Page 58 of You Say It First

Colby smirked a little. “I know stuff.”

“Clearly,” she said. “What else do you know?”

“What, like, about construction?” He ducked his head and tucked his hands back into his pockets, suddenly shy. “I don’t know. A reasonable amount, I guess.”

“Tell me?”

Colby looked at her curiously, but in the end he nodded and did it, keeping up a running monologue as they walked along the darkened sidewalk—about peg-and-beam framing and how to properly organize a workshop and machines that could lift whole houses clear off the ground—until finally Meg lifted a hand to stop him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking one last deep, shuddering breath and wiping her face with the back of one hand. She sat down on the steps of a tidy little brownstone, smoothing her dress down over her knees. “This is embarrassing.”

Colby shook his head. “Hey, what are you apologizing to me for?” he asked, sitting down beside her and running a hand down her backbone.

“I don’t know.” Meg took a deep breath, exhaling in a shaky sigh. It was still unfamiliar for him to touch her this way. “I’m just sad, is all.”

“You ever tell your dad that?”

Right away, Meg shook her head. “What am I supposed to say?” she asked, pulling back to look at him. “Congratulations on being happier than you’ve ever been in your life, Dad—sorry you had to throw the rest of us away to get here?” The words were out before she’d even known she was thinking them; she felt her eyes widen and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, between two fingers. “That’s awful. I didn’t mean that.”

Colby shrugged. “You can mean it,” he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “If that’s what you mean.”

Meg sighed, tilting her head back so her hair pooled on the step behind her, staring up at the dark canopy of new leaves overhead. “I think maybe it’s what I mean, yeah.”

“Then why not tell him?” Colby asked. “If somebody’s pissing you off, you ought to let them know.”

Meg laughed; she couldn’t help it. The way he said it made it sound so easy, not at all like the horrifying, humiliating spectacle she knew it would be if she were actually to do it. “Is this how I sound to you when I tell you that you should get involved with the electoral process?” she asked.

“What, like I have no idea what I’m talking about and should probably mind my own business?” Colby grinned. “Maybe.”

Meg’s mouth dropped open. “Rude!”

“I’m kidding. Mostly.” He leaned over a little, bumping their shoulders together. He smelled like Dial soap and medicated face wash and drugstore deodorant, boy smells. “Anyway, it feels like it’s probably a little late for either one of us to be minding our own business, right?”

“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “It probably is.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Colby looked over at her in the darkness. “Say you did talk to your dad, right? Say you went back into that fancy restaurant right now and told him how you’re feeling. Or say you told your friend Emily the whole, unvarnished truth. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I don’t know,” Meg said immediately, though in fact she knew exactly what the worst might look like. She gazed out at the empty street for a moment. Took a deep breath before she spoke again. “So, every year right before Christmas, my school does a potluck.”

“Okay,” Colby said, leaning back on his elbows. “I’m listening.”

“It’s this big thing. Everybody in the whole school comes and brings their families, from kindergarten all the way on up, and you all cook or bake something, and they set it up on these tables in the gym and the jazz band plays and there’s all these games—and whatever, I know you probably think it sounds unbearably corny, but—”

“I don’t think anything,” Colby said. “Keep going.”

Meg sighed. “So last year, winter of junior year, my parents were still together. And yeah, they fought a lot, I guess, but they’ve always fought a lot. Arguing was just, like, what they did for recreation. It didn’t mean anything; it wasn’t scary. At least, not to me, it wasn’t.” She shook her head. “Anyway, the three of us have been going to this potluck together every year since I was five, but this time my dad had to work late doing something for Hal, so the plan was for my mom and me to go, and he was going to meet us when he got done. And my mom was in this terrible mood about the whole thing. I didn’t know this then, but she thought he was having an affair—which he was, I’m pretty sure, with Lisa—on top of which she’s always hated having to socialize with other parents.”

“I mean, fair,” Colby joked with a gentle grin. “Other people’s parents are awful.”

“I mean, sure. Yes.” Meg tucked her hair behind her ears. “So whatever, she and I are at the thing together, but mostly I was actually with my friends, and Mason and I had just started dating, and we were having fun, and I guess I just didn’t notice how much she was drinking.”

Just like that, Colby wasn’t smiling anymore. “Uh-oh.”

Meg nodded. “Yeah.” She’d never told anyone this story before; it occurred to her all at once that she hadn’t even thought about it in ages, had in fact kind of forced herself to forget it, and that telling Colby now was a kind of remembering she suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to do. Still, she made herself keep going. “Anyway, by the time I finally realized what was going on, she was totally off her ass. And I was trying to keep anybody from noticing, and trying to convince her that we should go home, when my dad showed up.” She tugged at her bottom lip. “And I was super relieved to see him—one, because he’s my dad, and two, because I thought he was going to handle it.”

“But he didn’t?”

Meg shook her head. “He and my mom wound up immediately getting into this giant screaming fight.”

---