Page 73 of You Say It First

“Uh-oh.” Joanna’s lips twisted knowingly. “What’d you do?”

“I think it’s, like, more what I didn’t do?” Colby frowned, scrubbing a hand through his hair. It had felt important on the way over here to own up to what he’d done with Joanna, but now that they were face-to-face he didn’t know exactly what to say. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be vague.”

“Oh no?” Jo leaned over and nudged him with her shoulder, the vanilla-cupcake smell of her hitting his nose. “Don’t worry about it, Colby. It’s fine.”

Colby blinked. “It is?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug, running a freshly painted thumbnail along the plastic lip of her cup. “We’re friends, right? We’ve always been friends. And if the timing isn’t good for you, or whatever... I don’t know.” She smiled. “Life is long.”

“No, I know, but...” Colby broke off. He had the distinct impression he was getting off entirely too easily here. Shouldn’t she be pissed at him? After all, he’d objectively been kind of a dick about the whole thing. “I just mean—”

“I’m a big girl, Colby.” Jo smiled. “I knew what I was getting into with you. Like I said, we’re good.”

“I...” Colby searched her face for a moment, hunting for traces of insincerity and finding none. She meant it, he realized slowly. She was serious. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with how he’d acted—or, if she did, she was willing to let him get away with it. She didn’t expect anything else. It used to be he’d liked that about her—her willingness to meet him where he was at any given moment. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure he did. “I’m sorry anyway,” he said firmly. “I should have done a better job with you.”

“Maybe one day you will,” Jo said lightly, getting to her feet and brushing the seat of her skirt off. “In the meantime, Colby, you take care of yourself.”

Colby lifted his hand to say goodbye to her, sitting on the curb as her figure receded and waiting for the inevitable pang of regret. He was surprised to find it never came—and that instead he found himself thinking of Meg’s voice on the phone late at night, the way she drove him nuts and made him laugh and talked about the world like it was some old jewelry box she’d found at a curiosity shop, full of treasures just waiting for someone to blow the layer of dust off. He thought of what he’d said to Doug this morning: I was scared that the job would turn out to be a letdown, or, like, that I would be a letdown... or just that, like, the rug would get pulled out.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and gazed down at it for a moment. It felt heavy as a stone in his hand.

Thirty-Six

Meg

Meg borrowed a dress of her mom’s for graduation, a silky pale peach situation with a cinched waist that she remembered from when Hal used to play gigs at fancy historic theaters. “You look beautiful,” her mom said when she came down into the living room. “Actually, I take that back; you look fierce. Honestly, sweetheart, I am so, so proud of you.”

“I’m proud of you, too,” Meg said, and it was true. Her mom had gone from the hospital into a ten-day inpatient program in south Jersey; since she’d gotten back she’d been going to meetings every evening in the community room of a synagogue not far from their house. Two days ago, Meg had come home from school to find her standing at the kitchen island with a tube of cookie dough and a spoon. “It’s my turn to bring snacks,” she’d explained, looking a little sheepish.

“You want help?” Meg had asked, setting her backpack in the breakfast nook. She couldn’t remember her mom baking anything since she was a little kid.

Her mom had nodded. “I should have just bought something,” she’d said, digging an ancient cookie sheet out of a cupboard. “But I want them to like me. Is that pathetic?”

“I think it’s human,” Meg had said, and her mom had smiled in a way that made her look like a teenager, flicking the kitchen television to HGTV. In the end they’d eaten most of the cookie dough before they got it into the oven and had to run out to the store for another tube.

“Dad and Lisa are going to meet us at school so I can give them their tickets,” Meg said now, tucking the envelope into the outside pocket of her tote bag. “You guys don’t have to sit together, obviously, I just—” She broke off.

“It’s fine,” her mom said, squinting at the antique mirror hanging in the foyer and slicking on a coat of plummy lipstick. She looked different since she’d stopped drinking, Meg thought, even though it hadn’t been that long yet: her eyes were clear, and her face was less swollen. She’d started shuffling around the block in her walking cast every morning before she went to work, listening to the true-crime podcasts Meg had shown her how to download onto her phone. “I’ll behave, I promise.”

Meg grimaced. “No, I know you’ll behave. I’m not saying—”

“Meggie, sweetheart,” her mom said, turning away from the mirror before laying two gentle hands on Meg’s shoulders and squeezing. “I’m teasing. Today is about you, okay? You’ve done so much—at school, yeah, but also around here. Try to enjoy it.”

Meg nodded. She’d stayed at her dad and Lisa’s while her mom was away, helping Lisa cook plant-based dinners from some mail-order meal kit and running errands with her dad on the weekend. It had reminded Meg of when she was a little kid, kind of—the two of them going to the hardware store and the dry cleaners and the nursery, stopping for a dozen doughnuts on the way back. After school during the week, though, she’d driven home to her mom’s house and gotten to work: scooping her hair up into a messy knot and blasting Fleetwood Mac as loud as the sound system would go while she vacuumed the bedrooms and dusted the baseboards and scrubbed the inside of the refrigerator, opening all the windows to get the air moving around. She’d watched a YouTube video and figured out how to hang the art in the hallway; then, encouraged by her success, she’d gone ahead and painted the living room a fresh, clean white. She’d gone to the Philly farmers’ market with Lillian and Maja. She’d taken Lisa’s kids to an arcade.

She hadn’t talked to Colby at all.

She missed his laugh and his bitten cuticles and his dry sense of humor; she missed him more than she’d ever missed anyone before. And the worst part was how she’d been kind of right that night in the hotel room; he did lift neatly out of her life, as far as everyone else in it was concerned. Like maybe he’d been her imaginary friend. She’d thought about texting, about getting in her car and driving all the way to Ohio, but in the end she knew it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It had been fun for a while, but now it was over.

It was never going to work.

Meg swallowed hard and straightened up, turning and slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Come on,” she said, slipping her hand into her mom’s and squeezing. When she’d gotten back from the rehab place, they’d cleaned out all the closets and cabinets one by one. Meg knew they had a long way to go—when she’d driven to New Jersey for the family therapy session, her mom’s counselor had explained about the probability of relapse and maybe even more inpatient rehab, that addiction was a lifelong disease that could be managed but never cured. Still, in this house in this dress on this warm, sunny morning, it felt like they were making a start. “Let’s go.”

Two nights later, her coworkers threw her a little graduation party in the tiny conference room at WeCount, with paper cups of Trader Joe’s lemonade and a fistful of Mylar balloons Lillian had picked up from Party City. Maja had made lavender sopapillas. Rico played the sunscreen song on his phone.

“To the newest member of the Annie Hernandez campaign,” he said, offering a lemonade toast. “They’re not going to know what hit ’em.”

Meg grinned. It had been easier than she’d thought, telling her parents she was taking a year off from school to see what happened, that she’d rethink what she actually wanted and apply again. Meanwhile, in the days since she’d gotten the call about the internship, she’d found a roommate through the campaign and lined up interviews for some waitressing gigs to supplement her piddly stipend. She’d leave for Columbus at the end of the month. She didn’t think she’d ever been this terrified—and for the first time since she could remember, she was kind of thrilled by the idea of what came next.

---