I knew where I’d seen him before: at Matt’s cross-country championships in New Jersey in the fall. Matt’s family had let me ride in the car with them so I could watch him compete. Laura, Matt’s older sister, noticed Brandon first.
“Damn,” she muttered, nudging me until I spotted him at the bottom of the bleachers. I had to look away, afraid Matt might catch me staring at the other team’s hot coach.
By the end of my first day of work, I had a name for him: Brandon.
By the end of June, Matt and I had broken up. We both knew it was coming; he was leaving for college in Binghamton at the end of August. But the thought of not seeing him waiting at my locker on the first day of school sucked so much, I asked for extra shifts at the country club just so I wouldn’t sit around the house thinking about it.
Rachel and Alexa thought the perfect place to debut Single Monica was at Jimmy Varney’s Fourth of July party, since Matt wouldn’t be there; he and his family were at their lake house upstate for the weekend. Rachel had just turned seventeen and passed her road test, so she and Alexa planned to pick me up when my shift at the country club finished at six.
That morning, when I packed the white dress to change into after work, I thought of Brandon.
He was skimming the surface of the pool with a net when I got out of the employee bathroom. Brandon looked up at me, his lips parting. His face went pink and my skin went warm under the dress.
I thought about the look on his face throughout the entire party that night.
That look made me feel like I could do anything. So I started to use my breaks to talk to him. At lunch, I sat in the empty chair next to the lifeguard stand, eating my mother’s chicken salad while Brandon told me about what I’d missed on my days off. A six-year-old girl who screamed and refused to get in the water until Brandon fished out a dead beetle from the bottom of the pool.
He never asked how old I was and I never asked how old he was. We both understood it would ruin whatever was going on.
A week later, when six o’clock came around and it was time to close up, I texted my mom that I had a ride home. I offered to stay late and help Brandon clean the pool. After, we sat on the edge, thighs almost touching, watching the waitstaff set up for a wedding inside the country club.
“That was cool of you to help,” he said. “I’m sure you’d rather be hanging out with your boyfriend.”
He nudged my knee with his, and I kept my head tilted down so he couldn’t see the flush in my cheeks. “Who said I had a boyfriend?”
“Sorry,” he laughed. “I’m sure you’d rather be hanging out with the guy you wore that white dress for the other night.”
I sliced my foot through the surface of the water. I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to give it away that he was the guy I wore the dress for.
But he must have figured it out, because he asked if I wanted a ride home. He stood and extended a hand, helped me to my feet.
When he started up his Jeep, classic rock blasted from the speakers. Something about a blue-eyed boy and a brown-eyed girl. We were the opposite.
He really was going to take me home. I’m the one who told him where to turn, and when we reached my street, I told him to keep going and he did. He kept driving until we reached Osprey’s Bluff.
“Monica.” He swallowed, shut his eyes. I undid my belt and climbed into his lap, facing him. I held his hands on my cheeks for a little while, studying his face. He stared back at me in a way Matt had never looked at me, stroking his thumb along my jaw.
Brandon said my name again. “This is a bad idea.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
He didn’t push me away when I kissed him. He wanted it, I could feel how badly he wanted it, and when he asked, “Are you sure? Are you really sure?” I nodded. He leaned over and opened his glove compartment, tracing stubbly kisses around my neck the whole time.
It happened two more times before the beginning of the last week in August, when my mom took me for my annual gynecologist visit and the doctor asked when my last period was, and I said I didn’t know because I honestly didn’t remember, and she frowned and made me pee in a cup.
I called in sick for what was supposed to be my last shift at the country club, three days before school started. Brandon didn’t text me to see what had happened—why I never said goodbye.
Friday, I swallowed the first pill in Dr. Bob’s office. I spent Saturday curled up on my side on my bed, sobbing into my pillow and praying I wouldn’t throw up from the second pill, because then it wouldn’t work.
In the morning, I had a text from Brandon, asking if we could talk. I’m so stupid, I thought maybe he wanted to see me again.
But he was trying to warn me that he’d gotten a job at my goddamn high school.
* * *
—
Mom doesn’t speak to me as she collects me from the nurse’s office, signs us out, and leads me into the parking lot without uttering a single word.
The rain has turned to a light mist. I tilt my head back and let it cool my face as Mom unlocks the car.
I keep my eyes on my lap as I buckle my seat belt. “I’m sorry. I threw up.”
I watch her from the corner of my eye, searching for any indication she might ask me if there’s something else going on. She starts the car and flicks on the wipers. “You can’t keep taking painkillers on an empty stomach.”
The truck in front of us stops short. Mom slams on the brakes and all I can think is pain. I’m sweating, ears ringing. Her voice breaks through—she’s saying my name over and over. Shaking me.
I blink away the black spots clouding my vision. We’re pulled over, and my mother is staring at me. “Did you just pass out?”
“I don’t know.” Pressure builds behind my eyes. “Mom. I just want this to stop.”
“I know.” Her hand lingers on my shoulder. Her touch is light. I imagine her cool fingers brushing my hair behind my ear like she did when I was little, before my sister died and my mom stopped touching me. As if I’d become breakable.
She withdraws her hand and doesn’t say anything else until we get home.
* * *
—
Mom is the manager of a playhouse—it’s too small to be called a theater—in town. She has to pick up booster forms for the upcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest, but she drops me off at home first and makes me chug Gatorade to get my blood sugar back up.
From my bedroom, I hear her on the phone with Dr. Robert Smith. I wonder if his name is actually Bob Smith, or if he changed it to something so generic no one could find him and pipe bomb his house.
“Naproxen can make people sick to their stomach. He called you in some nausea medication,” my mother says when she sticks her head in my doorway. “It should be ready by the time I leave the playhouse—I’ll pick it up on my way home.”
As she’s shutting my door, I call, “Mom?”
“Yes, Monica?”
My heart is still racing from the sight of Brandon this morning. The adrenaline is the only explanation for the fact that I have the urge to tell my mother the real reason I asked her to pick me up.
My mom and I don’t exactly have an open relationship; she had to find out that Matt and I broke up by running into his sister at Starbucks. Even if I did tell her things, it would be totally demented to admit that I had a summer fling with the new cross-country coach.
I’m not seventeen. Brandon is in his twenties. Tom is a cop. I tamp down the thought as quickly as it comes to me.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
She studies me for a moment before shutting my door. It almost hurts, how taken aback she looks at my acting the slightest bit grateful. It makes me wonder why anyone would ever want children. I can’t think of a more thankless job.
When I hear the front door slam downstairs, I sit up in bed. Flinch at the fresh swell of pain in my lower body. I haven’t had a painkiller since before I went to Demarco’s office this morning.