Page 57 of You Say It First

Colby blinked. It was strange to hear himself introduced that way; he had to admit he’d thought there was a chance she’d try to fudge it, which made him feel kind of like a turd. “Nice to meet you,” he managed to say.

“Nice to meet you, Colby.” Meg’s mom offered a manicured hand for him to shake. She didn’t look like an unpredictable alcoholic, with her can of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and an off-white short-sleeved sweater he thought was probably made of something expensive. Then again, he guessed his dad hadn’t looked like... someone who would do what he did, and everyone knew how that had turned out.

They made small talk for a while, about his drive and the summer weather and the fact that she’d once dated a guy who’d gone to law school at Ohio State. “Where are you headed in the fall, Colby?” she asked.

Meg winced. “Mom,” she said, before he could answer, “Colby works, remember?”

“Oh,” her mom said vaguely, “that’s right.” She hesitated, a pause that lasted a second too long. “What time is your father’s thing?” she asked, glancing at the clock above the window—which, Colby couldn’t help notice, didn’t actually seem to be running. “Can’t be late for a rehearsal dinner.”

“It’s soon,” Meg said, ignoring her mom’s acrid tone. “We should go get ready.”

Colby smiled politely and held a hand up before following Meg back the way they’d come and up the creaking stairs to the second floor. “Sorry,” she muttered as they rounded the corner. “I told her you weren’t in school, but I guess she was a little bit more in the bag than I thought.”

“It’s cool,” Colby said, though in truth he was already dreading having that identical exchange with her dad, and her friends, and probably her freaking mailman. This is Colby! He hauls appliances off trucks for a living but still manages to bathe himself and use tools, like a gorilla who knows sign language! “No worries.”

Meg nodded. “Watch the runner,” she said absently, pointing to the place at the top of the stairs where the fraying carpet was peeling up. “I don’t want you to break your neck if you get up to pee in the night.”

She brought him into a guest room at the end of the long hallway, which held a double bed and an antique dresser along with about a million unopened boxes from Amazon and an expensive-looking exercise bike with dry-cleaning bags draped over the handlebars. “Sorry there’s so much crap in here,” Meg said as Colby looked around for a clear surface to set his bag on; finding none, he dropped it at the foot of the bed with a quiet thump.

“Don’t worry about it,” Colby said, wanting to reassure her and not sure exactly how to do it. “I’m getting the full experience, that’s all.”

“That... does not sound great,” Meg said with a grimace. For a moment, she looked like she was going to add something else, then decided against it. “Okay.” She tucked her hands back into her pockets. “Um, I’ll let you get settled, I guess.”

“Okay.” Colby nodded, watching as she turned to leave. “Meg,” he blurted, grabbing her wrist and tugging her hand out of her pocket, pulling her back and pressing his mouth against hers. It wasn’t particularly artful, which didn’t keep all the blood in Colby’s body from immediately rushing straight to his dick. “There,” he said finally, pulling back and gazing at her, her eyes gone a full shade darker than he thought of them as being. “Now I’m settled.”

Meg laughed, loud and ringing. “Welcome to Philly,” she said, and kissed him again.

Twenty-Seven

Meg

Her dad and Lisa’s rehearsal dinner was that night, at an Italian place downtown with a view of the river and a gluten-free pasta option for Lisa’s kids. Her dad had been a little weird when she’d said she wanted to bring someone—after all, Emily and Mason were already coming to the actual wedding—but to her surprise, Lisa had jumped in. “Of course you can invite a friend, Meg,” she’d said, tucking her hand into Meg’s dad’s and squeezing pointedly. “The more the merrier.”

Now here Colby was, slipping into her real life with surprisingly little fanfare, pulling her chair out when they’d gotten to the restaurant and teaching Brent how to make a football out of the paper napkin ring. He called her dad sir, which Mason had never done and which Meg could tell her dad was totally liking. And, yeah, he had a vaguely bemused expression on his face the whole time, like he was an actor who’d wandered onto the wrong soundstage by mistake and was waiting for someone to notice, but overall it seemed like it was going okay.

They were just finishing their spaghetti when her dad stood up at the head of the table, looking shy and almost boyish in his jacket and tie—Meg thought he was dressing more like a prep school bro since he’d been with Lisa, though she couldn’t tell if she was imagining it or not. “I wanted to propose a toast,” he said, lifting his wineglass. “To my beautiful bride, Lisa, the most incredible woman I’ve ever known.” He reached out and took her hand with his free one, gazing at her with a kind of adoration so personal and private Meg nearly looked away. “I’ve never in my entire life been this happy.”

Meg froze with her fingers wrapped around her glass of ice water, feeling—stupidly, she told herself—like someone had tipped its contents directly down the front of her dress. She thought of the blizzard that had hit Pennsylvania the winter she was in seventh grade, when their house had lost power for two full days and they’d sat in the living room wrapped in blankets playing Scrabble in front of the fire and listening to the news on an ancient battery-powered radio her dad had dug out of the garage. She thought of the trip they’d all taken to France when she was ten, her mom and dad kissing goofily on the banks of the Seine while Meg played photographer with the first cell phone she’d ever had. She thought of the day she was born, which both her parents had always made a big show of saying was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to either one of them.

But here, in this restaurant with his new wife and his new family, was the happiest her dad had ever been.

Meg forced herself to wait until he was finished speaking, gamely clinking glasses with her uncle Jim and both of Lisa’s kids. The last thing she wanted to do was make a scene. Once she was sure nobody would notice, she pushed out her chair and slipped away from the table, heading for the ladies’ room before doubling back at an arrangement of flowers almost as tall as she was and escaping out onto the street in front of the restaurant.

It was humid out here, the air thick and clammy, like summer had already arrived. Graduation was in less than three weeks. She thought of her mom back at the house, probably watching TV with a wineglass on the end table beside her—God, how was Meg ever going to leave her all by herself in their falling-down house? She’d seen the horrified look on Colby’s face this afternoon when he’d walked in, the dirt and clutter suddenly glaring. She’d spent the last few months—the last few years—trying so hard to convince everyone around her that everything was fine that she’d almost convinced herself in the process.

But it wasn’t.

She was trying to pull herself together when the door to the restaurant opened behind her; there was Colby with his hands in the pockets of his too-big khakis, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled halfway up his arms. “Waiting for the bus?” he asked with a smile, and that was when Meg started to cry.

Colby’s eyes widened. “Shoot,” he said, crossing the sidewalk in two big steps and wrapping his arms around her a little awkwardly, like he wasn’t entirely sure of the protocol here. “Meg, hey, hey, hey. What’s wrong?” Then, when she sobbed harder instead of answering: “Okay. Easy.” He glanced back at the restaurant, seeming to intuit her wordless panic. “You want to walk?”

Meg nodded gratefully. Colby took her hand, and they set off down the busy sidewalk, turning once and then again until finally they found a quiet, tree-lined side street, all bumpy cobblestones and brightly painted brick apartment buildings with decorative iron stars the size of dinner plates affixed to their fronts. “Did you know those are actually holding the houses up?” Colby asked, apropos of nothing.

Meg sniffled. “Huh?” she managed to say.

“The stars,” he explained, lifting his chin at a row of them. “People think they’re just there to look nice, but back a million years ago, masons used to use lime mortar on buildings like this, which doesn’t hold up in the long term. So eventually, the front of the building starts to pull away from the rest of it. The stars are actually just decorative bolts to keep the whole face of the thing from crumbling down on some unsuspecting pedestrian.”

Meg shook her head, momentarily surprised out of her meltdown. “How do you know that?” she asked.

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