You and Me and Him (9 page)

But then I look at the empty food wrappers on my bedroom floor, and my cheeks flush with shame and self-loathing. There’s a knock on my door.

“Maggie? You in there?” Mom starts to turn the knob, and I stuff the wrappers under my bed, wipe my mouth, and flop myself on top of the covers just as she opens the door.

“I just wanted to say good night, sweetie. And be safe tomorrow.” She leans over to kiss me, and I pray she won’t smell the sugar and chocolate on my breath. Mom pauses at the door. “Light on or off?”

“Off. Thanks.” She flips off the light and closes the door, and I roll over, breathing a sigh of relief that she didn’t catch me.

But the sense of calm I got from the sweets is gone after the narrow escape with Mom. My thoughts wander back to Nash’s plan, and Tom’s expected role in it, and Cece’s disappointment. I lie there for way too long wondering about Tom and Nash and Cece and Kayla and the whole confusing tangle. In some ways I feel lucky to be outside that fray. At least I know that when and if someone ever falls for me, it won’t be because they’re hot for my bod. I’ll know they see something more.

Monday morning comes way too early, and I always spend too much time stressing over what to wear when I go to Seattle. I know it’s dumb. The city’s full of people I will never see again, but I don’t want to look like a total dork. I want to look like I could belong there.

I knock on Tom’s door. A woman opens it, tall and slim and lovely in that nonchalant way some women have. Dressed in faded Levi’s, pink flip-flops, and a flannel shirt that, judging from the size, was probably borrowed from either Tom or his dad. I tug down my own shirt and straighten my sweater, giving her my best meeting-the-parental-unit smile.

The woman grins as if I’d brought her a winning lottery ticket. “You must be Maggie! Come in, come in!” Boxes are piled high in the living room and near the entrance of the kitchen, but they’d managed to hang some pictures in the entry hall. Two little boys, one slightly older than the other but both very Tom-ish, stare out of frames that line the hall. As Tom’s mom leads me to the kitchen, the photos form a timeline, moving from chubby-cheeked babyhood to the most recent one, a portrait in adolescent awkwardness that looks no more than a couple years old. “Tom and his brother, Colin,” Tom’s mom says. “I’m Jen, by the way.” She sticks out her hand.

I shake it and try the parental smile again. “Nice to meet you.” I look around the kitchen, which seems fully intact. No sign its contents had recently been in boxes.

“I always unpack the kitchen first,” Jen says. “The living room, the guest bathroom, those things can wait. Who are we going to invite over, anyway? But it’s not home until there are some spaghetti splatters on the stove.” She points to one of the kitchen chairs and I sit. “So, Seattle?” she says. “Anywhere special?”

“Not sure, actually,” I say. “Nash is the man with the plan. I’m just transportation.”

She gives me a once-over.

“I’m a very safe driver,” I add.

“You seem safe,” she says.

Safe.
It stings a little; I’d like to think of myself as edgy and a little dangerous. But I know in parent-speak she’s given me a compliment.

“Maggie.” Tom stumbles into the room from a back staircase. “You’re here.” He runs his fingers through messy hair and wipes a little toothpaste from the corner of his mouth. Grabbing some high-tops from the pile near the back door, he sits at the table and starts lacing them up.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m early. Painfully prompt to most things. Take your time.”

Tom tugs at his shoes as Jen leans close to him. “Did you get those new Odor-Eaters I bought you?” she whispers.

“Mom!” Tom stands, grabs his coat, and grimaces at me. “Maggie? You ready?”

We hurry down the hall, the fraternal timeline rewinding so the last thing I see before being ushered through the door is an adorable baby Tom smiling out at me.

I head the car to Nash’s house.

“Sorry about that,” Tom says. “She’s really . . . I don’t know what she is.”

“She’s great,” I say.

“Yeah, actually she is. Sometimes I get pissed off having to move so much. But at least I have a built-in way to make friends because of school. It’s harder for Mom. But she never complains. And Stephen doesn’t even notice.”

“Stephen?” I ask.

“My dad.”

“You call him Stephen?”

“Yeah.” Tom puts his shoe on the dash and reties the laces. “It’s kind of . . . I started doing it a couple moves ago. Colin was going to college, and my dad announced another move, and I was totally pissed off. So I stopped calling him ‘Dad’ and started calling him ‘Stephen.’” Tom smiles. “He hates it.”

“So moving so much has been—”

“Moving so much has sucked.” Tom starts chewing on his cuticles. “Like I said, I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve learned how to settle in because I’ve had to do it so many times. But I’m always aware that I could get home on any given day and my dad could say we’re moving again. So I never really . . . I guess I never really invest, you know what I mean?”

I nod. “One foot out the door all the time?”

“Exactly!” Tom says. “That’s it exactly.”

We ride in silence for a minute. “So, the Odor-Eaters?” I say.

“Bad,” he says.

I give him a skeptical glance.

“Really, really bad,” he says. “Toxic Avenger bad. So bad you can taste it bad.”

“Ewww! Taste it? Really?”

“Yep,” he says. “Sexy, right?”

“Dead sexy.”

“Dead fish sexy.”

“Just don’t tell Nash,” I say. “He has sort of a smell . . . thing. As in he doesn’t like things to smell. At all. Ever.”

“Good to know,” Tom says. “Speaking of which: Nash bailed.”

“What?” My head swivels, and I stare at Tom. “What do you mean, ‘Nash bailed’?”

“I mean bailed, flaked, ditched.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Not sure.”

“Well, what did he say, exactly?”

“Something about chores he forgot and going to his mom’s doctor’s appointment?”

I nod. These are standard Nash codes. What they really mean is that his mom got plastered and he has to either clean up the mess, nurse her hangover, or both.

“Why didn’t he call me?”

“No idea.”

And now I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Did Nash call Tom instead of me because he wants me to take Tom to Seattle anyway, and he knew if he called me, I’d find a way to postpone? Or did he call Tom instead of me thinking I would automatically know that he didn’t want me to carry on without him and would come up with an excuse on my own? I find I’m not up to the task of reading Nash’s lovesick mind at the moment, so I turn into a parking lot and grab my phone.

“What’s up?” Tom asks.

“I need to just—I need to check something.” I text Nash.
What’s going on? Why aren’t you coming?

Mom. Why else?
Nash texts back.

We’ll wait and go when you can come too.

No. Go without me.

No. No way. I’m not letting her wreck this for you.

Nash doesn’t text back.

I’m coming over. I’m coming to get you.

Don’t you dare! She’s bad today. I do not want Tom here!

“Everything okay?” Tom asks.

“Yeah, just asking Nash about his plan for Seattle. Don’t want to screw it up.” I text Nash again.
I hate that you are going to miss this.

Me too!

Call you later. Love your guts.

I let my phone rest in my lap, staring at it. Then I toss it into my purse with a little more rage than I intended.

“Okay, so I guess we should get going?” Tom says it as a question, giving me the chance to back out.

But I nod, put the car into gear, and pull back into traffic. We’re almost out of town before either of us speaks again.

“Nash and his mom seem really close,” Tom says.

I glance at him. Nash’s shit is Nash’s shit, and I’m not sure if I should say anything. But Tom has clearly picked up on some of the nuances of Nash’s family relationships. My thumbs are tapping a spastic Morse code on the steering wheel. “She can be a little needy,” I say.

Tom’s still waiting for an explanation.

I sigh, then spill. “So the short version is that Nash’s dad disappeared a few years back, leaving a gigantic crater in their lives. His mom’s tried to fill the hole with booze ever since.” I’m all in now so I forge ahead. “I guess Nash sort of blames himself for his dad leaving, so when his mom is bad, his guilt kicks in and he feels like he should take care of her.”

Tom watches the road for a minute. “That’s sweet,” Tom says. “That’s actually really cool.”

“Yeah, but she’s bad a lot,” I say. “And none of this is Nash’s fault. I wish he didn’t have to miss so much of his own life trying to put hers back together.”

“So missing today will bum him out?”

“Catastrophically,” I say.

“You still want to go, though, right?”

We’re stopped at a red light, and I glance over at him. He looks so hopeful, like a kid who’s been waiting all week for a trip to the candy store, which I guess he kind of is.

I sigh. “Sure. Of course I want to go,” I say. “If you want to. It won’t be as much fun without Nash.”

“I’ll never know the difference,” Tom says. “Besides, Maggie Bower, you’re my source for fun in Cedar Ridge.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I am famous in lab partner circles as being on the cutting edge of fun.” I turn to look at him, expecting him to share the joke, but he’s not laughing.

He’s looking at me with those green eyes, his head tilted a bit, like he’s thinking about something.

My face gets hot, but I don’t look away. I like looking at Tom looking at me. It’s like fingers brushing my cheek—the touch is gentle, but it brings goose bumps anyway.

I hear a honk behind me. The light is green. I accelerate and change lanes so I can make the turn that will get us down to I-5 South.

Tom takes in the scenery as we leave Cedar Ridge’s punchbowl valley behind and descend into the flat near the freeway. After a while he picks up my iPod and puts on a playlist I titled “Weekend.” This is not one of the playlists Nash would approve of. It’s pretty mellow, but it’s one of my favorites. After a couple songs, Tom laughs to himself.

“I love it,” he says, chuckling.

“What?” I say, a little defensive. “Change it if you don’t like it.”

“No, no. I really do love it,” he says.

“Explain yourself.”

“I love that your idea of ‘Weekend’ is not some raging party mix, but this soulful, quirky, folkish kind of thing.”

“Sorry. Nash told me not to play that one. I’m not a party animal. Never got invited, never wanted to.”

“See, there. That’s what I’m talking about,” he says, as if he’d made his point perfectly.

I stare at the road for a minute, trying to figure out if I missed something, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t.

“You are ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’”

I stare at him for a beat longer than is technically safe at highway speeds. “Bullshit,” I say.

“I’ll thank you not to denigrate the sacred words of my namesake in such a fashion,” Tom says.

“Tom Jones said that?” I say.

“Winston Churchill,” he says.

“What?”

“I am named after Winston Churchill.”

“I thought you were named after Tom Jones?” I say.

“My first name is for Tom Jones, my middle for Winston Churchill.”

“Ahhhhh.”

“Maggie, this is a significant milestone in our friendship. Revealing a middle name is a sacred trust. This should not be entered into lightly.”

“You think we’re rushing things?”

He shakes his head. “Okay. I’ll go first. I kind of already did, but I’ll make it official.” He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “My name is Thomas Churchill Pierce.”

“Wow,” I say. “No pressure there. You sound like some eighteenth-century British aristocrat.”

“Yeah, it’s a little intense, huh?” he says. “Now you.”

“Margaret Bower.”

Tom clears his throat. “Maggie, I’m not sure you grasp the point of this exercise. I know your first name. I know your last name. The thing that’s happening here is I learn your middle name,” Tom says. He waits and then tries another tactic. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

“Sorry,” I say. “No can do. I’ve only got the two names.”

“No middle name?” he says. “Not even an initial?”

“Nope.”

“So you tricked me?”

I nod.

“Well played,” he says. “Like I said: riddle, mystery, enigma. Full of surprises.”

I’m not sure what to say to this, so I change the subject. “Kayla said you had fun the other night.” I do a pretty good job of keeping my voice level.

“Yeah, I guess,” Tom says. “It was all right. The movie was dumb, but Kayla and her friends seem nice. Not as nice as you, though.” He smiles.

I glance at him, and I have to force my eyes away to keep from drifting right off the road into that smile. Tom turns up the music, singing along with some of the songs, asking questions about bands he doesn’t recognize. By the time we start passing the exits in north Seattle, I realize I have no idea where we’re going. Nash planned the itinerary. I want to stay far, far away from romantic, and cool is out of my reach, so I basically have to pick spots that are quintessentially non-Nash. I spot the exit for the Woodland Park Zoo and change lanes. I don’t ask Tom if he likes zoos. Nash hates them: something about the cocktail of large animals, whiny children, and acres of dung. Which means I never go when I come to Seattle with Nash. The zoo is neither cool nor romantic, but I love it, so why not?

The gates have just opened, so the zoo parking lot is only about one-quarter full.

“Excellent,” Tom says when he sees the sign. No sarcasm or disappointment detectable. I park the car, and we walk toward the entrance. “Come here often?” Tom asks.

“Not that often,” I say. “Not often enough. You like zoos?”

“Yep,” he says. “I think I want to study biology. Something with animals.” Tom pays for our tickets. “You bought gas!” he says when I argue. We look over the map, and Tom asks, “Are you feeling Africa or the rain forest?”

I always do the rain forest first and save my favorite, the elephants, for last. “Rain forest?”