Anything but Ordinary (6 page)

Greg’s hand rested beside his glass. Gabby took it. Bryce felt like something was snaking out of her gut. Her intestines maybe.

“Just say whatever you feel,” Gabby said.

“I don’t—have anything,” Bryce croaked. The hot rock was making it hard to speak.

Greg let go of Gabby’s hand. Bryce felt no relief.

“In a way, it’s a blessing,” Gabby said. “The timing—I
knew
we were right to come back to Nashville for the wedding. It would mean so much to us if you would be there.”

“Be there?” Bryce choked out.

Gabby sputtered, shaking her head. “Well, if you felt like it was something you could do. I mean, I have no idea. All I can say is…” She took a shuddery breath. “We didn’t know, Bryce. We didn’t know,” she repeated. “I’m just so glad you came back to us.”

Bryce would not look at Greg. She felt him sitting there, now ripping apart his napkin. She took a sip of margarita, and her mouth twisted at its salty-sweet bitterness.

Gabby’s face gradually broke into a small smile. “I just…Growing up, I always pictured you next to me at my wedding. I couldn’t imagine who the groom would be. It didn’t matter. I just knew you’d be my maid of honor.” She leaned forward anxiously under the hanging lamp. She was wearing makeup. Mascara that brought her lashes to a long, vicious swoop. Blush the color of sunset, at the tip of her cheekbones. “Will you? Be my maid of honor?”

Bryce stared at her. But then Gabby looked up, past Bryce. Bryce felt a warm hand on her shoulder and turned around.

“Sorry to be a downer, but you’re not in stable enough condition to drink alcohol.” Carter spoke directly to her, not looking across the table. “Also, I just got a call from your parents. They need you at home.”

“Oh.” Gabby sat up straighter, looking at Carter with concern. “Are you her nurse?”

Carter let out a snort. “Kind of.”

Bryce couldn’t help but untwist her mouth into a small smile. Relief swept through her. It felt good to be needed somewhere. She limped away with Carter at her side, the ground like liquid beneath her feet.

“Bryce!” she heard Gabby call.

She turned to look at the couple, now blurred across the restaurant.

“Talk to you soon, okay?” Gabby’s voice sounded tentative.

Bryce finally looked at Greg, but it was as if the moment her gaze met his, he shrank away, disappearing. She turned and walked away from them, pushing open the doors harder than she needed to.

hough it was nearly evening, the parking lot was still bathed in bright light, the low sun beating off the car hoods and windows. Bryce supported herself on the parked cars, surrounded by the sounds of distant traffic and the dull thump of her boots on the asphalt. The cicadas buzzed.

Carter came a few feet behind her, and they arrived at his car.

“What happened?” Bryce said softly, trying to match the quiet. “Is it Sydney? Is everything okay?”

Carter leaned against the Honda. “I made that up. Your parents didn’t call.”

Bryce blew out the breath she’d been holding. “Ah, okay.”

“I thought I heard you guys ordering drinks so I started listening in. It didn’t sound good.”

Bryce said nothing. Maybe she should be angry with Carter for sticking his nose in her business, but after the news she’d just heard, it seemed like a small offense.

“I thought you’d want out of there.”

“Too much excitement for my rusty ol’ brain. Good work, doctor.” She started to take short, pained steps past the car.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I just need to move.” As she said this, she realized how stupid she sounded, as if getting her body away from what had just happened would keep it away for good. She used to do the same thing as a little kid. A plate broke, she fell down and skinned her knee, she would just scramble away as if bad things only happened in one place. She turned, leaning against the warm metal of the car.

Carter opened the driver’s door. “You want to go home?”

“Yep,” she said, although she’d been awake for long enough now to know that home didn’t exist anymore.

The seats were warm and the windows were down. Bryce held out her hand to catch drops of water from the sprinklers. Carter had started to tell her about a book he’d been reading. The sound of his voice was oddly soothing, the up and down, but all Bryce could do was look out at the houses whizzing by, letting the water droplets hit her arm. If Bryce focused hard enough, she could see each individual droplet catch the gold light as it flew through the air and then follow its arc over the sidewalks, over the curb, shattering against her skin as if it were made of glass.

Beautiful, Bryce thought. She wished Carter could see what she was seeing.

They pulled up in front of the big blue house. The restaurant, Gabby and Greg engaged, it was all catching up. She couldn’t act like she was happy for them, like they were two people she knew from long ago, like an old high school friend would act. They didn’t feel like people from her past. One day she’d fallen asleep, and the next her boyfriend was engaged to her best friend.

Diving, the van trips to tournaments, Gabby insisting they play gin rummy, lying in the bed of Greg’s pickup truck, dancing with Greg in the barn with no music…it was all last month to her.

It didn’t matter that they were getting married. Walking down the aisle, wearing nice clothes, that was a game. It was that they were in love, that they probably needed each other, relied on each other. They kissed each other. My god, they probably had sex. And it meant something. Her stomach twisted painfully. It probably meant everything. Which left her with what? Nothing.

Bryce could disappear into a coma again and their lives would go on as planned.

She had been flailing above the truth like she was treading water, and now she let go. Bryce slumped in her seat.

Carter took off his seat belt. “You okay?” he asked.

She looked at him, and tears came. She tried to swallow them. “They’re engaged,” she said.

“I know,” he said solemnly.

Bryce remembered her dad’s warning about phases. Her mom trying desperately to get her to stay home. Sydney that first night at the hospital. Bryce was the only one in the dark. They had all left her in the dark. Or maybe she had put herself there on purpose. She didn’t know which was worse.

“How could they do that?”

Carter tightened his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know.” He moved his hand to Bryce’s shoulder, letting it rest there for a second, leaving a trail of warmth on Bryce’s skin.

Bryce sniffed, shuddering, and lifted her boots to rest them on the dashboard. She was still restrained by her seat belt.

Carter reached over. “Here,” he said, and clicked the buckle open. The seat belt slid back into place. “I normally don’t let people put their feet on the dash, but I guess we can make an exception.”

“Gee, thanks,” Bryce said.

Carter sighed, and shut off the engine. “The time you lost probably hits harder at some times more than others.”

“You think?” Bryce had a sudden urge to slap Carter in the face. Not because he had done anything, but because he was there, facing her like Greg had faced her that day at the lake. She wanted to go back to that day so badly now. She would swim away from Greg, and she would walk past Gabby under the tree. She would live the next five years of her life without them, as they had done without her.

“You’ll get through all of this,” Carter said. “You’re strong.” He was rubbing his chin again, thinking. His eyes darted from her boots on the dashboard to her face, back to the boots.

“I hope so,” Bryce said.

“No, you will,” Carter said. He spoke more gently now, evenly, like someone who would know because it was his job to make it that way. “Really.”

They sat there, listening to her take choppy breaths. She let tears fall on her lap, closing her eyes. She didn’t care about crying in front of Carter anymore. At that moment, she didn’t care about much of anything.

Through the dark red of her eyelids, Bryce felt Carter reach out to her, and that was how she met him in the center of the two seats, her head burrowing easily into a place in his chest, his arms fitting around her.

It was nice. She hadn’t been hugged like that in a long time. Nowadays people squeezed her quickly, just for a second, as if they might break her. This is nice, she thought again.

Carter loosened, Bryce leaned back, and somehow her forehead was right near his chin.

Oops, Bryce thought. She tilted her head to say sorry. But she didn’t end up saying sorry.

Her mouth had found its way to his. His lips were soft, but Bryce could feel pressure behind them. They moved again, to fit hers.

After a moment, Bryce pulled away. “Whoa,” she said quietly.

“Bryce…”

“Um, I should…” She opened the door without finishing her sentence. She kept her eyes down and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Bryce,” Carter called through the open door, but she shut it behind her before he could say more. Her heartbeat pulsed in her fingertips. She stepped slowly up the walkway and around the side of the house. She looked back as Carter finally pulled away. Night was coming, and fireflies started making dots in the tall plants lining the curb.

If a day like this happened five years ago, she would have immediately called her best friend. She would have said hi to her parents sitting in the living room with her phone already to her ear, gone down to her room, flopped on her bed with a handful of trail mix, and figured things out.

But she couldn’t do any of that. Her room wasn’t her room, her best friend wasn’t waiting at home for her call.

Bryce stayed in the middle of the lawn, surrounded by the stretching road and scattered houses, and realized River Drive was the only thing that hadn’t changed.

It was the people—the people settling into their houses, those people and the thick pastures that separated them, the
GO TENNESSEE!
signs on their long lawns—it was them Bryce had to ask:

“What the hell?”

Nobody answered, of course, and she went inside.

ryce found her mother in her home office at the back of the house, her face glowing blue from the monitor’s light. The office used to be the place where Bryce and Sydney kicked off their muddy galoshes or threw their coats, but now the small space was outfitted with a flat-screen computer and prints of some of the places her mother had designed. Out of habit, or maybe because she refused to acknowledge this wasn’t the mudroom anymore, Bryce kicked off her boots and set them in the corner. Her mother turned to face her.

“You knew,” Bryce said accusingly.

Her mom sat up in her Aeron chair, her spine stiff. “About Greg and Gabby? Are they… ?” She slumped. “I had heard they were dating,” she admitted.

“Engaged,” Bryce said, making her hands into fists. The sky outside the tall windows had faded to black. “Not dating. Engaged.” She tried to make her words hard. She wanted to hold on to the anger, to feel anything besides emptiness. But the anger was slipping away from her, out of her grasp, like water down a drain. Her lip began to quiver.

“No,” her mom whispered, getting up from the desk to put an arm around Bryce. “Oh, honey.”

At first Bryce tried to resist, but then she let her head fall on her mother’s shoulder. She used to do the same thing when she had done badly at meets, when her father’s face fell in disappointment. She felt that way now. Like she had lost.

Her mother’s voice sounded quiet above her. “I had hoped it was just a college thing. I didn’t want to say anything in case they weren’t still together, but…” With her head in the crook of her shoulder, Bryce could feel her mother shake her head. “I should have told you. It was stupid of me. I should have told you.”

She let her mother rock her back and forth, closing her eyes.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Bryce said, even though it wasn’t. It might never be okay again, but right now that seemed somehow beside the point.

“At least the toilet is clean,” Bryce called through the crack in the door. It was the next day, and she was standing outside the only indoor restroom of the Belle Meade mansion.

“The toilet
was
clean,” Sydney’s voice corrected, and Bryce heard the sounds of retching.

Bryce tried not to feel nauseous herself. The potpourri and decrepit lace that covered every surface of the old Southern house didn’t help.

“Girls?” their mother called from down the hall. “Everything okay?”

Bryce slipped into the bathroom, holding her nose. “Mom’s coming,” she said, panicky. Sydney shrugged from her kneeling position on the cracked tile.

“Yep, Sydney’s just having stomach issues,” Bryce called, peeking from behind the door. “Must have been bad cream cheese.”

“Don’t even bother,” Sydney said, still halfway inside the bowl. “They know I’m hung over.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Bryce said.

“Don’t,” Sydney replied shortly. “You can leave now.”

Bryce sighed. That morning, her mom had helped her upstairs to see her dad and Sydney gathered in the kitchen, Sydney’s eye makeup running from the night before.

“Family outing,” Sydney had muttered, and they piled into the van.

Her face had become increasingly pale on the winding drive to the other edge of Nashville. Their mother chattered up front about how they used to go to Belle Meade when the girls were small.

“Y’all just loved the horses,” her mom had said, adopting the accent of the reenactors who wandered the historical plantation in Civil War–era clothes.

Sydney had put her arms inside her oversized Ramones T-shirt and swallowed what was probably puke.

Now she stood up from the toilet, wiping her mouth. Her face was still tinged green.

“You look like a kid on one of those Just Say No posters,” Bryce said.

“You would know all about being a poster child, wouldn’t you?” Sydney responded, scrunching her brunette curls in the mirror.

Bryce stood beside Sydney. They were the same height and had the same hazel eyes. Their dad’s eyes. Dad’s dark eyebrows. Their mother’s ski-jump nose. If Bryce pushed back her waves, the blond disappearing, they nearly looked like twins. Minus the lip-piercing and heavy eyeliner. Bryce wondered vaguely what Sydney would look like now if she had been around.

“What is it like to be hung over?” she asked Sydney’s pale reflection.

Sydney made a face and turned to her sister. “I don’t know, Bryce. What is it like to wake up from a coma?”

“Touché,” Bryce said.

Their mother was waiting around the corner of the creaky mansion corridor with a new piece of plantation trivia, a small shopping bag hanging from her wrist. Their father looked comically out of place near the grand staircase, staring up at portraits in his Vanderbilt T-shirt and athletic shorts.

“You remember this one, Bryce?”

He pointed to an intricate portrait of a woman in a blue hoop skirt, her fan poised as it would be on a sweltering day like today. Her hair was slicked and her rouge formed perfect small circles, but she had a sparkle in her eye like she had just done something she shouldn’t.

“The Southern Mona Lisa.” Bryce smiled.

Her mother let out a happy sigh and wrapped Bryce in a hug.

Sydney twisted her curls into a messy bun and grabbed her phone from a nearby table. “I’m going back out to the car,” she announced.

Bryce’s father looked at Sydney, his lips in a straight line. “We just got here.”

Her mother shot her dad a look. “Are you sure, sweetie?” she said awkwardly, her arm around Bryce. “You want some pop or something?”

“Nah, you don’t need me now that the prodigal daughter has returned.” Sydney gestured to Bryce.

“Come on, Syd. Don’t be like that,” Bryce said.

“Screw off, Bryce,” Sydney said with a fake smile, and she turned to the door.

They decided to call it a day when her mom stepped in a pile of droppings left by the geese that roamed the front lawn. Though her dad laughed a little too heartily, he bent over with an old newspaper to wipe off his wife’s loafers. When Bryce saw Sydney again, she was leaning against the whitewashed fence, staring at the horses as she massaged her head.

The sycamores seemed oddly still to Bryce without the constant chirp of cicadas, but they didn’t come out until sunset. Her father used to wager he could hear them even in the daytime, if everyone held their breath for a long time, as quiet as they could be. Bryce could never really be sure if she could actually hear them, or if it was just that she wanted to believe him.

She stepped lightly underneath the mossy branches, only hobbling slightly, her legs sore from the constant effort. Dr. Warren said her body would never be at its best again, but what did she know? Bryce fanned herself against the wet heat.

And then she heard it, brief but clear: the high, chirping cry of a cicada. At first it echoed like it came from far away, and then it seemed to push through the silence and join with another call right next to her, as full and clear as if it were beside her ear. Bryce moved a hand up to touch it, but nothing was there. I knew that, she mused. They’re far away. I can tell. She put her hand down. They’re waiting for night. The calls came again, washing over her, making the air around her pulse.

After a moment, it stopped. The midday sun broke through in patches, and the trees were silent once more.

She set the fan down at her side and turned her face up to the sky. She was here on earth, wasn’t she? She was better off than she had been a month ago. She looked down at her feet, so pale in strappy sandals against the green grass. She needed sun. She needed exercise. It was time to accept that things were different, but she could be different, too.

“Bryce, honey!” her mother called to her from where their van was parked. “Let’s go!”

She looked at her family, her mother next to the SUV, her father at the steering wheel, and Sydney, her long legs stretched across the bucket seat, closing the door. They might not be as happy as they used to be, but they were there, together, and Bryce was awake, alive, walking toward them.

Back on River Drive, Bryce stepped down the stairs and let out an “Ahhh” at the air-conditioning. She moved slowly across the basement tile in her bare feet and stripped off her damp tank top and shorts, tossing them in the hamper in the corner of her room. She opened her closet. Nothing but everyone’s old clothes and a pair of skis.

Clothes, she added to the list. Sun, exercise, and clothes. She chose an old tunic of her mother’s from the seventies. Nothing fancy, Bryce thought as she pulled the white cotton over her head. Literally, just clothes of my own. The tunic was short on her but it would have to do.

“Bryce!” her father called down the stairs. Bryce groaned. Her name sounded loud and short when her father yelled it, as if he were yelling “Go!” at diving practice.

“What?” Bryce yelled back.

“Carter is here!”

Carter. She sat on her bed. Oh god, oh god, oh god, Bryce thought.

“He’s just gonna come around back,” her father yelled.

“No!” Bryce yelled.

“What?” her father yelled.

“Never mind,” Bryce said. It was pointless, she saw as she came out of her room and spotted Carter through the glass doors, making his way down the hill. He stopped at the pool, staring down into the water. Her father had cleaned it recently, and it was back to its pristine turquoise blue.