On the Island (23 page)

Chapter 56

—

T.J.

“I don’t have to wear a tie, do I?”

I had on a pair of khakis and a white button-down dress shirt. A navy blue sport coat lay across the bed. We were meeting Stefani and her husband, Rob, for dinner, and I was already more dressed up than I wanted to be.

“You probably should,” Anna said, walking into the bedroom.

“Do I have a tie?”

“I bought you one when Stefani told me where they wanted to go for dinner.” She reached into her closet and pulled it out, threading it through the collar of my shirt and tying it for me.

“I can’t remember the last time I wore one of these,” I said, pulling on the knot to loosen it a little. I had met Stefani and Rob the week before, when they invited us over to their place. I liked them. They were easy to talk to, so when Anna said they wanted us to go out to dinner with them, I said sure.

“I’ll be ready in a minute. I just have to decide what to wear.”

She stood in front of her closet in her bra and underwear, so I sprawled out on the bed and enjoyed the view.

“I thought you said thongs were uncomfortable.”

“They are. But I’m afraid it’s a necessary evil tonight.” Anna pulled a dress out of her closet. “This one?” she asked, holding a long, sleeveless black dress against her chest.

“That one’s nice.”

“What about this one?” The other dress was dark blue, short, with long sleeves and a low-cut front.

“That’s hot.”

“I think we have a winner then,” she said, putting it on. It clung to her. She stepped into a pair of high-heeled shoes.

I’d never seen her so dressed up before. She usually wore jeans—mostly Levi’s—and a T-shirt or sweater. Sometimes she wore skirts but nothing like this. Her boobs had gotten bigger now that she was closer to her normal weight, and the bra she wore pushed them up. What I could see between the deep V-neck of her dress made me want to see more.

Twisting her hair, she gathered it into a knot at the back of her neck and put on earrings, the same dangly kind I’d used for fishhooks on the island. She wore red lipstick. I stared at her mouth and wanted to kiss her.

“You look incredible.”

She smiled. “You think so?”

“Yes.” She looked classy. Beautiful. Like a woman who had her shit together.

“Let’s go,” she said.

I was younger than everyone in the restaurant by ten to twenty years. We were a few minutes early, so Anna and I followed Stefani and Rob into the dimly lit bar to wait for our table. More than one head turned when Anna walked by.

Stefani started talking to some guy. Rob and I were debating fighting our way through the crowd to get some drinks when a woman holding a stack of menus approached us.

“Your table is ready,” she said.

Stefani turned back to the guy she’d been talking to. He wore a suit, but he’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. He held a glass of something that looked like whiskey. He was there alone, and I wondered if he had come in after work.

“Why don’t you join us for dinner?” Stefani said to him. “Do you mind?” she asked us.

“That’s fine,” Anna said.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Sure.”

When we sat down, Stefani introduced him. “This is Spence. We worked on the same account last year.” She and Rob sat beside him while Anna and I sat across from them. I shook his hand, noticed his bloodshot eyes, and realized he was wasted.

Rob ordered two bottles of wine and the server poured everyone a glass after she made him go through the whole cork-sniffing, wine-swirling bullshit routine.

I took a drink of mine. It was red and so dry I struggled not to make a face.

Spence zeroed in on Anna right away. He watched her take a sip of her wine. His eyes drifted from her eyes to her mouth, then down to her chest.

“You look familiar,” he said.

She shook her head. “We’ve never met.”

This was what Anna hated about meeting new people. They would try to place her and eventually they’d remember her face from all the media coverage. Then the questions would start, first about the island and then about us.

Fortunately, he was drunk enough not to make the connection, and Anna seemed to relax. He might not have recognized her, but he wasn’t done with her either.

“Maybe we went out once.”

Anna lifted her glass and took another drink. “No.”

“Maybe we can go out sometime?”

“Hey,” I said sharply. “I’m sitting right here.”

Anna put her hand on my leg and pressed down. “It’s okay,” she whispered.

“Wait. She’s with you?” Spence asked. “I thought you were her younger brother or something.” He started laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Realization dawned on his face as he glanced from me to Anna. “Now I know who you are. I saw your pictures in the paper.” He snorted. “Well, that explains how you got her but not why she’s still with you.”

Rob glanced at Stefani and then said to Spence, “Knock it off.”

“Yes. I’m with him.” The way Anna said it, so confident, and the way she looked at him like he was a total dumbass made me feel better than the actual words.

Our server walked over. “I’m sorry,” she said to me. “I need to see your ID.”

I shrugged. “I’m underage. I don’t like the wine anyway. Go ahead and take it.”

She smiled, said sorry, and took my glass away. Spence couldn’t handle it.

“You’re not even twenty-one?” His barely contained laughter broke the silence at the table as everyone tried to act like what happened wasn’t totally humiliating for me.

We looked down at our menus. Anna and I still had trouble choosing something to eat in a restaurant. Too many choices.

“What are you getting?” I asked her.

“Steak. What about you?” She grabbed my hand, lacing her fingers through mine.

“I don’t know. Maybe pasta. You like ravioli, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll get that and we can share.”

Stefani tried to keep the conversation going. Our server came back and took our order. Spence stared at Anna’s chest and smirked, not even trying to hide it. I knew what he was thinking when he looked at her like that, and it took everything I had not to punch him.

When Spence got up to go to the bathroom Stefani said, “I’m sorry. I heard his wife left him, and I thought asking him to join us would be a nice thing to do.”

“It’s okay. Just ignore him,” Anna said. “I am.”

No one refilled Spence’s wineglass, and by the time we finished eating, he seemed a little more sober.

Our server offered dessert but no one wanted any. She told us she’d be back with the check.

“Stefani and I are going to the restroom,” Anna said. “We’ll wait for you by the door.”

Rob and I both tried to pick up the check and finally agreed to split it, each of us pulling out cash. Spence threw a handful of bills on the table. I shoved my wallet in my pocket and stood up.

Rob pushed his chair back, said good-bye to Spence without shaking his hand, and headed for the front of the restaurant.

Spence didn’t get up. “I’m sorry you aren’t old enough to drink with the grown-ups,” he said, slouching in his chair.

“I’m sorry you can’t touch my hot girlfriend. And I don’t really like wine anyway.”

I laughed at his expression and joined Anna, Stefani, and Rob by the front door.

“What’d you say to him?” Anna asked.

“I told him it was nice to meet him.”

“I’m sorry about tonight,” Anna said, when we got into the cab.

“It wasn’t your fault.” I put my arm around her.

Not being able to drink at the restaurant hadn’t bothered me, but the way Spence looked at Anna had. I knew she wasn’t interested in him, but I worried about the next guy. The one who wasn’t a drunk asshole. The one who had a college degree, liked wine, and didn’t mind wearing a tie. I worried that someday, maybe soon, it would matter to her that I wasn’t interested in any of those things.

And when I thought about her being with another guy, I couldn’t stand it.

I kissed her as soon as we were inside her apartment, and I wasn’t gentle about it, holding her face firmly in my hands and pressing my lips hard against hers. She wasn’t anyone’s to own—I knew that—but right then she was mine. When we reached the bedroom, I pulled the dress over her head. Her bra came off next and then I pushed her underwear down off her hips until they dropped on the floor. I yanked off my tie and got out of the rest of my clothes. Laying her down on the bed, I bent my head to the place Spence had stared at all night, sucking and leaving a mark that would take days to fade. I touched and kissed her until she was ready, and once I was inside her, I made myself go slow, the way she liked it. When she came she said my name, and I thought,
I’m the one who does that to her. I’m the one who makes her feel that way.

Afterward, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I took it back into the bedroom and clicked on the TV, keeping the volume low. Anna slept, the sheets tangled around her waist. Pulling the covers up, I tucked them gently around her shoulders with one hand and cracked my beer open with the other.

Chapter 57

—

Anna

In April, the spring rains stalled over Chicago for two days, keeping us inside.

T.J. flipped aimlessly through the channels. I lay on the couch with my feet in his lap, reading a book.

“Do you want to go to a movie?” he asked, turning off the TV.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you want to see?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just walk to the theater and choose one.”

I put on a jacket and we left the apartment, walking through the pouring rain while T.J. held an umbrella over our heads. He took my hand. I squeezed it and smiled when he squeezed it back.

T.J. wanted to see
Sin City
. We were standing in line to buy popcorn when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

We turned around. A tall guy in a baseball cap stood next to a petite girl wearing a pink hoodie, her hair up in a ponytail.

T.J. smiled. “Hey, Coop. What’s going on?”

“Just trying to find something to do until it stops raining.”

“Tell me about it. This is Anna,” T.J. said, draping an arm over my shoulders.

“Hi,” Coop said. “This is my girlfriend, Brooke.”

“Nice to meet you both,” I said.

“I keep forgetting you’re in town,” T.J. said.

“I’ll be stuck at community college forever if I don’t get my grades up.”

“Let’s hang out sometime,” T.J. said.

“My parents are going out of town next month. I’ll have a party. You guys should come.” Coop smiled at me, and I sensed the invitation was genuine.

“Yeah, that’d be cool,” T.J. said.

I glanced at Brooke while T.J. and Coop talked. She was staring at me, her mouth hanging open. To her, I probably seemed ancient.

Her unlined face and rosy skin looked radiant. She had no idea, the way I hadn’t when I was twenty, how beautiful young skin was. Though I had often worn T.J.’s baseball cap and my sunglasses on the island, there were times when I hadn’t. I thought of the years the sun had beat down on me, and I expected to wake up some morning and discover that my face had turned into leather while I slept. I spent more time than I was comfortable admitting trying to reverse the skin damage the island sun had inflicted, the counter of my bathroom crowded with all the lotions and creams the dermatologist had recommended. My skin appeared healthy, but there was no comparison between twenty and thirty-three. T.J. thought I was beautiful; he told me so. But what about five years from now? Ten?

We walked into the theater and found seats. T.J. put his popcorn between his legs and rested his hand on my thigh. I couldn’t concentrate on the movie. Images of T.J. and me drinking keg beer out of plastic cups in Coop’s living room while everyone gawked at me crowded my thoughts.

T.J. had done a great job fitting in with my friends. He’d endured Spence’s obnoxious behavior and being ID’d for wine he had no desire to drink in the first place. Wearing a tie wasn’t his thing, but he did it anyway. He’d carried on a conversation with Rob and Stefani, and he made it look effortless.

It was easier to age up, if you wanted to, by wearing nice clothes and emulating the behavior of people who were older. If I tried to fit in with T.J.’s twenty-something friends by dressing and acting like them, I’d look ridiculous.

The rain had ended by the time we left the theater. We followed the crowd and started walking. I stopped on the sidewalk.

“What’s wrong?” T.J. asked.

“I won’t always look like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m thirteen years older than you, and I’m getting older every day. I won’t always look like this.”

T.J. put his arms around my waist and pulled me close.

“I know that, Anna. But if you think I only care about what you look like, then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”

I walked alone down the aisle at Trader Joe’s carrying a basket full of whatever caught my eye, which so far had been two bottles of cabernet, some organic pasta, a jar of marinara, and some romaine lettuce, carrots, and bell peppers for a salad.

T.J. was out getting a haircut. We usually shopped for food together, partly because he insisted on paying for it, and partly because we were still in awe of grocery stores. The first time we went grocery shopping, after I moved into my apartment, we stood frozen in the middle of the store staring at all the food.

I went down another aisle and grabbed some beer for T.J., then found the ingredients to make him a chocolate pie. I was trying to decide what kind of bread to serve with dinner when I felt a tug on my jeans.

A little girl about four years old stood there with huge silent tears running down her face.

“Are you a mommy?” she asked.

I crouched down until I was at her eye level. “Well, no. Where’s your mommy?”

She held tight to a raggedy, pink blanket. “I don’t know. I can’t find her, and my mommy said if I ever got lost I should try to find another mommy, and she would help me.”

“Don’t worry. I can still help you. What’s your name?”

“Claire.”

“Okay, Claire,” I said. “Let’s go ask someone to make an announcement on the loudspeaker so your mom knows you’re safe.” She looked at me with tears swimming in her big brown eyes and slipped her tiny hand into mine.

We were walking toward the front of the store when a woman came running around the corner shouting Claire’s name. She held a basket in her hand. An infant slept in a carrier strapped to her chest.

“Claire! Oh God, there you are.” The woman ran toward us, dropped her basket, and scooped Claire up in her arms awkwardly, trying not to jostle the infant. The fear on her face dissolved as she squeezed Claire tight.

“Thank you for finding her,” she said. “I dropped her hand for a minute to reach for something and when I looked down, she was gone. I’m just so tired, because of the baby, and I’m not moving very fast right now.”

She was probably close to my age, give or take a year, and she did look tired, with faint circles under her eyes. I picked up her basket. “Are you ready to check out? Can I carry this for you?”

“Thank you. I would really appreciate that. I need more than two hands right now. You know how it is.”

I really didn’t.

We walked to the checkout and unloaded our baskets.

“Do you live around here?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Kids?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Thank you so much for your help.”

“You’re welcome.” I bent down. “Bye, Claire.”

“Bye.”

When I got home I put the groceries away, sat down on the couch, and had a good cry.