Why Can't I Be You (10 page)

“I can’t,” I said, “but thanks.”

“Come on. I’ll even let you take the piss out of my bar stories like you did with my PowerPoint.” He rubbed his head and gave me a smile—the kind that was meant to look shy and awkward but wasn’t. There was nothing shy about him.

I fell for this kind of act with Deagan. Fool me once: shame on the smiling guy. Fool me twice: not going to happen. I gestured back to the door of the bar. “I’m having drinks with some friends.”

“Are you from around here?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Something like that. There’s a . . . history.” I willed myself to shut up. The fewer the details, the more believable the lie—the words
cycled in my head like a mantra.

The door to the bar opened. I held my breath and tilted my chin down so my hair fell to cover my face.

“History was always my worst subject,” Kyle said, smiling again. Some guy who looked like a total meathead walked out of the bar and headed outside, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. I’m sure he was there for the reunion, but he looked like he’d probably been a jock in high school. Jessie Morgan’s friends were not jocks. They were the kind of motley group that can only form when people become friends way before puberty sets in. Their history is stronger than high school cliques. Without that, Jessie would have probably gone to the mean girls, Myra to the art-room kids, Heather to the nerdy girls who liked horses, Robbie to the out-back smokers, and Fish—I couldn’t figure out where Fish would have fit. But none of them would have hung out with the jock in the lobby.

“Well, uh . . .” I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just . . .” I met Kyle’s eyes. He had really nice eyes. And even if the shy smile thing was an act, for a split second I thought about just going with him. Hanging out with the PR people. Going into Seattle. It would be easier. I would know what to expect. I wouldn’t be lying. Or at least I’d be lying to myself, which is inherently easier than lying to other people. But I really wanted to be there when Myra’s ex showed up. I wanted to hear what Heather and Robbie had been doing since high school, because they were sweet and funny. And Fish. I had guys like Kyle figured out, but I didn’t get Fish at all, and I wanted to. “Yeah, you know, I’m good here tonight. But maybe tomorrow?”

“Well, then,” Kyle said, smiling, “I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”

“Good,” I said, smiling back, and watched him walk into the restaurant before I climbed the stairs to the bar, just to be sure the coast was clear.

When I got back, Robbie was up at the bar with the girls, waiting on beers. Fish was talking to some guy across the room. He looked at me when I walked in. He stopped talking, but when I made eye contact, he looked away. I could see him stumbling on his words, wrinkling up his forehead like he’d forgotten what he was saying.

“I mean, thirteen years since high school, but a bag full of Pixy Stix and a stack of John Hughes movies is still my favorite way to spend a Friday night,” Myra said, poking at the mint in her glass. She used her red straws like chopsticks to pick up a sprig so she could nibble at it. “Tonight excluded.” She grabbed my arm. “If you lived here again and this was what Friday night could be . . . Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d still choose Pixy Stix and John Bender.” She took a sip of her drink. “But you’d be invited, of course.”

“You’ll have to fight me for Judd Nelson,” I said. “He’s totally mine.”

“Ew!” Robbie said. “You guys are perverts!”

The bartender looked like he wanted to shush us.

Myra punched Robbie’s arm. “Shut up!”

“No,” Robbie said, “think about it! So you had a crush on Judd Nelson playing a high school kid when you were in high school.”

“So?” Myra said. “I’m failing to see your point.”

“I haven’t made my point yet,” Robbie said, laughing. “Now, you still have a crush on Judd Nelson in his role as a high school kid, but you’re thirty-one. That’s totally creepy. You’re getting all hot and bothered over a high school kid.”

“Judd Nelson is in his fifties now!” Myra said.

“But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about your crush on Judd Nelson in
The Breakfast Club
, where he’s only, like, seventeen.”

“One,” Myra said, “I won’t be thirty-one for three more months.”

“How is that better?” Robbie asked, shaking his head but smiling wide.

“It just is! And two, when I watch it, it’s like my high school self still has a crush on Judd Nelson playing a high school kid. It’s nostalgic. I’m remembering how I felt about him when I was sixteen.”

“I don’t know,” Robbie said, laughing. “I still think it’s a little pervy.” The bartender handed Robbie his beers. Robbie left some wrinkled bills on the bar.

“Three,” I said, picking up where Myra left off, “Judd Nelson was twenty-six when he was in
The Breakfast Club
. It wouldn’t be weird at all if Myra dated a twenty-six-year-old.”

“Okay, so you’re not a perv, My,” Robbie said, smiling. “You’re just a cougar.”

“Robbie!” Heather said, and tried to cover his mouth with her hand. He pushed it away.

“Really, Robert,” Myra said, raising an eyebrow at him. “Really? If I dated a guy four years younger than me, you’d call me a cougar?”

“If the tail fits,” Robbie said, smirking. “Plus it’s almost five years, because you’re going to be thirty-one in three months.”

“Well,” Myra said, dragging the word out like she was searching for a comeback, “well, maybe my imaginary younger man is going to be twenty-
seven
in two months.”

“Oh! Oh! You’re reaching,” Robbie said, stretching his arm out like he was trying to grab something just past his fingertips.

“Go drink your beer, Robert. Fish is thirsty. Go away,” Myra said, shooing him with her hands, laughing.

Robbie kissed the top of her head before he walked away. “Love you, My!” he said, in a patronizing voice.

“Piss off, Robbers,” Myra said, but she was smiling. She reached for the pitcher and poured herself another drink.

“Oh,” Heather said, “I wish Karen was here. Then we’d all be together!”

Myra caught my eye and smiled nervously, and I got the idea that there was something about Karen. Did Karen hate Jessie too?

“She’s stuck in Florida until Dylan’s okay to fly again,” Heather said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“I heard! She left me a message. That’s awful,” Myra said.

“I know,” Heather said. “He’s going to have to get tubes when she can get him back here. That’s like the third ear infection in two months.”

“So,” I said, working with the context clues, “does Karen just have Dylan?”

“No,” Heather said, pulling out her phone. “She has Paige too.” She scrolled through pictures on her phone, found the one she was looking for, and passed it over to me. The picture was of a little girl with long brown hair and gorgeous big brown eyes. She was sitting on a tractor with Robbie, and he was letting her steer. They were both laughing. The next picture was of Heather holding a little boy, a toddler, on her lap and they were both clapping their hands.

“That’s Dylan,” Heather said. “We babysit a lot. Karen’s husband left right before Christmas last year. He was a total douchewad.” She rolled her eyes. “She’s better off without him. And he’s lucky he left. I was ready to castrate him in his sleep.”

Myra whispered loudly, “Couldn’t keep it in his pants.” She’d taken care of most of the second pitcher of mojitos by herself.

“So Dylan is sick?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Heather said. “Karen took the kids to Disney. The divorce has been really hard on Paige and Karen wanted to cheer them up, but then Dylan’s ears got so bad that the doctor she took him to said she can’t fly back until he’s better.”

“That’s awful!” I said.

“Yeah, I feel so bad for them. Karen is all stressed out, because she’s stuck there and missing this and missing work and spending more money on a hotel than she had in the budget. Paige is bored out of her mind. Poor Dylan keeps asking for his dad. It all sucks.”

“Do you and Robbie have kids?” I asked, and then realized it was probably a rude question. I already knew the answer. If Heather and Robbie had kids, I’d have seen a full slide show.

Heather sighed. “No, we’ve been trying. For a really long time. No luck yet. But Dylan calls me Aunt H. now. It makes my heart feel like it’s a trillion times bigger, you know? If we can’t be parents, I am determined to be the greatest fake aunt there ever was.”

“You guys?” Myra said, looking at us gravely, like she was about to say something madly important. “Too many mojitos. Too little food.”

So we grabbed menus. I ordered Myra a Coke, and Heather discreetly handed the pitcher back to the bartender, even though there were probably two drinks left in it.

“Wait,” Robbie called from across the room. “You guys are getting food?” He and Fish came back over.

“You can’t order food without us!” Fish yelled to Heather. “They have the best burgers here.”

Fish made every effort to stay as far away from me as he could, waiting to sit down until the last possible moment, trying to tell Robbie he should sit next to his wife. But since I was sitting between Robbie and Myra, and Heather was at the end of the bar on the other side of Myra, the farthest Fish could get from me was the other side of Robbie.

And before we knew it, we were all sitting in a row at the bar, drinking Cokes and eating burgers like overgrown teenagers in some upscale version of a village soda shop. I loved it.

Fish pretended to be so into his burger that he couldn’t be bothered to look my way, but every so often I caught him staring. One time he even smiled. Just a little bit.

“Hey,” Robbie said, holding his burger in front of his mouth and pointing across the bar with his index finger, “is that Justin Finkel?” There was a guy wearing a gray wool suit and a flashy silver watch signaling the bartender smoothly, with two fingers, like he was hailing a cab.

“Yeah,” Fish said, “I think it is.”

“I mean, that’s who he would turn into, right?” Robbie said, aggressively taking another bite of his burger.

“Fuck him,” Fish said. He looked over at me, but I turned my head and pretended to be paying attention to whatever Heather and Myra were talking about. I didn’t want to push my luck and have to pretend I knew who Justin Finkel was, but I kept listening.

“Yeah, I know,” Robbie said. “It’s just . . . You know how you have some things that are, like, on replay in your brain?”

“Yeah,” Fish said.

“Sometimes when I screw something up or I feel like I’m in over my head, I can still hear him calling me a fucking retard when I had that panic attack in the middle of the SATs. Like, I still remember the way my pencil smelled and the stupid loud clock and then Justin’s voice over and over.”

“He’s such an asshole,” Fish said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lean over to gently bump his shoulder into Robbie’s.

“He looks like he’s a rich, successful asshole,” Robbie said.

“You’re successful. You guys are in the black at the shop. That’s no small thing.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got dirty fingernails and a house with a leaky roof, you know. And I know Heather doesn’t care, but—”

“Heather’s proud of you, man. You gotta do what you love. What else is there? You want to be that guy? In that shirt? You want to sell meaningless shit for a living? You fix things. You’ve got dirt under your fingernails to prove that you do something. You don’t just push widgets around.”

Robbie punched Fish in the shoulder lightly. “Thanks.”

“Joke’s on him, man, because he still looks like a douchebag. And you,” Fish said, gesturing to Robbie, “are just a whole lotta fabulous, my friend.”

I couldn’t help myself, I looked over. Robbie had a mouth full of milkshake, and he was in danger of spitting it across the bar. He managed to swallow it before he started laughing, but his eyes teared.

“He is fabulous, right, Jess?” Fish said, catching my eye and smiling, like he’d forgotten he was avoiding me. Or maybe, in the face of making Robbie feel better, the way he felt about me didn’t even matter.

“Robbie,” I said, “you are exquisite.”

“Aw,” Robbie said, putting his arm around me. “I love you, Jess.”

While we were eating, Kyle walked back in. He went to the other end of the bar and ordered another shot. He held it up and nodded his head toward me before he downed it. He flipped a twenty on the bar, said something to the bartender, and walked away.

This is it, I thought. My cover is blown. I started thinking about my escape plan. It would go better if I took my shoes off before I ran out.

“One for the road, you know?” Kyle said, patting my shoulder as he walked past. “See you tomorrow, Not Monica.”

“Who’s that?” Heather asked, smiling at me like maybe there was a secret to be found out.

Fish slurped at the ice at the bottom of his glass with his straw. Loudly.

“Oh,” Myra said, “Jessie’s here for a conference too.”

“So you didn’t really come to see us,” Fish said, staring me down.

“Well, I did.” I hedged. “I mean, it just—it all worked out nicely, you know?”