taking a swing and sending my ball sailing through the metal loop in the middle of the course and out the other end, nearly making a hole in one.

“Anything that moved.” Theo lined up at the tee.

“Did you ever get anything?”

“Of course.”

“Then shouldn't your aim be a little better?” I teased, waving my club at his golf ball.

“I'm accustomed to moving targets. Why don't you go do a little jazz dance over there, and we'll see how I do.”

One of the fifteen-year-old staff members from the mini-golf office came over to have us pay up, since they were closing soon. I whipped out my wallet first and paid the bill in full.

“Keep the change,” I said, feeling deliriously generous.

“Really?”

I later realized I'd given the kid a 100 percent tip. I had lost my mind.

If we hadn't been rushed through the rest of the course, we might have kissed in the plastic cave, the way we lingered in there. My hands were shaking as I struggled to align my golf club just so, torn between winning and tapping my ball into the water so we could stay in there forever. The self-assured woman had flown the coop. I pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my clenched fists.

“I let you win,” Theo said when we tallied the score.

We pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward Theo's house, where I would drop him off, bringing our impromptu date to an end. Again, the silence. I drove slower than I normally would, shifting gears now and then.
When I did so, my hand would brush against his knee. He didn't move out of the way.

“That's the turn for my house,” Theo said as we passed his road. “If that's where we're headed.”

I zoomed past it. A few minutes farther up the road, when my headlights bounced off a reflective sphere, the only marker to the entrance to my favorite stargazing spot, I abruptly swerved onto a dirt road. The parking lot was technically off-limits, accessible to permit holders only. But at night nobody bothered to patrol it. The cops were too busy pulling over teenagers on their way home from the bars. We had the whole place to ourselves. Theo got out of the car first and went to sit on the rocks overlooking the moonlit ocean. I was suddenly shy, as happens with people I really like, and that was how I knew I did. I wound my summer scarf around my neck and saddled up next to him.

“Look,” he said, pointing out to the ocean.

“What?” I asked. As far as I could tell, all that spread out before us was a pitch-black sea.

“Look again.”

I sat up and squinted. As each wave crashed, it was illuminated from the inside.

“Whoa. What is that?”

“Bioluminescence.”

My inner marine biologist lurched back to life.

“It looks like a billion fireflies!”

I'd learned about bioluminescence during freshman year marine biology and had stored the memory of it as a source of inspiration on rough days. If those crazy-looking creatures could light up in the darkest of places, the little light in me could stay aglow in the face of the most dreadful of times. I vowed to someday scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef to witness bioluminescence for myself. And suddenly, there it was, off the coast of Massachusetts. Sometimes the thing we're looking for is right there in front of us. We just have to adjust the focus.

“My grandfather is a minister,” Theo said. “He says that people are like fireflies. If we choose to come together to work toward peace, we can shine as brightly as lanterns, lighthouses even.”

We zoned out for awhile on the wonder of the living lights. I swaddled myself in my hoodie, my makeshift cocoon. It wasn't the same comfortable silence we'd experienced in the car to and from our date. It was the kind that twisted my nerves into knots. I was afraid I might hurl my dinner over the edge of the cliff. I could feel him looking at me now and then, and I knew that if I met his gaze, we would kiss. I was terrified, which was odd considering all my recent flopping around with guys like the fish out of water that I was. So why couldn't I kiss Theo?

By the summer between eighth grade and high school, all my friends had already kissed guys, so I had to get a move
on. Brandon Edwards and I had a daytime date at the movie theater in town. I had my mom drop me off down the street and out of sight—it was embarrassing enough that I wasn't allowed on dates at night. Brandon was skateboarding with a few other freshmen-to-be. The boys flaunted their first few sprouts of facial hair, shaped into would-be goatees, and I was looking pretty cool in my matching mint green shirt and socks from The Gap.

“See ya, guys!” Brandon yelled to his friends over the sound of skateboard wheels screeching on the forbidden strip mall sidewalks. He glided toward me and skidded to a halt, tapping the back edge of his board to pop it up into his hand.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

A sticker flashed across the back, bold red print on a white background: SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME. Was it a crime to go to the movies during the day as an excuse to hang out in the dark?

“Well, honey, you were kind of on a mission,” my mom said later that evening as I stomped around the house.

As much as I loved Winona Ryder at the time, I'd barely caught one scene of
Great Balls of Fire!
during my date with Brandon. We were too busy kissing in the back row. When we weren't kissing, I was distracted, the big screen a blur before me. All I could think was,
I just had my first kiss. I just had my first kiss!
I couldn't wait to tell my friends. But Brandon beat me to it.

Even before cell phones, the rumor spread across town like the Nutella I layered on my bread to console myself. Brandon, upon rejoining his friends outside the movie theater, relayed the details of our date. Apparently, his version was: “She attacked me.”

“I attacked him?” I flailed the knife around in our country kitchen, dipping in for more and more chocolate hazelnut therapy. My mom listened from a safe distance on the opposite side of the island. It was true that I had placed my hand on his knee one minute into the previews, but I didn't tell my mom that. It was also true that I had approached the date the way parents shopped for Cabbage Patch Kids in the eighties, when mob mentality led to casualties at stores where the highly sought after dolls were selling out. I was leaving that date with my first kiss, and I was taking no prisoners. I simply couldn't start high school without it. But I certainly wouldn't be making the first move again anytime soon.

I had been making the first move left and right with all the recent guys, and none of them had turned out so well. Maybe men preferred to be the one in control, to play the knight sweeping in and...

I shook my head.
What the? I don't actually think those things. I'm a feminist. Anyway, he would probably be totally psyched if I—

And then he kissed me. He leaned in toward me, I turned to face him, and he kissed me. I was thirteen again. Only this time it was a nighttime date, and nothing else existed.
We swiftly moved to the back seat of my car, where it was warmer, and spent an hour hugging, kissing, and grasping on to each other with the fervor of having just met a missing part of yourself. I couldn't get close enough to him.

“Why don't you come back to my tent with me ?” he asked, tracing the outline of my eyebrow.

“Your tent?”

“Yes, my entire family is here for the weekend, as you recall, and all the beds are taken. I'm out in the back yard in a tent. You're tired, and it's not safe to drive all the way back up to the inn at this hour.”

“Umm, no,” I said, imagining the morning walk of shame past a buzzing house in the interrogating morning sun.

“Come on, the tent is far from the house. No one will even know you're there. And we'll cuddle up just like this and sleep.”

“No way,” I repeated, crawling up to the driver's seat. “As much as I'd like to.”

“Don't worry, I'll behave myself, I swear.”

“It's not you I'm worried about,” I said, pushing in the clutch and starting the engine.

At the end of his driveway, Theo hopped out and trotted around the car to my open window for one last kiss.

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Is it tomorrow yet?”

I drove away slowly, letting the dreamy air of the evening linger along the winding uphill journey back to the inn.

“
T
hat's him, I know it,” my mom said.

“Huh?” I looked up to see Theo gliding across the lawn in his clogs, carrying a tray. There was a tail hanging off one end. When he saw us, he swiveled on his heel to head in our direction. As he got closer, the scales on the striped bass glimmered in the sunlight. My stomach did a backflip. Theo looked handsome in his chef jacket. And he could fillet a fish. Pedro, as usual, trailed behind.

“Mom, this is Theo,” I said, after attempting to give him a hug that just turned out to be awkward, what with the giant fish in the way and all. My heart was racing.

“Hi Mom!” he replied emphatically. We all exchanged curious glances, not excluding Pedro.
Hi Mom?
“Hey, I'll call you later when I'm done,” Theo continued, nodding toward
me nervously. “Nice to meet you!” And he scurried off toward the kitchen. For Theo's every step, Pedro took two to keep up with him.

“Can I say it now?” Up in the room, my mom wrapped her new wind chime in a towel and wedged it into her suitcase.