18
Before
“I think you’re sticky,” my father was telling my brother as I came out of the kitchen one windy Saturday night at the restaurant, Homecoming weekend of my third and, with any luck, final year of high school. There was a dance I could have gone to. I picked up an extra shift instead. It was after midnight and Antonia’s was empty, my work shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor.
“Well, what is it? It’s like, a—What’s the word? It starts with a P.” That was Cade, leaning against the bar in his discount-warehouse suit—he’d gotten promoted that fall, was managing days and some weekends. He and his fiancée, Stef, were saving up to buy a house.
“It’s a plasma,” Sawyer said. He was unloading glasses from the dishwasher behind the bar, and he smiled at me as I approached. “Here, ask Reena. Reena will know.”
“What will I know?” I set my plate full of pancakes on the bar and hopped up on a stool. My hair was falling out of its braid, I could feel it.
“Okay,” said Cade, around a mouthful of bar pretzels. “Reena. If I throw a bucket of blood on you”—he paused dramatically—“are you wet?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Are you wet,” my father repeated, like this was somehow a logical question. He was festive and silly tonight—he got like that sometimes, around the boys. It made him seem younger than he was.
I set my fork down. “First of all, that’s disgusting. Second of all”—I turned to Sawyer—“why is that something I would know?”
“’Cause you’re smart,” he replied reasonably. “And smart people know stuff.”
“Oh, well, in that case.” I rolled my eyes, dorkily pleased. I’d taken the SATs again that morning, as a matter of fact, trying to pull my math score up even more—the next in a logical sequence of steps, I thought, toward getting the hell out of town. “Anyway, I think he’s right. I think you’re more sticky than you are wet.”
“Ha. Good girl,” my father said, vindicated. He kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to get out of here before Soledad calls the police. You want to come with me, or have Cade drive you after he closes?”
“Um.” I hesitated, looking in every conceivable direction except for the one I wanted to be looking in. I should have gone home, actually—I’d joined the school paper at Ms. Bowen’s behest and was writing an Around Town column about street festivals and new stores on Federal Highway. I had 250 words on a sculpture park near the beach due first thing Monday morning. “I can stick around for a while.”
Sawyer noticed my plate once my father had gone and Cade, flush with his new managerial responsibilities, went back to the office to run the night’s totals. “Aw, not fair,” he said, his face a sad, silly caricature. “Finch made you pancakes?”
I nodded happily, digging into the fluffy stack sitting on my plate. “Finch loves me.”
“And really, who can blame him?” Sawyer hooked a pair of wineglasses onto the rack above his head. Then he reached across the bar, took my fork out of my hand, and helped himself to a big bite.
“Oh, come on!” I cried, playing at irritated. “Get your own.”
“Yours are better,” he said, mouth full.
I huffed a little, delighted and trying not to look it. “You know, not all of us want your germs.”
“Reena,” he replied mildly, handing back the fork. “You already got my germs.”
I froze for just one second, and then I started to laugh. It was the closest we’d come to talking about it—the only indication he’d given me that he even remembered it had happened—and hearing him say it loosened some knot I hadn’t even realized was pressing on the muscles in my chest. I giggled like a maniac for a minute, absurdly relieved, crazy hyena giggles, like I hadn’t laughed in a year. “Shut up,” I managed, once I finally got my breath.
“There you go, Reena.” Sawyer grinned, revealing two perfectly straight rows of white teeth. “You’re so serious all the time, I swear. I crack you and it makes my damn night.”
“Yeah, well.” I took a breath, calmed down a bit. “I do what I can.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sawyer wandered over to the piano and made himself comfortable on the bench. Though my father put a down payment on Antonia’s all those years ago in part so he’d always have a place to play his music, it only took a couple of months for him to realize that the care and keeping of a restaurant required more time and effort than he had anticipated. Now he sat at the baby grand only once or twice a month, a special occasion. The rest of the time, he booked bands.
“Any requests, ma’am?” Sawyer asked, clever hands already splayed over the keys. He started with a few quick scales, flew through the opening of a Dave Matthews song that was one of Cade’s favorites, then launched into some West Coast–style jazz I knew my father must have taught him. Dave Brubeck, I recognized after a moment. Car-commercial music.
Is there anything you’re not good at? I wanted to ask him, but I just smiled, reached behind me, and pulled the rubber band out of my hair. “Play whatever you want. I’ll just listen.”
“I wish everybody was that easy. Come sit.”
I slid off the barstool and onto the piano bench. Somewhere in the back of my head I thought of the old pictures I’d seen of my parents sitting at the upright in my grandmother’s house, the dark gaze of my mother, Antonia herself, fixed on my father’s young face as he played.
“You should wear your hair down more,” Sawyer said, glancing at me, hands moving fast through a piece I didn’t know. Our thighs were touching. “It looks nice like that.”
I laughed, but Sawyer just shook his head. “I’m serious,” he said, still playing. His voice went low and quiet. “I noticed you, you know that? Even before last spring I did.”
Before last spring you were dating my dead best friend, I thought and didn’t say. Instead I hedged. “That so?”
“Yeah.” Sawyer shrugged. “You’re just … different.”
“Different,” I repeated. I thought of Lauren Werner, of the fact that at this very moment, everybody else in my grade was at Homecoming except for me. I got tired of being different, is the truth of it. It wore on me. “What, from Allie?”
That was the wrong thing to say. Sawyer kept his fingers on the keys, didn’t miss a chord, but his whole body tensed. I thought of the strings inside the piano. “Sorry,” I said, backpedaling. I hadn’t even meant to bring her up, not overtly—she was just on my mind so much, still, like the six months since the car crash hadn’t done anything to dull how much I missed her. You’d think losing her almost a full year before she actually died would have cushioned the blow, somehow; instead I just felt it more and more. “I shouldn’t have—I just meant—”
“It’s fine,” Sawyer said shortly, but for the first time all night I didn’t like the sound of his voice. I wondered how much he thought about her. I wondered if he thought about her at all.
“Okay, but …”
“I said it’s okay, Reena.”
We sat in awkward, testy silence for a moment until Cade emerged from the kitchen. “Taking requests?” he asked, then noticed our stony faces and looked, sort of accusingly, at Sawyer. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said too loudly, keeping my expression as neutral as humanly possible and feeling certain that I’d just pulled this apart, whatever it even was, faster than I’d known it could be destroyed. “Everything’s great.”