The Believing Game (5 page)

“Enough, wifey. There's no major breach of protocol here.”

There was, though. Addison moved back to his game and didn't speak to me. I concentrated on whipping the ball down the lane. One time, I took down seven pins in one shot. I heard a hoot behind me. “That's my girl. Greer Elizabeth!” I turned to see Joshua standing in the center of the crowd, grasping Hannah Green's left wrist. He tugged her toward the lane. “Let's go, cupcake. Let's see what you can do.” And Hannah shrieked with laughter. She rolled the ball out, grandma-style, and knelt down to watch its slow progress down the wooden lane. “Get out of the gutter, you turkey!” Joshua called as Hannah shook with giggles. The ball swerved center. It chucked three pins down. “There you go!” Hannah's face practically split open with her smile.

Addison grinned over at me. He raised his hands up, as if to say,
You see?
I fidgeted with the scoreboard, felt him beside me seconds later.

“I'm sorry if I seemed ungrateful,” he said.

“Seemed?”

“I'm not ungrateful.” I used the computer to dock a point from his score. He didn't look up. He gestured to his friends, gathered around the stacked pizza boxes. “This makes me so happy. But it wouldn't have happened if I'd never met Joshua. How could he not be here to share it?”

“I don't know,” I said softly. “Maybe we would have a really fun night and you could have told him about the great time you had with a bunch of kids your own age?”

“That's the issue? He's too old?”

“I don't have an issue. It didn't occur to me to invite your sponsor to your birthday party. You got angry. That's your issue.”

Addison finally looked up. I'd changed his score from 168 to 2. “I still get to keep two points?”

“You're really good-looking.”

He smiled. The really good kind of smile that spread slowly across his face. “You're right.”

“But …” I waited for the excuses.

“But nothing. You're completely in the right. I was barbaric.”

“Barbaric?”

“That's pretty bad, right? But you know what?”

“What?”

Addison wrapped his arms around me. I could feel the eyes of the others. Ms. Ling was probably outlining her next abstinence lecture. He drew me closer. “It's still my birthday.”

Addison kissed me in the middle of the bowling alley. I could hear the bells and whistles of the arcade ringing. His lips tasted like buttercream frosting as his fingers sifted
through my hair. I lined my whole body up against his and leaned in. It felt like I'd been designed to fit right there.

It could have been a full minute before I blinked and glimpsed Wes lifting his hand to conduct. Even the guys behind the shoe counter had chimed in to serenade Addison with “Happy Birthday.” I stepped back to sing too. I really belted it out, the way you do when you're a little kid, just so happy to have been invited to the party. Sophie winked at me, bookended by the bench-press bros. Hannah closed her eyes and swayed. Ms. Ling looked more human than lizard just then. I felt myself looking around frantically, trying to memorize every sliver of that moment. Maybe that's why I noticed that Joshua was the only one not singing along.

The birthday party solidified some things. Addison and me, for one. It meant we both had to sit through sessions with the dean of students. “You've been making such progress, Greer.” She tapped her pen against her desk as she spoke. “Are you certain you're not throwing that away?”

We'd reviewed our answers together. “Addison is such a good influence,” I told her.

“I feel inspired to stay sober” was his line.

And both of us: “We've agreed it's nothing serious.” I can't imagine we fooled anyone, but we still tried. We kept up a hands-off policy on campus and never argued with dinner table assignments. I signed out each day as usual and he met me at the bottom of the hill. Sometimes we snuck into one of the movie-viewing cubicles in the library. Or sat on the curb between two parked cars so that we could kiss and kiss without being seen. It never went further than that. “I don't want all of this at once,” he told me, looking embarrassed. “A little at a time.” I found myself thinking,
This must be what it feels like to be good.

The pictures Addison slipped under my door suddenly had lines written along the margins. Nothing insanely saccharine.
I carry you in my heart,
he wrote once. Another time:
This matters to me.

Since bowling, we formed what Sophie called
our elitist clique
, but she was only half-joking. It felt as if that night had counted as some kind of induction. I felt close to everyone who'd been there. Sophie claimed it was Add and me. “People like to be part of a secret.” She spoke with her usual authority. “You two are easily the best cause on campus. And then there's Joshua.” She said it like it embarrassed her.

“What about Joshua?” I felt something tighten, like the air around us got thicker.

“He just has a way with people.” We were in the common space of the dorm. Sophie had boosted herself up on the beige Formica of the kitchenette. She picked at the edge of the counter, where it lined up against the wall. “Joshua has a way of talking to people.”

He'd been to campus, it turned out. A couple of times when Add and I were holed up in the library or walking into town. “How is that allowed?” I asked when Sophie paused for a breath.

“He's running some kind of group session with the NA kids. Ms. Ling came back from the bowling alley raving about him.”

It ended up that I was the last to know. When I confronted Addison about it as we walked back from Sal's that night, he acted like it was no big deal. “The dean had this idea for a group,” he said. “So Joshua's leading it. Working.”

“Oh.” I felt myself deflate.

Addison looked at me with sad eyes. “We need to figure out your deal with Joshua. Seriously.”

“There is no deal with Joshua.”

“Yeah, there's something.”

I wanted to tell him that there was something, an uneasy feeling I got watching Joshua watch us. That I felt like if I
told anyone that my boyfriend's best friend was a middle-aged Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, they'd at least look askance at me, if not declare it was, in fact, a deal.

“Look,” Addison said. There was no anger in his voice. If there had been, I would have fought back, claws out. Instead, Addison spoke so sincerely that I couldn't just shut down. He said, “It makes me feel weird that Joshua's made room for you and you're still trying to force him aside.”

“Where has Joshua made room for me?” I asked.

“In my life.”

“How can he do that?” I wanted to ask,
Are you listening to yourself?

“We talked about this at the very start. This” — Addison gestured to the space between us — “isn't supposed to be happening. But Joshua recognizes how rare you are. That's what he said to me — that you were some kind of comet. Miraculously passing by. Do you get that? He's going against everything he believes in because he believes in you. And all you do is attack him.”

I opened my mouth, but there was nothing to say. He kept his hands deep in his pockets, but he nuzzled against me, so that we were both a little off balance. It felt like we were stumbling down the street. “It's not just that it makes it hard for me, Greer.” Addison's voice coaxed its way over to me. “He could help you. Joshua's the best gift I could give anyone. And you keep refusing that gift.”

It was pointless to argue that I didn't want help. McCracken Hill loomed above us. I was there, wasn't I? And it felt better to be there, so obviously something had been wrong with me in the first place. I could tell the truth, that I only saw myself accepting help from Addison, but that would have had him backing away faster than the dean of students
could proclaim “codependent relationship.” So I found myself saying, “I want that gift,” with the appropriate halting vulnerability lining my voice. “Maybe Joshua and I could sit down together and talk things through.”

Addison was so happy with that answer. And what can I say? That seemed like enough to make me happy too.

 

Joshua picked me up the next day at Westlands Gate. He signed me out and everything. “I didn't know that was allowed,” I told him. “My parents —”

“I spoke to your father earlier this afternoon.”

“My father?” We hadn't driven a full mile, but I already felt carsick.

“I cleared it with Dean Edwards first. She felt it was appropriate in my capacity as a counselor.”

“Where are we headed?” I asked, as trees blurred by the window.

“Where would you like to go? Where will you eat something, Greer?”

I kept my face as placid as possible. “Wherever you prefer.” A few minutes later, he coerced the car into a tiny spot in front of a coffee shop. I was still getting my bearings when he hopped around the side and opened the door up for me. A gentleman.

Joshua stopped for a second by the driver's-side front tire. He slipped a little metal box out of the wheel well and tucked the car key in there.

“You don't carry keys?” I asked him.

“I lose physical objects,” he told me unapologetically. “I can't train my human self to find them important.” While he hid the box, I studied the building. It wasn't a Starbucks or a
Dunkin' Donuts, but a real coffee shop, with hand-lettered signs in the window and living room furniture scattered in groupings inside. Someone had painted a deer on the front window. It looked like a real deer, paused in the center of some leafy trees. From the outside, it looked like it was studying us. When we walked inside, the eye still seemed like it was tracking me. It creeped me out.

I moved toward the counter. “We'll sit down,” Joshua said. He guided me toward an overstuffed couch in the corner. “Holly will take care of us.” I sat down on one end of the couch and he sat back on the other. I shifted a little to face him and made sure to keep my arms at my sides. When I crossed them in front of me, Dr. Saggurti claimed my body language was closed. Joshua seemed like the kind of person who'd buy into the Saggurti School of Interpreting Positions Chosen Solely For Comfort as Passive-Aggressive Statements.

“Elizabeth,” Joshua said, and at first it didn't register that he was talking to me. “Do you know the meaning of the name
Elizabeth
?” I shook my head. “It means God is my oath.” Joshua's face was very solemn. “I'm going to make an oath to you right now, okay, Elizabeth?”
Go for it, Uncle Crazypants.
“I promise I will always be honest with you. I promise you will always have me on your side.” The first part I wasn't particularly interested in. Honesty is overrated. But the second — I knew it was my duty as a responsible, reasonably intelligent young adult to be skeeved out by the way Joshua leaned into me, by the slow way he spoke as if he was reading rehearsed lines. But I didn't have a whole lot of people on my side. I had Addison. And it had already been made clear to me that Addison came with some stipulations.

Holly, the waitress, arrived with two oversized white mugs.

“That's lovely, Holly. Thank you so much. How's life, Holly?”

Holly grinned. “Life's good, Joshua.”

He said, “That it is.” I got the feeling this was a familiar routine.

Joshua turned his focus back to me and nodded sagely before he explained his oath. “This is not a reciprocal interaction. You don't have to be on my side.” He shifted over and closed the distance between us. “You just have to be on your own side. That's the magical thing about faith — because I believe in you, because I'm taking this oath to fight for you, we'll be on the same side together.”

I felt like I was missing something. But Joshua didn't explain what we were fighting for, who we'd be fighting against. “How did you meet Addison?” I asked.

“Do you see what you just did there?” Joshua sat back in his seat. “You're putting him between us. That's not love, Greer. That's what the gunman does with his hostage — he holds the body in front of him as he makes his exit.” I thought about my troubled cousin Parker waving a handgun over the dish of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. But I'd never told Addison about that particular holiday memory. And it wasn't the kind of thing my parents would have put in my file. Joshua kept talking. “Addison shouldn't be your bulletproof vest. He shouldn't be your umbrella in the storm.”

I told myself Joshua was just spewing metaphors, searching for an image that would stick. I clutched at the one that didn't involve handguns. “We can't shelter each other.”

“That's right,” Joshua said. “What are you most afraid of?”

“Being invisible.” It came out before I even had the chance to wonder if it was weird. But Joshua just nodded to himself.

“Addison and I met once in a parking lot, but he doesn't remember. I used to buy him liquor. Has he told you that?” I shook my head. “He doesn't believe it.” Joshua shrugged. “I was a drunk, spent most nights on the curb, waiting for kids to show up at the store to buy booze. I'd drink my fee.” Joshua expected me to look surprised so I raised my eyebrows. “It must have been two, three years later. I'm in the basement of Our Lady of the Sea parish. By then I'm going to daily meetings, but Sunday night was show-time. That's when the rest of the drunks and drug addicts showed up. And in slouches this kid. He's taller. And worse for wear. But it's one of my old regulars. It's Addison. Do you know how these meetings work?” Joshua peered over his mug of coffee.

“Just what's in the movies: ‘My name is Greer and I'm an alcoho —'”

“Yeah, yeah. That's part of it. Usually you say that to wrap it up, after you share your story. That night, I spoke up and told my story. And this kid stared off into space the whole time. I mean, I was watching him out of the corner of my eye. He looked like he was sitting in front of the Game Show Network or something. So I wrote him off. I felt guilty and all, but you know, ef him, right? Coming to a meeting and not even listening. That's my life story, right?”

Joshua was getting all worked up. I really thought he was still angry about it, but then he smiled widely. “You know where this is going, right?” They were inseparable now, so I figured it got better. I nodded. Joshua asked, “Have you ever known Addison to not be listening? He's got that stealth brain. He looks like he's zoning out, but the whole time, he's just taking everything in.” I thought of Addison in class, his careful way of talking, his deliberate notes. “He came up to
me afterward, you know what he said to me? Has he told you this story?”

“No.” I should have asked about it, though. Somehow it felt like I'd let Addison down not asking about it. The look on Joshua's face said he thought so too.

But at least he got to tell the story. “He told me — this giant of a kid, with the skinhead haircut — he said, ‘I think we're a lot alike.' I said, ‘Yeah?' He said he felt drawn to me. I didn't tell him for months that was the drunk talking.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're not seeing it, Elizabeth. It's right there in front of you. Addison wasn't drawn to my story. He remembered me as an access to alcohol. His body remembered me, even if his brain didn't. Isn't that amazing?”

I didn't think it was amazing. I thought it was sad.

“Addison says you saved his life.”

“I did. But I also helped ruin it.” Joshua sipped from his mug. “Who ruined you, Elizabeth?”

The tea scalded my tongue. I wasn't ruined. And I felt inexplicably hurt that Joshua thought that. But I shrugged and said, “I don't know.”

“Why are you at McCracken?”

“How did you save him?”

Joshua paused and I thought that maybe he wasn't going to answer until I did. But then he said, “I just cared. You think you know what that feels like but it's possible that no one's ever cared for you before. Not your last boyfriend. Not your mother. We give each other so little. Maybe your mother was a little more than indifferent to you. Maybe your boyfriend cared about you. But they didn't care for you.”

“That was it? You cared for him?”

“See, that's how I know you've never been cared for,” Joshua said. “You would never say that if you knew the feeling.” We sat in silence for a minute or two. I sipped my tea, touched the burned place on my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

“I take things.” I looked Joshua in the eye. “I like to steal.”

“And you got caught?”

“A few times.”

“And they didn't put a rich, white girl like you in jail? Imagine that.” Joshua shook his head.

“I also like men.” I looked at Joshua and clarified. “Boys. I mean, I like sex.”

Joshua nodded like it was no big deal. I felt like an amateur. But he said, “Yeah, that's a kind of stealing too.”

We sat for a while and then Joshua stood, stretched, and told me he'd go warm the car. “You skinny girls. I know you're always so cold.” Holly dropped the check off after he left, and I stopped her.