We end up at our park. I don’t know that either of us made the decision to come here, but feet followed feet and the park is lit up by people smoking and checking their phones, little dots of bluish and orange light, so it feels safe and the strangest kind of romantic.
Bernardo sits on his bench. I try to follow, but he nods at the bench I usually share with Roxanne and Arizona, so I sit over there. He’s at his bench, I’m at mine, it smells like weed and someone’s McDonald’s, and that is when Bernardo finally smiles at me. He watches me from there for a moment before joining me on my bench.
“You’re weird,” I say. It’s the most flirtatious I know how to be.
“Well, yeah,” he says. “It’s even more fun to watch you from over there when I know I can do this after.” I don’t have time to ask do what? And I don’t have a chance to pull back and worry about how it will be. I don’t have a chance to think about before and after.
He kisses me and there’s only now.
eleven
Karissa is downstairs the next morning. She is sitting on the counter. Not on one of the bar stools next to the counter, but actually on the counter. She’s got a face-size to-go cup of coffee and she’s glowing in the general direction of Arizona, who has her legs crossed and her own enormous coffee and is at her normal stool, the one closest to the fridge that she claimed when we were little kids.
“Finally!” Karissa says. I’m in an extra-large Knicks shirt and gym shorts and I’m not at all ready for contact with humans.
“You’re all here,” I say. “For breakfast?”
“Karissa called me. Told me to bring coffee and pastries. She’s making French toast. With the pastries.” Arizona is giving me a look that usually means she hasn’t had enough coffee to deal with whatever is going down, but in this case must mean something else, because she has literally the most amount of coffee possible in her hands.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say. I can’t tell if it’s sleepiness or all the kissing that’s got me hazy and confused this morning. I had no idea the aftereffects of a great night with a cute guy were so close to exhaustion.
“It’s something I made up when I was little. I know it sounds insane, but it’s delicious,” Karissa says. She’s whisking eggs, so I guess she’s serious, she’s actually going to slather the pastries in eggs and fry them up like normal people do with challah bread. “I want to share with you two what my sister and I shared.”
“Oh,” Arizona says. Karissa wipes away a tear, and this is probably why Arizona asked if she was unstable.
“My sister died not long ago,” Karissa says. “My whole family did. So I get a little sentimental. Especially in the mornings. That’s something you should know about me.”
Arizona has no idea how to respond. She raises her eyebrows at me, but I don’t know how she should respond either. I thought that information was something I had earned the other night, something secret and special and hard to get to. I’m surprised to hear it slip out of Karissa so easily in front of Arizona. Surprised and something else too. Jealous.
“I want us to know each other. Like Montana and I know each other. Like your dad and I—” Karissa stops herself, hearing the sentence before she says it aloud.
This all came out easier when she was drinking with me. Drunk people are more prepared for heavy topics. The morning is time for magazine reading and risk-free conversations about pizza toppings or Sunday-night television.
“I’m so sorry. Losing your family must be . . .” Arizona can’t finish the sentence, so now we are in a sea of broken sentences. She looks at me, and I know she feels a little of what I feel toward Karissa. If only for a moment.
“We’re all just trying to survive the last terrible thing that happened to us, right?” Karissa says. She jumps off the counter and takes an apple fritter from the box Arizona brought over, starts coating it in egg. She trips a little over her extra-long bright-purple silky pajama pants.
There’s silence, and it’s the not the kind I had with Bernardo last night.
“What’s the last terrible thing that happened to you?” Karissa asks.
“I’m sorry?” Arizona says. She keeps grabbing different things on the counter—a spoon, a Post-it note that my father doodled body parts on when he was talking on the phone the other day, her cell, an almost-bad banana.
My mind does a little jump, and I try to remember what I have told Karissa over the last six months about my sister. And about my father. And about my life, of which she is now a part in a wholly new and unexpected way.