The Moon and More (26 page)

That was the thing about Theo, though. His enthusiasm
was
contagious. There was something so genuine and honest about how pumped up he got over the smallest things. I’d seen glimpses of it with the milk crate at Gert’s, as well as him meeting Clyde the day of the Big Club Big Moment. Now that we were together regularly, however, I understood it to be a core part of his personality. He didn’t play it cool. He didn’t play at anything. He just
was
, and it made me want to be, too. Even if I sometimes felt a bit guilty doing so.

“Okay,” he said now, holding out a plastic cup of wine to me. I walked over to him, taking it, and sat down at the table. He cleared his throat. “A toast. To the Best Summer Ever. And to you.”

“To you,” I repeated. We clinked glasses and drank, with me wincing a bit at the taste. I was used to watered-down keg beer, and Theo’s love of wine, red in particular, was something I was still adjusting to.

“Oh! Almost forgot.” He put down his glass and reached forward for the folded paper bag. “I brought snacks and apps, as well.”

“Snacks and apps?”

“Cocktail food,” he explained, opening the bag. “That’s what my parents called it. Every night between five and six,
they had drinks, snacks, and apps. Usually martinis, olives, and either herring or salmon dip with rice crackers.”

I had not eaten one of these things, ever. Instead of sharing this, though, I said, “Really.”

He nodded, taking a carryout box from the bag. “But don’t worry. That’s not what I brought. I know it’s not exactly for everyone.”

I smiled, watching as he removed two other small boxes from the bag. While he opened and arranged them neatly in a row on the table, I tried not to think of my dad and the two cold beers he drank most evenings. But it wasn’t like I’d envisioned our families being similar. Nothing else was.

Theo had grown up in both New York and Connecticut, attending private schools. His father was a psychiatrist, his mother an editor at a publishing house that specialized in travel and art books. They’d had him late—he claimed “our pleasant surprise” was his family nickname—and he’d been raised making the rounds of art openings, symphony performances, and operas. They did not have a television when he was a kid, and never kept junk food in the house. He’d actually had his first Cheez Doodle a few days earlier, with me.

It wasn’t like I’d planned on indoctrinating him in the orange delights that were my favorite snack food. I’d just picked up a bag from the Gas/Gro after a hard day at work and brought them with me when I went to pick him up. That was the other thing: Theo didn’t drive, at least not confidently. He had a license, but because he spent most of his time in the city, he didn’t use it much, and was much more comfortable riding shotgun than behind the wheel. Which didn’t bother
me, since I was the exact opposite. Riding made me nervous. It had been a running joke between Luke and me how uncomfortable I was in the passenger seat, always looking both ways in tandem with him and eyeing the speedometer when it crept higher than I thought it should be going.

That day, when I pulled up to Sand Dollars, Theo came out and got in the car, then leaned over to kiss me. When we finally broke apart, he eyed the Doodles in my lap. “Is that your dinner?”

“Nope. Just a snack,” I said, popping one into my mouth. “You want one?”

“Okay.”

I held out the bag, then watched as he carefully extracted one. After examining as if it was an artifact from another civilization, he finally popped it into his mouth. Then he chewed, a pensive look on his face, before swallowing and saying, “Huh. Interesting.”

“What is?” I asked, putting the car in reverse.

“That … whatever it is,” he said, gesturing to the bag. “Cheese Bomb?”

“Cheez Doodle.” I glanced over at him. “What, does it taste weird or something?”

“I don’t know. It’s the first one I’ve ever eaten.”

This statement warranted a full stop of the car. I turned to face him. “You’ve never had a Cheez Doodle before?”

“Well, I have
now
,” he said.

“You’re twenty-one years old,” I said slowly. “And that was your first?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “What? Is that weird?”

Yes
, I thought. Out loud I said, “Not weird. Just uncommon. These things were, like, part of our regular diet in our house when we were kids.”

“Really.” He glanced at the bag again. “Wow. They’re, um, awfully orange.”

I looked at the bag. “That’s the cheese.”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

We backed down the rest of the driveway, and I ate another Doodle, surprised at how self-conscious I suddenly felt. Now, though, with this mention of the herring dip and olives, it made more sense. His life was a long way from mine. But we
were
getting closer. One piece of junk food and glass of wine at a time.

“Okay,” he said now, with the voice I’d come to recognize as his ceremonious one. “Snacks and apps. These are all from the Reef Room. We have their homemade wasabi peas and peanuts mix, shrimp puffs, and, your favorite, the chicken satay.”

“Wow,” I said, looking across the spread. Actually, I was more a shrimp burger girl and hated horseradish in any form. Still, as he fixed a little plate for me on the top of one of the containers, I didn’t say any of this. “This looks great.”

“Is that your phone?”

“What?”

He nodded at my pocket, adding another shrimp puff. “Your phone. I think it’s ringing.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I slid it out and glanced at the screen, then hit
the mute button. “It’s just my father. He’ll leave a message.”

“You don’t want talk to him?”

I tried a wasabi pea. Ugh. I took a sip of wine, which didn’t help matters. “I rarely do, actually.”

“I’m surprised,” he observed, now making his own plate. “You seemed pretty close the other night at the Laundromat, when he came to help Clyde with that hole in the ceiling.”

I picked up a piece of chicken. “That was my dad.”

“Your …?” He looked confused. Then, “Oh, right. I keep forgetting you have two.”

“Only one dad. And one father.”

“Similar words,” he pointed out.

“But not similar things. At least not in my life.” I was feeling myself getting less and less hungry by the second, discussing this. “It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time.” He took a sip of his wine, savoring it. “I mean, if you feel like talking about it.”

I didn’t, actually. But since I was also now keenly aware of a woman in a Finz shirt power walking down the beach past our little date, eyeing us disapprovingly, I needed a distraction. “My father got my mom pregnant the summer before her senior year of high school. He disappeared from our lives pretty soon after. She married my
dad
when I was three. My father and I haven’t ever been close, really. The only stuff we’ve ever had in common has been school related.”

“School,” he repeated, pouring some more wine.

I nodded. “First just what I was learning, reading, that kind of thing. But when I was sixteen and started looking into colleges, he was suddenly very invested. Said he would handle
tuition, bought me books, coached me about applications and essays. He really wanted me to go to an Ivy, or someplace of equal stature.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

I glanced up at him. He was listening while swishing around the wine in his glass, something I’d noticed was a habit of his. It was like it tasted better if he kept it moving, or something. “No. But then, when I did get into Columbia, he told me he actually couldn’t pay after all. And then instead of explaining why, or really saying anything, he just disappeared. Again.”

Now, he looked up at me. “You got into Columbia?”

I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or insulted by how surprised he sounded. “Yeah.”

“Wow. You weren’t kidding about the SAT thing,” he said. “You must have seriously aced that verbal.”

I had. Not that I needed to tell him that, so instead, I shrugged. “I did okay.”

“Why aren’t you going there?”

“I couldn’t afford it.”

“That’s what student loans are for, though,” he said. “Debt is part of education.”

“Well,” I said. “Not in my family, I guess.”

“Your parents didn’t want you to go to Columbia?” he asked. “That’s crazy. Do they even know how hard it is to get into?”

“My dad’s a contractor,” I pointed out. “And East U gave me a full scholarship. It made no sense to go into some huge debt.”

“Yes, but they’re not the same caliber of school. I mean, no offense, but really …” He shook his head. “Not even close.”

“Yeah.” I bit my lip. “I guess not.”

He looked at me, but I just turned my head to the ocean, forcing myself to take a deep breath. Here I was, sitting on the remains of someone’s house, drinking wine I didn’t like, with food I could barely tolerate, while rehashing the worst part of the past year. There are just moments when you look up from any one place and realize, suddenly, you have no idea how you got there.

“Wow,” Theo said after a moment. I was still studying the waves, crashing in front of us. A few terns circling overhead, taking occasional dives. “Our First Fight. And it only took ten days.”

Even after such a short time, I could say that this sentence was pretty much Theo encapsulated. Not only did he know the exact duration of Our Time Together, but our first fractious moment already had a moniker. “Are we fighting?”

“I offended you.” It was a statement, not a question. I turned to look at him. “I’m sorry, Emaline. I just … education is a big deal in my family. It arouses passions.”

I nodded. “We feel that way about college football.”

I was kidding, although I realized, a beat later, he might not have realized it. We sat there another moment in silence while I tried another wasabi peanut. Still kind of gross. But the wine, surprisingly, was kind of growing on me.

“And,” he added, “I didn’t get into Columbia.”

I raised my eyebrows. “No?”

“My verbal was nothing to sneeze at, either.” He sighed. “It was my first choice.”

“No way.”

“Yep.” Another wrist flick, sending the wine swishing. “Don’t get me wrong, I love NYU. But it still nags at me sometimes.”

I didn’t say anything. Instead I just looked down at the table and the faint layer of sand covering it. I drew a circle in it with my finger, slowly. “I know a lot of people would have found a way to make Columbia work. But it just wasn’t going to happen for me. But the fact that he never explained what happened and disappeared … it just made it worse.”

“It’s a big promise to break,” Theo agreed.

“He blew off my graduation, too. Never responded to the invite. I didn’t hear from him until that day you saw us at the Reef Room.”

“What, a couple of weeks ago?” I nodded. “Ouch.”

“I know.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Did he ever tell you what happened? Like, why he suddenly couldn’t pay?”

I shook my head. “Now I know his marriage was falling apart. But he never gave that as a reason. He can’t even talk about it, period. The couple of times the subject of college has come up, even fleetingly, he looks like he might implode or something.”

A pause. Then he said, “Man. He’s probably embarrassed.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How do you figure?”

“It makes sense,” he said. “This is a guy who had never
lived up to his obligation as a parent, right? Finally here’s his chance. He’s going to help you get into college and pay for it. Does it make up for everything? No. But it
is
Columbia. A dream come true, right?”

It wasn’t my dream, though
, I thought. But I didn’t say this.

“But then,” he continued, “he screws
that
up, too. Talk about humiliating. Man.”

It was taking me a minute to catch up with this reasoning; there was a delay, like on live broadcasts. Finally I said, “But I was fine with going to East U, even after all we’d done. I didn’t care about Columbia. I would have told him that, if he’d just stuck around and been honest with me.”

“Maybe. But I bet for him, it wasn’t just about getting you into any old school,” Theo told me. “This was a chance he could give you that no one else in your life could. Something that could change
everything
. He was so close to redeeming himself. Which made it even worse when he didn’t.”

“It wasn’t about him, though.”

“True. But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.” He leaned forward a bit, looking more closely at me. “Look, I’m not saying he handled the whole thing well. I’m just saying … maybe there was more to it than you think.”

By this point, I felt unsettled, like my view of something I’d taken as fact was suddenly being shifted, and in doing so was skewing everything else I believed as well. Beneath all
that, barely but still there, something else. This tiny feeling that maybe, just maybe, he might be right.

“If that’s what he was feeling, he should have said as much,” I managed finally. “He’s a grown-up. He can use his words.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Again: not handled well. But he’s here now, right? Maybe he wants to make amends somehow.”

“Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.”

He ate a shrimp puff. “Sorry. My optimism can be very annoying.”

Hearing this, I again had a flash of Benji, telling me he was hard to entertain. Now that I thought about it, they were pretty similar, at least by the numbers: parent professions, where they were raised. There was probably something meaningful to them both converging on me simultaneously. Not that I was in the mood, right then, to figure out what it was.

“It’s not annoying,” I told him. “Just different. Like the Cheez Doodle thing.”

He smiled at me, then got up, coming over to where I was sitting, his glass in hand. He held it out, and I did the same. “To optimism. And junk food.”

We clinked glasses and drank. Then he leaned down, cupping my chin in his hand, and kissed me. I closed my eyes, letting myself forget where I was and what I was doing, temporarily, to just sink into it. It was almost easy to do, except for the fine grains of sand I felt blow up and over us every now and again. Light and drifting, tiny granules you couldn’t even see. But as always, they were there.