Page 46 of The Space Between

When Jeanie looks at Steven, he’s frowning like he’s trying to understand. “You mean nothing has happened between you?”

“Of course not!” Jeanie says, sounding as outraged as she feels. “I would never. No way. I mean,feelingsomething for him is one thing, but acting on it is another. It’s just—why can’t I find someone who likes me? Someone who wants to be with me and no one else? And why is it that the only real feelings I have are for someone who isn’t and can never be mine?”

The boys are quiet for so long that Jeanie knows they’re treating her questions as rhetorical ones—which they are. But then Steven speaks up, clasping his hands together in his lap as he swings his legs out over the water.

“Maybe it’s easier to like guys you can’t have right now,” he says hesitantly. “Sometimes what we think we want isn’t actually what we do want. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Jeanie is just drunk enough that she doesn’t really see where he’s going with this. She shakes her head as the streaks of tears dry on her cheeks. “No.”

“Okay, what if what you’re supposed to want right now is a husband and kids? Everyone else does, and you probably feel some pressure to settle down, right?”

Jeanie tilts her head to one side; he’s not entirely wrong. “Go on.”

“But what if what you really want is to be an engineer? What if you don’t want the things that everyone expects you to want? I mean, maybe you do love this Bill guy—I’m sure he’s great. But he’s also a safe person to love, because you can’t have him right now. Or, if you can, it won’t be in the way you’re supposed to have him. So it’s easy to focus your attentions and your feelings like this. It’s safe. At least, relatively speaking. Are you getting what I’m saying now?”

Jeanie nods slowly; she is picking up on his message, and it’s absolutely worth considering. “I think so. And there are certainly parts that you’re right about: I love being an engineer. I don’t want to be alone, and I do want love, but I don’t know that I want to give up the things I’m passionate about in order to get that love. I think I want children at some point, but I don’t want them now, so it’s far easier to love a man who isn’t asking me for that than to love one whose expectation will be to move rapidly in that direction. You’re not wrong about any of that.”

“Steven is the emotional wizard of our group,” Dale says with a chuckle. “At school, whenever someone is going through something, he’s the one you want to listen and offer advice.”

Steven puts his palms together and closes his eyes, bowing his head slightly with a beatific smile on his face. “At your service,” he says jokingly.

“No, you’re really onto something here,” Jeanie says, pushing herself up to a standing position. She wobbles a bit and both boys reach up to steady her, jumping to their feet immediately in order to escort her back down the pier and to the restaurant, where Vicki will most likely be emerging soon.

“I appreciate you guys listening to me,” Jeanie says as she loops her arms through both boys’ elbows this time, letting them guide her back over the wooden planks. “I don’t know what I’d do without friends like you.” Her eyes fill with tears again and she realizes that she’s being unnecessarily sentimental with two young men who she’ll most likely never see again. But in that moment, shedoesappreciate them. Steven has crystallized so many of her thoughts and feelings in just a few statements, and she can’t thank him enough for his unvarnished opinions and wisdom.

“Everybody needs friends,” Dale says.

“I just—“ Jeanie is about to go on, but as she’s walking, her stomach clenches and a wave of nausea overtakes her. “Oh no,” she says, lurching towards the edge of the dock.

The boys are right behind her and they each grab an arm as she leans over the water and retches. Jeanie empties her stomach repeatedly and the hot bile mixes with tears as she chokes and splutters. When she’s done, Steven pulls a clean, white handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to her.

“You can keep it,” he says generously.

“Thanks.” Jeanie’s throat is raw from the acid in her stomach and she wipes her mouth with a shaking hand. She’s suddenlyfeeling almost entirely sober and wishes desperately that she could just blink her eyes and be in her own bed rather than on a dock at night in the middle of September with two college boys.

“Let’s get you back to Vicki,” Dale says, taking her arm again the way he might take his grandmother’s arm to help her cross a street. Jeanie can feel the pity radiating from both boys, but it doesn’t even offend her. In fact, it feels nice to have them looking after her when she’s messed everything up so badly.

“I’m sorry,” Jeanie says as she starts to cry. Her tears come out in little hiccups. “I’m so sorry that I ruined your night.”

“Nah,” Steven says, rubbing her back in slow circles as they walk at about half-pace. “Don’t even worry about it, Jeanie. You’re a nice girl.”

Jeanie starts to cry more at these words, because they hold so much meaning for her. Sheisa nice girl in the sense that she’s made all the right choices, and that she holds herself to a high standard. She loves her family, and she even loves Vicki, who has come to feel as much like an aunt to her as her own Aunt Penny. But she’snotnice because she’s been coveting another woman’s husband now for months. It’s time to remedy that, and as soon as she sobers up, she will.

She’s ready to put Bill Booker behind her and move on.

“You’re a nice girl, Jeanie,” Steven says again soothingly. “And you deserve all the good things that life has to offer.”

Dale walks along quietly on her other side, and when the two young man deliver Jeanie to Vicki, they do so without a word about Jeanie being drunk or her vomiting.

They all say their goodbyes at Vicki’s car in the lot and Jeanie climbs in, resting her head against the headrest.

Outside the car, in the parking lot, Steven and Dale wave at them before getting into their own car to head back to the house where they’re staying with a friend whose family lives in town. Jeanie is happy for them that they’re so young and carefree.

It must be nice to just live and to not worry about anything, which is kind of an unfair thing for her to think, because how is she to know whether Steven or Dale have any troubles of their own. They probably do—everyone does.

As she drifts off to sleep in her bed an hour later, Jeanie counts the hours in her head until her alarm will go off in the morning. She rolls over in her sheets, winding them around her body like a cocoon. If she falls asleep now, she’ll get five and a half hours of sleep before she needs to be up for work, at which point she’ll confront everything and put herself on a straight path forward.

No more begrudging anyone their happiness—even silently. No more envy of Carol and Leonard and their three kids; no worry that Angela is marrying too young or that her kid sister is showing her up by getting engaged so early; no daydreaming about Bill Booker in any way.

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