The Edge of Falling (8 page)

“I dig you.”

“So flirt a little,” she says, giving me a push toward Bar Man. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Great question.

So I step forward. It only takes one for Mr. Bar Man to come toward me. As he gets closer, I see that I’m right: He’s about my age, maybe a little bit older. He’s dressed well—tailored shirt, black pants—and he’s got dark, dark hair and eyes. Even inside, in this poorly lit music hall, it’s easy to spot that they’re so brown they’re almost black.

“Well,” he says when we’re within speaking distance. “This is a surprise. Nice to see you.”

I frown. “Excuse me?”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps looking at me. It makes the back of my neck feel hot.

“Do we know each other?” I ask.

I cross my arms. He runs his tongue over his top lip. “We used to.”

I feel my heartbeat quicken. I hadn’t actually expected him to say yes. I thought he meant that he was surprised I came over. Or that I wasn’t Claire.

“You look perturbed,” he says.

I shake my head. “I don’t think we do.”

He takes a sip of his drink. Sets it down. Exhales. “We do.”

“Well, I have no idea who you are. No offense or anything.”

He smiles. “I wouldn’t expect you to. It was a long time ago. You’re Mcalister, right?”

More heart pounding. “Yes.”

“Of the Caulfields?”

Ah. Yes. “Do you know me, or have you just heard of me?”

He whistles. “Impressive. Spunky. I like that. No, I went to school with your brother. Patrick?”

“Peter.”

“Right. Nice kid.”

“You didn’t go to Kensington,” I say. My brother was only two grades ahead of me, and I knew everyone in his class, more or less.

“Grammar school,” he says. “We’ve been in London for the last few years.”

“Oh.” That makes sense. My brother went to Prep until the ninth grade, so we were in different schools. Prep is all boys, and a lot of them choose to go to middle school there instead of Wheatley. Prep doesn’t go all the way through, though, so they all transfer in.

My shoulders start to drop a little. “You recognized me?”

He tilts his head to the side. “I have a pretty good memory.” I feel his eyes loop my face. “You always used to come with your mom to pick your brother up. You haven’t changed very much.”

I shake my head. “You have no idea.”

“You want a drink?” he asks.

I motion to the orange juice in my hand.

“There’s no alcohol in there,” he says.

“No?” I bring the cup to my lips.

“No way,” he says. “You’re not a vodka girl.” He motions for the bartender. “Two whisky sours,” he says. To me: “You’ll like it. I promise.”

“What do you promise?” I ask. I’m feeling just a little bit flirtatious. Maybe it’s all the vitamin C. More likely the fact that I can practically feel Claire’s eyes boring into me and her voice:
Can’t you ever just
pretend
to have fun?

“I don’t make contingency plans,” he says. “Just trust me.”

He takes out a lighter and flicks the flame up. It startles me and I blink, taking a step backward.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I say. Stupid. Childish. Like a little kid tattling. So much for the witty.

He snaps the lighter closed. “I don’t smoke.”

“What’s your name, anyway?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Astor.”

“Astor what?”

He cocks his head to the side. “Did I stumble into a game of twenty questions?”

I suddenly feel silly. I don’t even know why I’m talking to him. Because Claire pushed me over? “So London, huh?” I say, taking a gulp of OJ. “Did you just move back?”

“Few months ago.”

“You’re in college?” I ask.

He looks at me, takes a swig of one of the drinks that have just been set down. “Not right now.”

“Right. Because right now you’re here at this bar. I get it.” I shake my head.

He laughs. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not going right now.”

“Okay,” I say, bringing my glass up to my lips.

He peers at me. “Surprised?”

I shrug. “Not really. A little unusual, I guess, for someone like you.”

A smile cracks along his face. Like a knife carving a pumpkin. “Someone like me?”

“Come on,” I say. “You know what I mean.”

He nods. “I do indeed.” He sets his drink down. “So you think I’m wild?”

“No,” I say.

“Adventurous?” he tries. He angles his body so it’s facing me, and flicks the straw out of my drink onto the counter. For some reason it makes me self-conscious. I run my pinky down the side of my glass, scooping up a bead of condensation.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know you. But I get it, I think.”

“Not many people do.”

I look up at him. “I’m not most people.”

He holds my gaze for a moment, and something passes between us. Something you can’t see, just feel. Then he laughs and the mood lightens. “Noted.”

“So,” I say. “What
are
you doing now?”

“Like tonight?” He winks at me and runs a hand through his hair. I can’t help but notice his fingers—long and lean, like him. He has a leather bracelet on his wrist, with a tiny silver clasp. “I get that college is what I’m supposed to be doing, but it’s not for me. Not now, anyway. I kind of have a different way of looking at the future.”

“Oh yeah?”

He smiles. “Yeah. Here.” He hands me my drink. I take it.

“So what’s your take?” I ask.

He turns and leans against the bar. “It’s just never seemed as certain to me as it has to other people.” He takes another sip. Stops. “Like these boxes people keep ticking. High school. College. Work. Marriage. Kids. How can you be so sure you’ll make it to the next one?”

“I know what you mean.”

He eyes me, like he’s trying to determine whether that’s true or not. “Yeah?”

“Trust me,” I say. “Yes.”

“Okay, then, Mcalister Caulfield. Let’s toast.” He raises his glass, and I surprise myself by doing the same. Then he looks me square in the eye. There’s a lot in that look. It’s enticing, nerve-racking. Like a roller coaster that you know is going to make your heart plummet down into your stomach, but it must be what you want, because you get on anyway. “To now,” he says.

We clink; ice cubes rattle. Then I take a sip. The alcohol burns a trail down my throat. It feels good. Hot. Like a brushfire. Like it’s clearing something out.

“Why do you hate me so much?” my mother asks. We’re at Bergdorf’s, browsing around the hat department. It’s on the ground floor, close to the doors. I like to stay near exits when I’m shopping with my mom. I’m also very inconsistently listening to Claire’s lunch date. Her dad made her go out with some aspiring photographer, one of his assistants, and she made me promise to come along—cellularly.

“I don’t hate
you
,” I say. “I hate that hat.”

My mom gives me a look that seems to say,
Same difference.
She has a tendency to overidentify.

This is usually what shopping is like with her. She wants me to dress like Abigail or Constance or one of the other girls in my grade who take off ten thousand dollars’ worth
of accessories and store them in their lockers when we have gym. It’s ridiculous. There are children starving in Africa, and my mother is concerned about a Chloé dress. You’d think that after my sister died, she would have gotten some perspective, that this stuff would have become far less important to her, but that’s not at all what happened. It was the opposite. She redecorated our house after eighteen months, same as always. She bought a whole new wardrobe. Sometimes I think she feels like the real world abandoned her, so she might as well stay here: in cotton and Lycra and linen.

“I like this,” I offer. I pull up a summer scarf. It’s cream colored with big stitching.

My mother ignores the gesture. “I spoke to your brother,” she says.

“Peter?”

“Any other siblings I should know about?”

We both get a little quiet. She clears her throat. “He said he’s thinking of coming home next weekend.”

I set the scarf back and in the process knock a bag off a mannequin. I reach down and fumble with picking it back up. “Already? He just got there.”

“Felicia,” my mother says.

“Right.”

“I don’t think she’s any good for him,” she says, sashaying over to the jewelry case.

I trot behind. “No? I dunno. He loves her and all.”

My mother looks at me sharply, like I’ve just sworn. “She’s a distraction,” she says.

“From what? Other girls?”

I put the phone up to my ear and hear Claire laugh. It’s genuine, so I know things are going fine. Plus I don’t think this is getting romantic. She’s still with Max, and it’s lunch.

“Don’t be smart,” my mother says. She motions for the saleslady to let her see a ring. It’s blue. Sapphire. She barely even looks at it before she nods to wrap it up.

“So look, Mom, I’m probably late to meet Claire.” That’s a lie—Claire is obviously busy at the moment—but we’re getting increasingly farther away from the exit, which means I’m starting to sweat in here. And that’s a feat. It’s always freezing in Bergdorf’s.

“We’re having lunch,” she says. “Claire can come if she’d like.” She taps her finger on the glass counter.

I pick up the phone again. “Demarchelier is my godfather, actually,” I hear Claire say.

“You know Trevor came by again yesterday,” my mother says.

Instantly my heart starts racing. I glance downward, toward the jewelry case. “Why?” I ask.

“What do you mean, why?”

“He must have had a reason. Why else would he come
over?” I can feel my neck start to heat up. I keep my face pointed low.

“He told me you wouldn’t speak to him,” she says, fingering a gold bracelet. “He said he didn’t have a choice.”

“He came to talk to you?” For just a moment, my confusion eclipses my anxiety. This conversation is unusual for a few reasons. Lately my mom isn’t too aware of what’s going on in our house. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure she knew Trevor and I had broken up. Also, my mom and I have never had that mother-daughter relationship where we tell each other everything. It isn’t our thing. She’s always just sort of let me live. I didn’t come to her when I was thinking of sleeping with Trevor. We don’t lie in bed together and talk about love. We’re not like that. If we ever were, we certainly aren’t now.

“No,” she said. “He was hoping to catch you.”

“He’s becoming a master of the ambush,” I say under my breath.

“You two were close,” my mother says, like she hasn’t heard me.

“Yeah, we were.” I busy myself with a counter display of dangly earrings.

“Are you seeing anyone else?” she asks.

The question startles me, and so does Astor’s face flashing across my mind without warning. To Claire’s disappointment
I didn’t give him my number. In my defense, he didn’t ask. I had a feeling if I offered it he would have said something like
If it’s meant to be, we’ll see each other again.
But we haven’t. Not in the last four days, anyway. It’s just that he keeps showing up in my head unannounced.

“No,” I say. “It’s not like Kensington is crawling with great guys.” That’s true, too. Who am I going to date? Tripp? Even he is taken.

My mother raises her eyebrows. “I think there are a lot of fine young men at Kensington. Some of the best—”

I hold up my hand. “Mom, I’d rather wear gingham for the rest of my life than date someone named Archibald. Or Walter. Or Harrington.” I swear, every guy I know has a name that makes him sound like he could be my grandfather. Well, not
my
grandfather, but
a
grandfather. You get what I mean. And I guess, really, Astor is no exception. Except something about him felt like an exception. Something about him felt different.

“What’s wrong with gingham?” For a moment I think she’s made a joke, but I’m wrong. She legitimately wants to know.

“Let’s just go to lunch,” I say.

“You’ve never been to LA?” Claire screeches when I pick up my cell to check in. They’re probably not getting married anytime soon, but it doesn’t seem like she’s in any
immediate danger. I decide to hang up and face lunch head-on.

*    *    *

There is this restaurant, Phoebe’s, on East Sixty-Seventh, that my mom has been going to for years. Phoebe’s never ceases to depress me. For one, the food is terrible and yet the place is always packed. Sometimes the line for a table spills out to the sidewalk. For another, no one eats there. Not really. They have this caprese salad that tastes like rubber, and their sandwiches are sand infused. I’m not sure why it’s so popular, but it is, so people go. That’s the thing about the neighborhood I live in: Rarely does anyone stop to question why they’re doing the things they’re doing. It’s a good enough reason if everyone else is.

When we get to Phoebe’s, Abigail is seated at a table with Constance and Samantha. Unsurprising. They are always here on Sundays.

“Mcalister!” Abigail calls out when she sees me.

My mother slides her sunglasses up on top of her head and gives me an eye. Abigail is never this friendly to me in public. Even my mother knows that.

“Hey.” I wave at them, searching desperately for a table on the other side of the restaurant. Too late. Abigail calls us over with her hand, and my mother, God help her, goes. I drag my feet behind.

Abigail air-kisses my mom and then turns to me. “What
are
you doing here?”

“Lunch?” I say. “The meal before dinner?”

Abigail misses the sarcasm, but not my mother. She tucks her arm around my waist and pulls.

“Are you girls doing International this year?” my mother asks. She’s talking about the debutante ball that’s held at the Waldorf Astoria every other year. She’s been trying to get me to agree to it since before I can remember. I don’t see the point in putting on a big white dress and strutting around with people I can’t stand, but my mother thinks it’s more important than a wedding. We’re in negotiations.

“My mom wants me to do Junior Assemblies,” Abigail says. “Which means I might wait until next year—but I’m
so
ready!”