Nothing Like You (10 page)

“They can do without me for one day. Besides, you’re much more interesting.” She brought a forkful of salad to her mouth. I quickly looked around the room, scanning the place for Paul. He had class this block, I’d never seen him at Wednesday lunches, but still, I had to ask, “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“Western Civ. He eats late lunch on Wednesday.” She took another bite, talking and chewing and somehow still seeming adorable. “What about
your
boyfriend?” she teased, meaning Nils. I knew this now.

“He’s
not
my boyfriend,” I said. “But, him too. Late lunch. Wednesdays I usually eat alone and read.”

She shoveled another bite of salad into her mouth. “Weekend plans?”

“What? No. Maybe I’ll see a movie with my dad.” I shrugged. “You?” I winced having to ask. I knew her weekend plans already.

She smiled sheepishly. “My birthday.”

I feigned surprise and took a bite of sandwich. “No way!”

“Mm. We’re going to Catalina.”

“Oh, wow—”

“Camping.”

“So great.”

“We haven’t been on a family trip in so long. And I get to bring Paul this time, so I’m psyched.”

“Bet you are,” I said, suddenly unable to meet her eye. I checked the clock on the wall. I looked at my bagged lunch, at her salad, down at my hands. I changed the subject. “Your family’s big?” I asked.

She sunk back in her chair. “Not really. Me, Mom, step-dad. My brother.”

“He’s older? Your brother?”

“Technically, yes. He’s nineteen. But I’m the older one, really. I’m the one who takes care of him, you know?” She polished off the last of her lunch. “Not the other way around.”

I nodded, remembering Paul’s words: Her brother was sick. I wondered what that meant, then said, “You really like lettuce, huh?”

She glanced down at her empty plate. “I like lettuce,” she said, her shoulders shaking with laughter. “I really do.”

Nils and I
were poking around Goodwill, drinking milk-shakes out of tall paper cups.

“So, you’ll be happy to know I’m gonna end it.”

“End what?” I tugged a sequined dress off a rack packed with evening wear. “You think I could pull this off?”

“Where are you gonna wear that? To prom?”

“I’m not going to prom.”

“Of course you’re not.”

I stuck the dress back on the rack. Nils ran his hand down the arm of a men’s suit jacket that was hanging on the wall, displayed. “Did you hear what I said?”

“About the dress?”

“About me ending things. With Nora.”

I stopped walking and turned around to face him. “You’re gonna break up with her?”

“I’m bored.”

“Does she know you’re gonna break up with her?”

“She’s got to see it coming. She can’t possibly be having fun anymore. We have nothing to say to each other.”

I turned back toward the rack of dresses and sipped my vanilla milkshake. “I feel bad for her.”

“What do you mean, you feel bad for her? You hate her. You think she’s dumb.”

“Sure, she’s dumb, but she has feelings. You know, clearly she’s really into you. I just feel bad.”
Poor Nora Bittenbender,
I thought, pulling at the skirt of a zebra-print dress, pondering Paul and me for a second or two. “So have you thought about how you’re gonna do it?”

“Do it?”

“You know, break it off.”

“Well, we’re not even really together.”

“So?”

“So I just figured I could slowly pull back—you know, that way no one really gets their feelings hurt.”

I shook my head, incensed. “That’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever heard. You can’t do that. What, so, that girl goes around wondering whether she’s still with you or not until she sees you screwing with some other poor, dumb girl—is that it? Just so you can spare yourself the awkwardness
of having a fifteen-minute conversation where you say to her, ‘I’m sorry you’re sweet but this just isn’t going to work out’??? What’s wrong with you?” I spun on my heels and beelined for the display case at the front of the store.

Nils followed. “Hey! Hey, Crazy? You’re acting insane.” He grabbed me by my arm. “I’ll break up with her, okay? Face-to-face. The whole ‘pulling back’ thing was just an idea.”

I softened. I looked at him.

“What’s with you? Are you okay? Why do you care so much about this all of a sudden?”

I shrugged. “I’m trying to be more compassionate, okay? I felt bad for her that day in the car when we just left her standing alone in her driveway.”

Nils took a long sip from his drink. “You stand alone in your driveway all the time.” He slipped an arm around my waist and drew me toward him. “Hey so, Paul Bennett?”

My insides went cold. “What about him?” I asked. I’d stopped laughing.
Does he know something? How could he possibly know something?
I squirmed free and hurried toward the front of the store.

Nils followed. “You know those glasses he wears? Those aviators?”

I was at the jewelry display now, fondling a string of faux pearls. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess, yeah.”

“He kept those things on all through Russell’s lecture today. Who does that? Seriously. Who keeps their sunglasses on indoors? In
class
?”

“I dunno,” I said quickly, nervously, trying on the fake pearls, then hanging them back on their hook. I pointed toward the display case, eager to change subjects. “See that necklace?”

“Which one?”

I touched the glass. “The one with green pendant.”

“I see it, yeah.”

“I think it would look great on me, don’t you?”

We were both bent down now, looking at the necklace. Nils bumped his body against mine and I swayed to one side. “Sure I do. Green is your color.”

I rolled out my hand. “Lend me ten bucks, moneybags? I spent the last of my cash on our milkshakes.”

Nils pulled a twenty out of his pocket and placed it in my open palm. “You’re the best,” I said, cupping his cheek with one hand. “Excuse me,” I called, flagging down the Goodwill store clerk with a wave of Nils’s crisp twenty-dollar bill. “Can I see something in the display case?”

Nils lifted the lid off his cup, downing the remains of his shake. I watched him sideways, bracing myself for more Paul talk.

“What?” he asked, feeling my glare.

“Nothing,” I countered, relieved. Then I turned back to the clerk, who was now hovering over the display case. I pointed at my necklace, exhaling.

In eighth grade
I found all Mom’s old photo albums stashed away in the hall closet by the bathroom. I’d been bored that day and leafing through her secret collection of historical novels—a tall pile of paperback books devoted to Henry VIII and all his sexy wives,
Catherine of Aragon, Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn
, buxom ladies in corsets she kept stacked in the back of the closet next to the shoe rack. I’d been skimming a book on Jane Seymour, jumping from chapter to chapter in search of sex scenes (I did this biweekly), when I noticed something new: next to her stack of paperback wives were three or four puffy maroon photo albums I’d never seen before. I picked one up, cracked the spine, and there, staring back at me, were photos of my mother with some dude I didn’t recognize. He was hairy. He had a beard and wild
hair and in every picture he was wearing the same pair of destroyed, bleached jeans.

“Who is this?” I asked. We were standing in the kitchen. Mom was eating grapes out of plastic carton in front of the fridge.

“Where’d you find that? My god,
me
, babe, that’s me.”

“No, I know that’s you. I meant the guy. The hairy guy, who is he?”

“Oh.” She popped another grape in her mouth. “That’s Michael. My college
boyfriend
.” She leaned into me, poking me in the ribs. I hated the word “boyfriend.” “He’s married now and lives in Calabasas.” Mom stopped to think for a second or two before shoving the grapes back into the fridge and shutting the door.

“Can I borrow this?”

“Yeah, sure. Why?”

“I just want to look,” I said, pressing my hand against the puffy cover, then racing down the hall to my bedroom.

Mom and Michael. So gorgeous. I loved their old clothes, tan skin, and slim bodies. I ran my hands across each page, fondling the edges of the yellowing clear plastic sheathing that lay over each collage of photos. I adored Michael: his hair, his jeans, the way he
gazed
at my mother in each photograph. They looked so happy together.

“So, okay. I don’t get it.”

This was later. We were out on the deck, in the sun,
drinking sparkling cider out of champagne flutes. Mine had a tiny umbrella hanging off the lip of my glass. I pushed it to one side, then took a sip of my drink. “Why’d you and Michael break up?”

Mom squirted a dollop of coconut-scented sunscreen into her palm and motioned for me to move closer. “What do you mean,
why
? I met your dad.” Then, “Here, come’ere, let me do your back.”

I scooched closer, positioning myself so she could smear cream across my back. “But, why? Didn’t you love Michael? He really looked like he loved you.”

“We were young, babe. We just … broke up. You know?”

“But you looked so happy with Michael.”

“Aren’t you glad Daddy and I got married?”

“Yes, of course, but I don’t understand why things didn’t work out with you and Michael.”

She twisted her long hair into a knot and smiled at me with her mouth shut. “We both just … I don’t know, babe, we both just loved other people more.”

“This is it, you know.”

Nils and I were on our backs in The Shack.

“What is?” he asked.

We were lying side by side, fully clothed—jeans and sneakers—the two of us tucked in tight, cozy in our fleece-lined cocoons.

“
This
. No more nights in The Shack after this. It’s over.”

Every now and then, when Jeff had okayed it, we’d have sleepovers. Gross food, sleeping bags, bad music, Scrabble.

“We have till the end of summer, Hols.”

I stuck my hand into a bag of Doritos and delicately bit the corner off a chip. “Yeah but, that’s, like, two seconds away. And then we’re done. You’re gonna move to, like, Colonial Williamsburg or some nonsense and I’ll still be here.”

Nils laughed. “Rhode Island.
Maybe
New York.”

“Whatever.” I licked nacho cheese dust off my fingertips and flipped onto my side. “Are we still gonna talk? Once you’re gone?”

“Holly, yes.” Nils was on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

He turned his head so we were face-to-face. “That better?”

“Much.” I slipped another chip from the bag. We stared at each other for a minute.

“You still have that
thing
going on, Hols?” He turned back to the ceiling. “Whatever it was you couldn’t talk about before?”

I sucked in some breath. “Sort of.”

“How’s that going?” he asked, cracking his knuckles.

I curled my knees to my chest and slipped off my sneakers. “Pretty shitty.”

Nils faced me. “How so?”

I shook my head. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him how I wasn’t a virgin anymore and how it wasn’t just that I’d had sex
one time
but I’d had sex multiple times—hundreds, it seemed like. And how in the beginning it had hurt so bad I could have screamed but that Paul was so amazingly sweet he’d made up for any real pain I’d felt. And how now that time had passed and sex seemed suddenly easy, I’d somehow managed to make up
for any physical pain with barrelfuls of emotional pain that seemed directly proportionate to the amount of pleasure I took in the actual act. I suspected I was being punished. Possibly by my mother. Most definitely by god.

“You haven’t, like, brought whoever it is
here
, have you?”

“What? No. Never. We’ve already talked about this.” I sat up and leaned forward, running a finger over Mom’s CDs, all stacked nicely on the shelf Jeff had built. “What do you want to listen to?”

“Anything. You choose.”

I pulled a Leonard Cohen CD off the shelf and slipped it into the stereo. I hit play.

Nils went on. “Do you really like this person?”

I thought about it. “I do.”

“Would
I
like this person?”