Emily Franklin - Principles Of Love 06 - Labor Of Love (10 page)

Squibnocket makes me think of the Silver and White

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event, the thought of which sends a chill down my back for no good reason other than it feels like a big deal. "Whose party is it?" I ask as we walk past the livestock tent. The animals are the first to arrive, and various sounds--grunts, whinnies, and clucking--emanate from the tent's open flaps. I'm not sure I'm up for a random prep-school party. If you've been to one you've been to them all. Good-looking people quipping one-liners while scoping out the facial tal ent, hooking up or throwing up until someone calls it quits. Studying with Charlie sounds better. Not that he's asked me over.

Haverford coughs. "No one I know. But I got directions."

"From who?" Chris asks.

"Yeah--this better not be another one of your overheard directions to a supposed party," Chili says.

Haverford shoots her a look. "I don't think you're in a position to bitch at me about wrong addresses."

"Dates. I got the date wrong. For the last time, I'm sorry."

Chris and I roll our eyes. "Okay, enough."We walk past a smaller tent that will in a few days house handmade quilts, jams for judging, and pies of all sorts, but for now is filled only with empty tables.

"So, who gave you the directions?" I ask Haverford. He's

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in front of me, approaching the Whip. A few people stand near one of the carts. Closer up, I can make out that they're our kind--that is, teenagers without a purpose at this very moment.

"He did." Haverford points with his arm stretched out tin man style like he wants me to go long, go long. I do, run ning ahead, miming catching a big pass, over to the Whip, to the group of aimless teens, one of whom is Jacob.

"You're the one who knows someone who's having a party?" Chris asks, all in one breath to Jacob, who does his best (or maybe it's not that tough?) to nonreact to my pres ence.A millisecond of locking eyes constitutes our hello.

"Guilty as charged," he says. "Should be a fun one-- barbeque. Serena Best."

"Serena Chest?" Haverford raises his eyebrows. One of the guys near Jacob nods.

"You're disgusting," Chili says, admonishing both of them.

"What? It's her name--I didn't give it to her."

I don't know how or if Jacob has looked at me or is looking at me. My eyes have taken a liking to the grass, looking there, at my feet, anywhere but at Jacob.

Chris tries to recover for me."Let's go!"

We move en masse until I realize something.

"I'm not going," I say to anyone who's listening. I hang

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back, letting Chili and Haverford, the other random people with Jacob, get ahead.

Chris turns around."You okay?"

I nod. "I'm fine. I'm going to check out the pigs and then head home.You guys go ahead."

I go back to the fair, back to the livestock tent, and look at chickens, then make my way to the pigs.Why is it that I never seem to call the shots with Jacob? He shows up here, inserting himself into my evening just like he called me out in California. Maybe I'm projecting some of my feelings onto him. Maybe I don't even know what I feel about him. Or what he feels about me, other than his declarative state ment that he "has feelings." Great.We all have feelings. But which ones?

Perhaps I'm just the slightest bit annoyed that I didn't get my movie-perfect reunion. The one in which I'm bet ter groomed than I am right now, for starters. I lean on the fence that surrounds the pigs until I decide it's time to call it a night, even though the sun hasn't fully set.

My car looks miniature and out of place near the decades- old oak trees and green pasture. I watch my feet as they move through the grass until I'm at the door. Sometimes I pick apart details--my toes and the scratchy field, the door handle, still warm from the fading sun. I'm so caught up in

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those small things that when I slide behind the wheel and see another person in the passenger seat, it takes me a second or two to scream. But I do.

Even when I see it's only Jacob sitting there, drumming his fingers on his knees to enhance the casualness of this encounter, I keep screaming--it's like my voice and mind aren't connected.

"Sorry," I say. Then I realize I don't need to be all girly and apologetic for no good reason, but before I can retract the apology, Jacob talks.

"No," he says, biting his lower lip a little and looking at me with those intense green eyes I tried to avoid before. "I'm the one who should be sorry."

"It's not that big a deal," I say and put the keys in the ignition. I don't start the car, though."You just surprised me, that's all."

"Oh--I mean, I'm sorry about sitting here and springing myself on you--but more than that . . ." He takes a breath and looks out the window."Want to take a drive?"

I have my hands on the wheel, steadfast at ten and two o'clock."I don't know."Then I look at him. Not just glance, but really look. He's the same. But not. And inside I feel those stirrings--not only the remnants of romance, but the fun feelings of just being around him. He looks back at me. "Sure. Let's drive."

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. . . "This isn't exactly what I had in mind," I say when we're both behind the wheel.

"But you gotta admit--it's pretty cool." Jacob pats the wheel of his sparkly purple bumper car. "I love my glitter. Glitterbug, I'll name her."

"Why are cars and boats always she?" I ask and admire my own choice--a bright green car that glitters.

"How else are you going to convince guys to go to sea for a year at a time with no promise they'll return?"

"Ah, yes, the risk of love," I say. I mean it to be funny, to keep pace with Jacob's perma-wit, but my words seem to hang in the air, calling undue attention to themselves.

"What I meant before," Jacob says while pretending to navigate, "was that I'm sorry about . . . making you come back here.You were off doing your thing, just like we said, right? Friends. But Crescent Beach really screwed with my head."

We look at each other from our respective parked cars. He's beautiful, still, in a way I can't shake. He looks at me and I wonder if he's thinking the same thing."I agree--but I have my own reasons--what's your take? What messed with your mind the most?"

He leans back in the small car, considering."Well, okay-- so you remember Juliette."

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"Can I insert one thing right here--I mean, if we're going to have one of those lay-it-all-on-the-table kind of discussions you and I seem to be so good at having?"

He nods. "Be my guest. Lay it out there." He motions with his hand like I'm spreading jam on a baguette.

"It's so annoying that you pronounce her name Juliette." Jacob licks his lips and starts to laugh."I mean, I get that you met her in Switzerland and that it's not affected there--that is, in fact, the correct pronunciation since she's French and all." I pause."And phenomenal looking, by the way."

"Yes--true on both fronts. But from now on I shall refer to her as Juliet.As in that song."

"Dire Straits?" I ask even though I'm perfectly aware of what he means.

"Yeah." Jacob stands up and holds on to the metal pole of the bumper car and switches to a jaunty pink one."How's this?"

"Suits you," I say."So . . . you were saying . . ."

"Right." He sits in the car, which is next to mine, and we look like we're about to drag race, but the minivehicles are motionless. The sunlight slips further down behind the trees. Soon it will be dark and I will be here, with my old boyfriend, my old friend, my old something, talking. Is it too intimate? Is this wrong, considering Charlie's place in my life? Worry creeps in for a bit, but then I push it away.This is

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okay.This is just talk.This is necessary."So, Love, we had this pact--you and I.We'd be friends. Only for a while it didn't really feel that way. And then, at Crescent--which I realize is an ironic place, given the fact that we split up there after sophomore year . . ."

I nod."Over Chris. Remember that? You were all huffy, thinking I was fooling around with him on the dunes while really he was trying desperately to come out to me."

Jacob holds up his hands. "Stop--I know. Believe me, it took an entire summer and fall for me to get past feeling like a total dickhead. I was young. Jealous.The usual crap."

"And now? What's the story?" I ask and stand up to trade my green car for white. "Hey, I'm in the lovebug. Heh. I adored those movies when I was little. Aunt Mable used to play them for me. Herbie the Lovebug. Herbie Goes Bananas. But I digress."

"You're the writer--you tell me what our story is." His eyes rest on mine while he tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. His dark curls are softer now, less coiled than I remem ber, giving his whole appearance a gentleness that sets me at ease.

"Why would you say that? That I'm a writer . . ." I feel as though it's something I'm just figuring out myself.That he has given me that classification feels funny.

"I didn't think it was any surprise. I mean, you've writ

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ten lyrics for ages. Good ones. Believe me, I've tried and I've read other people's, and the majority suck. And I figured with your journals . . ." He looks away. "The ones in your room . . ."

"I know which ones you mean." I picture the stacks of them tilting this way, unsteady, threatening to topple over and open up for the world to see. Or maybe this is a meta phor for me. I stand up and so does Jacob. Before we say anything else we simultaneously move to the bright blue bumper car in the center of all the others.

Standing side by side, we pause, and then squish next to each other, with me at the wheel. "So I'm driving?" I ask, putting my hands on the black circle.

"You are driving this . . . figuratively and literally." His shoulder touches mine. Our legs touch, too, my bare skin against his jeans. There are marks on the jeans--a phone number written in red marker, a splotch of something. Sud denly I need to know what these are. And suddenly just decide to tell him. "See this? I like, have to know whose number that is and why you have it.And the stain?" I touch it just for a moment, then pull my finger away."Was it grape juice? Liquor? Mustard?"

"Does it look like mustard?" Jacob's voice is deadpan. He always cracks me up. I start laughing but then continue.

"Do you get what I'm saying, Jacob? For all intents

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and purposes, we're not much--not really friends, as you said. And certainly not more . . ." I look at him as I say this and catch his gaze directly. In the small space, I can feel his breath, watch the rise and fall of his chest through his shirt. He could kiss me now. Or I could kiss him. Or we could hug."We haven't even said a proper hello," I say and initiate the hug.

I'm magnetized to Jacob. My mind knows it's not he that I'm dating, that he isn't my boyfriend, isn't even my super- close friend, but my body just swoops over as though we've never been apart. As though everything that's come after that first kiss at the end of sophomore year outside Slave to the Grind with the apple blossoms blowing around us-- never occurred. I never went away for the summer to Music Magazine for my internship; he never traveled abroad and stayed there; I never went to London; he never hooked up with bitchy Lindsay Parrish (not that they went very far, ac cording to rumors, but still--eww); as though I never woke up next to him at the Crescent Beach party to find he'd been flanked on the other side by his French import hottie, Juliette; and I'd never been swept off my feet by Charlie.

But all of that did happen. So even though I am utterly drawn to Jacob, even though I feel some base, instinctual need to lean too far into him, even though I could stay just a few seconds too long after the normal hug procedure, I

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don't. In fact, to prove to myself that I don't want to do anything other than greet him cordially, I end the hug with a pat.

"I don't remember you as being a patter," Jacob says, miming the action when we've pulled apart and are once again motionless driver and passenger in the bumper car.

I pat into my palm, looking as though I'm trying to flat ten playdough. "I'm not. I mean, I hate patting. During a hug at any rate. But I just did it to you and I . . ." I stop myself from rambling and then force myself to look directly into Jacob's eyes, which is something akin to looking right where you're not supposed to--behind the door in scary movies, into the light in Raiders of the Lost Ark--basically, somewhere forbidden. How best to proceed? Do I spew the quagmire of feelings currently swishing around my brain? Do I play coy and act like the Friend Girl I'm so good at being? Or none of the above. Just natural. Honest.

"It's good to see you, Jacob," I say, looking at his green eyes, but not for too long.

"You, too," he says and smiles, a sigh closely following. "You didn't come back here for me, did you?"

I shake my head. "I would have . . . at some point. . . ." Saying this aloud makes me sad. Like a moment has passed. So I say this:"That made me sad."

"Me, too." Jacob hoists himself from our cramped closeness

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and positions his body on the front of the car, like an over sized hood ornament. He notices me checking this out."We can talk better like this--face to face, I mean. Instead of . . ." He folds his arms in on his chest, squished. "I don't know. I used to think that everything happens for a reason. But I don't really. So with us . . ." The word lingers in the space between us. I take a breath.

"There's another chance, you're saying?"

"Something like that. When I called you in Cali--not that I knew you were there, obviously. Or I would've flown there instead of ferrying here. But I didn't want you to run to me in some overdramatic gesture. I didn't want my feel ings to be a gesture at all."

"What did you want?" My stomach growls so loudly we both hear, and I put my palm over it as though I can com fort it into silence."Fried food for lunch.Always makes you hungry for an early dinner."

Jacob nods. "I think I wanted to . . . how to say this without sounding like a total scam artist or cheeseball?" He thinks. "Remember when we used to write emails? Before you knew who I was?" I nod. "I loved that. I loved . . ." He looks quickly at me and then away. "I loved just getting something other than spam. Messages that made me think."