How to Love (11 page)

Or, you know, traveling the world with some girl who was into that kind of thing.

Whatever.

“So,” I said, affecting a carefully honed poker face and glancing at Cade out of the corner of my eye. “Where’s he going to live?”

Cade shrugged. “With some friends in Dania, I think. There’s a bunch of them living in some split-level off the highway. Roger was all pissed off about that, too, because apparently you can, like, smell the meth cooking all up and down the street.”

“Sounds very attractive.” I slipped my shoes off, put my bare feet up on the dash. “Did he say why he’s not going?”

“I dunno. He’s pretty screwed up, I guess.” Here my brother hesitated, glancing at me sort of nervously. We didn’t talk very much about Allie in my house. It felt like everyone was a little bit afraid of what I might do if they brought her up—go off like an improvised explosive, maybe, glass and shrapnel everywhere you looked. Three months in the ground and it was almost like she’d never existed in the first place, like maybe she’d only ever been my imaginary friend. “Because of everything that happened.”

“Right.” I swallowed the sudden thickness in my throat. “Well,” I said brightly, “State is filled with screwups. He’d have fit right in.”

*

One thing Sawyer definitely
wasn’t
doing was showing up for his shifts at the restaurant, which is why I was so surprised when I came in to work the dinner shift one Friday
in September and found him mixing a mojito at the bar. “Hey,” he said, grabbing a rag and wiping a spill from the glossy surface, barely looking up. “Your dad said to come find him when you got in.”

“Do you still
work
here?” I blurted, my backpack slipping from my shoulder. I was used to not seeing him by this point, used to the notion that we were never going to talk about anything: that I was going to spend the next twelve months in a sinkhole of guilt and confusion and sadness, and then I was going to leave. For a second I thought of that night in the parking lot, the taste of chocolate ice cream and the feeling of his fingers on my neck.

You kissed me
, I thought as I looked at him.
You kissed me and then Allie died.
For a second it felt like she was sitting at the bar in front of me, sharp chin cradled in one skinny hand—both of us watching Sawyer just like we used to, back when watching Sawyer never felt like something that hurt.

Now he tilted his head, lips barely quirking. “It’s nice to see you, too,” he told me, snapping me back to the present. Just like that, Allie was gone.

“That’s not what I meant.” I blushed. “It’s just … you know. Been a while.”

“I guess so.” He rattled the shaker a couple of times, poured its contents over ice and added a couple of mint leaves for garnish. Sawyer had been tending the bar at Antonia’s practically since puberty; he could have mixed drinks in his sleep. “You miss me?”

“No,” I said immediately. I glanced around, skittish—it was early yet, three or four people nursing drinks at the bar.
The Best of Ella Fitzgerald
pumped in through the speakers, afternoon music. “I don’t know.”

I picked up my bag again, ready to go find my father, but Sawyer wasn’t finished. “I saw you the other day,” he told me. “In your car, by the flea market.”

I blinked. “What were you doing at the flea market?”

“I wasn’t
at
the flea ma—I had band practice,” he said, as if perusing antiques and collectibles was any more ridiculous than the rest of the James Dean/James Franco crap he’d been doing. “Our drummer lives over near there.”

“How do you play piano with a broken hand?” I asked him, and Sawyer grinned wryly.

“It’s not broken anymore, princess.” He nodded for me to sit down on an empty stool and, once I did, slid some pretzels down in my direction. I glanced at the clock above the bar—I had a couple of minutes before I needed to punch in.

“Is that what you’ve been doing instead of coming to work?” I asked, cautious. “Playing with your band?”

“You mean as opposed to pursuing higher education?”

I shrugged. “As opposed to … whatever.”

“I guess,” Sawyer said. “I don’t know. We play at the Prime Meridian sometimes.” He raised his eyebrows like a dare. “You should come.”

The Prime Meridian was a seedy little club off the highway in Dania, Bud Light and bouncers who didn’t bother to card. People got stabbed at the Prime Meridian. “Why don’t you ever play here?” I asked, without comment.

Sawyer snorted like that was hilarious. “My father would love that, I’m sure.”

“Why?” I shot back. “Do you suck that bad?”

“Hey, now.” He laughed again. “We’re freaking awesome, Serena.”

“Well,” I said, fidgeting. “I’m sure you are.”

A guy at the end of the bar ordered a scotch and soda; Sawyer stood up and reached for a bottle on the top shelf, shirt riding up his rib cage to reveal a small tattoo winding above the waistband of his jeans, a curling green infinity that I recognized from my calc book. “Did that hurt?” I asked as he scooped ice into a rocks glass.

“Did what hurt?”

I gestured vaguely. “On your back.”

“Oh. Nah.” Sawyer handed the guy his drink and leaned over the bar like he was going to tell me a secret. I smelled polished wood and limes. “I’m really manly.”

“Right,” I said, leaning in a little bit myself without meaning to. “Obviously.”

He tapped the bar twice, like a rhythm, and straightened up. “What about you, princess?” he asked me, in a voice like maybe he was kidding and maybe he wasn’t. “You got tattoos nobody knows about?”

I was opening my mouth to answer when my father came through the swinging doors at the far end of the restaurant. He stopped when he caught us at the bar. “Reena,” he said sharply—and I think he was more surprised than anything else, but still we’d never talked about what I’d been doing with Sawyer that night at the hospital, and one look at his face said he didn’t like what he saw. “You know I don’t want you sitting up there when we have customers. Come on.”

“Sorry,” I said, scrambling down from the barstool. My skin felt tight and hot. I didn’t look at Sawyer as I headed back to the office, two minutes late to punch in.

“It’s not a date,” I promise Soledad the next morning, when she asks for the particulars of my playground trip with Sawyer and Hannah. She’s sitting at the table drinking her favorite chai latte from an old Northwestern mug she ordered a million years ago, her tawny skin smooth and makeup-free. I really, really hate that mug. “He just wants to spend a little time with Hannah, so I said he could.” I tickle Hannah’s feet in her high chair, and she giggles. “Kiss, please,” I demand, then wait for her to plant one on me before I turn back to Sol. “I actually think it’s very adult behavior on my part.”

Soledad eyes me over her latte like she thinks perhaps
the lady doth protest too much. “I hear you and Hannah have a very busy social calendar,” is all she says.

“Oh, you’re hilarious.” I scowl.

Now it’s three thirty and 89 degrees out, and Sawyer and I are pushing Hannah in the baby swings on the playground outside the elementary school, asphalt warm and sticky under our feet. My car is still at the mechanic’s and Sawyer picked me up at the house, just like he used to; Count Basie was on the stereo and I had to concentrate hard on looking out the window, on not breaking to smithereens right there in the front seat. I don’t remember why I agreed to this. It didn’t even seem like a good idea at the time.

“So what made you change your mind?” he wants to know now. He’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead, and I’m shocked to realize that he looks not like a rock star or a runaway boyfriend, but like a dad. He’s got another Slurpee and he brought me one, too, Coke-flavored and freezing, sweating pleasantly in my hand.

I raise my eyebrows, make him work. “About?”

“I don’t know,” he says, taking over as I step away from the swing set. We’ve been trading back-and-forth for nearly half an hour, steady like a metronome. Hannah could swing for days, chubby baby legs kicking happily; she figured out clapping a few months ago, and every once in a while she smacks her hands together with some kind of secret baby glee. “This. Me.”

I shake my head. “I haven’t changed my mind about you.”

Sawyer snorts. “Ouch.”

“Sawyer—” I break off, huffing a little. “I’m trying, you know?”

“I know,” he says.

We push in silence, patient. The sun glares. My lungs ache like they’re full of dust, dry and barren. “What was the best place you visited?” I ask finally, not so much because I want to know—it’s almost safer not to, I think—but because I can’t imagine what else to ask him and the quiet shreds my nerves. There’s a map of the United States stenciled in bright paint on the blacktop. I wonder if small things like that will ever stop making me sad about everything I missed out on. “What was your favorite?”

Sawyer glances at me once, like he’s surprised, and then thinks a moment. “Nashville,” he decides eventually. “You would really like Nashville.”

I hum a little, noncommittal. “Would I.”

“Yeah, Reena,” he tells me. “I think you would.”

“Out,” Hannah says, quite clearly, and Sawyer grins.

“Out?” he repeats.

“Out!”

“Okay, then. Out it is.” He lifts her from the swing and sets her on the ground; she toddles happily toward the sandbox, quick and unsteady. “My mom says it’s been good for her,” he tells me. “Hannah, I mean, having all her
grandparents around, and you, and—” He smiles, a little shyly. “She says she’s really smart.”

Well, that gets my attention. “Your mom said that?” I ask, disbelieving—Hannah’s smart all right, but if it has anything to do with the keen interest shown by her grandparents, then I’m the Cardinal of Rome. “Seriously?”

“Uh, yeah.” Sawyer looks suddenly uncomfortable, like he thinks he’s possibly misstepped—it’s not an expression I remember from back when we were together, him so sure of himself all the time. “Why, is that not … ?”

It boggles me a little, though not as much as you’d think. Lydia’s probably pulling out every stop she can think of to get Sawyer to stick around this time, and if that means convincing him that everybody gets along great around these parts, that we’re all some kind of modern, blended family—well, then, so be it. Still, for some reason I don’t have it in me to give her away, not explicitly: It feels like a lot of work for nothing, on top of which it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that there’s some small part of me hoping it will work and he’ll stay.

I shrug. “No, she’s definitely something,” I say, not bothering to qualify which
she
I might be referring to or what that something might possibly be. I nod at Hannah, who’s calling my name from the edge of the sandbox. “Here I come, babycakes!”

Sawyer looks at me like he’s not totally buying what I’m selling; he doesn’t push me on it, though, like maybe
we’ve got some tacit agreement to play nice with each other on this hot, sunny afternoon. “So, hey,” he says instead, as we follow Hannah on a scenic tour of the playground, sun bleaching white on the back of her neck. She squats down to grab a handful of sand and almost loses her balance, and I reach out a steadying hand. “Are you still writing?”

I laugh before I can stop it, a low angry cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West. I try not to feel bitter. It doesn’t always work. “No,” I tell him. “No, not really.”

Sawyer frowns. “That’s too bad.”

“It’s fine,” I say, hoping he’ll drop it, but:

“Why’d you stop?”

“Because.” I shrug and dig some sunscreen out of my bag for the baby. It’s possible this isn’t even the real answer, but at the moment it’s the best I can do. “You can’t be a travel writer if you’ve never gone anywhere.”

Sawyer takes some time to absorb that. With the hat, it’s kind of hard to see his face. “Fair enough,” he says after a minute, and he doesn’t ask me any questions after that. Instead he looks at the swing set, at the baseball diamond, at Hannah. He squats down in the sand and digs in.

*

We get home and my father is fixing himself a snack in the kitchen, leftover chicken and rice from the other night, skinless and low-fat like Soledad always makes for him. The radio croons, the public jazz station out of Miami
that he likes. “Hi,” I say, putting Hannah in her chair and pushing her sweat-dampened hair off her face. I collect a few stray Cheerios from this morning, toss them into the sink.

My father nods at me, impassive. His cholesterol and blood pressure medications are lined up along the counter. In the last year or so he’s put on weight.

“We were at the park,” I tell him.

“So I heard.” He nods again.

“With Sawyer,” I continue.

“So I heard.” Mother of God, he nods a third time.

Oh, come
off
it
, I almost snap. Instead I take a deep breath, steadying. “All right,” I say, surrendering. With the possible exception of Soledad, we’re none of us emoters in my family. Still, my father can out-silence anybody, even me. “Can we just … address the fact that this is happening?”

“What’s that?”

That makes me mad. “You know what,” I say, an edge in my voice I can’t totally file down. “Him being here. Any of it.”

My father sighs. “Reena, I don’t really see that there’s anything to talk about. You know how I feel. You make your own choices. Do what you want.” This morning’s paper sits on the table, and he opens it to the international news. “There’s food,” he says, without looking up.

“Okay,” I say finally, and open the refrigerator. “Just … okay.”

Not so long ago, in my art class we read about the Renaissance and how for a long time afterward it was almost impossible for Italian artists to make anything. All that history there already, they figured. What was the point?

“I think you’re sticky,” my father was telling my brother as I came out of the kitchen one windy Saturday night at the restaurant, Homecoming weekend of my third and, with any luck, final year of high school. There was a dance I could have gone to. I picked up an extra shift instead. It was after midnight and Antonia’s was empty, my work shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor.