Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (26 page)

For once Eric was staring directly at her. He was competitive, sure, but now he looked more concerned for her sanity. His players were smiling at each other smugly in the center circle.

Bridget put her eyes on Naughton and kept them there. He needed to know she believed in him.

According to camp rules, this was sudden death overtime. If Lewis made the shot, the shootout would continue to the next round. If he missed it, the game was over.

The ref blew his whistle. Usually, as the opposing coach, you hoped for the kicker to blunder it. In the strange case of Naughton, it was the opposite.
Please let this guy get a good shot off
, Bridget thought.

Lewis launched a magnificent shot. The entire camp was perfectly silent as they watched the ball stab through the air toward the goal. Naughton seemed to jump the very instant the ball left Lewis’s foot. That was one thing, Bridget decided. Naughton had incredible eyes.

The ball flew, Naughton leaped, and the two came together at the very uppermost corner of the goal. Naughton pulled the ball out of the air and landed with it in his hands. He looked so surprised at his accomplishment that he stumbled and let the ball dribble from his grasp. Luckily it dribbled out of the goal rather than into it.

Stunned, the crowd burst into cheers. Bridget watched with pleasure and pride as her team rushed the goal and carried Naughton out on their shoulders. They carried him to his coach, placing him at her feet. Amid the cheering, she hugged him and planted a fat kiss on his cheek. He seemed to like that.

She graciously allowed them to dump the icy contents of the water cooler on her head. Then it was time to shake hands with their opponents. They lined up, Bridget at the back, and slapped or shook hands. The last two to come face to face were the coaches.

“You win. Of course,” Eric said gallantly, bowing to her like she was a Japanese businessman and not a girl who loved him to oblivion.

She couldn’t help locking on his eyes for a moment.
I didn’t, though, did I?

“Lenny. Hey. It’s Bee. I’m fine. I really am. Stop worrying right now! But I do want to talk to you. I’m ready to come home. I miss you so bad. Hey! I heard the baby’s name! I love it! Was it Carmen’s idea? She must have laughed for an hour. Call me…no, never mind. It’s impossible to call me here. I’ll call you. And don’t worry! Okay? I miss you.”
Beeeeep.

I have Immortal longings in me.
—William Shakespeare

L
ena thrust her portfolio at Annik. She was girding herself for a long wait, and suddenly feeling strangely impatient. But it wasn’t like that. Annik put down her pencil, put on her glasses, and began flipping through right away.

Not three minutes later she closed it and looked up.

“It doesn’t matter if you get the scholarship,” she said.

Lena cocked her head in confusion. “It matters to me,” she said.

“You will get it,” Annik said, almost dismissively. “Unless the committee guys are blind or completely idiotic.” She smiled at Lena. “The reason it doesn’t matter is because you’ve done it. Whatever happens after is a little of this or a little of that. A little car wreck. A little dread disease. A little heartbreak. Now you are an artist.”

Annik said the word
artist
like it was the best possible thing you could say of someone. Better than being a superhero or an immortal.

“Thank you. I think.”

“It’s not like it’s a gift I’m giving you. You did it yourself.”

“You helped.”

“I hope so. You’ve done more and better than I imagined.”

“I’m getting there. I’m really beginning to think so.”

“You are. I can see it. I can feel it.”

Lena smiled at the thought of all the seeing and feeling that went on in this room. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Annik said.

“I’ve been wondering for a long time. I feel like I should probably just ask.”

Annik nodded encouragingly, almost like she knew what Lena was going to say.

“Why are you in a wheelchair?”

Annik clapped her on the back in her Incredible Hulk way. “God, I thought you’d never ask me.”

Win was waiting outside her apartment building with the car running. Carmen had never imagined there would be a boy with whom she would want to go to Target to shop for school stuff. It was yet another project they had together, more light-hearted than some.

Carmen burst through the front door to collect her shopping list and her debit card. She’d forgotten to bring them when a bunch of them had met for breakfast—Tibby, Brian, Lena, Effie, and Win—at the Tastee Diner a couple of hours before.

Carmen slowed to a pause in the living room. She was struck by how different the apartment felt to her in these days since Win, since the baby. The walls felt closer in and yet the floor seemed slightly farther away. It was quiet. For once the air conditioners were mute. The tiniest hint of autumn blew in the open window. Maybe that was why the air felt new to her.

She was in a hurry; she had things to do. This apartment waited for her nonetheless. It always waited.

She knew that when she turned the corner of the hallway she would find her mother in her room with the baby. And there she was. She and baby Ryan were curled up in the bed.

They spent their mornings nursing and sleeping. Carmen often visited them in her free moments, kissing the baby’s fists and swaddling him like a burrito before he kicked his way out again. Now Christina was sleeping, and Ryan was starting to wriggle. Carmen put her hand on his miniature back, admiring the efforts of her small brother.

She felt so different about him than she had expected. He was hers, and she ached at his fragility and his temper and the shape of his ears, already just like hers. But she also respected that he was Christina and David’s.

She had expected, before he was born, that he would be part of her old world, vying for her space and all that she claimed. But he wasn’t. He belonged to the new world. They both did, together.

Bridget’s victory wasn’t so sweet. Well, except for her players. It was sweet for them. They strode around the camp like superheroes for the rest of the week, clucking and retelling the major points of the game (there weren’t many). She was happy for them. She had grown to love them.

She’d had a blessed, one-day return home to Bethesda, and seeing her friends made her feel like life made sense again. When she came back to camp, she hung out with Diana and slept and ate, building up her strength again. She knew she could withstand her injured heart, but it took work, and in some moments, a lot of faith.

She realized she wasn’t completely finished with Eric. She could keep her sadness to herself and wonder forever what had really happened. Two summers before, she had been mute. She had taken it all upon herself and let it churn and spoil inside of her. But she didn’t feel like doing that anymore.

She waited until the camp was mostly quiet and went searching for him in his cabin. It brought back memories of a certain other experience long ago, fetching him from his bed. That time she went in after him. This time she was prim as a pilgrim. She knocked politely and waited.

He came to the door and opened it. Did he look slightly afraid of her, or did she imagine that?

“Would you mind taking a walk with me?” she asked. She was going to say something to reassure him that she wouldn’t jump him or anything, but was that really necessary? Hadn’t she proven her good intentions? Hadn’t they earned her anything? Or could you never live something like that down? Could a girl ever really repair her reputation in the ways that counted?

He nodded. He disappeared for a few seconds and returned wearing a T-shirt and shoes along with his shorts.

They just walked for a while. She had her hair bunched up in an elastic. She wore a beat-up football jersey over the Pants. She’d tried wearing shoes for a week, but now she was back to bare feet. She’d decided she could accept a splinter every now and then as the cost of foot freedom.

Without thinking they wandered down toward the lake and ambled onto the dock. She sat down and he sat next to her. If they had a place, this was it.

The moon was full, and bright enough to make shadows of them on the quiet water. She liked their watery selves.

“I’m just going to talk for a while and you listen. Okay?” Why had she added the
okay
? She didn’t mean to ask him for permission.

He nodded.

“I may talk about stuff you don’t like,” she warned him.

He nodded again. He looked tired, she realized. Even in this frail light she could see the bluish half-circles under his eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a while.

“I thought we became friends this summer,” she said. “I didn’t know if it would be possible after what we did—I did—two summers ago, but then it happened. I was happy. I loved being your friend. I admit I may have had some other thoughts too, but they didn’t matter to me nearly as much as being your friend. I was happy to be close to you on any terms.” Bridget needed to be honest tonight. That was the reason she was here.

He looked down, fiddling with the worn leather watchband around his wrist.

“I wasn’t trying to be your girlfriend. I know you have one. I accept that. I didn’t want to get in the way of it. I am happy for you if you are happy with her. I’m not saying it wasn’t hard for me, but I meant it…I mean, I mean it. I wanted you to trust me.”

Still looking down, he appeared to nod.

“And we spent time together and we did stuff and we had fun. At least, I had fun. And I thought you had fun.” Her voice was getting a little wobbly, but she pushed ahead. “And then when I got sick you took care of me. You took care of me as nicely as anyone ever did in my life. Even if our whole lives pass and we don’t see each other or talk to each other again, I will never forget it.” She paused so that the tears wouldn’t drown her words. She wanted to keep them in her eyes if she possibly could.

“I trusted you. I thought you cared about me. Not like a girlfriend. I’m not talking about that. I trusted you to be my friend. And then you just disappeared. I couldn’t figure out what happened. I felt so close to you and then you were gone. You made me believe in you and then you let me down. Is that how it is with you? Do you let people get close just so you can disappoint them?” She brushed the tears out of her eyes before they could fall.

Eric was looking up now, his eyes serious and shiny like hers. “Bee.
No.
That’s not how it is with me.”

Her chin quivered, though she wished it would not. “Then how is it?”

He sat up a bit straighter. He studied his knuckles. He opened his hands and shut them again. “I’m just going to talk for a while, and you listen, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The reason I don’t like to talk about what happened two summers ago is because I hate myself for it. I’m not saying you didn’t do your part; you did. But I could have resisted. That would have been the right thing to do. But I didn’t because I wanted the same thing you wanted, and that was wrong. You think it was just you, but I wanted it just as much. You should know that.”

She could hardly move. She watched his face and listened.

“The reason I disappeared after you got sick is because I needed to go to New York and it couldn’t wait. I drove up there and saw Kaya because I needed to tell her that I couldn’t be with her anymore.”

Bridget sucked in a little breath.

He looked sad. “I thought I loved her. Two months ago, I told her I loved her. I couldn’t let that stand. It seemed wrong.”

Bridget wanted terribly to ask him questions, but she also wanted to do her fair share of being quiet. She pressed her lips shut.

He opened his hands and put them together like he was going to pray. “And the reason it was wrong is because I knew I couldn’t really love her if I felt something so much bigger for somebody else.”

Bridget was frozen. She was scared to think through what he meant in case he didn’t mean what she thought he meant.

“And the reason I’ve been mostly staying out of sight is because when I’m near you my thoughts don’t go straight. I need to get them straightened out before I do anything else stupid.”

Bridget grabbed a look at him. Hope was filling her chest even as she tried to push it back out.

“When I was in New York, all I wanted was to rush back to you. But what would that mean? That I dumped Kaya so I could be with you? That I was a guy who’d forget a girl he thought he loved in five hours or less?” He was shaking his head. “And anyway, I didn’t want you to feel responsible for breaking us up. I know you weren’t pulling for that. All summer you were selfless enough to respect the thing with Kaya, and I wasn’t. That sucks. I didn’t feel like I deserved to come running back to you. I felt ashamed.”

Bridget couldn’t follow all these thoughts at once. She couldn’t figure out which way they led.

“There is one thing I feel sure of, and I know it is right. All these days I keep coming back to this one thing. We spent that night together, me holding you, and I felt something stronger than I ever felt for anybody else, and stronger than I even thought it was possible to feel. It blew me away. On theory alone, that made me know I couldn’t be with Kaya anymore.”

He shook his head again. He looked sort of disgusted with himself, but tempted to laugh too. “I’ve been wanting to be rational, to believe my decision about Kaya is theoretical and not just driven by my insane, out-of-my-head attraction for you.”

“Is it…,” she asked breathlessly, “…theoretical?”

He looked at her face very closely. “Not at all.”

You guys!

6-½ days! Ahhhhhhh! Yahhhhhhhh! Wahhhhhhhh!

Carma

The letter came to Lena postmarked from Providence, Rhode Island, at almost the last moment it could have before the end-of-the-summer beach trip. Lena’s heart throbbed as she opened it, but she knew it wouldn’t determine her fate, even if the answer was no.

Because Annik was right. She was an artist. She would find her way no matter who said what. Her fate didn’t belong to anyone else anymore.