Page 55 of You Say It First

“It’s fine,” Meg assured her, though she kind of couldn’t imagine him and Colby meeting each other. Then again, she couldn’t imagine Colby and Em meeting each other, either. “It would be weird if he wasn’t there, honestly.”

“Okay,” Emily said. “Thank you. And also, I know I haven’t really said it, but, like, thank you for being so cool about me dating him. I mean, not that I would have expected you not to be, but I know it’s awkward and probably super weird for you, even if you do like somebody else now.” She bumped Meg’s knee with hers, gently. “I’m happy for you, PS. I know I give you a hard time about Colby, but I’m glad you found somebody you feel that way about. I was worried about you for a little while there.”

Meg felt the back of her neck get warm, chafing a little at the idea that she’d ever been the kind of person anyone—even Emily—had to worry about. “I was okay,” she promised, “but I’m glad I found him, too. And I’m happy for you and Mason, honestly. You guys are a good fit.”

“I’m so glad he’s going to be at Colgate in the fall,” Emily said, licking the back of her spoon thoughtfully. “He was making all that noise about Berkeley, but I just want us all to stick together, you know? I don’t want us to be one of those friend groups where everything gets weird and fractured after graduation.”

Well, there were probably better ways to go about that than dating my ex-boyfriend, Meg thought, unable to stop herself. Still, she pushed the thought aside and set her sundae down on the step beside her, knowing in her gut that this was the moment to talk to Emily about next year. “Em,” she started.

“Yeah?”

Meg hesitated, the words heavy as pennies at the back of her mouth: I don’t want to go to Cornell in September. I don’t know if I want to go to college at all. I have a phone interview with the Annie Hernandez campaign on Tuesday. I’ve been lying to you for a really long time.

“Nothing,” she said finally—hating herself a little, wishing this were half as easy as delivering a passionate endorsement of the electoral process or telling some stranger that his joke made him sound like an ass. Meg knew politics weren’t 100 percent straightforward—she wasn’t that naïve, no matter what Colby might think—but they were easier to talk about than a lot of other things in her life, that was for sure. “I’m glad we’re friends again, that’s all.”

“Of course we’re friends, dummy,” Emily promised. “We’ll always be friends.”

Twenty-Six

Colby

The following week, Colby dug the one suit he owned out of the back of the closet, tried it on over his T-shirt, then stood in front of the mirror on the back of his closet door, staring at himself in consternation. The sleeves were too short. The pants showed his pale, hairy ankles. And every time he breathed, it felt like the seam on the back of the jacket was straining, like he was going to Hulk out of the whole thing altogether if he made one false move.

He guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised: he hadn’t even taken it out of the closet since Brooklyn Greer’s sweet sixteen, which had been a ridiculously fancy affair at a banquet hall involving a chocolate fountain and a mashed potato bar. He’d worn jeans and a hoodie to his dad’s funeral, because he’d been in the mood to be an asshole, and nobody had dared to give him a hard time either way. His mom had wanted him to try it on before graduation, only then Jordan and Micah had thought it would be hilarious if they all went naked under their graduation robes. And you know what? It had been hilarious. Jordan and Micah had been correct.

None of which changed the fact that there was no way he could wear this fucking getup to Meg’s dad’s wedding.

He was sitting on the side of his bed trying to figure out how much a new one would cost when his mom knocked on his bedroom door, easing it open before waiting for Colby to tell her to come in—one of his least favorite habits of hers, and another reason he wanted to move out as quickly as humanly possible. “I’m headed out,” she announced, then looked at him with great alarm. “Colby,” she said, like she was possibly concerned he hadn’t noticed, “that suit does not fit you.”

Colby flopped backward onto the mattress. “I know that,” he said to the ceiling. “Thanks.” Still, when he sat up again, something about the way she was gazing at him had him confessing: “I’m invited to a wedding.”

He watched half a dozen questions flicker across her lined, serious face—where? Who with? Do you have a girlfriend I don’t know about?—and if she’d asked any of them he probably would have shut down entirely, but in the end all she said was “Follow me.”

Colby got up and trailed her down the narrow hallway into the room she’d shared with his dad, his bare feet sinking into the carpet. He didn’t come in here a lot lately, but mostly it looked the same as it always had: the pink flowered wallpaper border along the ceiling, the heavy oak furniture they’d inherited from Grandma Moran. Photos of him and his brother as babies sat in silver frames on top of doilies on the dresser, along with a picture of his parents smushing cake into each other’s faces at their own wedding. Colby glanced away from that one, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Glanced back.

His mom dropped her purse on the neatly made bed, then opened the closet that had been his dad’s. “There’s a couple of them in here,” she explained, rummaging through the hangers. “They probably aren’t hip or anything, but they should get the job done.”

Colby nodded wordlessly. With the closet door open, the whole room smelled like his dad all of a sudden: bar soap and orange Tic Tacs and overstock cologne from Odd Lot, so strong that Colby felt a lump form immediately in his throat. In the year since his dad had died, the rest of the house had shifted to accommodate his absence, his slippers disappearing from the mudroom and his favorite mug migrating to the back of the cupboard and their subscription to Newsweek lapsing, like scar tissue thickening over an open wound. In here, though, it was like he was still alive. Just for a second, Colby would have sworn he was going to walk in any minute to change his clothes after work, to put on his Indians hoodie and get himself a Coors Light from the fridge. Colby didn’t know what had happened to that Indians hoodie, actually; suddenly, he was seized with a physical urge to rip through every drawer in the house until he found it.

“Here,” his mom said, the sound of her voice startling in the quiet room. When Colby turned to look at her, she was holding out a sober-looking gray suit. “Try this one.”

“Um.” Colby cleared his throat, blinked twice. “Sure.”

His mom turned her back to give him privacy while he changed into it, then turned around and looked at him skeptically. “I’d need to hem the pants,” she decided, reaching out to pluck at the waistband. “Maybe take it in a little, too, but that’s not hard. When do you need it?”

“This weekend,” he admitted with a grimace. “Saturday night.”

His mom nodded, those same unasked questions written all over her face. “You look like him, you know that?”

That surprised him; people always said that Matt looked like their father, but never Colby. “I do?”

“You do,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and pulling her purse into her lap like a cat she was thinking of petting. “You remind me of him, too. Not in a sad way; I don’t want you to think that. But sometimes when you’re fixing something around the house or I see you out in the yard with Tris in the morning. The way you hold your fork. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I’m being maudlin.”

I miss him, Colby wanted to tell her. “It’s okay,” he said instead. Then, before he even registered thinking it: “Can I ask you something kind of important?”

His mom’s pale eyes widened. “Of course, Colby,” she said, in this sort of overly confident voice like he should know he could—like they had the kind of relationship where they talked about personal or important things all the time, which they definitely didn’t. It would have made him laugh on a different day. “Anything.”

---