The Infinite Moment of Us (13 page)

She shoved him. He grinned and put his arm around her

shoulders, and she scooted closer.

“Two more,” she said.

“Give me a second. I haven’t traveled that much, you

know.”

“I haven’t either,” she said. She’d gone on a couple of

trips with her parents over the course of various spring

breaks and summer vacations—Florida, to check out

Disney World; Colorado, to go skiing; and South Caro-

lina, which was where she and her parents went to the

beach—but that was it. She’d applied for her passport at

the beginning of the month, though. It felt like a good, if

scary, step.

“All right, how about Santa Barbara, because it’s on the

coast,” he said. He played with the hairs at the nape of her

neck. “I’ve heard the ocean is pretty awesome.”

“Ah. I’ve heard that, too. I’ve only swum in the Atlantic,

but I’m sure the Pacific Ocean is nice.”

“And for my last place . . . Singapore.”

This surprised her, and she liked it.

“Why Singapore?”

“Because it’s in Asia. It’s an entirely different continent,

an entirely different culture. Singapore is the crossroads of

the East, right?”

“Is it?”

“I think it would be cool.” He leaned over and brushed

her lips with his. “And you? Where do you want to go?”

Back into your arms, she thought. She tried to focus.

“Um . . . Paris.”

“Why?”

“I guess because of the movie
An American in Paris
.” She felt sad for a moment, thinking of how she’d watched that

movie with her parents. She’d watched so many movies

with her parents. Often on Saturday nights, when Tessa was

out on a date, Wren had eaten popcorn with her mom and

dad, and they’d taken turns choosing which classic film to

introduce her to.

She wasn’t with her parents now. She turned toward

Charlie. “It’s good. Have you seen it?”

“I haven’t. I’d like to.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Where else?”

“Um . . . Guatemala.”

“Right. Okay, how come Guatemala?”

She thought about the question deliberately and was

surprised by what floated into her mind. “Sarah Shields.”

“Who’s Sarah Shields?”

“Wow. I haven’t thought of her for ages. She was a neigh-

bor of ours when I was little. She always wore long skirts,

down to her ankles, and kept her hair in a bun. I think she

was super religious?”

She shifted her body. “But her husband—he was a big

guy with a baby face—he always, like, barked at her. ‘Why

hasn’t the car been washed?’ ‘Why haven’t you done the

laundry?’ Stuff like that.”

“Sounds like a jerk.”

“Yeah, I didn’t like him. I thought Sarah was great,

though. She talked to me whenever she saw me, and she

always smiled, and she gave me cookies whenever she

baked a batch, although they weren’t all that good, because

she put flaxseed in them.”

Charlie traced the line of her neck. “Flaxseed?”

She laughed. “It’s weird what your brain stores away.”

“What does she have to do with Guatemala?”

Her laughter trickled off. “Um . . . one day I came home

from school, and my mom told me Sarah was gone. She’d

moved to Guatemala to do mission work.”

I guess she got out
, Wren’s mom had said, and it must have meant something to Wren, for her to have remembered it

all these years later.

“So are you going to visit her when you’re there?” Char-

lie asked.

“Visit who?”

“Sarah. In Guatemala.”

“Oh. I doubt it.”

Charlie rubbed his eyebrow. Wren wondered what else

about her own life she wasn’t aware of.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Well, Paris and Guatemala—

that’s two places. You get to name three more.”

“That’s all for now,” Wren said. “There’s tons of places

I want to go, but for now, that’s enough.” She bit her lip.

“Will you kiss me?”

He took her chin and guided her mouth toward his.

On Monday night, at 11:58, Charlie sent Wren a text that

said,
I miss you. Is that weird?

They’d talked and texted during the day, but they hadn’t

gotten to see each other, and Wren missed him, too.

Not weird!
Wren typed back.
No more long days at Chris’s shop!

Agreed,
Charlie texted.
Can I call you tmorrw?

tmorrw?
Wren typed, smiling at his typo.

*Tomorrow. Sorry, crap phone. Can I?

Absolutely
,
Wren typed back.

Good. Are your parents awake?

???
she typed.

You might turn your ringer off, that’s all,
he texted.

Her phone rang. Oh. Ha. It was tomorrow already.

She hit accept and brought her phone to her ear.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said. “Did I wake you?”

“Yes, because I was asleep. That wasn’t me just texting

you. It was my doppelgänger.”

“Your doppelgänger is pretty cute.”

She drew her knees to her chest and pressed the phone

to her ear. She was wearing a thin T-shirt and the soft cot-

ton shorts she slept in. She was sitting on her bed, with

her comforter half-turned down and her pillow propped

beneath her. A sock monkey sat beside her, a sweet little

sock monkey with bunny rabbit ears. Sometimes she still

held it while she slept.

Her bunny rabbit sock monkey sat beside her, and her

parents were right down the hall, and Charlie Parker was

talking to her from his house. She asked about his day, and

as she listened to his reply, she thought about how much

she liked his voice. It was low and gentle, and he articulated his words in a deliberate way. He said
At-lan-ta
with both
t
s enunciated, for example. Most people, Wren included, said it more like
Atlannuh
.

She wondered what his room was like. She wondered

what he was wearing. She wondered if he thought about

her, and all the ins and outs of her existence, as much as

she thought about him.

“So, yeah, it felt good to get it all done,” he said, wrap-

ping up his story about an order he’d worked on. “What

about you? You had that thing with Tessa, right?”

He meant the mom-and-daughters luncheon she’d

gone to.

“Totally fine, totally unexciting,” she said. “They served

chicken salad. It had too much mayonnaise.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes. Alas. Oh, and my dad . . .” She broke off, not sure

she wanted to follow up on that thought.

“Your dad doesn’t like chicken salad, either?”

“No, he does. I think. I was going to tell you something

else completely . . . but never mind.”

“Why never mind? Does it have to do with your parents

and Guatemala?”

Wren had told him about her conversation with them

after graduation, when she broke the news about Project

Unity. She was touched that he grasped how much it mat-

tered.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” she said. She rested her chin on

her knees. “My dad gave me a guilt trip about the car he

and my mom gave me, that’s all. I don’t know. It had to do

with Guatemala, but it didn’t have to do with Guatemala. I

guess it made me a little sad. But it’s no big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal if you felt sad. What happened?”

Tears welled in her eyes. He was just being nice, but

how nice that he was nice!

Oh, Charlie, she thought. Her body softened. She

turned her head and rested her cheek on her knees.

“First of all, they gave me a
car
,” Wren said. “I have nothing to complain about, right? I’m so, so, so, so, so

thankful . . . mainly. And I only say ‘mainly’ because I don’t actually need a car. But whatever. Maybe I just feel guilty?”

“What happened?”

“Um, this afternoon I did a grocery store run for my

mom, and I drove my car, and my dad made a comment

about how he was glad I was getting
some
use out of it since I wouldn’t be using it this fall. By ‘some use,’ he meant not

enough. Meaning, why did he buy it in the first place.”

She sighed. “But that’s all that happened, just that one

passive-aggressive remark to make sure I knew what a bad

daughter I am. So seriously, it isn’t that big of a deal.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “Sounds like he let you down.”

Wren was startled. She’d expected him to accept her

dismissal of the whole thing. “What do you mean?”

“There’s no way you’re a bad daughter. I know you, and

that’s impossible.”

She gripped her phone.
Did
he know her? She hoped so.

And she didn’t think she was a bad daughter, either. Not

truly.

“As for your dad, it sounds like he’s struggling with let-

ting you go,” Charlie went on. “It’s sounds to me like . . .”

He paused. “Um, I don’t want to overstep.”

“You’re not,” Wren said.

“Will you tell me if I do?”

“Yeah, absolutely, but I want to hear what you’re think-

ing.”

“It sounds to me like you want him to support your

choices.”

“I do.”

“And you feel bad for not choosing the path that would

make him happy, but you want him to want
you
to be happy.”

“I do. Yes!”

“Instead, he’s saying he wouldn’t have gotten you a car if

he’d known you weren’t going to go to college next year.”

“He didn’t actually say that, but yeah. And not just col-

lege. Emory. And I guess it’s more like he’s
confused
about why he got me a car, since I’m not holding up my end of

the bargain.”

“Did you have a bargain?”

“N-n-nooo, not about what would happen after high

school. He assumed he knew what would happen, maybe?

I think we all did. I just changed my mind.”

“Which you’re allowed to do,” Charlie said.

“Huh.”

“He’s your dad,” Charlie said in his measured way. “It

would be great if he could say, ‘Okay, this is what you want,

so I’m here for you. I want to support you in whatever way

I can.’”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” Wren said. She shifted onto her

side and propped her weight on her forearm. She ran her

finger along a line of stitching on her bedspread. “Now I’m

the one who doesn’t want to overstep, but . . . do you have

a relationship or whatever with your dad? Your real dad?”

“My biological dad? No.”

“Biological. Sorry.”

“He took off before I was born.”

“Oh.” She felt out of her element. Charlie had said to

her, just now,
Hey, you’re a good person. I care about what you’re
going through
. He hadn’t used those words, but she wanted him to know she felt the same way.

“What about your mom?” she asked tentatively. “Your

biological mom. Do you ever see her?”

“She’s an addict. She gave up visitation rights a long time

ago.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks, but you don’t need to be.” His tone wasn’t

sharp, exactly, but there was an edge to it.

Wren twisted a lock of her hair. On the other end of the

line, Charlie breathed out.

“I was six the last time I saw her,” he said. “The family I

was with—not Chris and Pamela—took me to her every

so often. They’d tell me to get in the car, and we’d go to

McDonald’s, or a park, or sometimes this weird room in

the basement of a church. They’d say, ‘You’re going to see

your mom,’ and I’d get excited, because I was little.”

“And because she’s your mom,” Wren said.

“Mmm,” he said noncommittally. “Half the time, she

didn’t show up. I guess I must have cried, because that cou-

ple—I know they got mad.”

Wren didn’t know what to say.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “I shouldn’t have told you that, huh?

Wren, shit. I’m sorry.”

“Charlie, please,” she said. “I just complained about my

father, who bought me a car. You just told me about . . .”

She pressed her lips together. “Please. Charlie.”

“I didn’t mean to mess things up,” he said, low and fast.

“I don’t know why I even—”

“Because I asked, and so you told me, and . . . thank

you.”

“For what?”

A lump formed in her throat. “For trusting me.”

He fell silent. She rolled onto her stomach, bending her

knees and pressing the toes of one foot into the sole of the

other.

“You’re welcome,” he finally said. He sounded embar-

rassed, and Wren wanted to wrap her arms around him

and hold him.

They spoke at the same time.

Wren said, “Do you want to . . . ?”

Charlie said, “Is it all right if we change the subject?”

“Whatever you want,” Wren said, although the question

she’d started to ask was,
Do you want to talk about it?

Apparently not, and that was his choice. She meant it

when she said thank you, though. She felt different now

than she’d felt twenty minutes ago. She felt honored that

Charlie had shared the story about his mom with her, even

though it was sad.

“So,” he said. “Chicken salad. Not a fan?”

She attempted to giggle. “Not a fan.”

“Is it the mayonnaise?”

“Yep. I hate mayonnaise. My mom doesn’t understand

that, but I do. I like mustard, but only honey mustard or

spicy mustard. Not yellow mustard.”

“So you don’t have a strong opinion about it,” Charlie