Real Live Boyfriends (8 page)

At that juncture, a shout of “Gas!” could be heard from the deck. The guys had come back and were going to refil the boat.

“You should call me,” Gideon said, standing up to leave. “When you know for sure.”

“For sure, what?”

“For sure you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“What if I do?” I asked. “I mean, I am pretty sure I do.”

“Then don’t call me.” He was standing in our doorway, silhouetted in the light. “But call me.”

Humiliation at Snappy Dragon!

a video clip:

Meghan sits in the window seat of her bedroom.

The Tiffany blue wall behind her is decorated with photographs and mementos. Her silky curls are up on top of her head and she’s wearing one of Finn’s soccer T-shirts.

Ruby: (behind the camera) What’s your
definition of love?

Meghan: I didn’t know you were going to
ask hard questions
.

Roo: This is a serious documentary
.

Meghan: (twisting her hair with her fingers)
Okay. Love is … Um. Love is this feeling.

It’s a big feeling. It’s like listening to music,
you know, like a ballad or
even religious
music—because it fills you up and you
can’t think about anything but the other
person and it all seems like a dream. Finn
took me out in a canoe the other day, and
we had a picnic and watched the sunset.

That’s like love in action
.

Roo: Isn’t that love in the movies?

Meghan: What do you mean?

Roo: Isn’t real love something different?

Meghan: I don’t think so. I think the movies
are expressing the way love feels, the
beauty of it
.

Roo: Sunsets and picnics. Really?

Meghan: Don’t be cynical. I’ve been in love
twice. I think I know how it feels
.

Roo: It doesn’t feel that way to me
.

Meghan: Doesn’t it?

Roo: No
.

Meghan: Are you sure it’s love, then?

Hutch was going away. He was spending the first half of senior year on an exchange program in Paris, and I got the idea to have a goodbye party, partly to cheer up my dad and partly to be nice to Hutch. There weren’t many people to invite—just me, Noel, Meghan and my parents—but I thought it was a fine excuse for cake, and we could get him travel-type presents, like a French guidebook or a fanny pack.

Hutch in a fanny pack would be very amusing.

Anyway, he was leaving in late August, the day after Noel was supposed to come back from New York, so the party had to happen the night of Noel’s return. I decided we’d all go to Judy Fu’s Snappy Dragon, our favorite Chinese place, and then to Simply Desserts, where they have the most unbelievable white chocolate cake. I invited Hutch and Meghan, told my parents and sent Noel this e-mail:

7 pm, day you get back

Judy Fu’s, a goodbye thing for Hutch
.

We can pick you up in the Honda if you
need
.

Let me know if you can make it
.

Love
,

Roo

Doctor Z is always saying: Think what you want out of a situation, and then try to get it. And I wanted Noel to come out with us the moment he got back.

I wanted to sit next to him at Snappy Dragon and twine my leg around his under the table.

I wanted to give him a ride so I’d get to drive him home after dinner, alone.

I wanted to kiss him in the car outside his house for so long my lips felt swol en, drinking him in after so many weeks apart.

So the e-mail was meant to get me all those things, but I was trying to be subtle about it.

And later, I would wonder over and over what would have happened if I hadn’t tried to be subtle. If I had been bold and true. If I’d conquered the weirdness I felt because he hadn’t called, and just said: I want to see you more than anything in the world. I’ll die if you don’t come see me Sunday night. Come be with me, come be with me, come be with me. Noel.

But I didn’t. Say that.

And after I sent my subtle e-mail, I thought: He won’t come.

I can’t assume he wants to come.

No, no. Stop thinking that.

He does want to come.

He will
want
to come.

He’s my real live boyfriend.

But he didn’t reply.

The night of Noel’s return, Hutch, Meghan and I drove to Snappy Dragon in Meghan’s Jeep, leaving my parents to take the Honda.

“Are we supposed to pick up Noel?” Meghan asked, pushing a CD into the car stereo and pulling out of Hutch’s driveway.

I was sitting in the back and I could see Hutch wince in profile as Beyoncé came through the speakers.

Hutch and Meghan are friends only of the school variety. They don’t hang out unless I’m there to be the link, and Meghan spends a lot of time with Finn and his soccer buddies—a social group in which Hutch would be woefully out of place.

Hutch shrugged. “Haven’t talked to him.”

“I haven’t either,” I said. Meghan knew this already.

She asked because she was hoping Hutch would have.

Hutch turned and looked at me, some hurt in his eyes. “I thought you said he was coming.”

“I said he
probably
was. I completely invited him.”

“Let’s call. Do you have his number?”

But Meghan had already found it in her cell.

“DuBoise, are you home?” she asked when Noel answered.

“Don’t talk and drive,” said Hutch. “Give it to me.” But she didn’t hand it over. “It’s Meghan, you doof,” she said to Noel. “I’m in the car with Roo and Hutch.

Do you need a ride?”

Hutch grabbed the phone. “Dude. Welcome back.

How was New York?”

I leaned back in my seat and stared out the window, blinking away tears.

Noel was here.

He was here in Seattle and he’d picked up his phone for Meghan when he hadn’t picked up for me.

“I’m leaving tomorrow, dude,” Hutch was saying.

“No more Tate till December.”

Silence. Hutch listening.

“Nah, not even Thanksgiving. I thought Ruby explained it all.”

Silence again.

“Well, you should check your e-mail. We’re going to Snappy Dragon and then some dessert place with white chocolate cake.”

Pause.

“I don’t like white chocolate either, but Ruby says trust her.”

Hutch shook his head as Noel was talking. Then he turned and rolled his eyes at me.

“Whatever, dude. I’ll be back in four months. Nah, it’s fine.”

He hung up.

“Lame!” Meghan said.

“He’s jet-lagged,” said Hutch. “And he forgot about it. And his parents want him home. He said to tell you he’s sorry, Ruby.”

He wasn’t coming.

He was back in Seattle and he hadn’t called and he wasn’t coming.

I mean, I kind of knew he wasn’t.

But until then, I had been able to hope he was.

I’m a vegetarian, so I ate asparagus in black bean sauce and vegetable pot stickers. Hutch, Meghan and Dad shared mu shu pork and sliced cod in Szechuan sauce, and my mother abandoned her raw food diet because she likes the Snappy smoked duck so much.

It wasn’t a very good celebration. Everything tasted like straw because of the choking feeling at the back of my throat. I was trying not to sob and my father was staring morosely into his plate of rice, occasionally saying things like: “My mother used to make asparagus on holidays.”

“My mother liked orzo better than rice.”

“My mother went to China once.”

“My mother used to bleach our tablecloth in the sink.”

Mom kept trying to get Dad to change the subject and tell Hutch about how they’d backpacked through Europe before Dad insisted on settling down and building his dream houseboat. “We slept on the trains, John,” she told Hutch as he unwrapped a Lonely Planet guide to Paris. “We’d shove our wall ets down our shirts so no one could steal them. I didn’t shower for days. It was wonderful.”

Hutch smiled at her in the way teenagers smile at their friends’ parents. “I’m staying with a host family, actually. I’m registered for school there.”

“Now I shower almost every day,” said my mother.

“But it’s really not necessary. In Europe it’s totally normal to bathe only once a week.”

“Don’t bathe once a week, Mom,” I said.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “I wouldn’t smell. We just worry about smelling, but really we don’t smell.”

“What about the smelly people?” I said. “There are definitely people who are smelly.”

“You might get a rash,” said Meghan. “Like a sweat rash.”

“No, I won’t,” said Mom, taking a sip of tea. “I think it’ll be very good for my skin, actually. I have a few dry patches that I’m sure are from overbathing.”

“Please, don’t let your new thing be refusing to bathe,” I said. “Any new thing but that.”

“What do you mean my ‘new thing’?” my mother snapped.

I knew I was starting an argument.

I knew I was, and I knew I shouldn’t.

But I was so shattered about Noel not coming, all the badness had to come out one way or another.

“You know. First it was juice fasting, then craniosacral

therapy,

then

Rolfing,

then

the

macrobiotic diet, then raw food. And now that you’re eating
smoked duck
, you’ll obviously need some new
thing
to fill the void left when you abandon the raw food way of life.”

“Ruby!” My mother straightened up in anger just as Meghan kicked me under the table.

But I kept talking. “So I’m just asking you not to take up no bathing as your thing. I think that’s reasonable.

It’s not a pathway to health and it’s not chic and European and it’s not anything except gross. You can put lotion on your dry patches and pick a different new thing, no loss.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.”

“Why not? Dad and I have suffered enough through all your fads. I don’t think we should have to live with someone who doesn’t bathe.”

“You!” My mother stood up so quickly her chair fell over and hit the floor with a bang. She shoved her pointer finger in my face and leaned down so her angry mouth was in front of my eyes. “You are a disrespectful, unsympathetic, shallow brat who has no idea what it’s like to be searching for something.

Searching for some kind of
truth
, some kind of
path
to be on in this life. All you care about is whether you get dessert and whether you can borrow the car and whether some boy is going to call you.”

“I want truth,” I said, because her words stung. “I want a path. I just don’t want to talk to
you
about them.”

“What? Why not?”

“You’re a crap listener.”

“I am a wonderful listener! Ask anyone. Ask Dad.

Ask Juana.”

“You’re not!” I cried. “You’re such a bad listener you have to pay Doctor Z to listen to me instead. How many parents have to do that?”

Meghan kicked me under the table again, hard this time.

“I am working extra hours copyediting to pay for that doctor,” said my mother. “Do
not
give me attitude about that.” She picked up a piece of tea-smoked duck with her fingers and shoved it into her mouth, talking while she chewed. “And do not give me attitude about my choices, either. I want to eat smoked duck now? I eat smoked duck. It is not any of your business to be commenting or criticizing what I choose to eat or how I choose to live.”