Page 37 of The Plus Ones

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“You are uniquely infuriating.”

“You are highly sensitive to my uniquely infuriating qualities.”

“We’re oil and water.”

He starts choking on his rum punch again.

Was it something I said?“You okay over there, sweetie?”

He gives me the thumbs-up and finally stops coughing. When he catches his breath, he says, “What we have is friction. Oil and water just glide right past each other.” He clenches his jaw for a second before continuing. “I’m more like a match that’s striking against your rough surface. Creating sparks. Producing a flame. Lighting you up.”

“Rubbing me the wrong way.”

“Just tell me how you like it, sweetie.” He winks. “I aim to please.”

Thank God the waitress comes over with our dinner, because it feels like someone spilled a little oil and water in my panties and I am done bantering with this guy. No good can come of this.

Keaton looks over his shoulder at Chase and Aimee and at Matt and Bernadette. They—and the rest of the diners in this restaurant—are in their own little happy couple bubbles. I watch him. The way he looks at them—it’s breaking my heart a little. He’s filled with longing. Not for them, although maybe it’s a little bit about that, but mostly for what they have. It takes me back to that moment with him on the deck, the night of the wedding.

But I can’t go back there.

Wecan’t go back there.

It was lovely, but ultimately all it did was create even more of a barrier between us. For me, anyway. For whatever reason.

“Are you going to call Tamara?” I blurt out. I don’t know why. I don’t really care one way or another, I just need to talk about something other than him rubbing me or how in love our friends are.

He slowly turns back to face me and then picks up his fork to poke at the chicken medallions. He considers the question before answering, which is not something I’m used to with Keaton. He’s more of a snappy comeback kind of guy. “No. I’m not going to call her… There’s a Russian word.Razbliuto.It’s the sentimental feeling you have about someone you once loved. Someone you don’t love anymore. That’s what I have for her. It’s not even her that I miss, really. It’s being in love. Having someone to love. Being allowed to love someone.”

I swallow hard and take a sip of water before clearing my throat and saying, “Yeah, I know the feeling.” I really do. But it’s not something I’m going to talk about with Keaton.

Every now and then, I realize why Chase has been best friends with this guy since college. It’s a mystery to me most of the time, and then all of a sudden, I get this glimpse into the fascinating world beneath the manscaped tailored privileged Upper East Side golden boy on the surface—the one I want to dropkick. I don’t want to explore that world, but I like knowing it’s there. For Chase and Aimee and Finn’s sake.

We’re mostly quiet for the rest of the meal, and it’s okay. It’s not awkward silence. It’s nice, even. It’s the kind of comfortable silence that fills a space between two people, maybe not with love or longing or even friendship but with something that doesn’t need a word or a label in any language.

8

Keaton

Drinks at the bar after dinner lasted all of thirty minutes before the married people claimed they needed to go back to their cottages to get a good night’s sleep. As if we aren’t all adults and friends who know perfectly well they’re going to be boning until the wee small hours of the morning. I think they just don’t want Roxy and me to feel awkward. Until dinner tonight, I didn’t think it was possible for Roxy Carter to feel awkward about anything, but she just couldn’t take the silence until I gave her an answer about Tamara.

“I was really hoping forsamar,” I say as Roxy and I watch the four of them meander, arm-in-arm, up the path to the cottages.

“Who’s Samar?” she asks, finishing her cocktail.

“It’s not a who, it’s a what. It’s an Arabic term. There’s no English equivalent. It means staying up late and having a good time with loved ones. The kind of conversations you only have with good friends at night. When you don’t even realize what time it is because you’re so happy to be relaxing and figuring out the meaning of life with the people who matter the most to you. And getting really drunk, usually.”

I watch her swallow the last of her second rum punch as she digests the meaning of the wordsamar,and I know it’s what she wanted too. It’s what we’ve been missing. It’s why we’re here. A warm mist obscures the ice blue of her eyes for one brief second, and then it vanishes like a mirage. She obviously does not want to experiencesamarwith me. “What are you—a linguist? And don’t say you’re a very cunning linguist, because I’m afraid if I roll my eyes one more time today they’ll stay that way.”

“I actually minored in linguistics at Wharton.”

She snorts, very lady-like. “A sentence only ever uttered by men who wear loafers with no socks.”

“Did you just say the word ‘uttered’ out loud? You’re so pretentious.”

She can’t help but grin at that callback. “You’re right. I meant ‘spewed.’”

“Anyway, I had a linguistics professor who’d write an untranslatable word on the chalkboard at the beginning of every class. I started keeping a separate notebook with those words and their meanings in it. Still have it.”