Time Flies (9 page)

CHAPTER 9

When I came back inside from a sweaty session in my studio, two whole messages were waiting on my voicemail, like smoke signals from civilization.

My initial excitement turned into a dull dread when I saw one was from Kurt and the other from Ted Brody. A broken marriage and a broken hose did not bode well in the voicemail department. Anxiety bubbled up and I considered just deleting them.

I changed into a dry T-shirt and guzzled a glass of water. Deleting unlistened-to messages was probably a little bit crazy, but maybe it would be well within the realm of normal if I merely avoided listening to them until I was having a better day.

Wait. Now I’d be afraid of highways
and
voicemail. Pretty soon I’d add spiders and vacuum cleaners and maybe frozen pizza
to the list, and one day I’d wake up and realize I hadn’t left my house in a decade.

I took a deep breath and tapped Kurt’s message.

It’s me. Listen, call me as soon as you get this. We both know we need to talk. So let’s just cut to the chase and do it. And FYI, this time I’ll expect you to dial down the hysterics
.

“Dial down the hysterics?” I yelled. I started to throw my phone across the room. I reconsidered and walked over and kicked Kurt’s recliner with one of my welding boots instead.

“Dial down the hysterics?” I yelled again. And again. And probably a few times after that.

When I finally stopped kicking, my big toe really hurt and Kurt’s recliner looked exactly the same. “And
FYI
, you have crappy taste in furniture, you bastard,” I yelled.

I found my phone again and tapped Ted Brody’s message just to get it over with.

Hi, Melanie? This is Ted Brody. I wanted to let you know that no innocent bystanders have been watered by your sculpture since you fixed it, and I thank you kindly for that. And, uh, I seem to have said exactly the wrong thing when you were here and, well, I’m just checking in to make sure you’re okay. And to tell you that, pun intended, you have a rain check to be my guest for a bite to eat whenever and if ever it works for you. And finally, I agree, a house with no one at home waiting for you does suck. Big-time. Trust me, I know
.

I thought about calling Ted Brody back, I really did. It was a sweet message, and chances were he was even a nice guy. But the thought of having to sit across a restaurant table from a perfect stranger and say all the right things while you tried to get to know each other all the way from scratch was just exhausting. Bone
wearying. No shared frame of reference, no guarantee that you’d have anything at all in common. All that baggage to unlock and open and all those quirky little bits and pieces to sort through.

If Finn Miller and I were sitting across from each other in a restaurant courtyard, we’d both be wearing rose-colored glasses. A retro haze would surround us like soft lighting, taking away all the rough edges. If the conversation started to lag, we could tell old stories from high school, about things and people we’d both known.

Halfway through math class, I twisted in my seat and angled my Yardley Liplighter mirror so I could see Finn Miller. I watched him put his elbow on his desk and rest his chin on the palm of his hand. He tapped his fingers on his jaw over and over again as if he were playing the piano. I sighed.

When class was over, I pushed myself out of my chair and reached behind me to yank my skirt down casually and, with luck, dislodge a slight wedgie at the same time.

I picked up the stack of books on my desk. B.J. had borrowed some purple dye from the biology room and we’d all painted our fingernails and toenails with multiple coats last night and then Veronica and I had helped her sneak it back into the classroom before first period this morning. I wiggled my fingers and watched my nails under the flicker-y fluorescent classroom lights.

“A purple people eater, huh?” Finn Miller suddenly said beside me.

I jumped. My face burned a million shades of red, and I squeezed my hands into fists.

He grabbed one hand and unfurled a purple-tipped finger. “Psychedelic.”

A tiny laugh that sounded like the bark of a seal pup came out of my mouth. My heart skipped a beat.

Finn reached over, took my books from me, and piled them on top of his own. He turned and walked up the aisle. He waited for me at the doorway and let me go through first.

Then he walked over to B.J. and Veronica and handed B.J. my books.

“Take good care of her,” he said.

I finished the last of my breakfast yogurt, scraping the edge of the spoon around and around the plastic container as I tried to remember the rest of our story. It was sometime in the fall of senior year when Finn Miller finally asked me out. We went to the movies with two of his friends and their dates. Was it
American Graffiti
? Whatever it was, the guys hooted through the whole thing, loud and obnoxious. I’d found the movie beneath my level of maturity and wished we’d gone to see something more sophisticated instead, maybe
The Way We Were
or
Scenes From a Marriage
. Whenever I reached for our shared popcorn, Finn reached in, too, and our hands brushed. When he put his arm around me, all I could think of was that if he got butter on my sister’s sweater, she’d know I’d borrowed it while she was away at college, and she’d kill me.

We’d ridden together in Finn’s friend’s family’s boatlike, wood-paneled station wagon, and after the movie all six of us
cruised around for a while in a pale imitation of the movie. “Hi, neighbor, have a Gansett!” Finn’s friends said over and over, as if it had been funny the first time, while we passed around two stolen-from-home cans of Narragansett Tall that tasted like watered-down skunk. The rest of the group waited in the car while Finn walked me to the door. When he kissed me, somebody leaned on the horn.

On Monday, Finn carried my books to my classes. He called me after school. And the next weekend, he ditched his friends and borrowed his own family car and let me pick the movie. He was nice. Attentive. A little bit boring maybe, but who was I to talk?

I threw my yogurt into the trash. So hard to remember: Did this go on for a few weeks? Longer? At one point I broke his heart, but how?

Yikes. By telling him I wanted to spend more time with my friends. I cringed as I remembered delivering this, the lamest of brush-offs. On the phone, no less, holding the receiver to my ear and stretching the long curly black telephone cord until it reached the privacy of the bathroom, because I didn’t have the guts to say it in person.

Looking back, the truth might have been that he’d never stood a chance. From the start I’d thought there must be something wrong with him because he seemed to like me so much. Maybe steady kindness was too subtle for a young girl to appreciate. But now, all these long years later, it sure as hell looked like some kind of wonderful.

How lucky I was that Finn Miller had emailed his way into my life again. How incredible that our worlds had imploded simultaneously,
that the universe was giving us this opportunity to rise from the rubble and build something better together.

Everybody knew that old magnetism never died. You could walk into a room decades later and still feel the pull. Physical attraction was chemistry, science. The shape of a face, the pitch of a voice, the scent of your perfect match.

I’d been such a little fool all those years ago. But I was older and wiser now, and I knew what was important in a relationship—kindness, stability, invulnerability to women named
Crissy
.

I’d appreciate Finn Miller the second time around. And when we saw each other again, this would be our chance to finally get it right.

The only thing standing between us was getting from Point A to Point B. Anxiety gripped my chest as I tried to picture making it all the way from the suburbs of Atlanta to the suburbs of Boston. I could only hope that love really did conquer all—including fear of highways.

To:
Melanie

From:
Finn Miller

Subject:
Re: Re: Reunion

Save the last dance for me.