Time Flies (32 page)

Kurt and I went out in high school for about five minutes. We had a study hall together senior year, both cut off from the friends we usually traveled in a pack with by the randomness of scheduling. The holiday break had come and gone, and snow covered everything like a big white cocoon. College essays were in, and there was nothing to do but wait, and try not to let our grades slip too much in the final stretch before freedom.

“We have to make every single second count,” B.J. would say at least twice a day. She alternated this with “I am counting the seconds till we leave this hellhole behind.” Three can be a dangerous number for friendships, but for B.J., Veronica, and me, it worked. We were the kind of girls who only had boyfriends once in a while, and rarely at the same time. So the other two held the fort while one of us, usually B.J., was off dating.

My turn had come and gone junior year, and my lack of dating since then felt like a drought that might never end. “Don’t sweat it, Mel,” B.J. said, after three seniors in a row I had crushes on went off to date cute, perky sophomores. “It’s just that guys our age are actually three years younger in maturity. Developmentally, they have nothing to offer us. College is where it will all be happening.”

And then, after all that math, Finn Miller finally asked me out. He carried my books to my classes. He called me every night. He took me out on actual dates, to the movies, even to a concert.

“It’s just,” I said to B.J. and Veronica, “he kind of gets on my nerves.”

“I think he’s cute,” Veronica said as she flipped through the latest issue of
Rolling Stone
.

“So give him to Veronica,” B.J. said.

“I meant Art Garfunkel,” Veronica said.

B.J. held her place in her magazine with an index finger and slid over to get a look. “Get real,” she said. “His hair is way too frizzy.”

When I got up to sharpen a pencil in study hall one day, I could feel Kurt watching me walk across the room. I held in my stomach and was glad I’d worn my good dungarees that day, the ones with bell-bottoms so wide they almost looked like a skirt. I even had on my favorite turtleneck bodysuit that snapped at the crotch. I had to sit just right for it to be comfortable, but it was worth every pinch for the long sleek line it gave me.

I took a roundabout way back to my seat, and when I passed Kurt’s chair I could feel the force field between us. I’d chosen this route so I could happen to look at him and smile, but I chickened out at the last minute.

We ignored each other for another week or two.

“I don’t like him,” B.J. said. “He thinks he’s way too cool for school.
And
he has a girlfriend.”

“Uh-uh,” Veronica said. “They broke up. She’s in my French class.”

“What’s she like?” I asked.

“You’re much prettier,” Veronica said, because she knew this was what I was really asking. “I think
she
dumped
him
. For one of her older brother’s friends.”

That weekend I called Finn and told him I needed to spend some time with my friends. The three of us tracked Kurt down at a party. It wasn’t that hard. The town was small, and only a limited number of parental units went away and left their high school seniors in charge of the house on any given weekend. Like maybe one. If we were lucky.

By this point in our senior year, you could feel the hard edges of the high school cliques softening, an early warning flash of the nostalgia to come. The freaks and the jocks and the band geeks could all coexist at the same party, as long as the music was loud.

We worked our way through the grass-filled haze, stopping to join a circle of kids passing a joint around long enough to take a toke to show how cool we were. Someone handed me a bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, and I wiped the top of it with my hand before I took a sip.

B.J. was the first to spot Kurt. “The eagle has landed,” she whispered. He was standing off by himself, lighting his cigarette with his hands cupped around a Zippo lighter like the Marlboro Man. Once he got the cigarette going, he took a long drag in and
blew it out expertly, managing to bounce his head more or less to the beat of Aerosmith’s “Dream On” at the same time.

As I watched him from across the room, my crush grew to epic proportions. “What a stone fox,” I whispered.

“A total stud muffin,” Veronica said.

“Far freakin’ out,” B.J. added as the grass kicked in.

We giggled our way across the room. We stopped when we got to Kurt, and I waited to see what would happen next.

A record scratched on a turntable somewhere and Alice Cooper broke into “School’s Out.”

“Wicked pissa song,” Kurt said.

There was nothing all that funny about it, since pretty much everybody in Marshbury talked that way, but that didn’t stop us. We dissolved into fits of laughter.

B.J. pushed me into Kurt. By the time “School’s Out” was over, B.J. and Veronica had disappeared. Kurt and I looked at each other. He held his cigarette off to one side and we started making out.

When I looked up, Finn was standing across the room, looking like a puppy that had just been kicked.

By Monday, Kurt and I were a couple. We sat together in study hall, doodling on each other’s book covers, our thighs pressed together, our dungaree-clad ankles intertwined under the long cafeteria table. The next weekend we skipped the party and went straight to the beach parking lot and watched Minot’s Light blink 1–4–3 for “I love you.”

“You know what that means, don’t you?” he said.

I nodded, speechless, one part of my brain hovering over us, planning the way I was going to tell this to B.J. and Veronica later.
And so then we looked through the windshield and he said . . .

With the motor running to keep us from frostbite, we climbed into the backseat of his parents’ station wagon with a blanket that just happened to be there. We split a beer Kurt had stolen from his father’s stash, and then we had sex. After that we drew pictures in the fogged-up windows and then he took me home.

By the following Monday he was back with his ex-girlfriend. Veronica found out before I did, in their French class. By last period, it was all over school.

He never broke up with me. We just started ignoring each other in study hall, and everywhere else our paths happened to cross. Finn and I also ignored each other. All this ignoring was exhausting, but I limped my way through the rest of senior year and then we graduated.

Eventually Kurt apologized. It was summertime and we’d both just finished two years of college in different states. I’d gone to the beach with B.J. and Veronica, because we’d all finally managed to get the same day off from our summer waitressing jobs. I walked up to buy us Popsicles from Seaside Market and saw him standing there.

I slowed my pace to give him a chance to pretend he didn’t see me. Instead he waited just outside the door.

“I was a total jerk,” he said, as if it had happened just last week and not two and a half years before. “You were too good for me.”

“This is true,” I said. I tossed my hair back and then adjusted the Celestial Wheel Signs zodiac beach towel I’d wrapped around my wet two-piece bathing suit.

He watched my every move.

I smiled sweetly. “But you did me a favor. You helped me appreciate my next boyfriend when I met him.”

When I pushed past him to go into the store, sparks flew between us like fireworks.

“Catch you later,” he said. I ignored him.

I let him chase me for the rest of the summer.

And then for decades I never let him go.

CHAPTER 35

The music had stopped, but the roar of conversation and laughter rose up to fill the silence.

Kurt took a long drink of his scotch on the rocks.

I put my purse down on the bar. The bartender came over with my drink.

“Last call,” she said to Kurt.

“I’ll have another one. Why don’t you make that a double. And whatever she wants.”

The bartender looked at me.

“Whatever you got me before, get me the other one,” I said. “Please.”

She shrugged and walked away.

“It’s not my fault,” Kurt said.

“It never is,” I said.

“I tried to call you repeatedly. If I’d known you were coming, then I wouldn’t have. Obviously.”

“You canceled my credit card.”

“Only to get you to take your head out of the clouds. You can’t keep pretending none of this is happening, Melanie.”

I picked up my drink and considered pouring it over his head. I decided I needed it more.

I took a long gulp. “My head is not in the clouds,
Kurt
. But yours, by the way, is up your—Oh, never mind. What are you even doing here? How many times did I try to get you to come to one of our reunions? You didn’t want any part of them.” It had never once occurred to me that he’d actually come to this one.

Kurt began tearing his cocktail napkin into long even strips. In the scheme of his annoying habits, this one barely registered, and it almost made me feel nostalgic.

He saw me watching him and stopped.

“Knock yourself out,” I said. “I don’t have to clean it up anymore.”

He laughed. “Like you ever did.”

“Hey, it was your mess.”

He drained the rest of his scotch. I resisted a knee-jerk urge to ask him how many he’d had. Kurt was a creature of habit and control—a drink or two and then he’d stop. Rarely did he venture into third-drink zone, and when he did the results were unpredictable. But this was not my problem anymore. He could drink himself into oblivion for all I cared.

In the dim light, his eyes were barely blue. The lines around them were deeper than I remembered, and he was wearing a soft summer-weight buttondown shirt I’d bought for him last year.
Part of me was oddly touched and another part of me wanted to say
How dare you?

He shrugged. “So, I guess we won’t get the award for the couple who lasted the longest, huh?”

I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say
Whose fault is that?

I shrugged. “I guess not.”

He tilted his empty glass back to get the mostly melted ice cubes, then picked up his new drink. The couple seated beside us turned to stare.

“So,” I said. “Why didn’t you bring her?”

He looked straight ahead. “I did.”

I tried not to react, but it hurt so much it was embarrassing. Or maybe it was so embarrassing it actually hurt.

I started to push myself off the bar stool, just so I wouldn’t have to do it in front of her when she came back from the bathroom, or wherever she was.

“She’s gone,” he said.

“Gone-gone?” I heard myself say. Like maybe she’d only been a hallucination.

“She took the rental car and went back to the hotel. Apparently someone in the ladies’ room told her she wasn’t welcome here. And then somebody else told her to get away from me while she still could, and something about she should see what I did to my wife.”

I slid the ruffle on my fake tattoo side up over my shoulder. “And you didn’t go with her?”

“We’ve been fighting since we got here.” Kurt sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on. She used to be so much fun.”

“Don’t,” I said. “I don’t want to hear—”

B.J. poked her head between us. “Hey, Kurt. News flash: Mel’s not your dating coach.”

Kurt and B.J. stared at each other.

“B.J.,” Kurt finally said. “Nice to see you. Is Tom here?”

“He’s home where he belongs.” B.J. picked up one of my drinks. She threw her purse on top of mine on the bar. “Keep an eye on these—we’ll be right back.”

She gave Kurt her most dazzling smile. “Touch my credit cards and I’ll cut your balls off.”

I followed B.J. out to the parking lot. “I really think the balls part was unnecessary,” I said. “And now Kurt will know I’ve been talking about him.”

“Of course you’ve been talking about him. I’m your best friend.”

“He brought her with him.
Crissy
.”

B.J. stopped walking. “I know. I found out when I brought the box spring ladies in today. It must have been a last-minute thing. His name was definitely not on the list the last time I saw it.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “And you didn’t tell me?”

B.J. put one hand on her hip. “It was a tough call. I didn’t want you to get all worked up about it. So I figured I’d tell you just before we went in, but by then you were all about the bathroom.”

“It’s just such an invasion. But there’s also this part of me that really wanted to check her—
Crissy
—out. Did you see her?”

B.J. shook her head. “Nope, but I heard from several reliable sources that she’s a huge step down from you. Oh, and everybody loves your new haircut.”

I smiled. “You’re a good friend, Louise. But if one more person tells me I was always too good for Kurt . . .”

“I think you’re the only one left who still has to believe it, Romy.”

I pointed to where my fake tattoo was hiding under my ruffle. “Everybody thinks he gave me this.”

B.J. grinned. “I know. And I’m proud to say I started that rumor.” She reached for my ruffle. “Here, get that down over your shoulder. No offense, but it makes you look a little bit matronly like that.”