Past Perfect (26 page)

Maggie made a
you-are-so-lame
face at me, then must have remembered that I was, after all, the greatest warrior Essex had ever seen, because she answered politely, “They’re on an antiquing trip in South Carolina this week.”

“An antiquing trip?” I repeated.

“Yes. It’s a trip. Where you buy antiques,” Maggie explained.

“Maggie’s parents collect Colonial memorabilia,” Fiona added.

“They have the world’s largest private collection of Colonial
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currency, or whatever,” Maggie said. “They left my brother in charge.” She gestured toward a shirtless, muscular guy who couldn’t have been older than nineteen. He was standing with three girls and drinking from a red plastic cup.

“Your brother’s hot,” Fiona noted.

“Ew,” Maggie said, her tone conveying that Fiona was completely correct, but that she, Maggie, could not say so without sounding incestuous. “He’s single,” she added helpfully. “But just for the summer. His girlfriend’s in California.”

“Hmm.” Fiona stared at him.

“Fi,” I said, as kindly as I knew how. “Eyes on the prize, sweetie.”

Fiona sighed, nodded, and turned her attention back to us.

“So did you remember your swimsuits or what?” Maggie asked.

Fiona lifted her shirt to show her bikini top.

“I didn’t know you had a pool,” I said.

Maggie looked confused. “Well, obviously. Otherwise, why would I be having a party?”

“Good point,” I said. “Why
would
you have a party without a pool?”

“I have a bunch of extra suits on my bed upstairs,” Maggie said. “You can borrow one. You probably wear a smaller top than I do, but that’s okay. If you tie it really tight, I’m sure it will stay on you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

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“Anne!” Maggie hollered.

Anne had been sitting on the edge of a lounge chair, talking to Bryan. When Maggie called, she trotted over to us.

“Show Chelsea where my room is, okay?” Maggie said.

Without waiting for a response, she took Fiona’s arm and led her toward the pool.

I followed Anne inside. She slid shut the glass door behind us, muffling the sounds of the party.

“Maggie’s room is this way,” she said and led me through the kitchen, its walls decorated with large copper pots; into the high-ceilinged front foyer, home to two Windsor chairs; and up the staircase, which was lined with paintings of various regiments crossing various rivers. I was impressed.

Collecting antiques is basically what rich people do instead of going to junk shops, and, lord knows, I love junk shops.

I don’t know who decides, though, when something is old, whether it becomes a valuable antique or just worthless crap.

“Do you think Bryan is looking kind of cute tonight?” Anne asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Oh.”

“Or was that a rhetorical question?” I asked.

Anne paused on the top step, considering my words. “I don’t know what that means,” she eventually concluded.

We went into Maggie’s bedroom, which, instead of feeling
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like a high-class Colonial gallery, looked like a normal, modern place for a normal, modern girl to live. I sifted through the mess of bikinis on Maggie’s queen-size bed.

“Why is Bryan even here?” I asked. I felt kind of snubbed that it had taken three years before Maggie had ever included me in a party, and then only because I was the War’s MVP.

Meanwhile, Bryan just scored an invitation, no big deal?
Bryan?

“I invited him?” Anne said.

“Huh.” I looked for the top to match the polka-dotted bikini bottom in my hand. “Weird.”

“I’m glad you and Fiona finally showed up,” Anne said.

“Nat has been asking about her all night.”

“Of course he has been,” I said. “Has anyone been asking about me?”

“No,” Anne answered. Anne is, above all else, a very honest person. “Why don’t they just go out? Does she think she’s too good for him? I don’t get it.”

“I think she’s scared,” I answered, trying to change from clothes into bathing suit without exposing Anne to an unintentional strip show.

“Scared of Nat?” Anne asked dubiously.

“Scared of commitment, I guess. Scared of love.”

“Huh.” Anne looked into the distance, pondering this for a moment, which I used as an opportunity to whip off my underpants and quickly slip into the bikini bottoms. “Have you ever been in love?” she asked me.

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“Yes.” I paused. “I thought I was in love, anyway. So I guess I really was, since I thought it, at the time.”

“And was it scary?” Anne asked.

“Absolutely. Someone can wind up getting hurt. That’s scary.” I tried to adjust the shoulder straps. “A boy once told me that love without heartbreak is just a pretty myth.”

“Did your Civil War boyfriend say that?” I looked up at her sharply. “What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know. I figured it was either him or Ezra, so . . .”

“Ezra and him aren’t the only guys I’ve ever hooked up with, you know,” I said.

Anne shrugged. “Okay.”

“I’ve had
lots
of boyfriends before.”

“Cool.” She looked wholly unimpressed.

“I mean, not a slutty number of boyfriends. But not just Ezra and a Civil Warrior, either. Basically, what I’m saying is that I’ve had a normal number of boyfriends.”

“Fine. Are you done changing yet?”

I put my clothes back on over the swimsuit. “But anyway,” I said. “Yes, it just so happens that the one of my many boyfriends who said ‘love without heartbreak is a pretty myth’

was the Civil Warrior.”

“Was he right?” Anne asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He might be. But even if he was right, it’s still worth it. Because before the time when you’re heartbroken, you get to be in love, and that’s worth it.”
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We went back downstairs. We had been away from the party for maybe fifteen minutes, but somehow, when we came back, we found Maggie sobbing on a lawn chair with Patience hovering around her, petting her hair and dabbing at her face with tissues.

Anne immediately abandoned me to run over to her friends. I might offer nuanced perspectives on love, but let’s be honest, that could never compete with the excitement of a weeping hostess.

Fiona and Nat were side by side, dangling their legs in the pool. I sat down next to them. “What did I miss?” I asked, gesturing at the huddle of distraught milliner girls.

“Ezra and Maggie had some big fight,” Fiona said. “Surprise.”

“Drama,” Nat drawled, rolling his eyes, like he was just so over drama.

“Is everything all right?” I watched Patience and Anne support Maggie as she hobbled into her house like she had argued with Ezra, and then somehow broken her leg. Her brother stayed outside, setting up some complicated-looking drinking game. Fiona was doing a masterful job of not looking at him.

“Who knows.” Nat kicked the water with his feet. “They’re both a couple beers in. This might not even be a
real
fight.”

“Either way,” I said, “it’s kind of shitty to fight with your girlfriend at her own party.”

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“Hold up.” Fiona put up her hands. “Ezra did something kind of shitty? This is truly blowing my mind.” Nat laughed and playfully splashed her legs. I suddenly noticed something so obvious, I couldn’t believe I had missed it for even an instant. “Nat, your hair!” I gasped.

His ponytail was gone. It was still longer than Ezra’s or Dan’s hair—still longer than a guy’s hair is
supposed to be
—but for Nat, it was downright short.

“I know.” He touched the ends of it. “I’m getting used to it.”

“You cut it off?” I asked, impressed by Nat’s sudden understanding of twenty-first-century fashion.

“Hell, no!” He looked offended. “Those farbs across the street did it. They caught me coming out of work yesterday. Two of them grabbed me. Big guys. I eventually got away, but not before one of them had chopped off most of my ponytail.”

“It’s horrible,” Fiona murmured. “That’s so traumatic.”

“They’re monsters,” Nat declared. “The only thing that makes it even slightly okay is that I know they’re being stripped of their Barnes Prize. So let them pull their stupid pranks, let them cut off my hair, which I’ve been growing out for
four
years
”—Fiona shook her head sadly—“but it’s okay, because we already won this War.” Nat nodded at me. “Thank you for giving me that, Chelsea.”

I didn’t want to be thanked for hurting Dan. I didn’t say anything.

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“I think it looks just as adorable as it did before,” Fiona told him, running her hand through his hair.

This was serious. If Fiona liked Nat even without his revolt-ing, scraggly long hair, then she was going to like him no matter what.

I decided to give them some alone time. “I’m going to get some food,” I said, standing up and shooting Fiona a meaningful glance. At least, I hoped it was meaningful. The meaning I was trying to convey was,
Make this happen, Fiona,
for the love of God.

Ezra stood alone by the grill, wearing swim trunks and a crew-neck T-shirt. His hair was damp, like he’d already been in the pool, and he was prodding at the burgers with a spatula.

“Got one for me?” I asked.

“Chelsea!” His eyes lit up when he saw me. Or maybe I just thought they did. It was dark outside, and who could say.

“Hey. Um, is everything okay?” It was none of my business, of course, what happened between him and his girlfriend.

But if it was the talk of the party, well, I was curious.

“Yeah. Well, not really, no. This thing with Maggie isn’t really . . . working.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I just don’t know what she wants from me. Everything seems fine, and then she freaks out at me over nothing. Literally, nothing.

It’s like she wants something really specific, but she doesn’t tell me what it is, and then when I don’t magically figure it out on my own, she flips her shit.
I don’t get it.”
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I wondered, suddenly, whether Ezra would ever be able to maintain a happy relationship with any girl at all.

Rosaline came over, looking for a burger, and after she had slathered it in ketchup and left, Ezra said to me, “Hey, do you want to go for a walk?”

“Who will man the burgers?” I asked.

He set down the spatula. “The burgers can man themselves.” So we headed off together, leaving behind the sounds and lights of the party. Maggie’s property was enormous and bordered by woods; within a few minutes, we couldn’t see the party at all, or even the house itself.

“Do you remember that time we went to DC?” Ezra asked me abruptly.

“Sure.” We’d had the day off from school for President’s Day, and I had told Ezra that I wanted an adventure. He picked me up in his car, and we didn’t even know where we were going. He just started driving, and the next thing we knew, we were on the road to Washington.

“You had made those banana muffins,” Ezra reminisced.

“Right. Because we were on an all-day interstate explora-tion, and I was worried that we might starve.”

“And we were singing along to Elvis the whole way there.” I smiled. Neither Ezra nor I can sing. We sing
loudly
, but we can’t sing.

“Wise men say,” Ezra began in his horrible, faux –Elvis Presley baritone, “only fools rush in . . .”
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“. . . but I can’t help,” I joined in, “falling in love you.” We stopped singing. For a second, all I could hear were the cicadas. “It doesn’t seem like that long ago,” Ezra said.

“Sometimes,” I said. “But sometimes it feels like forever.” He stopped walking and cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice came out unsteady. “I miss you, Chelsea.”

“I miss you, too,” I said.

And as soon as the words had left my lips, he leaned in and kissed me.

For close to four months now, I had been remembering Ezra’s kisses. How they were amazing, fulfilling, like fireworks. For months, I had been remembering how they made me feel. Like I was the most special girl in the world, like I could never want anything more than just this. For months, I had been unable to confront head-on the reality that Ezra would never kiss me again, and I would never feel that way again, that it was really and forever
over
.

Now it wasn’t really and forever over. He was kissing me again. I was kissing him back.

And the thing about it was this: it was good. It wasn’t perfect. I didn’t feel like fainting or crying or throwing him to the ground in these woods and stripping off all his clothes. It was a good kiss, because he’s a good kisser, and I liked it, but that was all.

I stayed there for a moment. I knew this was the last time I would ever kiss him, and I wanted to hold on to it for as long as I could. Then I pulled back.

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“What about Maggie?” I asked.

He shook his head and touched my hair. “Maggie and I are over. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t going to work.”

“It’s funny,” I said quietly. “You and Maggie looked so happy together.”

He seemed to think about this for a moment. “Did we?”

“Mm-hmm.” I sighed. “But I guess you and I must have looked so happy together, too.”

“Chelsea,” Ezra said, cupping my face in his hands and looking into my eyes. “Let’s get back together. This isn’t about Maggie, this isn’t about anyone else but you. I miss you, you miss me. Let’s get back together, and we can spend every weekend exploring the world and doing a terrible job of singing Elvis songs to each other. Please.” I looked into his gray-blue eyes, and what came into my mind was not a chorus of hallelujahs. What came to mind was the line Mr. Zelinsky repeated every summer orientation.

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

I didn’t want to be doomed to repeat the past anymore.

And I thought how funny it was. Funny and sad, at the same time. Sometimes you get everything you ever wanted, only it doesn’t look like what you wanted anymore.