Finding Mr. Brightside (12 page)

We watch as Terry feeds the first ball to Abram, who then hits it back a million times harder than when playing me. Abram glides into each of his shots, totally balanced, timing each movement perfectly, popping the ball right back to the same annoying location above Terry’s head every time as a
thwooomp
sound echoes around the court.

“So much talent,” Linda says, but not like it’s a shame he’s been wasting it—as if she, too, is mesmerized by what Abram can produce with an easygoing smile on his face. Linda McEvans could’ve been a model in a past life, provided she was about a foot taller in that one. She takes care of herself, too. I bet her bathroom is full of expensive face creams and firming serums I’d have a hard time not slipping into my purse. I’d bet she’s like a Heidi, someone who gets prettier and prettier the more you get to know her, while I do the opposite.

She also has something on her mind. She’s less obvious about what’s eating her than Starbucks Janette, but it’s in there somewhere, throbbing inside her temples, wanting me to acknowledge it.

ABRAM

J
ULIETTE SEEMS TO BE
getting along okay up there with Linda. Then again her expression hasn’t changed yet, so Terry’s guess is as good as mine, and he’s too busy having fun. His enjoyment is making it hard to wrap things up in five minutes. He laughs as my latest return lands right on the baseline, takes a bad bounce, and whizzes past him. Excuse my French, but it feels good to be hitting
le shit
out of his serve again. I’m surprised to find myself feeling this way, but I doubt Juliette is. She’s known all along tennis is in my blood. My dad’s way of communicating with me.

When we’re done, Terry puts his beefy arm around my neck and says, nonchalantly, “I’ll make a comeback if you do, champ.”

“Maybe. Let’s see how lame we pull up in the morning.”

The two of us sit down on the bench. Terry pours a cup of water over his head and turns to me, forehead dripping. “You know your mom told us to check in on you, right?”

“I figured she might.”

“Suzy loved watching you and Ian play tennis, Abram. I don’t get the sense it’s gonna bring back bad memories for her, should you someday decide to start kickin’ everybody’s ass again. But, hey, what do I know?” He yells up at Linda and asks her the same question. She rolls her eyes and asks if he needs any ibuprofen.

“One more game?” Terry asks, nodding his head yes for me.

Juliette

A
BRAM AND
T
ERRY
are shaking hands, having just finished a game called Butt’s Up that they asked our permission to play. Now Terry’s going back to the service line, bending over, and sticking his butt into the air. “Give me what I deserve!” he shouts. Linda groans and then laughs as Abram runs back to the baseline, prepares to take aim. He deliberately skims the ball just past Terry, who proceeds to fall down like he’s been hit anyway.

“Did Abram’s father ever bring another woman around?” I ask Linda quietly.

Linda turns to me, and she may be the definition of an unflappable Southern woman who’s either been through it all herself or heard it all before, but her smile doesn’t show as seamlessly this time.

“You mean your mother, hon?”

My fingers tighten around the edge of my seat. “So you met her?”

“We saw them here playing tennis a few times, had dinner with them once,” she admits guiltily. “She was enchanting, your mother. The life of the party. Terry and I tried not to judge—we’re certainly no angels ourselves—but of course it was hard not to think of Suzy and … everyone else involved.”

Before I can apologize, Linda goes on to eulogize how sorry she is for my loss. The words don’t sound quite as depressing in her southern accent, but I still feel like I’m attending another funeral. When she’s not paying attention, I shoot Abram a look like we should
really
be going soon.

ABRAM

O
N OUR WAY OUT
of the club, Terry and Linda offer to give us a ride home in their pimped-out golf cart. Juliette’s fingers find their way to the skin on the back of my arm, pinching a
no
into it. I wonder if I’ll ever learn what her
yes
signal feels like. Terry tries to make it happen by touting the cart’s satellite radio and playing us a sample song, but all he gets me is pinched in the exact same spot.

“They’re pretty nice, eh?” I say to her, when their golf cart has buzzed far enough away.

“Yes,” Juliette says, “but I never want to see them again.”

She’s said this about a lot of people, of course—me, that happy family at the beach this morning, old teachers we pass in the hallway who’d love to keep in touch. She always means it, but this time she’s got some extra oomph behind it.

28

Juliette

“E
VER NOTICED HOW TIRED
being at the beach makes you?” Abram asked me earlier tonight. “Not really,” I said, then he called his mom, I started e-mailing my dad, and he passed out on our couch bed twenty minutes later, the end.

Now not only am I alone with my thoughts again—they’re telling me it’s my own fault for “going there” with Linda—I’m sore from tennis and starving. This popcorn isn’t cutting it; not when I’m
craving—
can’t believe I’m admitting this to myself
—
a Doritos Locos Supreme.

There’s hope.

His eyelids are twitching.

“Abram.”

No response.

“Taco Bell?”

Nothing.

I move my laptop station closer to him, lean over until my face is nearly touching his. It’s warmer down here by his mouth, just as I suspected, maybe even anticipated on my worst days. I should’ve made it easier for him to kiss me in the ocean last night. His lips look firm, a little on the chapped side but in an intriguing way that makes sense for a boy; otherwise, I’d just make out with Heidi every once in a while and call it a phase. Bizarre that his breath hasn’t offended me once since we met—must be his candy-flavored toothpaste. His lids twitch again, but he still doesn’t open his eyes. His lashes are even longer from this close up. That’s sort of interesting. Eventually, I manage to pull myself away from him. I don’t go far.

ABRAM

I
OPEN MY EYES,
relieved to see Juliette hasn’t fled to jog off her insomnia yet; in fact, she’s maybe a little closer to my side of the bed than when I started dozing.

“Hi,” she says softly, and I can see she’s still typing the same e-mail to her dad on my laptop. So far, she’s written
Hello, Dad: How’s the new novel? Have you gotten up from your swivel chair since I left? Are you and the Keurig getting along? .
>
And that’s all. Writer’s block must run in the family.

“Hey there.”

She minimizes the e-mail, turns toward me, and everything about her is more exotic and hypnotic than it’s ever been. I think this pretty much every time she makes eye contact with me, but today her face seems a bit fuller and healthier than it’s been this past year, possibly due to her increased exposure to my snacks. To this point, there’s an open bag of popcorn beside her. I’m pleased that she a) helped herself to my stash, b) hasn’t apologized for it yet, and c) curtailed the Adderall enough today to allow hunger to resume its rightful spot in her empty stomach.

Emboldened by my sleepy state, I reach over and pull her closer to me, against me, and she doesn’t object or eject herself from the bed. In fact, she gets under the covers, finds the perfect position for almost every part of her body to connect with mine as I loop my arms around her and find her hands. Just like that, there’s no such thing as a problem in my world.

“I brought up my mom to Linda. Mistake.”

“What did she say?”

“That they hung out with our parents once, and she felt bad for your mom. I thought I could handle it, but it just … made me feel guilty by association. Which is ridiculous because I barely associated with my mom, especially toward the end; she was like a roommate I drank coffee with occasionally, a shady friend who gave me Adderall and disappeared all day, and I wish I was making sense.”

“You’re making a lot of sense,” I say.

“It’s been over a year, and I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to be dealing with this, and I’m sick of taking Adderall but too tired to figure out how not to, and … I want a Doritos Locos Supreme but I can’t even drive myself to Taco Bell.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

She’s shaking now. I roll her over to face me. Instead of trying to hide the tears in her eyes, she lets them do their thing right in front of me. I resist the urge to kiss them from her skin, because she probably wouldn’t hate anything more. Instead, I graze her cheek with the side of my fingertip and slide them away, nonchalantly, as if only so she won’t have to worry about clogged pores.

“Sorry,” she says, sniffling, “I’m the world’s ugliest crier.”

“Or its reigning prettiest,” I suggest as an alternative, which makes her cry harder for some reason. Time to rely on something other than words—take the action I’ve been meaning to take since CVS. I realize it’s not a solution to anything, but it’s the only thing I know will keep me from shedding a few tears myself, and then we’d really have ourselves a legitimate dude contender for the world’s-ugliest-crier competition. And no one wants that.

29

Juliette

M
Y CRYING HAS SLOWED,
thankfully, but the ugly won’t be evacuating my face anytime soon. What’s with the strange look of determination coming across Abram’s? It’s not going anywhere, either. Haven’t seen an eyebrow furrow of this magnitude since his last beer-pong rematch.

ABRAM

N
OT EVEN A WHALE
jumping out of the ocean and swallowing the house could stop me from kissing her. Still don’t want to take any chances, though, so now I’m rushing in a little faster than I would if I had a reciprocation guarantee. I slow down as I reach the very edge of her lips, and then finally, after all this time that seems longer than it’s probably been, I close the deal. Our lips are touching, we’re kissing, and I get to feel what she really feels like. So far she seems relaxed, eyes closed, not open and wondering how she landed herself in such a bind. I make every second count, not by overdoing it, by just experiencing her as much as possible—the softness of her lips, the smoothness of her other exposed areas when they brush up against me accidentally—without preconceived notions of how this miracle of all miracles should be unfolding.

Two peas in a couch bed. That’s what we are.

Juliette

H
IS LIPS STILL GRAZING MINE
, Abram opens his eyes to make sure I’m okay with all this. I pull myself closer to him, careful not to respond with a mixed signal. His mouth presses down against mine more firmly, finding the perfect spot between my lips, our tongues touching briefly, shyly, before retreating to their respective corners. They don’t stay away long. We repeat these movements in a slightly different way that feels entirely new every time. Then, unexpectedly, his face drifts down toward my neck. His lips know where to find the most sensitive part, the best possible area they can linger, and he kisses me there, intense and focused, channeling all his energy into this small, insignificant part of me. I give up on trying to keep his wavy hair out of his face and close my eyes, my breathing encouraging him to stay there as long as he feels like it or until I get weird. I lose track of everything, the sounds we’re making, how long we’ve been doing this, where I’m positioning my legs and arms … until I accidentally touch his butt region.

ABRAM

H
ELLO THERE
, was that a butt touch? Probably an accident. This is lasting about forty times longer than expected, which is great, no need to ever stop on my account. Might be time to mix it up again, keep her engaged. I pull away from her neck just long enough to make her wonder, and then move back in toward her lips, at a different angle, before she can figure me out.

This might be too bold, but I lift myself up and maneuver around until I’m on top of her, still supporting my weight on my elbows. Managing to do this without my lips leaving hers. I hope she doesn’t think I’m expecting to jump immediately from kissing to bootytown; I just really needed to move my hip off the spring from the couch bed that’s been digging into it.

Juliette

O
N TOP OF MY BODY
is certainly not where I thought he was going with this. The situation still doesn’t seem out of hand, the claustrophobia yet to kick in. He’s not making any pained expressions about my hipbones stabbing into his kidneys, either, so that’s considerate of him. Should I rub his back so he doesn’t suspect I’m a closet butt fetishist? I never know what to do with my hands in these physical-intimacy scenarios, maybe because they never occur, and, yes, Heidi, this includes when I’m alone.
Get it!
she calls out from a jail cell in my mind. I’ll probably kiss and tell her about this, and when I do, I’ll say Abram’s a great kisser and then I’ll resist answering her animated follow-up questions that will center around length and girth. Or is all of the above not the point of anything?

Eventually, against all odds, I really start to relax, not just fake relax, and there’s a marked shift in the way my lips operate. They’re more confident in their throbbing pursuit of Abram’s. Throbbing is a gross word, but that’s what they’re doing, like they’ve been starving for this all along, and now that they’ve gotten a taste, they can’t get enough. I put my hand on his lightly stubbled face, wondering how I’m going to force myself to stop. Then my body makes the decision for me.

“Can we go to Taco Bell in five minutes?” I ask.

Abram smiles. “I’m so happy your stomach growled that up again.”

An hour later, Abram thinks I should try driving in the Taco Bell parking lot.

“Bad idea,” I say, grimacing like I wish it’d been a good one.