Things I can’t Explain (15 page)

Sam was late and I had to get back to the paper. He was down from college, where he'd just started his sophomore year. My messenger bag was slumped beside me on the floor, filled with textbooks and notebooks for my night classes, and I'd had a draft of a small piece I was writing for the
Daily Post
—my first. It was short and I was hoping Sam would read it before I handed it in.

My internship with Hugh was in full throttle, so I'd had to jump through several fiery hoops to finagle this meager forty-five-minute furlough to meet Sam downtown. I remember that day feeling how lonely I was in the city, even with the beehive of a newsroom and Hugh being about the most demanding person I knew. There just wasn't anyone around who flat-out knew me. That's how it feels for the first few years after moving to New York.

You couldn't miss Sam coming through the door of the café. I'm surprised every girl there didn't stand up to claim him. At six foot two with broad surfer's shoulders, Sam stood out—a bright and fresh presence among all gloomy gray New Yorkers.

“Hey, Clarissa, how's it going?” he asked, folding himself into the tiny café chair.

“Awesome now that you're here,” I offered and slid over the cappuccino I had waiting for him. Sam smiled graciously and shrugged off his jacket. Just seeing him sitting across from me, I could feel my breathing relax and deepen, like the missing piece of a puzzle had fallen into place.

“So how's it going?” I asked.

“School's crazy, but fun,” he said, taking a long sip of his cappuccino.

“Like, a lot of work for all your classes?” I'm half envious that I didn't go to a normal college like everyone else, imagining Sam up there having a good time without all the ambitions and responsibilities I had burdened myself with.

“Yeah, that, too, but you'd think they just discovered the sexual revolution up there,” Sam said, and I perked up. Kind of an odd subject to lead with, I thought. I could see he was a little uncomfortable. I guess he needed to talk about something so I figured I should dig a little further.

“Doesn't sound so bad on the face of it. What do you mean?” I don't know why, but I had to admit that Sam being up at that girls' school always bothered me ever so slightly. I hoped they appreciated him for who he was, but I put it out of my mind as none of my business.

“Well, it's a bit extreme. You can't believe how everybody is hooking up all over the place. Sometimes they barely know each other,” he said.

That's my Sam, still a regular guy, the kind of guy you never see or hear about, that they never show on television in Super Bowl ads or in the movies. A red-blooded American boy, with raging hormones and all the proper working parts, but still the kind of guy who is thoughtful, soft, genuine, and put off by inappropriate stuff.

“Weird—I suppose having oodles of sex with random strangers is one of the rites of passage you forgo by choosing a job over full-time college,” I said with a dollop of regret, thinking how it was pretty hard for me to relate. All things considered, I figured I could live without having to buy home pregnancy tests and whatever antibiotics work best on STDs.

“Yeah. They take the ‘liberal' in liberal arts pretty seriously up there, I guess, mainly because the boy-girl ratio is so out of whack.”

Sam's freshman class included the first coed admissions to his college—a small, artsy school nestled into the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. It had been one of very few all-women's colleges left in the country up until last fall, when the administration voted unanimously to admit men into the female student body (academically and literally, it would seem). Sam was one of only about thirty testosterone-bearing individuals on the entire campus.

“I guess the administration is just new at this, probably trying to rein it in,” I said, assuming we all live in some kind of rational world.

“Are you kidding? You'd be surprised how many teachers are sleeping with students. There's one—this writing teacher I have—Betty Jo Carson. She's always playing with the buttons on her blouse when we meet in her office, pulling down the shades and kicking off her high heels.” I could see how this might be more stressful for Sam than a lot of other guys. Yet I can also see why he's so appealing and why a woman on the prowl would have him in her sights.

“It's kind of like every room is a bedroom up there, if you know what I mean,” he said.

“That may be the definition of ‘dorm,'” I added.

“I don't know if it's that way at other schools.”

“They should mention that in the college brochure for recruiting,” I offered, trying to lighten things up and find a way to change the subject.

“Yeah, it's kind of weird. There aren't a lot of kids up there in the mountains. It's us and the bears.”

Sam laughed a little awkwardly and there was a moment of silence that made me wonder why he was telling me this. Not that we didn't talk about anything and everything. But it seemed like something was on his mind. That's when it occurred to me that I knew very few details of Sam's sexual history, and I wondered why we had never talked about this kind of stuff before. Thankfully, Sam changed the subject.

“Hey, did you hear about the reunion party?” he asked.

“What reunion party?”

“How soon the famous forget,” Sam chided. “Class reunion bash the day after Thanksgiving.”

“A reunion at Tupper High?” I frowned. “Already? Isn't it customary for those things to take place at the five-year mark, or better, after fifty? We all just graduated, like, five minutes ago.”

“It's been a year,” Sam corrected, annoyed, as if I was being some kind of snob. “It's a chance to see everyone again, considering you weren't even there at graduation. Besides, who cares what she's calling it?”

“‘She'?”

“Yeah, that's the only glitch.” Sam gave me a sheepish look. “The party is being thrown by one of your least favorite people. Genelle.”

“One of?”

Genelle Waterman did the best she could to make my last year of high school, well, let's say difficult. She didn't succeed, but I didn't mind when my internship started early and I had to skip graduation. It didn't sound exactly thrilling to reunite on her turf.

“Come on, that stuff is all in the past,” Sam said. “Everyone wants to see you. Including me.”

“I'll be home for the holiday,” I reasoned aloud. “So I guess I could go.”

“Yeah, what's the worst that can happen?” he said, more as a statement than a question.

Sam shoved his hair out of his eyes and when his hand came down to the table, it inadvertently landed on top of mine. It's a sensation I've felt a zillion times—Sam brushing against me in some accidental way, just part of how we communicate. We've always been easy with each other—his hand on my arm, my hand on his hand, casual touches here and there. It always happened when we talked. But this time it felt different. Kind of annoying, actually. Maybe it had to do with being far from home. I dismissed it at the time.

Our conversation slipped easily to my internship, and when he asked how I was doing at the paper, I reached into my bag and pulled out the article. He jumped right in and I watched him read, nodding, grinning, and knitting his brow at all the right places.

“Wow,” he said. “This is amazing. You're, like, a real journalist. I like how you manage to lay out the facts, but still embed your own personal spin on the subject. That's so you.”

I was about to thank him, but at that precise moment, his legs shifted under the table and brushed up against my knees. What were his knees doing here all the way on my side of the table? It was a stupid little bit of bodily contact, but something was unsettling about it in a way I hadn't expected. When did Sam get so tall and lanky?

“Sorry,” I said, reflexively touching his knee again with my hand and moving to the side. But that touch felt like an even bigger deal and I knew in that second that something more was going on. Sam was surprised, too. This was definitely more than just me and Sam bumping knees … as friends.

“Hey, pal, put those knobby knees of yours back where they belong,” I joked, trying to restore my equilibrium.

Sam's cool and careful, so he didn't say anything.

He's your best friend
, I reminded myself. And then a thought exploded in my mind, like a piano being dropped on my head from a second-story window:
Can men and women be friends? I mean, can they really be just friends? Okay, yeah, Sam and I are a shining example … and yet …

“You must have gotten taller,” I observed, laughing.

“Yeah, that never happened back in the lunchroom at Tupper,” he said, a little embarrassed.

“No,” I awkwardly agreed.

Sam went to the counter for another cappuccino, and returned moments later with a paper cup emblazoned with the Joe's logo. I was a bit surprised that he ordered his beverage to go, but I guess he was playing it safe. I had to get back to Hugh anyway.

On the sidewalk, we said our good-byes.

I remember heading back to the paper thinking how Sam and I were the perfect team. Friends in the most complete sense. Still, I was trying to mentally decode the meaning of what had just happened. We're such perfect friends and we're perfect together—why aren't we …
together
? How many times had someone asked me that question? I must have touched his knee dozens of times before—but this time that act wasn't so much a matter of crossing the boundary between friendship and romance as erasing it. Two weekends later, at the Tupper High School reunion, everything changed.

“Yo, Clarissa!”

Who in this place knows my name?
I wonder
.
Blinking out of my memory, I look up and blink again.

Shit.

Norm.

He's standing right in front of me, sucking up way too much of my personal space. I grimace.

“I never heard from you. Did you get the flowers I sent?” he asks. “You're not just letting ol' Norm hang out there to dry again, are you?”

I could scream. Not only am I
not
happy to see Norm, but I'm instantly reminded that one of Norm's most pathetic habits is that Norm insists on referring to himself in the pitiable third person. You'd think a copywriter trained by Hugh Hamilton would have known better than to get involved with someone who talks about himself in the third. Hugh would have eviscerated him. Yet another reason why Norm was such a colossal mistake.

“I did receive the flowers,” I snarl at him and stand. “
And
the balloon-o-gram,
and
the Legume of the Month Club membership,
and
the official certificate notifying me that an endangered baby Sri Lankan elephant has been sponsored in my name.”

Norm gives me a lazy, self-satisfied grin. “Thought thirty-two cents a day was a small price to pay to make you happy. Not to mention how comforting it must be for the baby elephant.”

“Yes, and I gave them to the Kute Kritters Day Care on my street,” I say, although I've never been sure if Kute Kritters is day care for kids or pets, but that doesn't matter right now.

“Norm, what is there about ‘over' you can't understand?” I demand. I've said this to him more times than I can count, but, as usual, it doesn't seem to register. What did I ever see in this idiot? Oh, right … he's got abs you can grate cheese on.

He takes my hand and tugs me toward the door. “Come on, Clarissa. I want to show you something.”

I pull my hand away, but follow him because it's the only way out and that's where I want to go. The old skater dudes are still hanging around outside. They're crossing the street heading toward us.

“See those guys? I just sold three of them five brand-new custom skate decks. Aging hipsters love 'em. You've got to see the new boards—they're awesome. I'm officially a business now, and ol' Norm is about to make some serious bank. I've got a major backer and my peeps doin' the gluin'. No more Gorilla Glue for me. Honest. I've sworn off it.”

“Congratulations,” I say dully, ignoring Norm's plea for redemption from our early skateboard-making debacle. I look for the best direction to dash. “Let's just be clear, we're still broken up—you have to get that through your head, okay?”

The aging hipsters join our little tête-à-tête and Norm makes his big play in front of them. “Aw, come on, Clarissa, give good ol' Norm another chance,” he pleads. “You're the snappiest, most rad dudette I've ever met. How about you and ol' Norm take my new newfound cash and celebrate with a chow down? You're my queen, Clarissa, you know that.”

I grind my teeth as they all turn to look at me. I postulate that if the rejection is spoken in Norm's native tongue, in front of his peer dude group, it might sink in, probably the one thing I haven't tried.