These Are the Moments (8 page)

Chapter 18

Then

Overly in love with himself.

Mood swings that would rival any menstruating teenage girl.

Known to cause mind-splitting migraines.

It was easy for Wendy to focus on the things she hated about Simon. She had a running list of bad qualities, armed at the ready, so that even when a sliver of a positive or nostalgic thought reared its head, she would swat it away with her arsenal.

She discovered she could hate Simon. She could hate Simon to the point of wishing that he’d find himself old, fat and alone one day. She could hate him to the brink of picturing him distraught, on his knees and begging her forgiveness. She could hate him right up to the point of wishing she’d never met him. Stop. Think. And realize that she could never mean that. That she couldn’t even picture it.

Rude, condescending, obnoxious.

A few days after the fight, he texted her.

Know-it-all, incessant flirt, drama queen.

“
Hey,” he said.

She wanted to swing her insults in his face. But Wendy being Wendy, said, “hey,” right back.

“I’d like to make it up to you,” he said.

This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to reach her. He’d texted, called, voice-mailed, emailed and instant messaged. She’d ignored them all. In the days of silence, Owen leaked that Simon and Erica were officially over. Splitsville.
Here’s your stuff back
and
done.

Wendy didn’t care.

“Good luck with that,” Wendy answered.

“Will you let me do that?” he asked.

She stared at her phone out of the corner of her eye, cold and stoic. “I don’t know. Why should I?”

“Because,” he typed, “You are the best person in my life. Hands down. And I know, believe me, I know, that I don’t deserve it. But I want to try. Because, Wendy, you have no idea how important you are to me.”

Slimy, good-for-nothing manipulator.

“No. I really don’t,” she said. Harsh, but honest.

“I know I messed up,” he said. “I took my anger out on you, and that wasn’t fair. I’d like to do something with you tomorrow. Please.”

She didn’t say anything back. Maybe Simon sucked, but at least he recognized it. She thought about all the times she’d taken her anger out on people who didn’t deserve it. She thought about the circumstances, about him and her, and that maybe, he did it because he was scared. Maybe he lashed out because underneath all of it, he knew they weren’t just friends.

Maybe.

“I understand if you don’t want to, though,” he continued. “If you just want to kill this whole thing.”

“I don’t want to do that,” she answered, a little too quickly. “Just tell me it’s not always going to be this difficult and complicated.”

“It’s not always going to be this difficult and complicated.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, you’ll hang out with me tomorrow? Just you and me?”

She thought about it. Them. Alone. “What did you have in mind?”

“Something crazy,” he said. “Or completely normal.”

She laughed. He was pretty accomplished in the art of making her laugh. “We could do something outside?”

“Sure, we could go to a park or something.”

“We could go to the woods across from my house. There’s like a hundred and something acres over there.”

“Perfect. Meet you at 11.”

There were friends and there were
friends
. Wendy didn’t know what they were anymore. She knew that he was fighting for her, trying to smooth things over, but she didn’t really know why. If he didn’t like her—more than like her—would he really be working so hard?

But he’d said.

For every borderline friend/more-than-friend comment, he had a disclaimer. “You’re pretty . . . in a totally platonic way” or, “My ideal day would be with you . . . because you’re my best friend.” She was fairly certain he had no idea what to do with all of his non-friendly feelings.

But now they were alone.

Across the street from Wendy’s house, layers and layers of woods lay untouched.

“It used to be retreat grounds,” she explained. “They’ve been talking about fixing it up for years. Turning it into a kids’ camp or something. Every few years we hear about some big plan, but it never goes through.”

This was a storybook day. The sky was the bluest she’d ever seen, like it had been hand-picked fresh for them, and the air tasted new. It was the kind of day that didn’t feel like it could ever end, as if it were beyond boundaries, and it would just keep going on, breaking time and stretching into space.

“Look, I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said.

He wore a navy blue T-shirt and khaki shorts, and he smelled like cologne.
Why did he always have to look so good?

“I know,” she said. “Let’s just have a good day. Okay?”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“Simon,” she said. “I don’t want to dwell on bad things. I want to be here. Happy. With you.”

He smiled an impressed smile. “I can do that.”

“Good.”

“So, where are we headed?”

She set their pace, taking grand, bounding strides. “Wherever we feel like.”

“Scared you’ll get lost?”

“Not even a little bit,” she said, taking a sharp turn. “Left!”

If Wendy could keep moments, she would’ve saved each second of that day, buried deep into her chest where they could fill her lungs, charge her heart and keep her warm.

The fresh smell of the woods.

The breeze through his hair.

How quiet the world was when it shrank to just two people.

“Question time,” he said.

They were deep in the woods now, zigzagging through, lost and looking. Sometimes, they would walk close, their hands skimming past each other, without either of them mentioning it. It felt like a game, like they were daring the other to be the first to say something.

“Okay, you first.”

“If you could go anywhere in the world,” he asked, “where would you go?”

She skipped past him. “Everywhere.”

He laughed. “Okay, and if you could do anything in the world, anything at all, what would you do?”

“
Everything.
”

She didn’t just say these things to say them. She believed them. That day, it all seemed possible, just a few turns away.

The woods broke into a vast clearing, greeting them with a field full of high grasses. A little ways away, a pond caught the breeze and light, shining, at peace in its still, uninterrupted haven. It was a moving canvas, a paper world come to life.

Wendy felt her heart beat in double time. This. This was her sign. Ecstatic,
elated,
she charged into a run. Because she could. Because nothing inside of her could stay still anymore.

Simon kicked into gear behind her, catching up and taking hold of her hand, so they were running side by side.

“This is crazy,” he said, winded.

They stopped short at the edge of the water, and Wendy gripped her knees. “How did we even get here?”

“We’re dreaming. That’s the only logical explanation.”

“Logic’s got nothing to do with it,” she said, winking up at him.

They walked along the water for a bit, quiet, and Wendy was sure now. She and Simon would be together one day. Maybe not today, but someday. And knowing that, she relaxed.

Around a bend, behind a patch of brush, he spotted it first.

“What’s that?”

Simon climbed into the thick overgrowth, and bending forward, he hauled a canoe out from the vines. It looked old, with paint chipping off its sides, and a single oar settled inside.

They stared.

“Don’t even think…” she started.

“We have to use this, obviously.”

“I’m not so sure that’s obvious to all of us.”

“You’re getting in,” he said. “No excuses.”

The canoe worked. No leaks. No sinking.

He rowed them across the water, his arms pumping back and forth, sneaking glances at her. Wendy didn’t know what to say. She focused on Simon in the sun, and how beautiful he was when he was happy.
He should be happy more often
, she thought.

After a while, Simon stopped rowing. They floated along, wordlessly. When Wendy bent over her knees, his hands waited to take hers.

So, this is what we’re doing now.

“Wendy,” he said softly. It was one word with a thousand behind it.

“Yeah?”

Wendy could see it in his blanketed blue eyes. All of the answers to the questions she couldn’t ask him.

Do you like me?
Yes.

Do you mean it?
Yes.

Do I mean more to you . . . more than what you’ve had . . . more than what we’ve been?
Yes and yes.

But he didn’t say any of that.

He picked up the oar and checked over his shoulder. “Let’s head in.”

“Sure,” she said.

And even though he didn’t say it, she knew then that all of the disclaimers in the world couldn’t change the fact.

He liked her.

And she liked him.

And this was just beginning.

Chapter 19

Now

It was just the beginning of what was sure to be an uncomfortable evening.

Wendy didn’t know how to date someone she didn’t know. She realized this halfway to the restaurant, mid-lyric of a country song. She wasn’t quite sure where to put her hands. Clasped together in her lap made them sweat, crossed over her chest sent the
I’m pissed off
message and she had no idea how to make herself look like an actual human being.
Since when were hands so awkward?

Everything about Gray Fulton screamed man. He smelled like aftershave, and in his hair, he wore a gel or a mousse, which made it Ken doll stiff and shiny. There was a slight lean in the way he drove his car, a kind of cool comfort.

He took her to Sander’s, a fancy steakhouse that Mom and Dad took the family to for special occasions. On cue, Dad would always say, “I really need to teach y’all how to make hollandaise,” which he promptly forgot by the drive home.

Gray Fulton did all the gentlemanly things boys are supposed to do: door-opening, chair-pulling and jacket-taking. Wendy knew girls were supposed to want these things, but it always made her feel like a show horse, like something to parade around a group of judges.
Look at her, isn’t she a byoot?

“
Wine?” he asked her.

“Absolutely,” she said.

She loved wine. Red, mostly. But even though she loved wine, she still felt strange ordering it, like she was breaking some kind of rule. She wasn’t, she reminded herself. She had an ID to prove it.

What did one talk about on a date? Did you start with light conversation about your job or did you start even simpler with a
nice weather
type of comment?

The waiter brought the wine.

“So tell me about yourself,” Gray asked her.

This was most likely the hardest question he could have drawn from the question hat. She laughed uncomfortably and countered with, “What do you want to know?”

He didn’t know what to do with this response. He straightened his tie. “The basics, I suppose.”

That’s when Wendy realized that Gray Fulton, despite his gentlemanly check marks and coiffed hair, lacked an essential component to any and all Wendy contenders: a personality.

“Well, I work at a law firm,” she started. Basics only. Simplistic personality traits. “I graduated with a double major in art and business. I live with my parents.”

He kept pulling at his tie, like a dog with a collar. He coughed a little. “Cool.”

One word. No elaboration. Another observation about Gray Fulton: he had no propensity for conversations with females. Or maybe conversations at all.

“How about you?” she asked.

He muttered something about being in IT, then something else about living in New Orleans. He said all of this while biting on his bottom lip, nay,
chewing,
and the words had to maneuver themselves around this impediment, making them sound more like grunts than actual syllables.

Wendy nodded, gulping down her wine. “That’s great.”

She had no idea what was great, but the silence was a jarring. She was dating silence, and it just sat there sprawled out on the table, naked and awkward.

“So, I’m a painter. Watercolors, mostly.”

Once Wendy opened her mouth, she couldn’t close it again. She started talking about work, about Donald, about the storyline of the most recent series she’d started watching. Gray nodded along with her, playing with his fork, swishing the wine around in his glass, whatever it took to lose himself in her jabbering, to distract himself from the fact that he was out, on a date, with a very chatty girl.

So, this was how it was going to be. Wendy, the egotistical, self-obsessed loudmouth.

And all before 8:30.

“Can I just say something?” Gray interjected, finally allowing Wendy to catch a breath. “When Reese set us up, I had no idea how attractive you would be. You are a seriously beautiful woman.”

Gag me
, Wendy thought. His words actually sounded sincere, but maybe that just made it worse.

This statement freaked her out more than anything else. A beautiful woman. Were they allowed to say that? She wasn’t a woman. Women had rents and suits and titles like Mrs. or Dr. or Ms.

Women did not watch Saturday cartoons and drink their coffee out of Disney princess mugs.

She excused herself to go to the bathroom. She didn’t say she had to powder her nose or wash her hands. She straight up told him she needed to use the restroom.

“I’m not cut out for dating,” she said hurriedly when Claudia picked up. She wasn’t sure why she called Claudia.

“Oh no, are your teeth all stained like they always get when you drink red wine?”

Wendy gritted her teeth at the mirror. Purplish. “Add that to the list. He called me a beautiful woman. After I talked his ear off for a straight forty minutes. And he wears hair gel. And he bites his lip. And I hate this so much, please please bail me out.”

“I think you should stay,” Claudia said. “If you bail now, you’re just going to keep making excuses not to go on dates.”

“I’m not.”

“However,” Claudia continued, reveling in her power, “I’ll bail you out this one time. Because of your recent emotional turmoil and whatnot. You owe me, though.”

“I owe you big time,” Wendy said.

At home, supposedly caring for her sick sister, Wendy set herself up to paint. She ran her palm over the paper, and dipped the brush into the water. And she was moved.

She could smell the air bouncing off the pond water.

She could see the field of swaying grasses.

She could picture herself there, her hand through his, standing in the wind.

She would date, eventually. Just not now.

For now, she would paint.