If He Had Been with Me (18 page)

I am drinking white wine out of a blue mug. The party is crowded and hot, a success. Some people are dressed as pirates or hobos; I am dressed as myself in a blue t-shirt, a black skirt, neon tights, and a silver tiara. I watch the party alone, leaning against the doorway of the living room. Brooke and Noah are in the kitchen making drinks. I don’t know where Alex and Sasha have gone. Angie and Preppy Dave are snuggling on the couch, drinking Coke and whispering. Jamie is standing on the coffee table, telling a story to his captive audience. He spreads his arms wide and shrugs, and everyone laughs.

“So I went back to the car
again
,” he says. One laugh stands out this time, and I glance around him to the other side of the room. Sylvie sits cross-legged on the floor next to the couch, a beer in hand and her eyes shining. I know that look. Sylvie has been charmed by Jamie. It happens easily enough and to nearly everyone.

Jamie throws back his head to laugh at his own joke, and Sylvie grins. My mouth eases into its own smile and I watch Jamie jump off the coffee table and take a bow. Sylvie may like him now, even want him maybe, but he is sauntering across the room to me. Jamie lays his hands on my hips and leans close.

“Hey,” he says.

“That was a very entertaining story.”

“I know,” he says. Now that his epic tale is done, the room is beginning to fill again with other voices, a low humming around us. He is so close that all I can see is his laughing, mocking eyes staring into mine.

“I really want—” I say.

“Want what?” he says.

“To be alone with you,” I say. The skin crinkles around his eyes as he grins.

“Let’s go,” he says. I shake my head.

“If everybody sees us go together, they might duck under the rope too,” I say. Before everyone came, I strung a piece of twine across the stairway to keep the party downstairs, the madness and mess contained.

“I’ll go now,” Jamie says, “and you follow in a minute with drinks.”

“Okay,” I say. He kisses me hard, pressing me against the doorframe, the way he never does in front of others usually. He leaves me breathless and flushed; I tip the mug back and finish the wine in one swallow.

I walk over to the couch and sink down next to Angie. I cup my hands around my mouth and lean into Angie’s ear.

“Whisper, whisper, whisper,” I say. She shoves me gently and laughs. “What are you guys plotting over here?” I say.

“We’re gonna get married,” Preppy Dave says.

“In December, maybe,” Angie says. “We’re going to tell our parents soon.”

“Wow,” I say, “that’s really—” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Finny enter the room. “Big,” I say. They both nod, and Dave’s arm tightens around her shoulders. I stumble up and stand with one hand on the couch. “I’ll leave you two crazy kids now,” I say. “I have an appointment to keep in my bedroom.”

“Be safe,” Preppy Dave says.

“Yeah,” Angie says. I laugh and take my hand away from the couch as I turn away, and I stumble into Finny’s chest.

“Oh!”

“Sorry,” he says, even though it is clearly my fault. His drink spilled down his front when I ran into him. He wipes at his chest with one hand while I look around for something to blot his shirt with.

“Oh, baby,” Sylvie says. She touches his chest and clucks like a mother hen.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“It’s fine,” Finny says.

“You’re going to reek of alcohol, baby,” Sylvie says.

“Let’s go in the kitchen and get a towel,” I say. “And you can have a drink from our stash.” He steps around the table with me and we walk to the kitchen.

“You don’t have to do that,” Finny says.

“It only fair,” I say.

“That’s very nice of you, Autumn,” Sylvie says. Finny and I don’t say anything in reply.

In the kitchen, Brooke and Noah are trying to make a martini shaker by fitting a plastic cup over a glass tumbler. Drops of vodka fly across the room with every shake.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Noah says.

“No,” Brooke says. She lays the makeshift shaker down sadly.

“Hey,” I say, “make something for Finny from our stash.”

“Would you like a custom hand-shaken martini?” Noah says. I open a drawer and take out a tea towel.

“Say no,” I advise.

“Um,” Finny says, “perhaps something that won’t make a mess in Aunt Claire’s kitchen.”

“Who?” Brooke says.

“My mom,” I say. I hand Finny the towel and he blots his chest, but his shirt is only damp now and it doesn’t do much good. While Brooke and Noah make a rum concoction for Finny, I fill my mug and a plastic cup with wine.

“Here you are, my good man,” Noah says.

“Thanks,” Finny says. The three of us—me and Finny and Sylvie—walk back to the living room. The hallway is empty. I duck under the rope and look over my shoulder to make sure no one saw.

Finny is standing at the bottom of the stairs, his drink untouched in his hand. Sylvie is gone. I hear her laughter in the next room.

“Hey?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t forget what you promised me, okay?”

I try to flip through all of my memories of us, trying to find a promise that hasn’t been broken yet. There were a lot of promises; there isn’t much left.

“Not while you’re drunk,” he says. My grip on the wine tightens, and I feel myself start to nod and then shrug.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Phineas,” I say. “Okay?”

He looks at me, not blinking, not moving. He does not blush. From the next room, Sylvie calls his name. He doesn’t seem to hear. I swallow, trying to push my heart back out of my throat.

“Fine,” I say, “I’m not—we aren’t going to, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, and turns on his heels.

“Finn?” Sylvie calls.

“So, did you hear about Thanksgiving?” Finny says. He’s lining up his pool cue with the white ball. He shoots and breaks the triangle in the center of the table. Balls roll in every direction. One falls into the left pocket.

“Does that one count?” I say. Finny shrugs and motions for me to shoot. “We might as well count it since you’re going to win anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” he says.

“Yeah, I do.” I lean over and try to position myself the way he did.

“Don’t hold it so high in the back,” he says. “Don’t hunch either.” I shoot anyway and hit the ball on the side. It bounces off the rim and hits the floor. Finny grabs it and places it back on the table. He opens his mouth to explain to me what I did wrong.

“What were you saying about Thanksgiving?” I say. He looks down and begins to line up for his next shot.

“My father wants me to come over to his place and meet his wife and daughter.” He shoots and the white ball hits the one I think he was aiming for, but it doesn’t go in the hole.

“You have a sister?” I say. My chest feels hot and my stomach sinks. Finny shrugs, and anyone else would think that he could care less. I know he cares. And it’s another connection to rival mine. First Sylvie and now this sister.

“What’s her name?”

“Elizabeth.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s four,” he says. I relax a little bit.

“How long have you known about her? Why didn’t you tell me?” He looks up at me again. We’re standing across from each other, on different sides of the table, pool sticks in hand. Around us, other conversations buzz, and balls clack against each other. I know why he didn’t tell me, because we were hardly speaking to each other when she was born. He doesn’t bother reminding me though.

“Your turn,” he says.

“So, you won’t be with us on Thanksgiving?” I say. I shoot and the white ball hits the orange number six, which clacks uselessly against the wall and rolls to a stop.

“No, I will,” he says. “I’m supposed to come over later in the evening, for cocktails and leftovers.”

“Oh,” I say. He shoots, and another ball rolls into the pocket.

“You look relieved,” he says. He smiles.

“Would you want to be alone with them all day?”

Finny shrugs. I lean over and try to aim.

“Stop,” he says. “I can’t take it.”

“What?”

He doesn’t answer, but walks around the table and stands behind me. He lays his hands over mine. They are dry and warm. His hip presses against mine.

“Like this,” he says. He adjusts my hands. I close my eyes. We are still. His hands press against mine. I take a breath. I hear the clack of the balls.

“Oops,” Finny says. I open my eyes. The ball we were aiming for bounces off the side and rolls slowly to a stop. We straighten and step away from each other.

“I guess I’m too big of a screw-up even for you to fix,” I say. He doesn’t answer me or move to take his aim. “Finny?” I say. He blinks.

“That wasn’t your fault,” he says. “It was mine.” He hands me the cue again.

We are in the courthouse downtown. I’m holding my new digital camera, a gift from my birthday. Angie’s dress is short and white, with blue tights. She has a large white flower pinned in her hair. Her back is to me now, but when she turns in profile, I will see the barely discernible swell in her middle. Preppy Dave is in a gray suit. His hair is wetted down and combed so that the lines show. His mother is crying. I’m not sure if they’re happy tears or not. I raise my camera and take another shot. Jamie leans over and looks at the screen. He nods in approval. All of us are sitting in one row on the left. On the other side, three of Preppy Dave’s teammates sit. They are the only other young people here; the rest are parents and grandparents, a few aunts and uncles. There is one baby in the crowd and every few minutes, it mews and is shushed again.

I reach over and take Jamie’s hand again.

“We’re next,” I whisper. He smiles briefly and squeezes back.

Preppy Dave and Angie turn to face each other, and I let go of his hand and raise my camera again. Her smile sends a knifepoint into my stomach; my hands shake and the picture is blurry. I delete it before Jamie sees.

Someday I’ll be happy like that, I tell myself.

Angie’s hands squeeze Dave’s and I think about his hand over mine as we aimed the pool cue. I squeeze Jamie’s hand.

All day, The Mothers made a big deal about this being our last Christmas before we leave for college, and Finny and I had to not roll our eyes or laugh when they got sentimental. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and we gave each other silent warnings not to give in and snort or sigh in reply to them. We didn’t see how things could be so different next year, and they were ridiculous and maudlin in our eyes.

My parents gave me a laptop. Good for schoolwork, they said. Good for writing, I thought. I’ve started something new, something secret, and now I can carry that secret thing with me wherever I go, bouncing against my hip in my messenger bag.

Finny got a sound system for the little red car from his father. He was never that much into music, but he shrugged and kind of smiled.

***

We’re sitting on the couch watching TV with the lights off. Christmas is at Aunt Angelina’s this year. The pine tree by the window sometimes blinks randomly in one section or another, but never all at once or to any rhythm. Finny had tried to find the problem and fix it, but then Aunt Angelina decided she liked it. Because of the tree, the light in the room dances across the ceiling and makes the windows darken and flash again. Finny has the remote. He flips through the channels until he finds
It’s a Wonderful Life
. He sets the remote down on the coffee table, leans back against the cushions, and stretches his long legs out in front of him.

At Thanksgiving, when he got up in the evening to leave us for his new other family, our eyes met briefly but we did not say anything. Without him, I sat in the corner with a book and went upstairs early. Nothing about his evening came to me through The Mothers and he did not say anything about it in gym class. All I know is that he isn’t leaving us tonight.

The Mothers laugh in the kitchen and Jimmy Stewart falls in the swimming pool. We both smile, and the movie fades into a commercial break. I stand up.

“Do you want a Coke?” I say.

“Sure,” he says.

I kick his foot. “You’re blocking traffic with those things,” I say, and he folds his legs back and stretches them out again after me like a toll booth.

Those legs took our school to state soccer finals this fall. I went to their last game with The Mothers and got to watch him running for an hour and a half. The muscles in his legs, the way he lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, the concentration in his eyes as he ran—it made my chest constrict. I felt as if I would never see him play again, and I somehow knew they wouldn’t win the game, that they wouldn’t make it to championships, and this would be Finny’s last game ever. Finny’s last game in high school, I amended in my mind, but my chest still hurt when the whistle blew and he trudged across the field in defeat.

In the kitchen, my mother is checking on the lamb, and Aunt Angelina is pouring a glass of wine.

“Twenty more minutes,” Mom says.

“I’m just here for Cokes,” I say. Aunt Angelina reaches on top of the fridge and gets them down for me. I take a warm can in each hand. Finny and I like to drink our sodas out of unrefrigerated cans; sometime around third grade, we got the idea that there was something wild and rebellious about drinking soda straight from the can, and for years we refused to drink it any other way. It’s habit now. Jamie thinks it’s odd, probably because I have never given him an explanation, not that the real one would help. He still offers the opinion, whenever it comes up, that my relationship with Finny is weird.

“Throw it,” Finny says when I come back. He holds out his hands.

“Do you have a death wish or something?” I say. I cross the room and place the can in his hands.

“Nah. Even if you hit my head, you couldn’t throw it hard enough to do any real damage.” I sit down on my side of the couch and open my can. He’s probably right. I’m taking my first sip when he speaks, and he’s too quiet for me to hear.

“What was that?”

Finny clears his throat. “I’m going to miss gym class with you,” he says.

“You mean you’re going to miss laughing at me in gym class?”

“No. I mean I’m going to miss hanging out with you.”

A lump forms in my throat. I shrug, smile, and try to speak around it. “We see each other all the time. We have dinner with The Mothers, like, twice a week.”

“I know,” Finny says. He looks down at his can. “But I dunno. We should hang out sometime when we don’t have to. Go see a movie or something.”

“Um,” I say. I’m looking away again now. I feel warm and fluttery inside. I cannot say anything. Perhaps it is possible for us to have come full circle, from as close as two people can be to awkward strangers to nearly friends to—

To what?

What could we, would we, be now? It’s possible to love two people at once, but could it be possible to stay loyal to one?

I look up at his face, his flushed cheeks and nervous blue eyes, and I want to say “Sure.” I want it too much.

“I’m not sure, Finny,” I say. Even allowing myself to say his name hurts. “I don’t know if Jamie would like it. It might be kinda weird.”

“But I thought Jamie and Sasha hung out all the time?”

“Yeah, they do,” I say. “But they’re friends—”

I flinch, and I can’t speak anymore. I stare straight ahead and try to breathe without trembling.

“I see,” Finny says. I hear my mother’s cell phone ring in the kitchen. I take a deep breath and stand up.

“It’s probably almost time for dinner,” I say. Finny watches the TV and says nothing. I step around the coffee table and walk as quickly as I can out of the room.

In the bathroom, I sit on the edge of the tub and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see strange shapes in the darkness. My fingers tremble in my hair.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t,” I whisper.

“Finny! Autumn!” Aunt Angelina calls.

Finny and I meet in the hall and say nothing. We walk into the dining room together and stop at the threshold. An hour ago, Finny and I set the table for five. Aunt Angelina is taking off the china and silverware from one seat. She carries them into the kitchen. My mother sets the rack of lamb on the table and sits down with her hands in her lap.

“Mom?” I ask. “Where’d Dad go?”

“I don’t know, honey,” she says. “But he just called to say he won’t be coming back tonight.”

“Oh,” I say.

Aunt Angelina comes back into the room and puts her hand on my mother’s shoulder.

“Come on and sit down, kids,” she says. Her voice and face plead with us. Finny takes a step forward but I don’t. He turns and looks at me. Our eyes meet. He reaches out and lays his hand on my arm.

“Come on, Autumn,” he says. He squeezes gently and kind of smiles.

“Okay,” I say.

Aunt Angelina and Finny talk for us while we eat. Afterward, The Mothers close themselves in the kitchen and Finny and I watch TV until midnight. We don’t say anything else to each other.