The Best of Enemies (14 page)

“Trust me, anything will be gourmet after all the MREs I’ve eaten,” I say to appease them both, referring to the bland, cold, prepackaged field rations I normally call dinner.

We circle around the baggage claim to wait for my luggage.
A seemingly endless supply of identical black roller bags whiz past us.
How often does someone take the wrong suitcase when they all look so much alike?
I don’t even have to tell Teddy when mine chugs past—he can automatically deduce that the dusty old green duffel belongs to me.

We load up Terry’s Outback and I feel like a child again in the backseat, with my doting parents up front.
“Tell me everything, hon,” Terry says, navigating out of the four-tier parking garage at O’Hare.
“How long do we have you?”

“I won’t know more about that for a few days,” I reply.
“The wakes begin tomorrow and then the funeral’s on Wednesday.
But I can take as long as I need.”

Terry’s face softens.
“I’m so sorry, hon.
This is devastating.”

“Thanks, Ter, I appreciate it,” I reply.
I swallow hard, trying to hide my emotions, but almost too overcome not to.
Terry really feels like a second mom to me, significantly different from the original (obviously), but better in so many ways.

Teddy asks, “You mind bunking with Bobby and the boys?
They should arrive later tonight.”
A few years ago after I was transferred from Baghdad to Kabul, I shipped my few things home to Terry and Teddy.
They wanted me to have a place I truly could call home, so they set up a little apartment for me in their basement.
However, ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s Bobby who uses it as a crash pad between his winter and summer gigs.
I’m not sure he
has
to so much as he
wants
to be there with all Terry’s mini-pies.
(I suspect if Terry were to make a full-sized version, Bobby would move in forever.)

“I packed Benadryl and an inhaler, so I should be set.”
I’ve developed an allergy to cats as an adult, which I guess is a benefit even though I love them.
Pets can inadvertently tether you to one place, so never being able to have one made it easier for me to move about at will.
I’ll be glad to see Bobby’s crew, though, as they’re particularly sweet.
He has the kind of cats who head-butt you to demand kisses.
I always oblige, and then spend the next two days sneezing and scrubbing at my watery eyes.

Terry glances at me in the rearview mirror.
“Whenever you do leave, which will be too soon, bee-tee-dubs, what’s next?
Any chance we can convince you to take a stateside assignment in the near future?”

“Not unless Putin relocates.
Believe I’m off to Russia next.
If ol’ Vladimir keeps up with his current level of nonsense, I could be there for a while,” I reply, mentally ticking off his ever-growing list of transgressions.

“Ooh, Putin!”
Terry replies.
“I
hate
him!
But . . .
I kind of love him a little bit, too.
I know all the shirtless bear-wrestling and posing on horseback is propaganda, but I don’t care.
He’s just the most perfect Bond villain ever.”

Teddy gives Terry’s shoulder a good-natured rub.
“Only you, Ter.
Only you.”

We’re almost to their home before Teddy remembers something important.
“You got a call today, Jack-o,” he says.

“From?”
Given the news, it stands to reason people would know I’m back.

“Kitty Carricoe.”

I slump down in my seat.
“Damn.
I forgot I’d have to deal with her.
Was it awkward?”
I ask.

“Why would it be awkward?”
Terry demands.
Terry can sniff out the faintest trace of gossip like a truffle pig in a forest.

“No, it wasn’t awkward,” Teddy replies.
“That was a million years ago.
It’s you who has the issue with her, kid, not me.
I
always liked her.
Plus, with all her big blond hair, red lips, and trapeze dresses?
She was the shit back then.”

“They dated briefly when I was a freshman,” I explain.

“Jealous?”
Teddy asks, arching an eyebrow.

Terry gives Teddy the side-eye and replies, “Survey says . . .
no.
But it sounds like there’s a story.
Dish, please.”

I lean into the front seat to explain.
“Their brief relationship and subsequent breakup caused this whole chain of events that took us from being the best of friends to the best of enemies.”

“This is already my favorite story ever,” Terry says, eagerly glancing back at me in the rearview mirror.
“What happened?”

“What happened is, we started to act like eighteen-year-old girls.
She said something that pissed me off, so I stormed out, then she made a big stink out of an innocent mistake I made, then John convinced me to seek revenge.
The whole thing went back and forth, escalating in severity and, bottom line, we almost got kicked out of the dorms because of it.
Clearly we’ve never gotten over it because each time we’re together, we’re at it like two wet cats in a burlap sack.”

“How have I not heard any of this?”
Terry asks.

“Because it’s mortifying and I’m desperately ashamed of my behavior,” I reply.

“That’s how you know it’s a good story.
Do continue!”
Terry signals and expertly navigates the Outback down the off-ramp.
We’ve reached the Andersonville area and should be home soon.

I explain, “Our whole feud took on a life of its own.
Normally, when something like this happens, both parties agree to hate each other and go live entirely separate lives.
But because of Sars, we keep getting thrown back together and each time it’s been a disaster.”

“Wait, this is the girl who almost killed the shark?”

“Yes.”

“And she dumped the chocolate fountain on you at Sars’s wedding?”

I clear my throat.
“
Allegedly.
Trip’s lawyers eventually made the whole incident go away.
But if that had happened—and the attorneys are vehement that
it did not
—I’d have had so much chocolate on me, it would have been as if I’d leapt into a pool of it.
It was—allegedly—everywhere.
In my ears, up my nose, in my underwear.
I mean,
everywhere
.
I went through a bottle of shampoo trying to wash it all out of my hair.”

Terry nudges Ted.
“Take note, please.
I want this to happen to me before I die.”

I interject, “I promise you death by chocolate isn’t as great as you’d imagine.”

“I prefer to be the judge of that.”

Personally, I
wish
that I could be covered in scalding hot chocolate every single day of the rest of my life if it would erase the memory of the look Sars and her parents had on their faces when they saw the end result of our shared grudge.
I’d do anything to take back that moment.

I can handle having an enemy, especially as I believe that good can come of conflictual relationships.
But poor Sars has always been the innocent in all of this.
The bystander.
The sweet kid in a bad neighborhood, just trying to ride her bike to Grandma’s when she gets caught in gang cross fire.
I’d always secretly hoped that somehow Kitty and I could find a place of understanding and give back to Sars what we inadvertently took away by ruining the end of her wedding.
And bachelorette party.
And engagement party.

But now?
Now it’s far too late.

I say, “I’m dreading seeing Kitty tomorrow because she’ll make an impossible situation exponentially more difficult.
I’m warning you, the coming days are not going to be a treat.
I apologize in advance if I turn into a bitchy
girl
.”
The more I contemplate what’s ahead of me, the more I twist the hair in my stubby ponytail.
My brothers could always tell when I was stressed in school, because I’d end up with these long, panic-based banana curls—until I finally chopped it all off second semester of my freshman year.

Terry is a paragon of compassion.
“Oh, honey, that’s terrible!
But you have to tell me—what could that awful wench have done to cause such a ruckus?”

I love how Terry’s on my side, ready to defend me, whereas Teddy’s already sputtering with laughter as I explain.

In retrospect, the story
is
hilarious, and maybe if I hadn’t reacted so badly due to my immaturity, shock, and surprise, she’d have never pulled that business during rush and I’d have left her hair alone, so she wouldn’t have destroyed my stuff and the Sean situation wouldn’t have come to pass . . .
Long story short, we’d never have reached this point.

I take a deep breath, give my locks a few extra twists, and finally say, “The fight started when Kitty claimed Ted dumped her because he was gay.”

Teddy’s laughing so hard he’s gasping for air, while Terry scratches his five o’ clock shadow, as he always does when deep in thought, trying to piece this all together.

“Um . . .”
His voice is as rich, deep, and melodic as James Earl Jones.
If he weren’t committed to being a pastry chef, he’d make a killing doing voice-overs.

Terry looks like what Val Kilmer should have grown into, had he fulfilled the promise of his golden youth back in the
Top Gun
days.
His hair is still fair and full, and jawline square as ever.
He’s lean in all the spots where Val became puffy and he’s so strong from hoisting fifty-pound bags of flour all day.
He certainly wouldn’t need a tub of Vaseline to try to squeeze into a fitted Batman costume.
(No offense, Val.) And a steady regime of injectables and microdermabrasion has kept his skin as fresh and unfurrowed as the day I met him back in 1996.
Is he forty-two?
Is he twenty-four?
No one can tell.

I explain.
“
That’s
why it’s funny now.
At the time I thought she was just being a megabitch.”

Teddy finally manages to compose himself.
“I wasn’t mad.
I was relieved.
We parted as friends because she was the catalyst to my being honest with myself, even if it took me a while to come out to all of you.
I remember thinking,
‘If this smokin’ hot chick isn’t doing it for me, no woman ever will
.
I can finally stop overcompensating.’
And P.S.
she was a freak in the sheets.
Big-time.”

I grit my teeth.
“What a poseur.
She’d always tell me she was saving it until someone gave her his fraternity pin.”

Ted hoots with mirth.
“I pinned her all right.”

I shriek, “Augh!
No!
Again, I’m going to throw up on
you
, Joel.”

Teddy snaps his fingers.
“Actually, no—wait.
My bad.
I’m remembering wrong.
The first night, she went on and on about the whole boyfriend/committed relationship thing, too, so I figured we weren’t going to happen because I wasn’t in the market for anything serious.
Her tune sure changed after a couple of drinks.
Two grenadine-spiked Zimas later, I literally couldn’t peel her off of my jock.
One time, she—”

I throw up my hands.
“Stop.
I mean it.
Kabul didn’t give me PTSD, but your story might.”

“When did all this happen?”
Terry asks.

“Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve in 1994,” I reply.

“And when did we meet?”
He steals a glance away from the road to look to Teddy.

Ted replies, “October of 1995.
I saw you for the first time on Halloween at Sidetrack in Boystown.
I got your number that night.
Remember?
You were done up like Tori Spelling in
90210
?”

“Aha!
All the pieces finally fit together.
Blond hair, red lips, trapeze dress,” Terry replies as the streetlight illuminates his wide grin.
“Donna Martin really did graduate.”