Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (20 page)

 “How long does it last?” said Clayton. “The morning sickness, I mean.”

 “Oh, only for the first four months.” I had to laugh. I could barely speak four words without turning sick again.

 “Why don’t we go back to the hospital? Maybe they can give you something.”

 “I don’t want anything. Just some ginger ale. And some fresh air.”

 He screwed up his nose. “Yeah. One of those is going to be easier than the other – just so you know.”

 He tried anyway. We took the subway to Central Park and I almost felt normal again, once I had trees over my head and could see at least ten different shades of green.

 “I don’t think I’m cut out for city living,” I said.

 “That’s kind of a relief,” he said. “Because I’m sure as hell not.”

 I laughed weakly. My lips felt rubbery and my face was hot. “It’s funny – the last time I was here I kept thinking about you.”

 “Yeah?”

 “Mmm-hm. I went to this stupid ‘art’ exhibition. It was such a pile of pretentious crap. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you’d say about it. And Aunt Cassandra – weirdly enough.”

 “Your aunt is pretty unforgettable,” he said.

 “I hear she called you an asshole too.”

 “That she did.”

 “She’ll do that,” I said. “Everything’s very simple in her world. You can stay pregnant or get an abortion. You can be straight or you can be gay. You can get your shit together or be an asshole. Simple.”

 “I have to ask,” he said. “Do you think I’m an asshole?”

 “No. No more than anyone else.”

 “And what about you?” he asked, in a neutral, strangely psychiatric tone.

 “Me?” I said. “Yeah. For what it’s worth, I do feel like kind of an asshole right now. I was here with her for nearly two weeks and I didn’t notice a goddamn thing.”

 “It’s not your f...”

 I held up a hand. “I know, Clay. I
know
. Everyone keeps explaining it to me, and then I feel like an even bigger asshole for making her problems all about me.”

 “I think you’re allowed to feel hurt,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “You think you know someone and then...”

 “True. But I get it.”

 “Get what?”

 “Get why she kept it to herself all those years,” I said. “It was actually something Steve said – when you and Trey had gone out to smoke. He was saying about small towns, how ‘everyone knows your damage’. His exact words. Everyone knows your damage. She was probably just sick of being Eating Disorder Girl. That’s why she never told anyone. Do you know how
weightless
I felt when I first went off to college? Nobody knew I was that girl whose brother had cancer. It was the most liberating feeling. Nobody was looking at me with that mixture of pity and horror – like they’re sorry for you, but they quietly wish you’d go the fuck away because you remind them that the things they fear the most can happen to real people. People like you. People like them.”

 Clayton sighed. The year was rolling on – for the first time his breath made a little cloud in the air. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I know the look. You see it a lot in military families. After Bryan was....well...”

 I don’t know what set me off this time, thinking of Courtney, or of poor Bryan, or the simple fact that Clayton understood. The tears came pouring out all the same.

 “It’s not so bad,” he said, wiping my eyes. “You’ve seen him – he’s doing great. Probably gonna try out for Rio in 2016.”

 I sniffed and snorted and snuffled like a troll. I’d never been a pretty crier and lately it was like there was nothing under the surface but tears. Now I was crying because Bryan was such a total fucking huge hero and I was just that girl whose brother had cancer, whose mother had killed herself. And it had all been so long ago and I was still crying about it – like an idiot and a failure.

 “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish I was brave.”

 Clayton stared at me for a moment and then laughed – one of those beautiful, thoughtless laughs that burst out of him like sunlight. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.

 “Don’t laugh at me, you douchebag,” I said, even as his laughter caught up with me. Holy shit – was it going to be like this for the whole time? My emotions were like a weathervane.

 “I’ll laugh at you if I want to,” he said. “Were you even
there?
In the Fuzzy Duck?”

 “Oh, that,” I said, blowing my nose. “That wasn’t bravery. That was English Lit 101.”

 “I beg to differ.”

 I finished the ginger ale I was drinking, and dropped the cup in the trash.

 “Does that help?” he asked, handing me another tissue.

 I nodded. “Yeah. I feel almost human again. Like I could cope.”

 “You want to go back to the apartment?”

 “Not right now. Just let me clear my head some more.”

 We sat for a while in silence and watched dog walkers and joggers, watched European nannies ferrying the babies of the rich around in their five thousand dollar strollers.

 “You know I’ll probably never afford one of those, right?” he said, jogging my thigh with his.

 “Which? A Bugaboo stroller or a Russian nanny?”

 “Both.”

 I shook my head. “Well. We’re young. There’s time. The New York Times bestseller list awaits.”

 He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. You’re serious?”

 “I’m knocked up. Time to
get
serious. Anyway, like Cassandra says – how hard can it be?”

 Clayton rubbed my upper arm through my jacket. “Okay,” he said. “Don’t hit me...”

 “Oh well, now you know I probably will.”

 “...I know. I’m sorry. But you know your aunt?”

 “Yes.”

 “Are those all her own boobs?”

 I hit him anyway.

 Epilogue

Two Years Later

Clayton

There comes a point in your life when you realize you are officially too old to sleep on couches. For me it came when I rolled off Steve’s couch and found that not only was my back all kinds of fucked but my neck was stuck in the weird position it had been forced into my the arm of the sofa.

 I tried to crack it back, but a bolt of pain shot down into my shoulder and made my posture look even weirder.

 So I shuffled into the kitchen and the first thing Steve said was “Let me guess – you need a brain for your master?”

 “You’re not funny. And it’s not that bad.”

 “It is that bad. You look like you’re about to bust out the Winter of Discontent speech.”

 Great. Shakespeare. All I needed. I was going to ask him if he’d been playing trivia with Psycho – beg pardon,
Uncle
– Bob again, but when I managed to straighten my neck out to a reasonable degree I could see something was up.

 I have no idea how long he’d been sitting at his kitchen table, staring into a cup of coffee, but his posture and general jitters were not good for a man in his position. Not good at all.

 “You don’t look that great yourself,” I said.

 “I’m fine. I’m upright. That’s a start.”

 “Steve, you look like you’ve seen a goddamn ghost.”

 “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I don’t believe in ghosts.”

 I poured a coffee and pulled up a chair. Oh God. Lower spine was getting involved now. Oh goody. “Listen,” I said. “I know you’ve read all kinds of books and I know Machiavelli and Lao Sun Tzu and all your other devious little friends have told you to show no fear...”

 Steve held up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you right there...”

 “...no you’re not. It’s okay to feel nervous. It’s normal.”

 “How do you know?”

 “Well, I don’t.”

 “So shut up.”

 “No. I may be hobbling around like fucking Igor, but when I walked into this kitchen you were sitting here looking like you’d been
stuffed
. You know what they say – speak now or forever...”

 Steve slumped forward with a groan and began to gently bang his head against the kitchen table.

 “So maybe that was a bad choice of words,” I said.

 “Shit. Oh shit, shit,
shit
.”

 “Steve, stop. Sit up. Breathe.” Well, I guess this was what I was here for.

 He straightened up and buried his face in his hands.

 “Okay,” I said. “How long has this been going on for?”

 He shook his head.

 “Come on. It’s now or never.”

 “I KNOW!” His hands came down slap on the tabletop. He took a breath. “Goddamnit,” he said. “Don’t you think I
know
that? I’ve had all this time to say something and I haven’t.”

 “Say what?” I felt a weird little rollercoaster swoop down in the pit of my stomach, like I knew this was coming. Oh, he’d picked a fine time to admit it was just a phase he was going through.

 He bit his lip. “I’ve had this feeling the whole time. Ever since it was official.” He got up from the table and poured himself another coffee. “And fuck you, by the way. Making me talk about my feelings on a day like today.”

 “Steve, today’s the day if ever there was one. What feeling?”

 He took a long swallow of scalding coffee. “What if we’re about to fix something that isn’t even broken?”

 I frowned. “So...what? No harm done, right?”

 Steve shook his head. “Yes. There’s a million ways this could fuck up. What if I’ve taken something that was perfect and wonderful and just applied...
pressure
? And what if I can’t handle the pressure?”

 Oh. So that’s what it was.

 “You can handle it,” I said. “Trust me.”

 “How do you know?”

 “Steve, I have a
kid
. You want to talk pressure? Try sleepless nights, teething and shots. Come on – eat something. Take a shower. Get dressed. Tomorrow morning you’re going to be waking up in Barbados.”

 He opened the fridge. “Ass-pirates of the Caribbean,” he muttered. “I wonder if they ever made that porno. You want eggs?”

 We’d come a long way, baby. The inside of Steve’s fridge looked like an adult’s – no more beer, mustard and bloated hotdogs. He had broccoli in there, soy milk (Trey was lactose intolerant) and ordinary milk you didn’t have to sniff carefully before attempting to use it. Milk was a goddamn minefield at home – you never know which mammal it had come from.

 Next to the broccoli was a tray of boutonnieres. We had never found the rare and precious Himalayan orchid that said ‘I’m sorry I called you Princess Fuckpants’, but the late red roses were pretty, if traditional. “Did you pick these up?” I said.

 “Delivery.”

 “Holy shit – I didn’t even hear the doorbell. I must have been dead to the world.”

 “You were,” he said. “No wonder your neck got all fucked up.”

 “I can straighten it. It’s fine.” I held my head up straight. The pain shot down one side of my neck.

 “Put some heat on it. I’m not having you screw up the photos by looking like an anxious parakeet.”

 “Thanks. So sweet of you.”

 “Hey – I get to be shallow. It’s my day. You’ll get your turn.”

 My turn. Jesus. Like we’d even had time to think about that. “Is it this a good time to mention that I have no idea where I put the rings?”

 He stared at me and turned a shade of whitish green that I have never seen before or since.

 “I’m fucking with you,” I said.

 “You’re going to hell, Clayton,” he said, when he could speak again. “And I can’t help you.”

 I knew it. But it was worth it. It was maybe the only time in our lives I’d ever seen him off balance.

 It was a beautiful service. On my way down the aisle I caught sight of her standing next to her old man. She was wearing a clingy, gauzy blue-green dress, and she’d done as I asked and not tried to straighten her hair. It was piled up behind her head, a few curls hanging loose around her neck. She had obviously given up trying to pin the boutonniere onto her dress and instead stuck the rose in her hair.

 I think I must have been dragging my feet, because she raised her eyebrows and inclined her head to where I was supposed to be, where Steve and Trey were waiting to be joined in what Trey referred to as ‘unholy matrimony’.

 Trey looked stupidly handsome, but then he always did. Lacie informed me afterwards that Steve ‘cleaned up nicely’, but I said I’d defer to her judgment on that one.

 “To me,” I said. “He’s always going to be the snot-nose little bastard who made me walk into a biker bar wearing three fisherman’s sweaters and his Mom’s shoulder pads.”

 “He looks good,” she said. “They make a really handsome couple.”

 “Speaking of which...”

 She smoothed the front of my tux. “Yeah, yeah. Stop fishing. You look edible.”

 “I was talking about you, actually?”

 “Oh, this old thing,” she said, patting her hair and adopting a Southern accent. “I just threw it on.”

 Bullshit. She’d had about five separate panic attacks and had asked me on no less than seventeen occasions if it made her look fat. “I don’t suppose it’ll make any difference if I tell you that I’ve never seen you look so beautiful?” I said.

 “I don’t know,” she said, turning pink. “Try it. See what happens.”

 I didn’t get any further. Steve’s brother caught hold of my sleeve and told me the photographer needed me. And after that there was dinner, and speeches, so I didn’t get her to myself again until it was time to join the couple on the floor for the first dance –
It Had To Be You
. My choice. Steve wasn’t a big fan of the oldies but I’d managed to talk him into it and out of his original choice of
Killing In The Name
. Trey had been no help at all; his choice was
Down With The Sickness
.

 “You pulled it off,” said Lacie, as she swayed back and forth against me on the dance floor. “Although I can’t help thinking something’s missing.”

 “Nothing is missing,” I said, confidently. If anything had been missing, Steve’s Mom would currently be screaming, hyperventilating and demanding to know why the exact number of balloons hadn’t fallen to the dance floor at the right moment.

 “I don’t know. Some part of me thinks this wedding is missing a mosh-pit...”

 “Funny.”